Is Syria's Assad Dead or Fled?

By Alan Caruba

It is the nature of despots to fight to the end, though some do flee. The former dictator of Tunisia was smart enough to get out with his skin, but Libya’s Gaddafi was eventually captured and summarily executed. It took a U.S. invasion to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein who was found hiding in a hole in the ground. The end for most despots is ugly, but they often do not have too many, if any, options.

On January 5^th, Bashar al Assad, the son of Hafez al Assad, the despot who ruled Syria for twenty years, gave a speech to an audience of supporters and, having killed 60,000 Syrians at this point, sounded quite defiant. He called the civil war that has been going on for the past two years a period of “transition” which is about as daft as it gets. According to Assad, his enemies are Islamic radicals who, in turn, are Western “puppets.” 

Within twenty-four hours there were unconfirmed reports on the Internet saying that he was dead or had fled Damascus. The truth about anything in the Middle East can be elusive.

The Middle East often makes for strange bedfellows. While the United Nations typically wrings its hands, there are indications that the U.S. has been covertly transferring arms to the rebels, Syrians tired of the Assad regime’s oppression and al Qaeda that wants to be in position to exercise some power after Assad is driven from office. The curious aspect of this is that the assassination of the U.S. ambassador in Libya and three others was reportedly carried out by al Qaeda. It is often hard to know who one’s allies are in the Middle East.

Assad’s major ally has been Iran, the primary sponsor of Hezbollah, a Palestinian terror group that currently controls Lebanon and never ceases to threaten Israel with destruction. Another ally has been the Russians who have cultivated relations with him because they want to retain a port in the Mediterranean for their warships. They have voiced reservations about Assad of late.

Syria’s neighbors, Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon have provided refuge for the many Syrians who fled the war.

Israel has kept a low profile. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since their loss by Syria in the 1967 war. Bashar’s father, Hafez, was smart enough not to engage in further wars with Israel.

Whether he is alive or dead, Bashar al Assad and his regime is finished. The biggest losers have been the Syrian people and, as an Israeli scholar, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East, has noted, “The country is in a state of clinical death resulting from systemic collapse.”

As bad as the estimated 60,000 deaths so far have been, Dr. Kedar, predicts that the death toll of members of the Alawite tribe that has run the nation will increase as Syrians take their revenge.

“Other small sects as well—the Christians and the Druze—are among the losers because the Alawite regime protected them.” Many have fled or soon will. Dr. Kedar described the Assad regime as dictatorial in style and feudal in structure. The irony of the revolution to get rid of Assad is that “freedom is not a natural thing, especially in the Middle East.” The rebels are likely to find themselves under an Islamic-religious dictatorship.

 

A point in case is Egypt where the citizens rose up to demand the removal of Hosni Mubarak only to find themselves dealing with Mohamed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has already demonstrated his own despotic inclinations. Meanwhile, the Christian Copts of Egypt will have to flee for their lives and Jews as well.

The other big loser when the Assad regime falls will be Iran, says Dr. Kedar. Syria was Iran’s “Trojan horse in the Arab world” and the base for Hezbollah. “Despite its economic difficulties stemming from international sanctions, Iran has sunk an estimated twenty billion dollars in Syria during the past two years in weapons, ammunition, and payment of Syrian soldier’s salaries in an effort to keep them from deserting.” That investment will be entirely lost. The Iranian ayatollahs will likely find themselves further isolated, both within Iran, and in the region.

Moreover, says Dr. Kedar, “Other Arab peoples—of Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq—might be encouraged by the success of the Syrians, and surge into the streets to achieve their own freedom from domineering rulers.” There are current news reports of Iraqi protests.

The Israelis have built a fence along their border with Egypt, much in the same way they built one between themselves and the West Bank and Gaza in response to the Palestinian “intifadas” that killed Israelis in their homeland. They recently waged a short air war against Hamas to discourage the constant rocketing which received little coverage in the West until, of course, they took steps to defend themselves.

