Strategy and Tactics

With all the controversy over the DOJ quashing of a criminal case that was won against New Black Panthers who engaged in "mob" type control of Philadelphia polling places (eg, http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/07/01/doj-slimes-whistleblower-adams-in-panthergate-case/ ), keep your eye on the ball ... Panthergate is the tip of the coming iceberg in terms of what Obama, Holder and the rest of their ilk will attempt.  Well before the last election, I was one of the first to raise the alarm that Obama and his people were actually communists, not simply "very Left" or "Socialist".

That got me a lot of skepticism if not outright eye-rolling.  I'm not getting that anymore, especially since Beck and many others took up the charge to inform people.  Now I'm going out on a limb again with a suspicion that has been growing since that time. As I said in something I posted at http://pajamasmedia.com,

    "What will be telling in the months to come is how the SVR agents’ cases are disposed of. If you see them getting whitewashed in the manner of the new Black Panther case, you may reasonably suspect that Obama doesn’t want them prosecuted for other reasons.
    
    "I submit in all seriousness that it should be considered as a frightening possibility that a man who was born of communists, raised by communist grandparents, mentored by a communist who was under the direct influence of the KGB, and who has associated extensively his entire adult life with communists … has potentially been directly under the control of the Russian SVR, and helped, promoted and financed to gain the highest possible office in the United States, where he could have the greatest possible impact on U.S. policy, the greatest possible destructive effect on the U.S. economy, and the greatest possible opportunity for theft of American secrets (which can be accomplished "legally" by simply declassifying documents, as Bill Clinton and his minions did).
    
    "The FBI should interrogate these arrested SVR agents and any other in the manner of Al Qaeda operatives, to expose this fact. Or offer a massive reward (let’s say, $100M) to any former KGB / SVR, to provide evidence of same. But again, watch what happens. The FBI reports to Eric Holder (who is probably a communist)."

Take that seriously.  Don't let anyone intimidate you as a "conspiracy theorist".  "Conspiracy Theories" are speculation based on not a shred of evidence, circumstantial or otherwise.  There is a flaming warehouse of circumstantial evidence in the case of Obama.  But the label of "conspiracy theorist" has always been a very effective technique of communists to prevent people (even police and intelligence) from looking into such things, since at least the McCarthy era.

You will note that the activities of the recently arrested SVR/former KGB agents was all about influencing U.S. policy. This has always been the modus operandi of the Soviets / neo-Soviets running Russia, since Stalin's time: pull the strings of the intellectuals, push the politicians where you want to go. But that doesn't mean they don't want agents who become politicians.

Keep your eye on key "policy" issues like nuclear and conventional disarmament (see http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/04/next-phase-in-obamas-rush-towards.html), or Cap and Trade (which will cripple the Western economies).

I could include the ending of the ABM deployment, which was definitely an SVR / KGB goal, but it is now effectively dead.  I could include the Health Care Nationalization Act, but it has already passed. (Though Health Care nationalization  has long been a deeper "policy" goal of Leftists in general and KGB promotion as a "policy" goal is unlikely, I include it for the simple reason that it supports a Russian agenda of destabilizing the U.S. economy and system, whether they realize it or not. See some supporting arguments  here: http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/09/real-meaning-of-health-care-reform.html or http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/rodents-of-unusual-size.html )

Obama's purpose in all cases here:  to enact as much as possible before the mid-term election, whatever the cost to the Democrats.  Why else does Cap and Trade keep rearing its head like Jason in Friday the 13th?

Is Obama an SVR agent?  I currently give it better than 75% odds right now, when you gather up the sum total of the evidence, which is much deeper than that brief list above, and which includes a knowledge of how the KGB long operated.  (for some insight, see http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-brainwash-nation.html ).  Before the election I didn't think it a possibility.  Now I'd put serious money on it.  This is why I would implore any patriotic FBI, CIA, DIA and other personnel to do whatever they can to investigate and expose the evidence, on their own time, if necessary. (I do know there are many patriotic people in these agencies, and they have the best skills and resources.)

The survival of the Republic depends on it.  We need the Obama equivalent of Climategate -- get the emails, voice messages, confessions, FBI files and all else out there on the internet for everyone to see and judge for themselves.

Postscript on Obama's motives:  Whether SVR agent or not, deeper than simply acting for the Russians.  He is ideologically driven, remember.  Some say conventionally corrupt, others say pragmatic ... I say no.  Yes, he'll take a crooked buck, but ideology trumps all else with him.  Communists by nature are insecure megalomaniacs, and their conspirializing reflects their need to prove their "superior" intelligence.  As does their quest for power.  To understand this, see my comparison to Ayn Rand's character of Ellsworth Toohey (in The Fountainhead):  http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/06/good-night-america.html.

