Obama, economic justice and socialism

[erimir]

Today in Investor's Business Daily stock analysis and business news

Some "highlights":

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
[...]
"Economic justice" simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It's a euphemism for socialism.
[...]
Obama also talks about "restoring fairness to the economy," code for soaking the "rich" — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
[...]
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
[...]
A careful reading of Obama's first memoir, "Dreams From My Father," reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as "Frank" — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his "subversive," "un-American activities."
[...]
Throughout his career, Obama has worked closely with a network of stone-cold socialists and full-blown communists striving for "economic justice."

He's been traveling in an orbit of collectivism that runs from Nairobi to Honolulu, and on through Chicago to Washington.

So, I realize that this Investor's Business Daily is obviously far-right when it comes to economics, clearly think that anyone who is poor deserves to be poor, extrapolate wildly from the term "economic justice" to Soviet-style Marxism, and are using buzzwords like "collectivism" and for some reason throwing around the word "communist" like it's the 50s (how retro).

But what of the substantive claims that aren't just right-wing hysteria about how socialism is teh most evilest evil? (which they must always link with the Soviets and Cuba, since talking about Western Europe might make you think that socialist policies don't always destroy the economy and make everyone miserable) Are those claims about Obama's mentors and such being commies even true?

Any thoughts about this article? Apparently it's being emailed around, since my mom showed it to me and wanted to know what I thought about it, and if I knew/could find out whether its claims were true.

[Crumb]

Cool. If that's true than Obama may be even more liberal than I imagined.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by erimir

Investor's Business Daily

[Dingfod]

I wish I made so much money I paid taxes at the maximum rate.

Oh, wait ...

[chunksmediocrites]

I've posted this before but I'll link it again: Naomi Klein's Nation article from June 2008 regarding Obama's chief economic adviser, the economist Austan Goolsbee, and the head of his economic policy team, Jason Furman. Neither are- by any stretch of the imagination- leftists. The opening quote from Obama:

"Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."

If communists scare your mom, then she will remain scared. If it surprises people that a black man like Frank Marshall Davis, let alone many people living in the U.S. in the '20's, '30's and '40's saw communism as a better deal than they were getting under America's capitalist system, then they are in for a lot more surprises.
Keep in mind Obama was in Hawaii, where he was born, and where he knew Davis, from '61-'67 and '71-'79, and he was 18 in 1979; in 1979 Davis was 74. Frank Marshall Davis' wiki is here.

There are lots of sites, predominantly right, that will tell you that William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, and Saul Alinsky are Obama's mentors; they press hard any possible connection. There are even articles on "Obama's mentor's mentor". Other articles not so steeped in OMG! mention Lawrence Goldyn, Sen. Richard 'Dick' Durbin, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Emil Jones.

Really this is a stir-up to paint Obama as a radical, which is unlikely, and a socialist, which is hysterical, as our nation, lead by a Republican Administration, goes into full command economy mode and offers its twisted version of socialism: socialism for the rich, paid for by the working class.

This is just red scare stuff. I wish Obama was as radical or as left as the right fringe paints him, though of course they paint Hillary as a socialist as well, because everybody knows socialized medicine is crazy*... what with how 'good'** we've got it under for-profit health care.
Their hope is that McCarthyism lives on well enough to get the fear up and running, and some votes move away from Obama. An excellent play, if this were the 1950's or 60's... when the government taxed the wealthy and corporations at a much higher rate than today, and the middle class in America and income equality*** was as high as it has ever been- though of course the thought of a man with dark skin and mixed-race heritage running for president in the 1950's doesn't really fly, does it?


*Just ask England, France, Canada...
**Good meaning not acceptable and shitty.
***Predominantly for whites

[Nullifidian]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

If communists scare your mom, then she will remain scared. If it surprises people that a black man like Frank Marshall Davis, let alone many people living in the U.S. in the '20's, '30's and '40's saw communism as a better deal than they were getting under America's capitalist system, then they are in for a lot more surprises.