Not even Europe is spared by the Syrian revolt. “Even now,” says Dr. Kedar, “thousands of Syrian refugees are knocking on Europe’s doors, which are closed to them, so that they can open a new chapter in their miserable lives. In Europe, they know well that an Arab refugee will never leave and, therefore…Europe fears the flow of Arabs into its territory and is slowing down their immigration as much as possible.”

About the only thing that can be predicted with any certainty is the Middle East and the Muslim nations of northern Africa—the Maghreb--will remain in turmoil as the Islamist factions, al Qaeda and others, seek to impose their will on the various nations.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

The Principles of Taxation

By Alan Caruba

“NYSR to Sell Itself in $8.2 Billion Deal” was the lead story in the December 21, 2012 edition of The Wall Street Journal.”

“The New York Stock Exchange, the cornerstone of American capitalism for 220 years, agreed to be sold as part of an $8.2 billion takeover by IntercontinentalExchange, Inc. If regulators and shareholders approve, the combined company would own 14 stock and futures exchanges and five clearing operations that serve as middlemen between buyers and sellers of futures and other contracts, doing more things in more places than any other rival. The takeover also would seal the triumph of electronic trading over ‘open outcry’ floor trading that long dominated financial markets, as well as the push by exchanges to embrace new and lucrative kinds of trading.”

The Internet has transformed the buying and selling of stocks and other financial contracts, but it has not changed the fundamentals of capitalism.

The factors most affecting economic growth or decline remain the same and, as the “fiscal cliff” approaches for every American, it is predicted that its cost will represent an increase of $4,000 for all who still pay income taxes in a nation where an estimated 47% do not, where unemployment remains for 26 million Americans, and the Obama administration, during its first term in office, increased the national debt to $16 trillion, has spent and generally wasted billions in its “bailouts” and “stimulus” programs in addition to the billions lost on “green energy” companies that went belly-up.

In an essay on taxation by a former Secretary of the Treasury, the following fundamentals of taxation were discussed and I will share his observations with you before telling you who wrote it and when.

“The problem of the government is to fix rates which will bring a maximum amount of revenue to the Treasury and at the same time bear not too heavily on the taxpayer or on business enterprises.”

The Obama administration needs a lot of money. It borrows $4.8 billion every day. It has a debt of $16 trillion, $6 trillion of which was added in the last four years. The so-called “entitlement” programs are verging on insolvency in the years immediately ahead. They are not voluntary programs, but maintained by the force of law and Congress has routinely raided the Social Security fund to pay for other things. Obamacare raided billions in Medicare to fund a program that essentially nationalized twenty percent of the nation’s economy (Socialism!) and which included 28 new taxes. Many states have refused to create the “exchanges” it mandates.

“I have never viewed taxation as a means of rewarding one class of taxpayers or punishing another.” So much for Obama’s constant demand for higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” which, at one point it defined as anyone earning $250,000 or more.

“If such a point of view ever controls our public policy, the traditions of freedom, justice, and equality of opportunity, which are the distinguishing characteristics of our American civilization, will have disappeared and in their place we shall have class legislation with all its attendant evils…” That is the point which we have reached with an enormous and manifestly unfair tax code in need of major revision.

“The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; the capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the government nor profit to the people…”

Americans now have a huge, centralized federal government that sucks up and largely wastes vast amounts of taxable income that would otherwise be invested in new enterprises, the expansion of existing ones, and punishes the most productive members of society.

There is a war being waged on capitalism in the nation that rose to the greatest citadel of wealth the world has ever seen. It is being waged by a President who was recently reelected by demonizing a successful venture capitalist whose firm invested in companies that generated thousands of jobs.

“High taxation…is largely borne by the ultimate consumer. High taxation means a high price level and high cost of living. A reduction in taxes, therefore, results not only in immediate saving to the individual or property directly affected, but an ultimate saving to all people in the country.”