Post-post-script:  Fundamental ideas always trump politics.  Whether Obama is SVR or not doesn't mean the key ideas of philosophy aren't more important.  Much more so.  What makes people susceptible to Leftist / SVR / KGB goals?  Their views of reality -- metaphysics.  Are human beings pawns of fate, or free agents?  (Can workers be manipulated by evil Capitalists?  Can Capitalists be manipulated by smarter Communists?  etc.)  What makes them susceptible to irrational arguments like "freedom from hunger", etc?   Their view of epistemology.  What makes them susceptible to enslaving people with laws like the Health Care bill?  Their views of ethics (ie, altruism).  What makes them susceptible to unrestrained democracy, democratic socialism, socialism, and ultimately communism?  Their views on metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. (But of course the "smartest" ones jump to the head of the line.)

You don't win the war if you only defeat the communists -- ultimately, you have to defeat their ideas.  Communists become communists because they hold certain ideas beforehand, regardless of how they came to hold them.  Defeating those ideas is crucial.  That is a much longer term strategic goal, but the most important one.  But wars (even ideological wars) are fought battle by battle.  And tactically, it could be enormously useful to defeat the communists right now, by exposing Obama as a deep cover Russian SVR agent (if he is).

It would discredit the Left in a way they have never been discredited, and it could buy us enough time to save the Republic in the near term, so that the long term battle can be won in the minds of Americans -- their understanding of the full nature of what the Founding Fathers were attempting to achieve, the full nature of individual rights, which our government is the only one in history to enshrine, and the full nature of the importance of Reason as an absolute.  Strategy and Tactics are both essential to winning any war.  As Ayn Rand said (in the character of John Galt):  A is A.

The Chimera of the Internet

So imagine the scenario, ten years down the road, where ALL communications (email, voice, data) gets lumped under "the internet", and one day the President decides there is a "crisis" (maybe after a terrorist attack, maybe not), and orders it shut down, or orders filtering of all communications that involves certain keywords (which they can automatically detect, even for voice calls).

Imagine the airline shutdown after 9/11 to grasp this: for 4 days, they only way you could get anywhere was driving. (I know -- I had to drive back to Denver from L.A.)

But imagine it taken a step further:  suppose they shut down ALL the roads.  Or perhaps, just all the major roads.  What happens?  People drive, but start taking the back roads.  They need food, at least.  But if the government has made it a crime to do this without "authorization"?    You'd better have your domestic travel papers.

Same for communications -- don't attempt an unauthorized call.  Better have that special access code, because otherwise, you get the automated message, "We are sorry, but you do not have authorization to make this call.  Goodbye!".

But before we get to that point, imagine the first few days after the "crisis" is announced:  You're sitting at home.  Your phone doesn't work, except for "911".  Your internet doesn't work. You've got no communications for anything except the TV signal coming in -- with government approved content ("The Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's Island").   You still have U.S. mail.  Unless mail censors are screening every letter (probably part of a full employment plan.) You can still drive.  Unless the newly hired cops are checking your travel permits.

How do you make your voice heard to oppose the new government policy?   How do you get the word out that it's a sham, rationalized on "national security" grounds?   (Anything can be rationalized on "national security" grounds, even a financial crisis -- see http://robbservations.blogspot.com/2009/10/unbridled-authority-of-presidential.html)

Maybe you try to use some form of shortwave or other wireless communications -- but the government is monitering it.  They quickly find you with a directional antenna.

Maybe people raise bloody hell -- that's when the "communications permits" come into being.

I could project this out ad infinitum.

The point is, everyone talks about the liberating effect of the internet that makes it impossible for the government to suppress dissenting voices.  The truth is, those dissenting voices can be stopped very easily, depending only on the will of those in power and whatever rule of law is left.   (Most traffic goes through very few portals, the major telcos, which have long been de facto nationalized in the sense that they will do anything the government demands.)  I don't say we are there yet where this would be attempted -- I'm simply saying: if we get there, it can happen.

http://news.techworld.com/security/3228198/obama-internet-kill-switch-plan-approved-by-us-senate/?olo=rss


Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate


President could get power to turn off Internet

By Grant Gross
Published: 11:02 GMT, 25 June 10

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill <http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/?FuseAction=home.Cybersecurity>  published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

The committee unanimously approved an amended version of the legislation by voice vote Thursday, a committee spokeswoman said. The bill next moves to the Senate floor for a vote, which has not yet been scheduled.

The bill, introduced earlier this month, would establish a White House Office for Cyberspace Policy and a National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications, which would work with private US companies to create cybersecurity requirements for the electrical grid, telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure.

The bill also would allow the US president to take emergency actions to protect critical parts of the Internet, including ordering owners of critical infrastructure to implement emergency response plans, during a cyber-emergency. The president would need congressional approval to extend a national cyber-emergency beyond 120 days under an amendment to the legislation approved by the committee.

The legislation would give the US Department of Homeland Security authority that it does not now have to respond to cyber-attacks, Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said earlier this month.

"Our responsibility for cyber defence goes well beyond the public sector because so much of cyberspace is owned and operated by the private sector," he said. "The Department of Homeland Security has actually shown that vulnerabilities in key private sector networks like utilities and communications could bring our economy down for a period of time if attacked or commandeered by a foreign power or cyber terrorists."

Other sponsors of the bill are Senators Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat.

One critic said Thursday that the bill will hurt the nation's security, not help it. Security products operate in a competitive market that works best without heavy government intervention, said Wayne Crews, vice president for policy and director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an anti-regulation think tank.

