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Is George Bush A Socialist?
gnomexxx
Member Posts: 2,920
The question stands.
Who else would condone the government buying out private companies and corporations? We are supposed to be a free market that runs on a capitalistic principle.
I do not agree one bit with what the Department of Treasury is doing right now. Why would anyone agree that it's okay to put the burden of private companies onto the tax payers? I'll tell you why, greed!
A greed that puts the Constitution and the defense of that document second to the economy. The principles of liberty and freedom should not be squandered by the economy and bad decisions of a few nitwitted people and some private banks and lending organizations.
I do not want this burden on me as a tax payer. Not because of the cost, but because of the power that it gives to the federal government. Now the government has taken it upon itself to bail out companies and individuals who make bad choices. Let me correct that, this gives the government the selective power to bail out companies and individuals. I guess it just decides which businesses and people are "important" now and thinks nothing of spreading out their pain on the backs of everyone.
So, my question is on the table. Is George W. Bush a socialist? I say yes. He is practicing socialism on a grand scale and it's in plain site for everyone to see. Problem is, will people turn the other way and worry more about their pocket books and deny the importance of the promises of protection from government in the future? Will the future pan out to give us more government growth and intrusion like we keep seeing, or are people going to stand up to government no matter what the costs?
Some people go off to war and are willing to die for the ideals of this country. Some people can't even compromise their personal economy. A far less price to pay, unless their priority is greed.
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Comments
As ken Macleod wrote: "the west is red"
They are all socialists of one variant or another -- well, all except libertarians -- the only question is on degree.
fishermage.blogspot.com
The only problem with this reasoning is that Bush has no decision over what the Federal Reserve System (FRB) does; them loaning money and gaining the majority of stock in AIG was all them, if anything I think Bush is more a corporate pull toy and if anything a fascist.
He cut taxes that only affected people who made millions, and supported going to war over WMDs which weren't found; what do you think he is? :x
He's all for privatizing profit and socializing risk; he's all for stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
That his non-millionaire followers still support him is an indication of how very, very stupid they are.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Well, I'd say we took Iraq in the War against the Jihad to create a free fly zone so Israel could attack Iran -- but that would be thinking with a long term strategy -- and we couldn't be doing that, now could we?
fishermage.blogspot.com
Paulson is the Treasury Secretary. The Department of the Treasury is a cabinet position of the President of the United States and Paulson's position is appointed by Bush. Paulson is promoting this buyout plan. He is a spokesman for Bush. That is Bush speaking when he speaks.
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Paulson is the Treasury Secretary. The Department of the Treasury is a cabinet position of the President of the United States and Paulson's position is appointed by Bush. Paulson is promoting this buyout plan. He is a spokesman for Bush. That is Bush speaking when he speaks.
Well I would say that this is more the case of Bush being clueless, and Paulson having a plan...but yeah Bush owns this baby.
fishermage.blogspot.com
Paulson is the Treasury Secretary. The Department of the Treasury is a cabinet position of the President of the United States and Paulson's position is appointed by Bush. Paulson is promoting this buyout plan. He is a spokesman for Bush. That is Bush speaking when he speaks.
Well I would say that this is more the case of Bush being clueless, and Paulson having a plan...but yeah Bush owns this baby.
Bush has the power to tell Paulson to STFU. Paulson is a Bush appointee. Bush has chosen not to tell him this but to remain quiet because he supports this.
Anytime a Bush cabinet appointee speaks and the President remains quiet, then by proxy he accepts support of that position. If he disagrees then he should either voice his disapproval or force the step down of that cabinet head. He has done neither.
So, I'm with you, Bush owns this one. And this action is the action of a socialist. In a capitalistic society the government does not own private property or interfere with the free markets. These corporations and people need to face the fire for their actions and the market needs to correct itself.
