We Have Met the Left and It's Obama

“What is motivating (Obama) primarily is ideology. And an ideological opening. He doesn’t like the malefactors of great wealth. He wants to “spread the wealth around.” Peggy Noonan

Anyone who dares to characterize Barack Obama as a leftist radical is heaped with scorn and outrage.  Only crazy, hateful talk-show entertainers like Rush Limbaugh stoop so low, but reasonable people do not listen anyway. Whether Obama harbors socialist views is a valid topic for intellectual conversation, but, other than errant bloggers (Is President Obama Truly a Socialist?), polite people avoid it.

Many moderate Republicans bought into the media narrative that Obama is a centrist, who moves left only to placate his base. Were it not for them, the true Obama would govern from the center, or tilt only ever so slightly to the left.

Indeed,  the carefully scripted Obama masterfully masqueraded as a centrist during his two presidential campaigns, while governing from the left. The complicit media characterized him as a softy, too ready to yield to the obstructionist Republicans.  But if the Left would only “Watch what I do, not what I say,” Obama already delivered for them the moon, and now wants the stars as well.

go to forbes.com

Challenge for the American Left: Go on Record For Hollande's Socialist Program

During the French presidential campaign, pundits assured us that Francois Hollande was simply playing to his socialist base. Once in office, he’d prove to be a pragmatist. All his talk of 75 percent income tax rates, wealth surcharges, infrastructure banks, new taxes on dividends, hiring more public employees, not giving an inch on entitlements, and punishing the financial sector was just talk. Two months later, we know Hollande meant every word. Armed with a solid parliamentary majority, he is carrying out his socialist agenda, no holds-barred.

It is time for our anti-austerity, pro-stimulus, and ueber-fairness crowd to go on record in support of Hollande. I’d like to count them when the French economy goes down the toilet, as it certainly will unless Hollande changes course.

The American Left counts among Hollande’s many cheerleaders. At long last, a leader of France is standing up to the austerity crowd. Liberal New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, rails against the Hollande hysteria of the staid Financial Times and the stingy Germans. Per Krugman: we need not fear someone who genuinely believes in the need for a fair society, and we know the mess we get into when the government does not run things.  By ignoring the austerity nonsense, Hollande offers the “possibility of something better” not only for “new Keynesians and old socialists” but for France, Europe, and the world economy.

As they say, time will tell.

go to forbes.com

A Community Organizer Among Hunter-Gatherers: Do We Have Socialist or Individualistic Genes?

 "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." Barack Obama October 13, 2008

A young community organizer is struck by lightning and is transported back to 20,000 BC, sitting around a fire as twenty five cold fur-clad men recount their day of hunting and gathering.

The community organizer feels an immediate kinship.  His Ivy League course on “Liberation Writings from Marx-Engels to Cornell West” taught him that these noble “first communists” constitute “our loving, peaceful, lyrically fair human core.”  Shared belief in collective production and equal distribution make us spiritual brothers. He is fortunate to be able to observe the “blissful conditions of a fabulous golden age of the remote past,” as one writer phrased it. This should be fun.

The glorious savages name him their leader.  Anyone who could make fire with the “flick of a Bic lighter” must be a god. Well, if our intrepid time traveler can organize tough Chicago neighborhoods, he can help this clan live up to its principles of  collectivism and redistribution.

The next day, the community organizer dispatches the hunters and gatherers. He divides them into groups of five and observes with dismay as they depart in ones and twos. He waits near the fire as they return – some with food, others empty handed. The rugged Thor returns with an antelope, and the clan gives him the place closest to the fire’s warmth.  The community organizer has to move.

Our community organizer writes observations in his notebook. Indeed, the successful hunters and gatherers share, except with two they call Hapless and Helpless. Our community organizer waits in vain for his share. Apparently hunter and gatherers think a god should know how to provide for himself. He goes to bed hungry.

The next day Gor bags a deer. He shares with all except Hapless, who got lost, and Helpless, who sprained his toe. Now Gor gets the place closest to the fire. The Community Organizer gets nothing.

Outraged, the community organizer rebukes Thor and Gor. They should pay their fair share!  Down-on-their-luck Hapless and Helpless need a helping hand. Also community organizers don’t work for nothing. In a dramatic gesture, he waves his magic cigarette lighter: “If you do not provide for me and the less fortunate, I will bring the wrath of the gods down upon you.”

The next morning Hapless, Helpless, and the community organizer awake to find the others gone. The community organizer snaps his fingers to return to the 21^st century, but he is stuck in time. He, Hapless and Helpless become weaker and weaker and die.

My story is based on Thomas Mayor’s Hunter-Gatherers: The Original Libertarians. He demonstrates that we are genetically programmed to respect  individual rights to the fruits of our own efforts. Our prehistoric forbearers did not engage in voluntary redistribution. They shared perishable food, not out of altruism, but as insurance and reciprocal gift giving. Consistent shirkers were expelled from the band. If anyone tried to force them to redistribute, they simply picked up and moved on to another hunting ground.

go to forbes.com

Award for Best Defenses of Bain Capital Goes To John McCain and Steve Forbes

If Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee, he will somehow have to explain to American voters what private equity  is and its positive contribution to growth and prosperity. Because private equity and venture capital are complicated businesses, this task is not easy. I credit John McCain and Steve Forbes for coming up with the easiest-to-understand explanations.

Number 1: John McCain

Blitzer (Situation Room): How do you rebut that (claims that Bain cost jobs) in the general election?