"Policymakers should reject such proposals to centralize cyber security risk management," Crews said in an e-mail. "The Internet that will evolve if government can resort to a 'kill switch' will be vastly different from, and inferior to, the safer one that will emerge otherwise."

Cybersecurity technologies and services thrive on competition, he added. "The unmistakable tenor of the cybersecurity discussion today is that of government steering while the market rows," he said. "To be sure, law enforcement has a crucial role in punishing intrusions on private networks and infrastructure. But government must coexist with, rather than crowd out, private sector security technologies."

On Wednesday, 24 privacy and civil liberties groups sent a letter <http://www.cdt.org/files/pdfs/20100624_joint_cybersec_letter.pdf>  raising concerns about the legislation to the sponsors. The bill gives the new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications "significant authority" over critical infrastructure, but doesn't define what critical infrastructure is covered, the letter said.

Without a definition of critical infrastructure there are concerns that "it includes elements of the Internet that Americans rely on every day to engage in free speech and to access information," said the letter, signed by the Center for Democracy and Technology, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups.

"Changes are needed to ensure that cybersecurity measures do not unnecessarily infringe on free speech, privacy, and other civil liberties interests," the letter added.

Metaphysics of a Thug

I was asked for an elevator pitch to explain why someone like Obama acts like a thug and resorts to thuggery.

In brief, it's his metaphysics -- Obama views reality as totally malleable, yet himself as utterly impotent in that reality, and the only control he sees himself possessing are lies and threats.

Reality to Obama is purely social relationships.  He views the choices of human beings as arbitrary, and being arbitrary himself in all things, he believes a strong enough person of sufficient "will" (in the Nietzchean sense) can make anything real.  He denies any objective reality of facts or principles outside his control.  He doesn't believe he has to conform to any facts.  Oil leaks in the Gulf?   He simply has to "kick ass" to stop it.  It doesn't matter that the oil is 1 mile below the surface, or under 1000 pounds per square inch of pressure, or that the nature of geologic formations can't be fully predicted, or that hardened steel pipe has a finite breaking point or anything else -- Obama just has to "kick ass" and the problem will be solved by generating enough fear.

At the same time, Obama feels completely impotent to exist himself and suffers a complete lack of self-esteem--which he conceals from himself with a form of megalomania.  He's never done anything productive his entire life except manipulate people.  He's never made anything, designed anything, conceived anything to prove he is efficacious or independent.  All his ideas are second-hand hand-me-downs from his communist parents, his communist grandparents, his communist mentor, his communist friends, and an endless assortment of the usual suspects in his network of Leftist associates who consort regularly at cocktail parties, church socials and golf course meetings to congratulate themselves on their own brilliance.

His pursuit of self-esteem is the epistemological method of a self-licking ice-cream cone.   His brain is filled with cliches and bromides and slogans and a littany of lies which he has mouthed his whole life and heard repeated back to him by friends and acquaintences and gullible groupers swimming along after him.  He counts on looks, style, race, smile, a smooth voice, cliches of public speaking ("look stern, lower your chin, look left, look right, chop the air with your hand to punctuate each word") and a lot of moxy and chutzpah to carry him forward with the illusion of competence and strength, while he clings to a teleprompter in public and and profanity in private like a lifeline.

But he knows, at some level -- conscious or not -- that it's all a sham.  He knows that he himself is a sham.  He knows he doesn't know anything about existing except manipulating people.  So how do you control them when they don't cooperate?  You've only one tool:  you threaten them. His lack of ability and lack of self-esteem are reflected in the psychology of a bully:  do it or I'll knock your teeth in.  It's his only control over existence.

Again, Atlas Shrugged is illustrative.  In the scene leading up to the Taggart Tunnel disaster, a second-rate politician, Kip Chalmers, on a trip to San Francisco for a political rally, is held up in the Colorado mountains for lack of a diesel locomotive -- so he threatens the railroad workers until they do the only thing they can do:  use a coal-burning locomotive. Kip orders them to proceed without caring about the facts of a coal-burning locomotive traveling 6 miles through a tunnel under the Continental Divide without adequate tunnel ventilation to protect the passengers from the exhaust.  All he cares is that he wants to get to San Francisco:

        Kip Chalmers swore as the train lurched and spilled his cocktail over the table top. He slumped forward, his elbow in the puddle, and said: "God damn these railroads! What's the matter with their track? You'd think with all the money they've got they'd disgorge a little, so we wouldn't have to bump like farmers on a hay cart!"

        ...Kip Chalmers had curly blond hair and a shapeless mouth. He came from a semi-wealthy, semi-distinguished family, but he sneered at wealth and distinction in a manner which implied that only a top rank aristocrat could permit himself such a degree of cynical indifference. He had graduated from a college which specialized in breeding that kind of aristocracy. The college had taught him that the purpose of ideas is to fool those who are stupid enough to think. He had made his way in Washington with the grace of a cat-burglar, climbing from bureau to bureau as from ledge to ledge of a crumbling structure. He was ranked as semi-powerful, but his manner made laymen mistake him for nothing less than Wesley Mouch.

