Union power

this brief post and the accompanying chart says it all.  Without union support, the democrat party would disappear.  Not enough people understand just how much the political field is tilted by the influence and money of the unions.

THERE IS REALLY ONLY ONE SPECIAL INTEREST GROUP

And that is labor unions. Antony Davies of Duquesne has prepared a series of charts that summarize special interest political contributions from 1989 to 2009, based on data from Open Secrets. This chart is the most revealing; it shows that the overwhelming majority of special interest money goes to Democrats, and that unions dwarf everyone else. It’s actually even worse than the chart shows at first glance, since teachers’ unions are listed separately and account for another $50 million, virtually all of it given to Democrats. If everyone understood what this chart is telling us, there would be a lot more outrage about what's going on in Congress and in politics in general. Click to enlarge:

Via Veronique de Rugy at The Corner.

As I’ve said before, I think it is time to revisit the privileged status that unions are given under the antitrust laws. If we repeal Section 6 of the Clayton Act, unions will be on a level playing field with the rest of us.http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/06/there-is-really-only-one-special-interest-group.php

The un-American POTUS

From the outset of his emergence on the political scene, to many of us Barak Obama was a strange construct with whom we had no connection.  He was simply out weird, a kind of freak person who spoke in dulcet tones and flowery language but was largely incomprehensible and not real.  Obviously many others, a majority of voters in the US found a way to identify with him and his strange message of hope, or whatever, and he became the president.  The quote below from an ordinary citizen, Jay Clarke, writing in the American Thinker on 29 June 2011, pretty much sums up the feeling many of us had and have about this weird personality who now represents our country all over the world on a daily basis:

These and many other shared experiences before and since have created generations of Americans who cherish this land, this idea that is America.  They do so with heart and soul.  Standing on cue they remove their hats, place their hands over their hearts or salute, and then choke back the tears as the Star-Spangled Banner is played.  They are Americans within the very fiber of their being. 

Naturalized citizens often display this same love of country, for many have escaped oppressive regimes or economic hopelessness to come to America and be adopted as America's sons and daughters.  They came seeking their American Dream, the freedom and opportunity to build a better life for themselves and their families.  There's a common, deep, and intimate connection that Americans feel for their country.  The soul of America is maintained in the hearts of its people, fiercely loyal to the vision of our Founders and the ideas and precepts of our founding documents.

These same kinds of experiences did not shape the young Barack Obama.  His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an atheist and politically extreme.  At the age of 6 the future president was ushered off to Indonesia where he attended school registered as a Muslim, recited the Quran in Arabic, and learned how to be a good Muslim.  In these studies, he would have learned that all non-Muslims were infidelsworthy of deception and ultimately, death.  Christians and Jews were the enemy.  Despite what Obama may say, the United States remains a Christian nation with a strong Jewish population and deep ties to Israel.  Judeo-Christian principles helped form and continue to influence our national identity with many signers of the Declaration of Independence having been clergy or devout Christians.  America remains home to the largest Christian population in the world.  What bigger infidel could there be than America?

Obama's teen years were spent living with his maternal grandparents on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  There he met a family friend, communist, purported pedophile, and his eventual mentor, the radical poet Frank Marshall Davis. 

Obama's connections to radical leftists are numerous and well-known.  He's admitted to attending socialist meetings and participated in a rally organized by the Democratic Socialists of America.  In 1996, he sought and received the endorsement of the far left group The New Party.  He has worked with, supported, and attempted to shield from investigation the group ACORN which was recently convicted of massive voter fraud.  Obama's White House is chock-full of radical leftist, anti-American advisors.  As a 20-year attendee at Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama was steeped in Black Liberation Theology which is rooted in the collectivist philosophy of Karl Marx.  Marx's most oft-quoted excerpt from his work "Critique of the Gotha Programme" seems to foreshadow the future President Obama's stated belief in wealth redistribution: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

The reason that Americans feel unease when Barack Obama talks about America is that he is talking about a different America.  His words are carefully chosen and crafted to sound American, but the hidden meaning is much more malevolent.  His goal is "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" into a nation where social justice reigns and injustice is counted as fairness and equity.  He seeks a nation of redistribution where those who succeed through hard work, honest enterprise, financial investment, time, energy, and risk are rewarded with government confiscation of the fruits of their labor.  His is a country where communication systems, travel corridors, and private property are tightly controlled by the State.  It's a country where education is state-run and curricula are state-mandated.  In a fully implemented Obama-nation, it would be illegal to pass the accumulation of one's lifetime on to heirs.  This is the America of Karl Marx's dreams.

