AMERICA’S
CREEPING REVOLUTION
PART 4
By
Betty Freauf
January 15, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
It’s back to England and the crisis they were facing for lack of disciplined spending. The writer most hated by English Socialists, Rudyard Kipling said 30 years earlier:
In
the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could
buy
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: If you don’t work
you die
All this sounds remarkably like Paul’s letter to the Thessalonian - II Thes. 3:10-18. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. Such slothfulness is to be shunned. Free money always has the unfortunate effect of making people go overboard. The above quote, of course, came from John T. Flynn’s 1949 book The Road Ahead. . As I read through this book, I see plainly what was happening in England is happening today in America. Flynn was saying in 1949, “Unless we change direction, we were going to end up like England.”
We’ve seen the rioting on our TV news in Europe and a January 8, 2011 AP said British was on alert for a terror attack. Airlines, airports warned they may be an al-Qaida target. January 5, 2011 AP article said: Britons were going to get slammed with a sales tax increase that is increasing the price of everything from beer to clothing – a downbeat start to a year that many economists warn could feel rougher than the recent recession. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government said the rise in so-called value added tax (VAT) is “tough but necessary” to bring down Britains massive deficit, but the opposition argues it puts the economic recovery at risk just as the country is struggling to get back on its feet. The government lifted VAT from 17.5 percent to 20 percent in a bid to raise an extra $20.25 billion for the country’s coffers this year and unemployment is forecast to soar, house prices to fall and inflation to rise.
I understand Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman said that some businesses are hiring but we are a long way to replacement and bringing unemployment down to 8 percent. And now that part-time workers hired for the holidays have been laid off, we’ll see those unemployment numbers sky rocket but manipulated again to make them look better than they are. Environmentally conscious Oregon has unemployment over 10% for as long back as I can remember but I fear the unemployment may be close to 17%. The watermelons shut down our timber and fishing industry and wanted to depend on “tourism.” And now Oregon’s Progressive Democrat Governor Kitzhaber – elected for a third term in November and responsible for loss of jobs during his earlier eight years - is counting on the “green” movement to help create jobs using stimulus money Oregon received from Washington, D.C. Watermelons are red on the inside, green on the outside. Many workers are discouraged and no longer looking for employment so long as the unemployment check keeps arriving.
Bernanke admits it could take four to five years to return to some type of normal. As this article is being drafted, there are pros and cons about raising the debt limit. As a senator in 2006, Barack Obama voted against raising the debt limit. I guess we’ll soon find out what Congress does. I wrote on September 27, 2008 Let ‘em fall. We should have allowed those big corporations that mishandled finances to fall just like a private irresponsible citizen but the gutless Congress controlled by the socialist Democrats kept bailing them out with “stimulus” money and Bush signed one of the first bailouts. They tell us not raising the debt ceiling will have catastrophic results and seniors living on “fixed incomes” who have not had a raise in two years will be extremely hard hit because the IOUs in the alleged Social Security “trust account” have not been repaid while billions are sent to Third World countries who hate us. Our system will probably collapse if the debt ceiling isn’t raised but do we do it now or later?
The misleaders in power had assumed the billions poured into the economic pump would prime it and get business going again. Christine Craft, a liberal radio talk show hostess on KGO out of San Francisco was complaining on 12/30/2010 about the “uppity ups” at the University of California planning to sue for their loss of pensions due to the college being bankrupt. While blaming President George Bush for his tax cuts, she said about the pensioners, “Call me Marie Antonette, ‘Off with their heads’ metaphorically speaking.” However, this financial crisis we are facing with our federal government is going to hurt lots more people than a public employees not getting their pensions. Due to lack of oversight and the courage to fix it years ago, the pump has been seriously out of repair for decades. The Federal Reserve created under another Democrat president has caused a distinct class division. Rich class, poor class and no middle class.
In the chapter in Flynn’s book entitled “Where We Stand Today,” he wrote about America’s 1929 crash and the depression that seemed to furnish proof that the radical revolutionists were right in their insistence that capitalism was on its last legs. As the depression deepened the mood of frustration grew darker. By 1933 with FDR at the helm America had moved into the first stage of the Fabian stealth revolution – the Welfare State. The argument ran thus:
Private industry has failed. Its leaders have lost their way. Meantime the jobless starve and lose hope. Therefore the State must step in. This meant actually that the politicians must step into the breach…Accordingly the federal government proceeded to set up a large number of agencies to feed the hungry, to provide work for the unemployed, to round up the youth in CCC camps, to pay money to farmers, set up old-age pension and unemployment systems, to aid students in colleges and so on. The drive for these things was supported by our radical agitators but also by men and women of every type of political philosophy as humane devices to aid the chief victims of the depression.