        For reasons of his own particular strategy, Kip Chalmers had decided to enter popular politics and to run for election as Legislator from California, though he knew nothing about that state except the movie industry and the beach clubs. His campaign manager had done the preliminary work, and Chalmers was now on his way to face his future constituents for the first time at an over publicized rally in San Francisco tomorrow night. The manager had wanted him to start a day earlier, but Chalmers had stayed in Washington to attend a cocktail party and had taken the last train possible. He had shown no concern about the rally until this evening, when he noticed that the Comet was running six hours late.

        "God damn these railroad people!" said Kip Chalmers. "They're doing it on purpose. They want to ruin my campaign. I can't miss that rally! For Christ's sake, Lester, do something!"

        "I've tried," said Lester Tuck. At the train's last stop, he had tried, by long-distance telephone, to find air transportation to complete their journey; but there were no commercial flights scheduled for the next two days.

        ....Kip Chalmers sat staring at his glass. "I'm going to have the government seize all the railroads," he said, his voice low.

        ...It was half-past two when the Comet, pulled by an old switch engine, jerked to a stop on a siding of Winston Station. Kip Chalmers glanced out with incredulous anger at the few shanties on a desolate mountainside and at the ancient hovel of a station.
        "Now what? What in hell are they stopping here for?" he cried, and rang for the conductor.
        With the return of motion and safety, his terror had turned into rage. He felt almost as if he had been cheated by having been made to experience an unnecessary fear. His companions were still clinging to the tables of the lounge; they felt too shaken to sleep.
        "How long?" the conductor said impassively, in answer to his question. "Till morning, Mr. Chalmers."

        ..."Damn your tunnel!" he screamed. "Do you think I'm going to let you hold me up because of some miserable tunnel? Do you want to wreck vital national plans on account of a tunnel? Tell your engineer that I must be in San Francisco by evening and that he's got to get me there!"
        "How?"
        "That's your job, not mine!"
        "There is no way to do it."
        "Then find a way, God damn you!"
        The conductor did not answer.
        "Do you think I'll let your miserable technological problems interfere with crucial social issues? Do you know who I am? Tell that engineer to start moving, if he values his job!"
        "The engineer has his orders."
        "Orders be damned! I give the orders these days! Tell him to start at once!"
        ...In the dilapidated office of Winston Station, he confronted a sleepy man with slack, worn features, and a frightened young boy who sat at the operator's desk. They listened, in silent stupor, to a stream of profanity such as they had never heard from any section gang.         "--and it's not my problem how you get the train through the tunnel, that's for you to figure out!" Chalmers concluded. "But if you don't get me an engine and don't start that train, you can kiss good-bye to your jobs, your work permits and this whole goddamn railroad!"
        The station agent had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did not know the nature of his position. But he knew that this was the day when unknown men in undefined positions held unlimited power--the power of life or death.

And there we have Barack Hussein Obama: a little boy who never grew up, who conned his way into a man's job, with only one tool at his disposal: a fist.  And where are we?

        It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.
        The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it's masses that count, not men.
        The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion "for a good cause," who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon others--to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder-for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of "a good cause," which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by "a feeling"--a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own "good intentions" and on the power of a gun.
        The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly schoolteacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil...
        The man in Drawing Room B, Car No, 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic instincts, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one another-and, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rulers, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teaching them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order and justice.
        The man in Bedroom H, Car No. 5, was a businessman who had acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.
        The man in Drawing Room A, Car No. 6, was a financier who had made a fortune by buying "frozen" railroad bonds and getting his friends in Washington to "defreeze" them.
        The man in Seat 5, Car No, 7, was a worker who believed that he had "a right" to a job, whether his employer wanted him or not.
        The woman in Roomette 6, Car No. 8, was a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had "a right" to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not.
        The man in Roomette 2, Car No. 9, was a professor of economics who advocated the abolition of private property, explaining that intelligence plays no part in industrial production, that man's mind is conditioned by material tools, that anybody can run a factory or a railroad and it's only a matter of seizing the machinery.
        The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, "I don't care, it's only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children."
        The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.
        The woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.
        The man in Bedroom F, Car No. 13, was a lawyer who had said, "Me? I'll find a way to get along under any political system."
        The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mind--how do you know that the tunnel is dangerous?--no reality--how can you prove that the tunnel exists?-- no logic--why do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power?--no principles-why should you be bound by the law of cause-and-effect?--no rights--why shouldn't you attach men to their jobs by force?--no morality--what's moral about running a railroad?--no absolutes--what difference does it make to you whether you live or die, anyway? He taught that we know nothing--why oppose the orders of your superiors?--that we can never be certain of anything--how do you know you're right?--that we must act on the expediency of the moment--you don't want to risk your job, do you?
        The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 15, was an heir who had inherited his fortune, and who had kept repeating, "Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?"
        The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 16, was a humanitarian who had said, "The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned."
        These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt's Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.

Grounds for Impeachment?