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I posted these links under another thread, but I think they answer the question to those willing to listen:
The Making of Amerika 1,2,3...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-4kCD4nbrw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxXhqxtmHjo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rulSfrcNU9U&feature=related
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRy_mP627z8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBZne09Gf5A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjUrib_Gh0Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BVNN1wqw3k&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPPFgHF9VR4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZv4aU998ik&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-w1_nliQqs&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSAOQuLxSdY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF5Kdm4Eu6w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRtsJEVp-p0&feature=related
http://www.seeloosechange.com
...And from the desk of W. J. Mencarow:
"Today I received an e-mail with the question,
"If we don't do it (the bailout), will the consequences be as
dire as the gurus claim?"
Here's my reply:
"The consequences would be that prices would fall to what buyers are
willing to pay, there would be an economic shudder, and the boat
would right itself again. But few who depend on voters to stay in
office want the economy to go through that necessary process.
Postponing the inevitable, as we have so many times in the past
by throwing money at it, will only make it far worse when it hits --
when it's so out of control that there won't be enough fiat
money in the universe to stop it.
You don't solve a problem by doing more of what caused it.
This is the biggest federal economic power-grab since the New Deal.
According to the Financial Times, the wording in the bill will
allow Treasury to buy *any* investment instrument. Bloomberg says
it could include car loans, student loans and credit card debt
"and any other troubled asset."
The various bailouts are expected to more than double if not triple
or qeven uadruple the deficit. I've seen estimates that the bailout
itself could go to $2 and even to $3 trillion. $700 billion
"estimated" bailout package for Wall Street + $438 billion projected
deficit in the federal budget for FY 2008 + $200 billion for
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac + $150 billion in "stimulus rebate checks
+ $85 billion for AIG + $29 billion for Bear Stearns = $1.602
billion. The national debt ceiling will have to be raised for
the second time in the past two months, this time to $11.3
trillion. That will make the national debt over 70% of GDP. The
highest the national debt got during the Great Depression was
44% of GDP.
I am at a loss to understand how the federal government can revive
the economy by saddling its citizens with unprecedented debt.
Lew Rockwell put it well earlier this year when he wrote,
"All this nonsense about digging ourselves out of recession through
government intervention began with the New Deal, when FDR used the
economic downturn as the great excuse to make himself the economic
führer of America.
"Here is the amazing fact: not once has this strategy worked. Not
in the New Deal. Not in the 1970s. Not in the 1980s. Not in the
1990s. Not once has government done anything to restore prosperity
during a slump. What happens again and again is that government
spends, the Fed inflates, the regulators punish, there is wailing
and gnashing of teeth, and then, at some point, we hit bottom,
and normalcy begins to return again.
"The most government can do is prolong the period at the
bottom. Otherwise, it is just wasting resources."
-- Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute
www.mises.org
Cheers,
W. J. Mencarow
President, The Paper Source, Inc."
The short answer is he is a communist on a global scale.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Gnome.
I would say yes.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
This is above the president now. Agree with it or not it will happen.
Bush could postpone it, but the legislatures would override him at this point.
Nice. I really like the letter by the guy who doesn't seem to understand anything. If he honestly thinks that leaving this alone would result in a minor market correction, he is completely ignorant of what is being dealt with here, somewhat on the scale of Paris Hilton talking about quantum mechanics. Let me break down our major interventions for you.
With Bear Sterns, we really only offered a safety net to JP Morgan, and a rather paltry one at that by federal budget standards. It is a loan, and if the assets it is collateralized to hold up, we will get paid back. Of course, they probably won't hold up in their entirety. At the very worst, though, we will lose like ten to twenty billion on that one. I don't like it, but I see the rationale behind it. This was at the very start of the problem, and this is what Bernanke was seeing: a company with sufficient liquidity beforehand was about to go under because a crisis of confidence created by liquidity rumors had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. He figured that if he let this runaway train keep going, it would drag down other companies that were otherwise stable, so he intervened. If the move had been enough, taking it would have been a net gain to taxpayers. We could have done without this one, though. I'll admit that.
