PrintObama and His Socialist Agenda
We all knew that Barak Obama was liberal. But just how devoted he is to the nanny state has been a pretty well kept secret by both the Senator and his campaign. In fact, if you read most mainstream media accounts of where the Senator stands on a host of issues, you might think he was a candidate of the center or slightly left of Hillary Clinton. There has been much more discussion of Obama's "themes" of empowerment and unity than there has been of specific policy proposals.
But Obama let his true colors show yesterday in a speech in Washington, D.C. about urban poverty. His "solutions" will sound familiar to those who listened to Lyndon Johnson's poverty gurus and their fellow travelers under Jimmy Carter's presidency. Promising massive government assistance with the help of private businesses (help that never seems to be asked for when the programs hit the streets), Obama goes Johnson one better by promising to empower unions to organize (read "intimidate") just about everyone:
When I'm President, I will raise the minimum wage and make it a living wage by making sure that it rises every time the cost of living does. I'll start letting our unions do what they do best again – organize our workers and lift up our middle-class. And I'll finally make sure every American has affordable health care that stays with you no matter what happens by passing my plan to provide universal coverage and cut the cost of health care by up to $2500 per family.And this 1960's-style rhetoric about poverty should be a dead giveaway for those knowledgeable about how the left speaks in code words to mask their true intent:
The philosophy behind the project is simple – if poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence; failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works.If Obama and his socialist friends were to focus on what "actually works," they would make school choice the law of the land, crack down on drugs and gangs, lower taxes in urban areas to encourage the growth of the private sector, and a host of other free market solutions that have been advocated for decades. Instead, we get the same old tired bromides about government intervention.
The inner city is not the liberal's pet laboratory where they can experiment with people's lives as if they were lab rats. What the inner city needs, Obama and his socialist theories of government activism cannot provide. And that is the simple human dignity that goes with being self sufficient and supporting your loved ones. Getting those jobs to where they can do the most good will require rethinking urban policy so that lower taxes as well as tax incentives will begin the process of wealth creation that Americans are so good at. But asking these big city Democratic mayors to lower taxes and seek more free market solutions to their problems flies in the face of their own interests in feeding the numerous interest groups, special pleaders, and cronies who have gotten used to the contracts, the handouts, and the barely disguised bribes that pass for local government action these days.
It was federal government policies and programs that caused most of the problems of the inner city today. The fact that Obama wants to try more of the same only shows that absolute dearth of ideas emanating from the left regarding urban policy. They just can't help themselves. And Obama can no longer disguise his far left policies by advocating them using soothing, non-threatening rhetoric.
(Hat Tip: Ed Lasky)