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

Sowell is exactly right, and if BP doesn't have the backbone or balls to oppose Obama in U.S. court, someone else should, on the grounds that Obama is now guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in the blatantly unconstitutional execution of his job -- violation of the constitutional guarantee of due process -- and this should lead to his impeachment if enough of a majority can be achieved after the election.  I would love to see the testimony in court on what happened when Obama threatened BP.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/537967/201006211813/Is-US-Now-On-Slippery-Slope-To-Tyranny-.aspx
 

Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

By THOMAS SOWELL Posted 06:13 PM ET
 

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.
Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

"Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.
In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Many among the public and in the media may think that the issue is simply whether BP's oil spill has damaged many people, who ought to be compensated.

But our government is supposed to be "a government of laws and not of men."

If our laws and our institutions determine that BP ought to pay $20 billion — or $50 billion or $100 billion — then so be it.

But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without "due process of law."

Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.
With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don't believe in constitutional government.

Life Trying Really Hard to Imitate Art

The story below is the face of things to come...

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

...Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

They point to 80,000 tons of rotting food found in warehouses belonging to the government as evidence the state is a poor and corrupt administrator.

...unless Obama, the Democrats, and a good number of Republicans are booted out of office.  To borrow a favorite Obama phrase, that's whose "ass we have to kick".  But you can substitute almost any "commodity" for "food".   Under National Health Care that could be mountains of decaying medical equipment and soldiers raiding private health clinics, seizing "essential" drugs and arresting doctors who charge more than than the Health Czars allow.

Recall a previous post of mine:

Life imitates art: Hugo Chavez just got through nationalizing the Venezuelan metals industries. If you want to see the full scope of this imitation, google "chavez nationalizes", and you'll get a frightening crystal ball into the course of the United States under Comrade Barack. Here is how it looks:

Chavez nationalizes French-owned retailer
Chavez seizes U.S. food giant unit
Chavez Nationalizes University
Chavez nationalizes Venezuela's iron-makers
Chavez nationalizes Bauxite producers
Chávez Nationalizes Oil Service Companies
Chavez Nationalizes Bank of Venezuela
Chavez nationalizes two more private banks
Chavez Nationalizes Cement Industry
Chavez may nationalize gold mines
Chavez Nationalizes Last Venezuelan Oil Fields
Chavez seizes Hilton resort
Chavez nationalizes coffee
Chavez nationalizes French Supermarket Chain
Chavez nationalizes ports, airports
Chavez nationalizes steel sector
Chavez nationalizes small shops...

There's some good material in Atlas Shrugged describing this phenomena.  But back to the original news story. I'm reminded of  how all those nationalizations led to (from Atlas):

...But thirty million dollars of subsidy money from Washington had been plowed into Project Soybean---an enormous acreage in Louisiana, where a harvest of soybeans was ripening, as advocated and organized by Emma Chalmers, for the purpose of reconditioning the dietary habits of the nation.

Ma Chalmers could be Mayor Bloomberg of New York.

Emma Chalmers, better known as Kip's Ma, was an old sociologist who had hung about Washington for years, as other women of her age and type hang about barrooms. For some reason which nobody could define, the death of her son in the tunnel catastrophe had given her in Washington an aura of martyrdom, heightened by her recent conversion to Buddhism. "The soybean is a much more sturdy, nutritious and economical plant than all the extravagant foods which our wasteful, self-indulgent diet has conditioned us to expect," Kip's Ma had said over the radio; her voice always sounded as if it were falling in drops, not of water, but of mayonnaise.

"Soybeans make an excellent substitute for bread, meat, cereals and coffee--and if all of us were compelled to adopt soybeans as our staple diet, it would solve the national food crisis and make it possible to feed more people. The greatest food for the greatest number--that's my slogan. At a time of desperate public need, it's our duty to sacrifice our luxurious tastes and eat our way back to prosperity by adapting ourselves to the simple, wholesome foodstuff on which the peoples of the Orient have so nobly subsisted for centuries. There's a great deal that we could learn from the peoples of the Orient."

Of course, soybeans are ubiquitous today. Making people sick and fish androgenous everywhere.

...In Minnesota, farmers were setting fire to their own farms, they were demolishing grain elevators and the homes of county officials, they were fighting along the track of the railroad, some to tear it up, some to defend it with their lives--and, with no goal to reach save violence, they were dying in the streets of gutted towns and in the silent gullies of a roadless night.

Then there was only the acrid stench of grain rotting in half-smouldering piles--a few columns of smoke rising from the plains, standing still in the air over blackened ruins--and, in an office in Pennsylvania, Hank Rearden sitting at his desk, looking at a list of men who had gone bankrupt: they were the manufacturers of farm equipment, who could not be paid and would not be able to pay him.

The harvest of soybeans did not reach the markets of the country: it had been reaped prematurely, it was moldy and unfit for consumption.

Or not so ubiquitous, before long.  I'm not say we're near this stage;  I'm saying that if Obama gets his way, we will be, eventually.

Hugo Chavez Spearheads Raids as Food Prices Skyrocket

Published: Friday, 18 Jun 2010 | 5:18 PM ET

By: Reuters

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

"The battle for food is a matter of national security," said a red-shirted official from the Food Ministry, resting his arm on a pallet laden with bags of coffee.

It is also the latest issue to divide the Latin American country where Chavez has nationalized a wide swathe of the economy, he says to reverse years of exploitation of the poor.