The author quoted throughout was Andrew William Mellon who, in 1921, was made Secretary of the Treasury, a post he held until 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected President. As noted in “The Patriot’s History Reader: Essential Documents for Every America”, Mellon was “the first proponent of the idea that lowering taxes stimulated business and therefore resulted in increased tax revenues.” The essay quoted was written in 1924.

Mellon’s policies were vindicated by John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, but during Roosevelt’s administrations he was demonized at the same time that tax rates were raised to 80% on the highest incomes in 1935 and to 90% by 1940. This is a time period that is also known as the Great Depression.

The current Secretary of Treasury wants to give the President the right to increase the ceiling on new borrowing any time he wants.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

News Notes from Warning Signs

By Alan Caruba

Attention editors: This is a personal communication for visitors to Warning Signs and should not be posted on your website.

Donations to Warning Signs in 2012 made it possible to replace an aging computer and that ensured that I could do the research necessary for the daily commentaries and to write them knowing that they have proven their value to the many visitors to my blog. Google statistics indicate an average of 100,000 visitors a month these days. Let’s keep this going and, of course, if you have any spare change after paying the Christmas bills and throughout the year ahead, a donation would be very welcome.

On the news front, a slowing economy is taking its toll on everyone including your devoted editor/writer of Warning Signs, so if you know of a corporation, a trade association, a think tank, or other potential clients that need high quality editorial services and/or public relations assistance, particularly as regards the issues I address—environmental claims and regulations, the food police, energy issues, education, science topics, and other “hot button” issues, do send them to http://carubaeditorialservices.blogspot.com/ where they can review my credentials and services.  Thanks.

Cartoon Round Up

Welcome Illegal Aliens--You're Safe Here

By Alan Caruba

The Obama administration loves to pass unpopular legislation—Obamacare—and release news of unpopular policies on Christmas Eve. The assumption is that people are too distracted to pay attention and, anyway, there’s nothing they can do about it.

Illegal aliens received a Christmas gift when the chief of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), John Morton, released new guidelines for local police who might think it was their job to cooperate with ICE by detaining illegal aliens stopped for probable cause. Previously ICE had a “287 (g) program” that facilitated the process, but no more.

As ICE explained this change, the administration’s goal is to limit the role of local cops with regard to the detention of illegal aliens arrested for misdemeanors (offenses punishable by jail sentences of between 30-days and one year) or violations (offenses punishable by jail sentences of 30-days or less). Apparently there are just so many of these arrests that ICE doesn’t want to bother with them anymore. And, after all, it only involves someone here ILLEGALLY.

According to ICE, the policy change will “further enhance our ability to focus enforcement efforts on serious offenders” by “changing who ICE will issue detainers against.” 

Need it be said that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) pushed hard to get this policy change, along with a variety of immigrant and refugee advocacy groups, including the Arab-American Institute.

I was reading a new book by Brett Braaten, “Homeland Insecurity: Failed Politics, Policies, and a Nation at Risk”, when the new ICE policy was announced. The author is a former special agent whose career spans 29 years with both the U.S. Customs Service and, after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He saw how these agencies operated from the inside.

In his book, he warns that “The tangled web of guidelines, each one more convoluted than the last, stifles every innovative though that might otherwise see the light of day. The political correctness and cultural sensitivities that abound in the federal system, shackle law enforcement officers who are simply trying to do right by the American taxpayer and get everyone home safe at the end of the day.”

What he learned along the way is the pecking order of the FBI, the IRS, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.) “There had never been, nor would there ever be, a selfless spirit of cooperation among these agencies.” After 9/11 the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 was supposed to create greater cooperation among its components, but old rivalries die hard. At the bottom of the pecking order was and remains now the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Customs personnel quickly found that dealing with illegal alien processing and deportation was unwieldy and mind numbing. Layers of bureaucratic fine print, immigration laws saturated with loopholes, and exceptions to exceptions, slow the process to a near halt.” During its first term, it became obvious to anyone paying attention that deporting illegal aliens had a very low priority.