AIG involved a much bigger loan. It's a credit line of up 85 billion. However, this is collateralized by the entirety of the assets of AIG. This means the government expects to get paid back by the sale of AIG's businesses, and if it doesn't, it can go after AIG and pick it apart until it gets its money back. We could have done without this too, but we have very little risk here. The risk is still on AIG's shoulders. We just gave them some breathing room.
These two are really chump change, though. The trillions come from our assuming direct control of the two failing GSE's. Now here's the difference. We honestly had no choice. Let me put it in simple terms for you. Put together, these are the largest companies which have ever existed, by far, and they control more debt than _any_ entity on the world short of the US government. Yes, more than China or Japan. The collapse of these entities, or the closest thing to a collapse since they can't collapse like a normal company, would have been total global economic meltdown. Let me put it to scale for you. Take the Great Depression and multiply it by ten. That would be what the countries with the weakest economic ties to the US would experience. For the US and the western world, it would be complete economic failure, as in the world would be set back about ten years by this. The economic equivalent of a total nuclear exchange between the US and Russia is a good analogy.
So yeah, you can argue against the creation of the GSE's, and I'll agree. You can argue that the creation of the GSE's placed way, way too many eggs in one basket, and I'll doubly agree. You could even argue that creating the GSE's was opening like a Pandora's Box which never should have been touched, since we now have to deal with behemoth, massive entities that we can't remove without destroying our economy, and I'd still agree.
You cannot argue that the government had any choice but to step in regarding those two, and you certainly cannot say it would only result in a minor correction if we did, that we'd get over it soon enough, that Fed intervention has only made things worse.
Why havent they cloned Ronald Reagan yet.... He'd know what to do.
There is just no denying it. It's an obvious answer.
Yeah, letting the market crash would suck. No doubt about it. But I know something that sucks even worse. Us letting Wall Street taking over the White House. It's no longer in the hands of the American people as a whole. Only the ones that the White House has deemed "important".
Like I said, some things in life are infinitely more important than money. This is going to go down in history as a sad choice by us. Our children's children are going to look at this as a very bad day.
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Kurush, I think he means the market, in correcting itself, which is a good thing, would cause some turmoil, but only temporarily, this "solution" by comparison will simply do us in. They claim they will sell these instruments, I keep wondering, to who? Overseas interests? If your mortgage is a means of ownership over your home or commercial property because its the collateral for the loan, and the government owns that mortgage, that property belongs to it until its paid off. That's communism, if it then sells those assets to overseas interests, do americans even own their own country anymore? Aren't they just serfs then?
Its interesting how you say Mr. Mencarow and Mr.Rockwell, the president of the Mises Institute don't know what they're talking about and then go on to agree with almost everything they said, while misquoting and ignoring the various precedents cited as to previous implimentations of similar government action not working. Even now as we cascade into an economic abyss the likes of which has never been seen, you trust the same politicians that brought you such presidential highlights as 9-11(no kids, 2 planes can't knock down 3 buildings, but who'scounting), Katrina, $4 gas, outsourcing, wiretapping, The $411M/day war in Iraq, The War in Afghanistan, the decimation of the Constitution, Biggest deficits in U.S. history after inheriting the biggest surplus, over a million dead iraqi civilians, open borders, higher taxes, lower test scores, record unemployment, the highest prison population per capita on earth, corporate and political corruption the likes of which we've never seen and now, Communism, to guide us merrily back to our greatest glory? Well if you like that, you'll Loooove the North American Union. Supporting these clowns' attempt to bankrupt us while their corporate fat cat pals walk away with hundreds of millions is IMO the height of madness.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Gnomexxx, your hatred for Bush has you zeroing in on a single individual when there are plenty of villians to go around.