Chavez supporters are grateful for a network of cheap state-run supermarkets and they say the raids will slow massive inflation.

Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

They point to 80,000 tons of rotting food found in warehouses belonging to the government as evidence the state is a poor and corrupt administrator.

Jose Guzman, an assistant manager at a store raided in Catia, watched with resignation as government agents pored over the company's accounts and computers after the food ministry official and the television cameras left.

"The government is pushing this type of establishment toward bankruptcy," said Guzman, who linked the raid to the rotten food scandal. "Somehow they have to replace all the food that was lost, and this is the most expeditious way."

Wasted Food

Much of the wasted food, including powdered milk and meat, was found last month in the buildup to legislative elections in September. The scandal is humiliating for Chavez, who accuses wealthy elites of fueling inflation and causing shortages of products such as meat, sugar and milk by hoarding food.

"They are not going to stop us in the plan, which is to give the people what is their right," Chavez said Friday during the inauguration of a supermarket chain the government bought this year from French retailer Casino.

Food prices are up 41 percent in the last 12 months during a deep recession, government figures show, despite the government's growing network of state-run supermarkets that sell at discounts of up to 40 percent and are popular with his poor supporters.

South America's top oil exporter, Venezuela imports about 70 percent of its food and analysts say the economic hardships could give the opposition a boost at the ballot box—although most expect Chavez to retain a reduced parliamentary majority.

Fighting back, Chavez says he is in an economic war against the "parasitic bourgeoisie"      that tries to convince Venezuelans that socialism does not work by twisting facts and taking advantage of honest mistakes.

"They know where we are headed, we are going to take from the Venezuela bourgeoisie the hegemony of dominance in this country," Chavez, who calls himself a Marxist, said to applause from supporters on his TV show on Sunday.

He has also revived threats to take over the country's largest private food processor, miller and brewer, Polar.

The president rushed to give public support to Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, who as the boss of PDVSA is also responsible for food unit PDVAL, over the case of the rotting food.

Two former PDVAL managers have been jailed in the scandal, but that has not stifled opposition charges of government incompetence.

A string of expropriations and buyouts of companies during the last couple of years means the government now controls between 20 percent and 30 percent of the distribution of staple foods.

"We are bringing order to prices," Trade Minister Richard Canan told Reuters during the Catia raid. "There are traders who are taking these products to the black market ... That is a crime and our government will continue to target these stores."

Reader Comment to "The Hand of Soros?"

Blogger won't allow comments longer than 4096 characters, so I publish this as a post from reader Wendy...

----- Begin comment -----
Nice find and good question, Robb.

When the financial crisis happened, I made a serious inquiry into its causes and determined that the mark-to-market accounting regime was the absolute and sole cause of the crisis, that factor without which there would have been no financial crisis. The evidence is overwhelming. I won't go into the model here because I hope to publish it in more detail soon on RealClearMarkets.com. It is true that mark-to-market is just an accounting method, there is nothing wrong with it per se, and it is appropriate for certain types of situations. The problem is that it was made mandatory on the private sector and encompassed a significant portion of all securities. The regime causes a positive feedback loop of financial losses, which is essentially synonymous with a self-reinforcing contraction of the credit supply. The IMF has done a simulation of the regime and verified this effect as well.

I regard every other model of the crisis, including the housing bust, the Fed, the GSEs, the CRA, deregulation, etc., to be phony, irresponsible, and extremely damaging to the cause of capitalism. It is widely believed among actual market players that the mark-to-market regime was responsible for the crisis, but the incompetariat has largely ignored the story (with some notable exceptions, including Steve Forbes). Here is a history.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization, is the authority which sets the accounting rules and put the mark-to-market regime in place. It operates under the aegis of the SEC, which enforces the accounting dictates uncritically on the financial industry. Early adoption of the regime was effective for all years beginning after September 2006, i.e., starting January 1, 2007. Most of the major commercial and investment banks did adopt it early out of reputational concerns, apparently oblivious to the threat. Asset prices began dropping immediately, and though most big banks gamed the new regime fairly well that year, a credit crunch still ensued. You may remember the sudden market plunge on August 19 of that year as institutions sold off assets in a scramble for capital. The regime became mandatory for everyone on November 15, 2007. Then there was serious trouble. Sometime in Q2:2008, losses began to exceed capital raisings in the financial system. The financial system as a whole was effectively insolvent. The critical event occurred when John Thain decided to look out for his investors and sell the failing Merrill Lynch's assets for 22 cents on the dollar in the last week of July 2008, forcing everyone else to mark down their assets to the same catastrophic level. A crisis was formally recognized when Lehman collapsed a little over a month later, causing between $100 and $200 billion in lost value.