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Flynn says something almost identical with Lloyd George’s aggressive Liberal crusade in England that began in 1906 and got under way in America in 1933. In America we began to hear that the State must provide “jobs for all” and “security for all from the cradle to the grave.” And these slogans, without too much examination of all their implications, were sold to the American people. These welfare measures, involving outlays of three or four billion dollars of borrowed money every year, produced a momentary sense of relief. But, despite all the spending, unemployment began to grow again and by 1938 had reached threatening proportions and now its January 2011 and it seems to be déjà vu all over again with another progressive Democrat in the White House. Yes, America gradually pulled out of the depression and we’ve had some pretty good times but no one took away the credit card.
Why would the British bureaucrats prefer a value added tax aka consumption tax? It would provide governments with higher revenues than a tax on income because it is a more “purer” tax and can be collected continuously instead of once a year or quarterly and business owners must still be the “tax collectors.” It provides for the opportunity to track purchases and those making purchases. But whether it is a flat tax, a value-added tax or consumption tax, all are a socialist dream as evidenced by all of the socialist and communist countries around the world that already have them.
The aim of the progressives has been for years to build a huge united progressive movement that can force the new president to move America massively to the left and up until the November 2010 election, President Obama was being a compliant follower. But while we are now seeing his Marxist friends from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) being replaced, he’s bringing in the old Clinton crowd, bankers and automobile executives that got bailouts. That’s like putting an alcoholic in charge of the Liquor Control Commission. I could say the initial people are “jumping ship” and leaving Captain Obama behind but please do not be misled. These leftist folks who have so cleverly infiltrated the Democrat party are not going anywhere; however, this allows Obama to save face and move to the center momentarily. But how many readers find it interesting that President Obama says he wanted a tough manager with sharp political instincts who wouldn’t seek the spotlight while getting the job done and he chooses William Daley, “an experienced public servant, a devoted patriot” as USA Today described him. He served as Commerce secretary in the Clinton Administration. This is nothing more than Chicago-type political nepotism. How many remember Chicago was the home of Al Capone and a long-time training ground for Communists? And as an interesting side bar, a 1/13/2011 AP article said Illinois was raising taxes to resolve a budget crisis that threatened to cripple state government. That move surely will help create jobs. Ya sure!
According to the Wall Street Journal, “over the first three years of the Obama presidency, 2009-2011, the federal government would borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion and that is more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. In Part 5 I’ll explain when the borrowing began.
On Christmas Day the New York Times reported the “Death Panels” became top priority in Obama care. The health care of the elderly will be evaluated every five years to make sure they have a “plan” to exit earth- a nudge here and a nudge there. Encouraging old people to die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive and Obama took the occasion of a Senate recess to appoint Donald Berwick, by passing Senate confirmation hearings that would surely have publicized Berwick’s belief in rationing. When government has taken over medical treatment, taxpayers and patients both suffer and doctor shortages will be a further result.
In a move to eliminate competition, the socialist AARP was rewarded by the Obama Administration for it’s Medigap Insurance policies. Rate reviews and premium restrictions imposed on other health policies under ObamaCare will be exempt for AARP. Flynn says socialism does not mean the State will take over every farm, shop, mine and factory. It means the State will take over and operate the great basic functions of credit, electric power, fuel, transportation and insurance, including the so-called welfare activities. Up until April 1949, outwardly at least, all seemed to be going as merrily as a wedding bell in Britain but like so many marriages, the once happy romance turned swiftly to a troubled and turbulent drama, Flynn wrote.
He describes England’s experiment with socialized medicine as a gigantic comedy if it were not so tragic. Soon great numbers of people in Britain were not receiving adequate medical attention but could not be denied. Doesn’t that sound like Obamacare? It was ending up that medical care was so inadequate for almost everybody and rationing became necessary due to lack of doctors and yet Englanders were being taxed to death.
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But a far sterner crisis was upon England according to Flynn. Trouble seemed to be tumbling upon her bedeviled redeemers from every quarter. The causes were simple. Arithmetic and gravity and the laws of physics and nature had caught up with the architects of the Bright New World. Population reduction follows rationing. The crisis in England was as logical as the bankruptcy petition of the spendthrift. I once worked for an attorney who did bankruptcies. I commented one day about the jewelry, furs and other “luxury” items in the paper work. He told me it was to him “just a name on a piece of paper” and I shouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Is that how our elected leaders feel about our unsustainable debt?
Click here for part -----> 1, 2, 3, 4,
� 2011 Betty Freauf - All Rights Reserved
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