Let me start by saying that, yes, as a conservative I am as disappointed by Bush's actions here as anyone. Never before have I seen such a huge move toward socialism in the U.S. as I am right now. How can Republicans possibly condemn socialized medicine and at the same time go along with this bailout plan? Other conservatives, like Newt Gingrich, are sounding alarm bells all over the place. It may save our economy in the short run, but it may very well kill it in the long term.
But my question to you, Gnomexxx, is why are you focusing on Bush here and letting Congress, which is probably as responsible for this mess as any organization, off the hook? Not only do they have oversight over the financial institutions, which means this mess happened under their watch, but now you've got prominent Democrats, like Chris Dodd and Bill Clinton, saying that $700 Billion is not enough. We have to spend even more money to bail out the individual homeowners who over-extended on their mortgages. The big government liberals are honestly emboldened by this crisis. They see it as a golden opportunity to nationalize the financial industry. And this bailout plan could never work if Congress didn't rubber stamp this plan, which it looks like they are going to.
Liberals and the Democratic Congress are going to get exactly what they have wanted for a long time, the socialization of the free-market financial industry. My big criticism of Bush is that he's not going to block it, but actually is a party to it.
I agree to your opinion gnome
Well, we can all rejoice that the board members and executives of all these struggling financial corporations have already recieved their bonuses and billion dollar salaries(slight exaggeration). Wasn't 2006 and 2007 record years on wall street for bonuses? Their ancestors can live like kings for generations to come.
I don't know if Bush is Socialist since most of what he's done has been mostly for the rich and not for the general public, but he sure spends the government's money like a liberal Democrat!!
Ron Paul 2012!
What part of the Constitution mandates free market capitalism? Apparently in Constitutional Law class they skipped that part...
"The powers not delegated t the United States by the Constitution; nor prohibited by it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
That means that the government has VERY limited powers -- only those outlined in that document. The spirit of the document, and that ammendment, certainly imply free enterprise.
Only by stretching the interstate commerce clause and the "necessary and proper" clauses BEYOND the above mandate have we gotten into the mess we have gotten into.
None of the crap we have accepted are authorized by the Constitution. Of course, most people have been educated by the same government that seeks to take over their lives, so they don't understand our founding concepts: limted government, individual rights, private property, and free markets.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I am zeroing in on Bush because right now the ball is in his court.
Why do you choose to not zero in on him right now? I dislike anyone who takes a pledge to protect and defend the Constitution and then gets in office and does the exact opposite. Democrat or Republican.
You want to start a thread about Democratic policies when the ball is in their court, fine. I could go on for days about how they've trashed this country with their social programs as well. But right now the spotlight is on Bush.
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"The powers not delegated t the United States by the Constitution; nor prohibited by it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
That means that the government has VERY limited powers -- only those outlined in that document. The spirit of the document, and that ammendment, certainly imply free enterprise.
Only by stretching the interstate commerce clause and the "necessary and proper" clauses BEYOND the above mandate have we gotten into the mess we have gotten into.
None of the crap we have accepted are authorized by the Constitution. Of course, most people have been educated by the same government that seeks to take over their lives, so they don't understand our founding concepts: limted government, individual rights, private property, and free markets.
Thank you for clearing that up.
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I am zeroing in on Bush because right now the ball is in his court.
Why do you choose to not zero in on him right now? I dislike anyone who takes a pledge to protect and defend the Constitution and then gets in office and does the exact opposite. Democrat or Republican.
You want to start a thread about Democratic policies when the ball is in their court, fine. I could go on for days about how they've trashed this country with their social programs as well. But right now the spotlight is on Bush.
Every member of Congress takes an oath of office as well. You say the spotlight is on Bush because he is the President, but he is just one person. The United States Congress as a body has far more power than the President in every area except foreign policy. Tax legislation, goverment spending, federal regulation all come from Congress. The President can propose legislation and submits spending bills, but they go no place without the approval of the 535 representatives and Senators.
Since this is a domestic crisis we face and it occured under Congress' watch, I say right now the spotlight is on Congress.