Mark-to-market as a method has been around for ages. I haven't researched its history yet, but I do know it was in effect as a regime during the Great Depression until Roosevelt suspended it in 1938. It was enforced by the New York Federal Reserve in those days. Given that the Great Depression and the Great Recession seem to belong to the same category of crisis based on their characteristics, I highly suspect that the mark-to-market regime caused the former as well, although there were certainly other aggravating factors brought into play, including the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

The mark-to-market ideological movement revived several decades later and has been taking hold since at least the late 1980s. Alan Greenspan among others warned against it in 1993, so when the FASB decreed mark-to-market in effect in 1994, the moral force was not with them. They thus had to concede the practical execution to the pro-market factions, who quickly adopted a discounted cash-flow method, used to reflect the long-term economic value of the asset, on the theory that since markets are efficient, market prices should be the same as the economic value anyway. When leftists try to tell you that mark-to-market has been in place since 1994 and hasn't caused any problems so why would it be responsible for the crisis, remember that leftists shamelessly lie like rugs. This is out-and-out deception on their part. They can call it whatever they want, but it was a discounted cash-flow method, not mark-to-market, that was in place prior to 2007.

Mark-to-market was eased significantly when Congress intervened and threatened the FASB. When conditions became undeniably hopeless during Q1:2009, the anti-regime factions, both among the financial industry and the general public, gained political momentum. Warren Buffett, previously a cavalier supporter of the regulatory state, had become noticeably more humble as he watched his investment in Goldman Sachs inexplicably going toward zero. Despite the Goldman Sachs CEO's psychotic and suicidal support for the mark-to-market regime, Buffett decided to face reality and, along with other key players, testified against it to Congress. On March 10, 2009, Fed Chairman Bernanke reversed his previous unconditional support for the regime, announcing that substantial improvements needed to be made. These developments caused the sudden reversal of the crisis seen in March 2009 as markets began pricing in relief and write-ups.

The ruling and the market reversal precipitated a bout of existential rage among the left, who had been hoping for a total collapse and who wanted to use a collapse as a pretext to nationalize the banks. The humiliated FASB, headed by a malicious crypto-Marxist named Bob Herz, quickly determined to bring mark-to-market back with a vengeance in 2012-2013. It is a religion for them, and a FASB board member has actually labelled it as such. The FASB intends to force not only all the securities that were previously covered back into the regime, but all loans as well. Combined with the worldwide implementation of the new Basel II capital accounting regime, I can say in all seriousness and with no exaggeration that if they succeed, it will cause the collapse of Western civilization.

George Soros cannot possibly be ignorant of the effects of mandatory mark-to-market, and neither can the FASB. I do not know if they have some sort of closet relationship, but because they share the same ideology, they can probably be counted on to cooperate in this endeavor without a word spoken between them.

Wendy

The Hand of Soros?

“Regime change” in the United States entails a paradigm shift away from free enterprise capitalism and the establishment of a socialist government  ...will make it forever impossible for the U.S. to reinstate the free enterprise capitalist system, as every political and social act will be dictated by the elite in Washington."

"Such “regime change” was facilitated by the government’s stealth regulatory change on November 9, 2007, from "hold to maturity" accounting to “mark-to-market” accounting, which caused the collapse in private sector capital formation and access to credit in 2008 and 2009..."

"Without the mark-to-market regulatory change, the markets would not have collapsed and we would still have a booming economy. Instead, we have a loss of over $10 trillion in private sector wealth and a shifting of private sector ownership and control of capital to the government and Fed... "

It would be really interesting to do some investigation into the origins of the the "mark to market" accounting rules change.   Who initiated the idea?   Who promoted it?  I would not in the least be surprised that a puppetmaster like George Soros was behind it, because only someone like him could fully appreciate the devastating effects it would have.  I emphasize "fully". 

Many people could see it would be "bad".  But not many could predict the detailed consequences and timing of events.  I would bet hard money that Soros was positioned to make a lot of money on the collapse when it finally happened -- and I'm sure he could pull the strings of Bush's treasury chief Paulsen (a Democrat) to trigger the crisis once he determined the conditions were ripe.  (If you go public with a request for a trillion dollars to "save" the economy, I submit that you know you're going to trigger a wave of selling and destroy it.)

As I said, it would take someone of Soros's sophistication to know that "mark to market" rules would cripple American businesses and precipitate a severe banking crisis. If Soros made a boatload on the collapse, I'd bet our intelligence agencies could determine that very quickly, and it would be a smoking gun for going after him -- if you didn't have a communist in the White House, a communist in the Justice Department, etc.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cregime-change%E2%80%9D-of-socialist-control/

Obama’s “Regime Change” of Socialist Control

By Pieter Samara  |  June 17, 2010

Cap & Trade, involving a Chicago carbon exchange and other companies that Obama and/or his associates may have financial interests in, was all but dead in the water until the BP oil blowout crisis renewed “hope” that he could revive it again.

With all the solutions available from the private sector and from around the world since day one, to deal with the oil spill, President Obama has stalled on allowing any of these going forward for the following reasons:

To increase the power of government over the private sector. To allow the private sector to solve the problem would defeat and undermine Obama’s assertion that only government and government-owned companies, bureaucracies and labor unions can provide the solution. Obama sees the private sector as inherently evil, as reflected in the fact that he refused to meet with BP to establish a working relationship with the company to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape.