There are lots of sites, predominantly right, that will tell you that William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, and Saul Alinsky are Obama's mentors; they press hard any possible connection.

What, you don't think that Bill Ayers was brainwashing the eight year old Obama into committing acts of vanguardist violence in order to usher in the Maoist people's revolution?

Saul Alinsky is an another interesting claim for a "mentor" considering that he died when Obama was ten years old, and he spent his last years in Carmel, California. However, the difference in age doesn't mean he wasn't Obama's mentor. After all, aren't all kids eager to hear elderly people reminisce?

Besides, if erimir's mother needs any indication about how being "mentored" by someone is no indicator of their subsequent politics, all one needs to do is look at Hillary Clinton. She wrote her thesis on Saul Alinsky, and just look what happened there.

[Kael]

Speaking as someone who currently sits in a fairly low economic bracket, I like Capitalism. But I like it tempered with Socialism. Like so many things, policies purely one or the other are not usually very good. They work best together, one balancing the other.

Just how liberal Obama is is what keeps me from throwing my support fully behind him, and I will likely only vote for him as the (obviously) less horrible of two bad choices. 'Course, it's been that way for me since I could vote, deciding which candidate is less likely to make a complete mess of things, and I think that's the way it will always go. With the spiral of dementia that has gripped the Republican party, I've resigned myself to not being able to vote for a conservative in the foreseeable future. I can only hope sanity returns to the party in my lifetime, or a new conservative party rises to replace them.

[godfry n. glad]

So...You don't feel comfortable with the likes of the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, or the Independent Party?

I don't blame you. The Constitution Party, from what I can tell, is badly misnamed. They want to institute a Constitution based upon biblical law, so far as I can tell. They are religious wingnuts. Dominionists. The Libertarian Party has too damned many Objectivists and their current candidate is worse than any other candidate when it comes to issues of equality, he being a bigot of the worst type, on top of being a religious wingnut. The Independents are running Ralph Nader....'nuff said.

It sounds as though you come to the question from the opposite side as I do and arrive at roughly the same place. I'm looking for what I call "Capitalism With a Human Face" (my apologies to Alexander Dubček), where capitalism can, so far as possible, allocate scarce resources, but the government acts to control markets to keep them honest and reasonable and prevent the rising of "conspiracies to defraud the public" (in Adam Smith's phrase for the proclivities of merchants) like monopolies, oligopolies and consumer fraud.

Of course, our problem is that so many economic actors have become so large and so influential that they buy and sell legislators and control the laws which should be there to control their actions.

I tend to think that once we've reduced the hemorrhaging finances to support the military-industrial complex, we should use the "peace dividend' to erect a sizeable and active anti-trust division in the Justice Department.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

If communists scare your mom, then she will remain scared.

My mom is from Sweden. So... suggesting that a policy might be socialist isn't gonna work.

There are lots of sites, predominantly right, that will tell you that William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, and Saul Alinsky are Obama's mentors; they press hard any possible connection.

Ok, so basically, Obama does have connections to those people, they just aren't that strong?

I don't personally care, I don't think my mom cares that much either. She was just curious how much of that was true. I was only wondering insomuch as how that would affect how other people would think.

Originally Posted by Nullifidian

Besides, if erimir's mother needs any indication about how being "mentored" by someone is no indicator of their subsequent politics, all one needs to do is look at Hillary Clinton. She wrote her thesis on Saul Alinsky, and just look what happened there.

My mom doesn't really matter for the election anyway. She can't vote - she's not an American citizen yet, just a Swedish citizen. If she could vote tho, she would be voting Obama, I'm pretty certain.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Kael

I can only hope ...a new conservative party rises...

This may have already happened. The Democratic Party of today is further right on economic issues than the Republican Party of Nixon's time.

[beyelzu]

Yes nixon actually was about the price fixing thats pretty far left.