McCain:  Well I’d compare that with the half billion we put into Solyndra with the 5 million they put into Staples which hires, I don’t know, ten thousands people or more. Unfortunately in the free enterprise system, there are winners and losers, and there is competition in the free enterprise system. When you total up what Bain capital did, the successes far outweigh the failures. And if you are not willing to allow, as tragic as it is, for some enterprises to fail, well obviously that is the essence of socialism.  Source

Number 2: Steve Forbes

In terms of Bain itself, I've not looked at the particulars but that whole nature of that business -- most businesses eventually succumb and if you can save it, that's great.
If you can start one that succeeds, that's great. But it's like baseball. Seven times out of ten you're not going to get that hit. The same is true with what he did in terms of equity capital. But the key thing is -- did he create jobs overall, because a lot of those companies that are going to portray him as killing jobs and that kind of thing would have gone under if they didn't have someone to save it. Sometimes you have to tighten the belt to save the company. Source  

Psst: The Tea Party Is Mainstream Despite Everything You Hear

Democrat politicians paint the Tea Party as an extreme fringe of American politics. Vice President Joe Biden famously described Tea Party Republicans as “terrorists.” According to Democrat Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Tea Party are “extremists” who have “hijacked” the Republican Party.  Other Democrats are less restrained, telling us: The Tea Party is like the Nazis or KKK, is a serious threat to our national security, and Tea Party members should “go straight to hell.”  Some even whisper the Tea Party “wants to lynch blacks.”

Establishment figures condescendingly describe the Tea Party as “an amorphous collection of individuals” which includes “affluent suburban libertarians, rural fundamentalists, ambitious pundits, unreconstructed racists, and fiscally conservative housewives.” They shudder to consider: What would happen to our foreign policy if those hicks got in charge!

The Democrats’ media allies either ignore huge Tea Party rallies or feature clown-like demonstrators dressed as Uncle Sam or revolutionary figures. They single out Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann as representatives of the sinister free-market ideology of the Christian right.

National Public Radio and other “balanced” news organizations decry the plague on both parties. The beleaguered president must contend with his far-left, and noble moderate Republicans must bear their Tea Party cross. They ask plaintively: With extremists on both sides, how we can have civilized discourse and compromise?

Democratic politicians and their media allies can scarcely restrain their glee when national polls find the Tea Party’s popularity slipping. Given the onslaught from all sides, I personally find it remarkable that the Tea Party commands the large support it does.

The dominant narrative of the Tea Party as an extremist fringe group isolated from the American mainstream is distant from the truth. American public opinion polls, in fact, show that those who have “read, heard or seen anything about the Tea Party” are more supportive and majorities credit the Tea Party with energizing the political process and making government more responsive to the people.

If the Tea Party is a kook fringe, then its agenda should be far out of line with American public opinion. I surveyed a large number of Tea Party sites to distill what I consider to be its “core” platform. I then studied public opinion polls to determine whether the American people agree with the Tea Party’s core principles.

Here is what I found:

to read go to Forbes.com

Mafia in Pinstripe: The Real GE Scandal

The transition from street thug to state mafia took a decade in Russia. I was an eyewitness to the Russian process: In 1992, I saw businesses being shaken down by bullies in jogging suits and shaved heads. Six years later, I talked with business owners harassed by crooked tax, sanitation, police, and fire inspectors. Under Putin, these petty thugs were replaced by officials in pinstripes, politely shaking down businesses in meetings in government offices and swank hotels. It has become civilized, but the outcome is still the same.

What does the Russian story have to do with GE?

GE is unique among American corporations. Since its founding, it has been consistently in Fortune’s Top 10 – the only long-term survivor of Schumpeter’s creative destruction. GE adapted better than others to changing tastes and technology under executives like Gerard Swope, Charles Wilson, and John Welch Jr., who wrote the book on the art of corporate management.

GE is still in the top ten under CEO Jeffrey Immelt, but it is a different GE. Instead of adapting to the marketplace, GE structures its businesses to harvest government subsidies, tax preferences, and bailout money. GE fits Schumpeter’s pessimistic forecast of bureaucratized, influence-peddling capitalism, which he had the temerity to call socialism.

A casual glance at GE’s annual report shows that most of GE’s businesses depend on favor with the government. Energy generating windmill turbines make money because of government subsidies and state orders. Nuclear power requires government licenses. Energy-saving turbines receive subsidies. GE’s lending arm may again need a quiet $140 billion bailout. Its huge medical services division must receive favorable treatment under a new health care law. Even its competitive jet engines could use a diplomatic boost when foreign airlines buy new aircraft. Its NBC division needs broadcast licenses and other forms of protection.

The GE scandal is not that it paid no U.S. taxes. It was simply following the social-engineering instructions of our tax code, which its tax department is able to nudge at times. The true scandal is that the once mighty GE has become a crony capitalist in its “partnership” with Washington. The hundred million or so in campaign contributions is chump change compared to the cost of its lobbying behemoth and its vaunted tax department.

The new winners in creative destruction at first naively think they have no need of government. Silicon Valley's Microsofts, Apples, Googles, and Facebooks create products no one had ever dreamed of. They can outstrip the competition on their own. They are then baptized by fire. Government agencies politely worry that they have grown too big; an anti-trust suit may be in the works. Revenue-hungry politicians may decide that taxing the internet is a good idea. Facing this reality, the creative-destructors open expensive offices on K-Street and join the crowd. An ounce of protection is worth a pound of cure, they reluctantly conclude.

There is an invisible cost to all this that few of us notice or understand. The mighty GE has been diverted from innovating and developing products that stand on their own to producing those things that its Washington partners want for the “good of society.”