If you are here illegally, unless you engage in serious crimes, you are not likely to be returned to your homeland. Indeed, the U.S. has become your homeland and one that where you can get a job and have access to multiple social programs which should be reserved for U.S. citizens.

Under the aegis of the Homeland Security Department, immigration enforcement has become a bad joke. The Center for Immigration Studies recently criticized DHS saying that “the agency responsible for overseeing educational institutions hosting foreign students rarely exercises its enforcement authority.” There are nearly 1.2 million foreign students and their dependents in the U.S., attending close to 7,000 educational institutions. We are likely to learn that some of them are here for purposes of terrorism, but by then it will be too late.

Braaten warns that “There is no way that law enforcement can be efficient in the execution of its mission when it is little more than an expression of the political policies designed to serve the best interests of the current administration, regardless of affiliation.” The nation’s problem with illegal aliens has a long history. Occasional amnesties have only served as an inducement to enter illegally.

To those Americans who think border control is not a priority or that the presence of illegal aliens pose no real problem, Braaten says, Whether (they) like it or not, illegal aliens bring the ills of their respective societies with them. Lacking any reasonable societal pressure from (native born and naturalized Americans), there is no impetus to assimilate into American culture. There’s no pressure to learn English in a society that falls all over itself to accommodate a vast population that lacks the interest or ability to learn it.”

Large portions of California and the Southwest have literally been reclaimed by their illegal populations. “The southwest border,” says Braaten, “has devolved to a state of near chaos. Communities, overrun with a crippling demand for social services from a foreign populace, find themselves falling deeper and deeper into deficient spending with no relief in sight.”

The Obama administration has managed to cover up the “Fast and Furious” scandal in which the ATF allowed nearly 2,000 guns to get into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. It cost the life of a border patrol officer and is currently protected against further Congressional investigation by an executive order. In the course of the investigations, however, Eric Holder became the first Attorney General to be held in contempt of Congress.

While Braaten focused on revelations about customs and immigration enforcement, he also took note of Department of Homeland Security failures that we know about, the uselessness of the Transportation Safety Administration that makes air travel a nightmare, and, in effect, the widespread belief that the U.S. is adequately and actually being protected by the alphabet soup of DHS agencies, and others charged with protecting the nation.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

The American Way of War

By Alan Caruba

The U.S. military has been in Afghanistan since shortly after September 11, 2001. That’s eleven years and it is longer than the time spent in Vietnam, though with less casualties. We invaded Iraq twice, once to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after he invaded in 1990 and then, in 2003 to depose him in the hope of bringing “democracy” to that nation. After the 2005 elections, Iraq was eager to see us leave, but many observers say it is as wracked with violence today as it was during our occupation. 

The American way of war is not working and has not been working since the 1970s.

 

Armies are not intended to be “nation building” forces. Their job is to kill the enemy and break things until a threat to our national security is ended. We did that during World War II, fighting it in two theatres, Europe and Asia. We won because we inflicted an enormous amount of damage in both theatres of war in just four year’s time.

Empires have invaded Afghanistan for centuries and usually left bloodied and battered, Alexander the Great, the British Empire, and the former Soviet Union are examples. I doubt there is anyone who thinks we should still be there, particularly since we fought the war by shuffling in a new general every year, none of whom were there long enough to grasp what had to be done other than to build up an Afghani security force that is just as likely to oppress the people as the Taliban. The rules of engagement there are a threat to the lives of every American soldier. It is the seventh century in Afghanistan still today.

This is a very bad way to wage war in the 21^st century and I suggest we need to go into combat with the intent of waging short, brutal engagements, enough to suppress the existing threat and then leave with the obvious option of returning if that is required.

