Third World America

Remember President Lyndon B. Johnson's "war on poverty"? In a 1964 speech before a joint-session of Congress, Johnson declared "unconditional war on poverty in America," urging "Congress and all Americans" to join him "in that effort."

Johnson insisted his escalated war - on poverty, not in Vietnam - would turn "one thousand dollars invested in salvaging an unemployable youth" into "$40,000 or more in his lifetime." He further stated that for the program to work required massive social programs "organized at the State and the local level ... supported and directed by State and local efforts."

"For my part," said Johnson, "I pledge a Progressive administration which is efficient, and honest and frugal. The budget to be submitted to the Congress shortly is in full accord with this pledge." He further pledged to "cut our federal deficit in half."

At the time, poverty in America stood at 19%. Since the enactment of Johnson's Great Society programs (and others), poverty has hovered between 11 and 15.2% - mitigating the misery by no more than 8% after trillions of dollars in government spending.

Then came the government-sponsored housing bubble and crash, followed by President Obama's "transformative" economic "change."

Now, the Associated Press reports the nation's poverty rate will climb to a staggering 17.7%. "Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups," said the AP, "from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty ..."

"Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens help to carry them." No, that is not the usual Progressive pabulum uttered by Obama at campaign rallies, that's a portion of Johnson's '64 speech.

Johnson's war on poverty, coupled with Obama's stimulus and health-care spending, is proving to be as wildly successful as was America's 1960s military escalation in Southeast Asia ... a no-win war.

It is worth remembering that Johnson's war buildup in Vietnam fractured his party, with an anti-war faction disrupting the 1968 Democratic National Convention, where violence erupted in the streets of Obama's Chicago. It marked the beginning of that party's leftward tilt, culminating in the Obama presidency.

The Tea Party is a peaceful expression of the nation's discontent with Johnson's big-government war on poverty and its recent massive and pointless escalation under Obama.

In 2011, the Gallup organization reported that 40% of American voters identify themselves as independents. Gallup noted that 31% were Democrats to the Republican's 27%.

This clearly indicates a growing number of Americans are disenchanted with the bipartisan Progressive no-win-war on poverty and its debilitating effects on future economic growth.

Like Greece, America is reaching (may have already reached) a tipping point beyond which growth is impossible due to the heavy burden placed upon the economy by a government more interested in wealth redistribution than allowing a once free people to thrive and prosper.

An anti-war-on-poverty movement is growing. They understand that too much government threatens political and economic freedom.

As Obama demands, like Johnson did in Vietnam, that Americans redouble their efforts fighting and endless war with no clear objective or end in sight, he shouldn't be surprised to hear a deafening chant this November - "Hell no, we won't go!"

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History teaches us that society's remedy for failed socialism is invariably more socialism.

We had a financial crisis in 2008 as a result of egalitarian drive to give ownership of private homes those who could not afford them. We then dispatched our Attorney General, Janet Reno, to warn banks if they did not make unsound loans we would prosecute them. Having set in motion billions of dollars worth of unsound loans, we then intimated to the world that we would guarantee these loans. We then selected as the agent of these guarantees a slush fund of the Democrat party, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which cooked the books and thereby enriched Democrat cronies while leaving the public deceived.

So far, all of these actions are typical of socialism.

When nonpartisan investigative agencies and Republicans operating in the minority exposed the risk of these nonperforming loans, they were accused of racism.

Nathan Bedford's first Maxim of American politics: all politics in America is not local but ultimately racial. And racial politics in America implies socialistic, egalitarian goals imposed by the state.

When "speculators" operating in a free economy saw mortgages that apparently had the moral hazard risk removed by virtue of the implicit guarantee of the United States government, they naturally bought these high-risk, high paying instruments at fire sale prices because they were really low risk, high paying instruments because of the implicit guarantee.

When legislators removed the firewall separating depositors money held in trust by the bank subject only to controllable risks normally associated with banking and permitted banks to engage in freewheeling speculating, it exposed those deposits to new and unknown risk. But banks, operating in a free economy, saw that the risk was greatly diminished by virtue of another guarantee of the federal government for depositors' funds.

More socialism.

When the nonperforming loans inevitably defaulted and the financial instruments leveraged upon them also inevitably defaulted, our reaction was to impose more socialism for these failures. So we distributed money to avoid a crash under a program called "tarp;" we authorized a Democrat president to spread about 1 trillion dollars around as he saw fit and many of elitist media professed surprise when that money went to Democrats cronies, bundlers, and interest groups; We sat supine (to mix a metaphor) while the chairman of the Federal Reserve flung trillions of dollars from his helicopter into cyberspace (to mix a second metaphor in the same sentence); We regulated banks, auto manufacturers, and virtually every other business socialists could conceive of without consideration or approval by the people's representatives in Congress; we did this by Fiat of regulators some of whom were approved by the people's representatives and some of whom, called "czars," were not; we "authorized" these regulations by mega legislation written in their thousands of pages but which ultimately simply said, "Mr. President appoint someone to make up rules as he goes along to fix all this."

Socialism triumphant.

I plead your indulgence and beg a grant of latitude because I am, after all, responding to the notorious (in my view) maxim of Speaker Tip O'Neill whose assertion was that "all" politics is local." I felt that such a limitless claim warrants an equally broad counter assertion. Speaker O'Neill did not scruple to characterize his Maxim as the first among a series of maxims, rather he theorizes for the universe and for all time.

But I take your point, race politics in America is in a neck and neck race with economic issues for first place as the dominant issue. I plead guilty to taking liberties with literary license to make a point but plead exculpation for good motive.

"Nathan Bedford's first Maxim of American politics: all politics in America is not local but ultimately racial. And racial politics in America implies socialistic, egalitarian goals imposed by the state."

Democrats don't WANT the black man to get comfortable. He might vote Republican then.

He might go back to voting Republican, if he ever got a taste of life outside the Democrat plantation.

I'm sure you gentlemen are well aware of this, but there was a time in which the vast majority of blacks voted with the 'party of Lincoln'. All four of my grandparents were Republicans until their dying day. Their children and grandchildren were seduced onto the Democrat plantation by the Socialist promises and practices of that party.

They were captured and yoked by a soft Marxism, and subsequently dumbed down and indoctrinated with an ideology which permanently separated them into a malleable, idiot, servant class.

A more diabolical mind trap has hardly ever been conceived or executed. The Democrats successfully herded an entire demographic of American people back into slavery. As LBJ remarked when pushing through his Great Society programs, "I'll have them niggers voting Democrat forever."

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