While BP attempts to cap the Deep Water Horizon well, it has to be remembered that the government forced BP to drill at a depth of 5,000 feet, one of the deepest wells ever drilled, creating the crisis. BP had wanted to drill at a depth of 500 feet. The result of the blowout has been that the government, Obama, and Democrats in Congress have threatened and talked down BP and its efforts. On the one hand, they require BP to obtain approvals from the government to move forward, while on the other hand they vilify the BP president and CEO during Congressional hearings, due to the government’s own delays.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration failed to grant requested waivers to the 1920 Jones Act that would allow foreign ships and skimmers to enter U.S. water, refusing international assistance from 33 countries and stalling and minimizing Louisiana’s creation of sand barriers, as well as stalling numerous private sector solutions that the Administration has refused to take heed of. One such example offered on May 3 was from Dr. Henry Crichlow, the leading oil blowout specialist worldwide, who developed the blowout engineering after Gulf War I for 800 or more wells in Kuwait, who provided quick relatively inexpensive solutions to either recover the oil with the Crichlow connector  from the pipe a mile down or to “Kill the Spill” completely.

As part of the orchestration of the crisis, liberals in Congress threatened to put BP into receivership, while Obama played to the radical left with a threat to take over BP’s assets, if they could not force BP to allocate $20 billion in an escrow for a government appointee to administer. The result was that despite BP’s balance sheet, the U.S. government has succeeded to cause a FITCH downgrade of BP’s unsecured debt from AA to BBB, with BP shares losing a market cap value of $90 billion. The Obama Administration demanded that BP make payments it had already agreed to make, thus financially weakening the very company the government asserts it wants to be able to shoulder the burden of the fines, the oil cleanup and claims of lost revenues for the Gulf states.

Force Obama’s Cap & Trade bill and energy tax through Congress. Under the Obama policy of “don’t let a good crisis go to waste,” such stalling and delaying mentioned above allowed the crisis to get bad enough for Obama to have the “audacity” in his Oval Office speech to the nation to contrive and justify his Cap & Trade climate bill. Since the beginning of the blowout, the private sector and the States have been fighting with the Administration to get approvals to take action. However, the longer the Administration could stall, the worse the situation would become for BP, the States and Gulf coast businesses, exacerbating a crisis further by creating a moratorium on current and new shallow water drilling threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Cap & Trade, involving a Chicago carbon exchange and other companies that Obama and/or his associates may have financial interests in, was all but dead in the water until the BP oil blowout crisis renewed “hope” that he could revive it again. Cap & Trade is designed to increase the cost of energy to the private sector by more than 10 percent, lowering GDP in the process.

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) studies have demonstrated that for every 1% reduction in the cost of energy there will be a 3% increase in manufacturing and industrial output. This occurred when President Reagan deregulated the oil industry, creating an economic boom. Obama is moving in the opposite direction—that of higher taxes and more federal government control on a permanent basis.

To effect “regime change” toward statism. Why would the Administration willfully let the Coastal region be damaged, destroying revenues and lives to create a crisis, as an “end justifies the means” call for Cap & Trade? The answer is that we just need to look at the cause of the systemic financial crisis itself, which was intended to achieve, as Mohamed El Erian, CEO of PIMCO, himself called it , “regime change” in the U.S. and globally. “Regime change” in the U.S. means an inexorable shift of control and ownership of private sector capital and productivity of the populous to the federal government and Federal Reserve.

“Regime change” in the United States entails a paradigm shift away from free enterprise capitalism and the establishment of a socialist government which assumes ownership and control of capital and human resources. Its projected culmination to a “New Normal” of slow economic growth and bigger government within four years will make it forever impossible for the U.S. to reinstate the free enterprise capitalist system, as every political and social act will be dictated by the elite in Washington.

Such “regime change” was facilitated by the government’s stealth regulatory change on November 9, 2007, from "hold to maturity" accounting to “mark-to-market” accounting, which caused the collapse in private sector capital formation and access to credit in 2008 and 2009, unless accompanied by government ownership or guarantees that allow such debt to be reclassified under the government’s sole right hold to maturity valuation.

Without the mark-to-market regulatory change, the markets would not have collapsed and we would still have a booming economy. Instead, we have a loss of over $10 trillion in private sector wealth and a shifting of private sector ownership and control of capital to the government and Fed. Thus, clearly, if the government and “special interests” are willing to orchestrate an unmitigated economic collapse allowing over $10 trillion in private sector savings to be lost to effect a “regime change” to a “New Normal” culminating in their total ownership and control of financial and human resources, then government stalling in its response to the oil spill to create a crisis to justify the resurrection of Cap & Trade to further such “regime change” is small potatoes by comparison.

To start the nationalization of oil and other major industries. An outright government takeover of BP and other oil companies could be the next phase of Obama’s “regime change” policy.

To read a longer version of the points covered in this article, please go to “Regime change <http://admc24-7city.com/files/V/the_new_normal_which_completes_the_regulatory_regime_change_that_started_november_9_2007_8.5x11_061710.doc> .”

________________________________

Pieter Samara is a citizen of the United States of America who currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand, and has been an entrepreneur his entire working career, developing and managing his own businesses. He is currently the CEO of Asset Development and Management Company Private Limited and Chairman & CEO of American Asset Acquisition Corporation.