 

World War II was one in which we had to occupy Japan to build an entirely new government and we had to aid Europe to ensure the Soviet Union would not be able to go beyond the eastern nations that were sacrificed to keep those in the west free to rebuild.

The Korean conflict, 1950 to 1953, ended in a stalemate, albeit one that allowed South Korea to develop into a modern democracy and economic force. The North has remained a horror story for its people. The U.S. has maintained a fighting force in South Korea ever since the end of the conflict and currently has about 28,000 troops there to support its military. The North is said to have a million-man army. And missiles, some of them long range. UN sanctions have had zero effect.

Let’s understand something. While I served in the Army in the 1960s during the Cold War that had been ongoing since the end of WWII, I was not an officer and received the same basic training as any other soldier. I was fortunate that no shooting war broke out at the time I was in uniform and I most certainly am NOT conversant with the art of war as is taught in our military universities of West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy. What I know of war I have read in history books.

It is said that generals always fight the last war and I suggest we have been fighting the last war for far too long. We essentially lost the war in Vietnam when, after the French withdrawal, we intervened in a civil war. It was a Cold War proxy fight.

 

The first war against Saddam after he had invaded Kuwait could be said to have been an American mercenary force to keep him from expanding into Saudi Arabia, a strategic ally so far as oil is concerned. Deposing a brutal dictator—one said to possess weapons of mass destruction—was probably a good idea, but I maintain that once he was caught and turned over to the Iraqis, we should have left. One thing is clear. Iraq has slipped back into a period of chaos with constant bombings as various groups within the nation assert themselves.

We may yet have to engage Syria’s equally brutal dictator, Bashar al-Assad, along with a number of NATO and Arab League nations. He has, after all, killed tens of thousands of Syrian citizens in his quest to retain power for himself and the Alawite tribe that has run the nation since his father, Hafez al-Assad took over in a coup, ruling for 29 years until his death in 2000. Syria has supported the Iranian-backed Hezbollah which is much more than just a terrorist organization. It controls Lebanon these days. And it threatens Israel in the same way the Iranian-based Hamas does from Gaza. Most importantly, Syria is an ally of Iran.

No nation, however, appears to want to get directly involved and it’s a good bet that most Americans do not. All manner of military preparations are being made, such as moving anti-missile batteries to Turkey, a NATO partner with a long border with Syria. Some U.S. special operations troops are said to be in Jordan.

All this is occurring while the Egyptians have essentially traded one dictator, Hosni Mubarak, for a new one, Mohammed Morsi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood that has plotted to take over Egypt for decades. Mubarak suppressed them. Morsi has received an inordinate amount of praise for bringing about a cease fire during the recent Israeli conflict with the Palestinians in Gaza and is, for all intents and purposes, backed by President Obama.

 

None of this has any good long term outcome because we are looking at a resurgent Islamic revolution everywhere in the region and stretching across North Africa. Egypt is receding into an Islamist orbit that cannot be good for the West or for itself.

We live in an age of a war being waged, not always by nation-states, but by organizations such as al-Qaeda and others. Killing their leaders with drones is probably a very good idea and something future American presidents will be doing for a long time. Beyond that, there is a need that our Special Forces are well trained and equipped for their counter-terrorism operations. Get in, kill the bad guys, get out. In larger combat situations another aspect of their mission is securing the support of indigenous people.

I believe that where war is necessary—even a preemptive one—the U.S. should apply it with as much force as possible over the shortest time possible.

Placating or warning other rogue nations like North Korea is not a policy. It is just a way to buy time, but North Korea is backed up by China and we surely do not want to get into a war with that nation. China should be encouraged to end the present regime there, now into its third generation, but I am sanguine about seeing that occur.

All this is occurring as “sequestration” is about to cut deeply into our defense budget over the next ten years, assuming Congress allows it to occur. Our professional, all volunteer military is probably the best in the world, but they are functioning with a lot of older, continually repaired weapons, including our air fleet. Our Navy hasn’t been so small since the end of WWII. It must be said that rotating our soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors through multiple tours of combat is probably not a good idea either. Bluntly stated, our military has been hollowed out in the Obama administration’s first term, a process likely to continue.