Barack Obama does not sound like an American because Obama's heart and soul are not American in nature.  His thoughts are not American.  His attitude and philosophy are not American.  He cannot speak from the heart about America because America does not reside there.  With a Muslim upbringing, a radical family, radical mentor, a myriad of radical connections, radical advisors, a radical theology, and some say a radical spouse, it's no wonder. 

Obama's agenda is informed by Marx and guided by years of close associations with extreme individuals and groups whose stated goals are the demise of America and America's influence in the world.  When he says he wants to "fundamentally transform America," he is dead serious.

For the first time in all of American history, we are at the mercy of an un-American American President.

May God truly bless the United States of America.

Jay Clarke is a businessman and lifelong conservative from Southern California.  He's a proud husband, father, and grandfather.

China's scary financial system

Just when China faces its financial meltdown is unknowable, but without draconian action by the central authorities it surely will as is evident from this explanation of their rapidly expanding credit system looking a lot like what happened in the US during the runaway housing boom of the last decade.  The bottom line is regulators cannot control the credit expansion as fast as financial entrepreneurs find new ways to create more.  There is this difference:  during the US massive credit expansion the government while democrats were in control, were complicit in making the bubble happen by enabling Fannie and Freddie Macs to underwrite risky mortgages in the name of "social justice". In China it appears the central government in the control of the Communists are trying to reign inn credit expansion but simply cannot keep up with the wily entrepreneurs who are enjoying the current fruits of their bubble.  Hard to say where all this leads as the commies are able to operate free of any pesky media and in the end can impose "solutions" unavailable in our more transparent and legally defined system.  One such "solution" might be to send the entrepreneurs off to the gulag, never to be heard from again.  Could happen.

2012 Election prospects

Soon, and hopefully people will be analyzing and deconstructing Obama and his administration after the fact.  The likely comparison that will come to mind is Jimmy Carter and his failed administration of the late '70's.  It's hard to think of much Carter did right, especially in foreign affairs, but to his credit he did get one thing right on the economy: deregulation.  By all rights, he should get a great deal of credit for starting the deregulation ball rolling that eventually freed up the US economy from the rigid controls that inhibited competition and therefore growth especially in transportation and communications. Affordable airfares, telephone service and shipping costs all contributed positively to the fabulous growth of the economy that occurred during the '80's and 90's.  Unfortunately Obama has no understanding of the workings of our modern economy as is apparent from this article, and sees the commercial world largely through the prism of the 18th century mercantilism that Adam Smith debunked and buried once and for all in  "Wealth of Nations".  Obama also has no idea of the significance of the Austrian School of Economics and its emphasis on the incentives that drive free markets in the creation of wealth.  This latter shortcoming in Obama's education is particularly unfortunate for had he been aware of all the failed policies of Herbert Hoover in his attempt to promote recovery from the onset of the Great Depression in 1930 and 1931, he would have understood that the democrat party's Keynsian deficit financing effort and the various bailouts were not going to work.  Long before FDR's great spending debacle, Hoover tried them all, including large tax increases on income and capital and the infamous Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariff law that killed all export markets for US producers. In fact, for those who are familiar with the Hoover presidency, it is his administration that Obama's most closely resembles and will most likely be linked with not Carter's which at least gave us deregulation.

2012 Election prospects

Soon, and hopefully, people will be analyzing and deconstructing Obama and his administration after the fact.  The likely comparison that will come to mind is Jimmy Carter and his failed administration of the late '70's.  It's hard to think of much Carter did right, especially in foreign affairs, but to his credit he did get one thing right on the economy: deregulation.  By all rights, he should get a great deal of credit for starting the deregulation ball rolling that eventually freed up the US economy from the rigid controls that inhibited competition and therefore growth especially in transportation and communications. Affordable airfares, telephone service and shipping costs all contributed positively to the fabulous growth of the economy that occurred during the '80's and 90's.  Unfortunately Obama has no understanding of the workings of our modern economy as is apparent from this article, and sees the commercial world largely through the prism of the 18th century mercantilism that Adam Smith debunked and buried once and for all in  "Wealth of Nations".  Obama also has no idea of the significance of the Austrian School of Economics and its emphasis on the incentives that drive free markets in the creation of wealth.  This latter shortcoming in Obama's education is particularly unfortunate for had he been aware of all the failed policies of Herbert Hoover in his attempt to promote recovery from the onset of the Great Depression in 1930 and 1931, he would have understood that the democrat party's Keynsian deficit financing effort and the various bailouts were not going to work.  Long before FDR's great spending debacle, Hoover tried them all, including large tax increases on income and capital and the infamous Smoot-Hawley protectionist tariff law that killed all export markets for US producers. In fact, for those who are familiar with the Hoover presidency, it is his administration that Obama's most closely resembles and will most likely be linked with not Carter's which at least gave us deregulation.