The late Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf had some useful advice. “It frightens me when I hear someone propose a hundred-billion-dollar cut in our armed forces without any rationale other than that the money can be used elsewhere…we should be sure that we have made a thorough analysis of what our national interests will be for the next twenty years.”

“We must ensure,” said Gen. Schwartzkopf, “that our forces remain flexible enough to handle unforeseen contingencies. The future is not always easy to predict and our record regarding where we will fight future wars is not the best.”

Nobody wants World War Three, but if a nation like Iran is allowed to acquire nuclear weapons that can be put on the nose of long-range missiles, we are virtually guaranteed a horrendous attack on the homeland or at the very least on Israel and possibly Saudi Arabia as well.

Short wars for the purpose of removing an obvious threat seem to me a very good idea. Invading and then staying around for a decade is a very bad one.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

How Not to Run a Nation

By Alan Caruba

The political farce that ended 2012 and began 2013 has surely made the United States a laughingstock among the nations of the world. The sharp divisions between liberals and conservatives in Congress led to desperate last minute negotiations to avoid a “fiscal cliff” that faced the nation’s taxpayers and that still threatens default on our debts. The same battles will be fought again when it comes time to raise the nation’s debt ceiling limit in two months.

This is a Congress that has not passed a budget for three years.

 

This is no way to run a nation!

By a vote of 89-8 in the early hours of Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled Senate approved a plan to raise taxes on families earning more than $250,000 and to postpone sequester cuts for two months. By mid-afternoon, however, Politico.com reported that “House Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed to the Senate's bill to avert the fiscal cliff, making it nearly certain that Speaker John Boehner's chamber will amend the legislation and send it back to the Senate - a potentially serious blow to a package that appeared well on its way to becoming law.”

“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the No. 2 House Republican, told GOP lawmakers that he was opposed to the legislation in its current form. Republicans are chiefly concerned with the lack of spending cuts in the tax bill.” And that has been the problem since Obama took office, too much spending and too much borrowing to continue spending.

For the year or more the “fiscal cliff” existed Congress chose to do nothing. The frantic negotiations resulted in an agreement to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, something Democrats and the President campaigned against for years. 

 

Having to fight these fiscal battles all over again in two months will only reaffirm that Congress is incapable to arriving at common sense solutions. For the 47% of Americans who pay no taxes, the discussion is a distraction from watching the bowl games and other diversions.

It is useful to review the Heritage Foundation analysis issued prior to the late night vote. Amy Payne spelled it out in a recent commentary, saying “Tax hikes are the centerpiece of the problem” warning that the largest tax increase in American history was scheduled to kick in on January 1.

While the Bush tax cuts remain, solutions are needed to resolve what to do with the payroll tax, the alternative minimum tax patch, and a host of other tax policies that were scheduled to expire at year’s end.

However, twenty tax increases built into Obamacare are scheduled to go into effect. They will generate a trillion dollar increase for the years 2013-2022. Curiously, a tax on medical instruments that covers everything from tongue depressors to MRI machines will make healthcare more expensive for everyone despite the claim that Obamacare would make healthcare more affordable.

As the Heritage Foundation and others have been shouting from the housetops, Obamacare raises the hospital insurance (HI) portion of the payroll tax on wage income over $250,000 from 2.9 percent to 3.8 percent. It then applies that 3.8 percent rate to investment income-capital gains and dividends—for anyone earning above $250,000.

Tax experts like Curtis Dubay, a senior policy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, points out that “this is a massive policy change, since it represents the first time the payroll tax will apply to investment income.” He calls the investment income HI tax “a dangerous step down a slippery, tax-hiking slope”, predicting that “the economy will suffer, because incentives to work and invest will fall. Less work and investment will mean that businesses create fewer jobs and pay their existing workers less than they otherwise would have.”

Dubay refutes President Obama’s claim that his plan for taxing the rich would just be a return to the rates that existed under President Clinton. “That is flat out incorrect,” noting that Obama is ignoring the tax hikes hidden in Obamacare.

Stephen Moore, a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and a senior economics writer, a regular commentator on CNBC-TV and Fox News, has a new book out, “Who’s the Fairest of the Them All? The Truth About Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America.” ($21.50, Encounter Books). It blessedly brief, but it covers a lot of ground, especially as regards the lies coming out of the White House about the “rich.”

A lot of Americans are oblivious to the fact that the President is operating from an ideology that is the opposite of everything that built the greatest economy the world has ever seen. His views are those of a Socialist or to put it more bluntly, a Communist. He stops short of initiating programs by which the government would nationalize all industries, but Obamacare in effect does that for the health care industry; twenty percent of the nation’s economy.

In his book, Moore defends the free enterprise system as “the on-ramp to economic progress and rising incomes.” Under President Obama, “the ranks of the poor have risen and the progress of the middle class has stalled in the United States in recent years because we have moved so aggressively away from free markets and toward ham-handed government solutions.”

The lies the President told all through his 2008 campaign and the last four years of his first term have all been intended to create class warfare. Moore points out that “Mr. Obama says that in recent decades the middle class has suffered and shrunk. He is dead wrong on this count. In fact, the last thirty years (up until the 2008 recession) have been a boom period for the middle class.”

 

The proof of that, Moore notes, “By 2011, after Mr. Obama’s first three full years in office, and after nearly two years of radical spending and taxing policies, the median American family incomes declined by almost $4,500 for every household. The poverty rate increased, and so did the number of Americans losing their homes. Yes, Mr. Obama inherited an economic mess, but his policies have done little to stop the decline.”

Throughout 2012, according to Obama, if you earn more than $250,000 you are among the “rich” in America. This is surely a redefining of what we used to consider rich; usually those earning a million or more. As things stand now “Our government,” says Moore, “relies for more than 50 percent of its revenue on the richest three percent.”

The tax rate increase on “the rich” that Obama has been demanding would raise enough revenue to run the nation for about a week. Meanwhile, the U.S. must borrow $4.8 billion every day just to meet its expenses.

Obama’s goals since becoming President can be found in the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” and I recommend you get familiar with it as the nation hurtles toward financial collapse because that is exactly what the strategy is intended to bring about in order to impose a total socialist/communist system on the world’s greatest capitalistic economy.

Among the strategy’s proposals was a “massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls” and we have seen this in the expansion of the food stamp program and loosening of requirements for those on welfare to seek employment. The goal of the Cloward-Piven strategy is to ultimately “sabotage and destroy the welfare system in order to ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would ‘the rest of society’ accept their demands.”

That is Obama’s definition of “fairness” and it exists today as half of society, those with jobs or self-employed, are having their income taxed to pay for government programs for those who do not work or cannot find work; an estimated 26 million are unemployed or stopped looking for work. Another 47 million are using food stamps, a program that has greatly expanded during Obama’s first term and which uses television commercials to encourage more people to sign on.

A recent Rasmussen Reports poll noted that 73% of likely voters want government spending cut.  They sense the danger of a government grown so large it threatens the economy and, indeed, enforcement of the Constitution’s limits on government.

It has become a cliché to say the problem is government spending, but the problem is government spending.

There are a variety of scenarios regarding the near future and among them is the collapse of the U.S. dollar. Should that occur there would be wide-spread panic and demands that the government “do something.” One massive form of control has already been imposed in the form of Obamacare. When the government can determine who lives or dies, or how much care they can receive, Americans have lost a precious freedom. Other freedoms would be lost.

Obama has found ways to worsen the financial crisis and it has been deliberate. He is not merely “transforming” America, he is destroying it.

© Alan Caruba, 2013