I’m not saying President Obama is wrong but… something really smells. While I am not a “conspiracy person” I have been astounded at the actions of President Obama. It seems clear to me that the present course of spending will drive this economy into the ground in the long-run regardless of any short-term benefit. It simply does not make sense that a very educated and naturally informed President would chart a financial course of action that is violently opposed to our free-market system. So I am asking for your help. I would like you to help me in striving for balance in my outlook. Does the following information serve as a potential explanation for the reasons and rationale for President Obama’s leadership? Please read and then rate this theory either: #1 – probable #2 – plausible or #3 – ridiculous. Thanks.
Ideological Moorings?
The following are excepts from a story that ran on Belief.net regarding President Obama’s ideological upbringing (posted Jan 27, 2009) entitled: Defining Obama – The Cloward-Piven Strategy.
Strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called “crisis strategy” or “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.
In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.
The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven’s early promoters cited radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration.
“Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules,” Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals.
When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system’s failure to “live up” to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist “rule book” with a socialist one.
The authors noted that the number of Americans subsisting on welfare — about 8 million, at the time — probably represented less than half the number who were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a “massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls.”
Cloward and Piven calculated that persuading even a fraction of potential welfare recipients to demand their entitlements would bankrupt the system. The result, they predicted, would be “a profound financial and political crisis” that would unleash “powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level.”
Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in Cloward and Piven’s article. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States — often violently — bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law “entitled” them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a dues-paying membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation. From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite mostly flush economic times. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city’s private economy. As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975. The entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.
In 1982, partisans of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new “voting rights movement,” which purported to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like ACORN, the organization that spear-headed this campaign, the new “voting rights” movement was led by veterans of George Wiley’s welfare rights crusade. Its flagship organizations were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with a former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.
All three of these organizations — ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE — set to work lobbying energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which Bill Clinton ultimately signed in 1993. The Motor-Voter bill is largely responsible for swamping the voter rolls with “dead wood” — invalid registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people — thus opening the door to the unprecedented levels of voter fraud and “voter disenfranchisement” claims that followed in subsequent elections.
More Information
Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis
Worldview Weekend Interview with Jim Simpson of Truth and Consequences
You decide: #1 probable #2 plausible or #3 ridiculous
I’d be cautious here. There are numerous unsubstantiated claims here that you’ll have to establish before it sticks.
In any case, your original question is whether this explains the present administration’s seeming antipathy for the free-market system.
Ockham’s Razor says we ought not multiply causes beyond what is necessary to explain what we observe… or more simply, “all things considered, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one.” I think we can adequately explain what we see in the Obama administration in terms of the traditional liberal agenda. There’s no need to turn to conspiracy theories to explain it.
I’m not saying you’re wrong… but the burden lies with you to establish 1) that no other explanation adequately explains what you observe, and 2) that the Cloward-Piven strategy is the most probable of the available explanations.
It’s a bit like saying a conspiracy among the Romans, Herodians, and Pharisees is the best explanation for the empty tomb on Easter morning. It’s neither necessary to explain the empty tomb nor more probable than the Resurrection.
Just from reading your post, this is definitely plausible. No one in government acts without an agenda. I don’t think you are in league with Oliver Stone for thinking this way. 🙂
I vote plausible. No matter how moderate our President may try to appear while standing at a podium (and reading his teleprompter), his history definitely points to a socialist leaning agenda. His brief voting record also is consistent with this bent.
I am not concerned with a man who tells me it is his intent to start a revolution. I am concerned with a man whose intent it is to start a revolution but doesn’t tell me.
In the past I would have said we will be ok. The American public will vote in (by way of the mid-term elections) a more conservative congress as a check to a liberal President. This is what happened in 94.
But we are a different country now 15 years later. We seem much more dependent and much less educated. We are ripe for a cult of personality to drive us down a scary path.
Why did Hugh have to be the one to post right after my comments. Man, I really feel dumb.
God is sovereign, right? I’m not naive enough to even dream that Obama’s vision has any remote identity to God’s plan. I’m tempted to ask…What is Obama’s long term strategy? What is the end game if he executes the Cloward-Piven strategy? Is he really trying to eliminate our current form of government? Perhaps that is a bit of a stretch. Should my question really be…what is God revealing about Himself through this current economic and political climate?
I would say Plausible. I agree with Hugh that we should proceed with caution, but Obama goes beyond the usual liberal agenda as can be seen by his connection with radicals such as Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayres, and ACORN. There are too many hard connections to these people/groups who are not your main stream liberals. Not to mention the Chicago connections.
The spending bills that have passed lately specify that no public money can be spent on any building (especially at colleges) where religious groups meet. So if you have a formal bible study group in your dorm room, then your dorm is denied funds. This also limits the funds that can go to private Christian schools. (Christianity Today)
You can also read on some of these blog posts how Obama is going well beyond the typical liberal agenda:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/obamas_tactic_shock_and_awe.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/of_course_hes_a_socialist.html
http://www.davidlimbaugh.com/index.html
I would vote that it is a plausible theory for the present administration’s seemingly antipathy for the free-market system. But more importantly it is happening, so the question becomes what next?
Capitalism and the free market system has been quite successful from a world’s viewpoint. The bottom line is that it has lifted incomes of most all people for over a half a century. Even though some people might say that is not all good, it has provided food, health, shelter and comfort for millions. Not always a good thing if you want people to rely on God, but, that is for another day.
For a while, this success of capitalism has provided a “world’s view” of security. While people thought they had “strong” security in good days, the economy will have “ups and downs”, and now that we have a “down” time, it looks as if the people’s security has drastically changed (it has from the strong security viewpoint) on a relative short term scale.
Liberal thinking seems to move in the direction of government can provide this security, so people are flocking to the “O”, and, the current administration is taking full opportunity of this. However, this will not provide security, but may create more fear and could have consequences that hamper any growth.
My what next question is really – what does the free market or business need to do (I know this was not your question, but a great thing about a blog is you can go in different directions). I believe the free market and business needs to recognize the gap that it has driven by the key business strategy of “what provides the stockholders the greatest return”. This strategy has had the unfavorable consequence of driving a gap between business objectives and social needs.
Instead business need to work in conjunction with social policies. The market or business will need to change and build a new culture of social engagement. Business must become connect to their communities, and, with their local governments (yes business and government working together) to enact “real change” that benefits people. This includes financial investments. If business turns from “value for the stockholders” to “value for the community”, the market will grow driving value for the businesses and “personal gain” politicians lose their power.
Unfortunately, the church sometimes falls in this trap. Let’s be sure we stay connected to God first and our community with Him.
Is President Obama really motivated by a plot to cause economic chaos and is his plan opposed to our free market system?
A recent Wall Street Journal poll of economists gave the Obama team an “F” for the handling of the financial crisis (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123671107124286261.html). The WSJ article says that that the economists are divided on whether the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed last month was enough. In fact, many of them want another near $500 billion dollar spending stimulus. It makes me think that our great great great grandchildren will be paying for this, but then I ain’t that smart. The article goes on to say that the “economists’ main criticism of the Obama team centered on delays in enacting key parts of plans to rescue banks.” So according to this group of economists it’s not the plan so much as it’s taking too long and not focused enough.
Now, is the current economic crisis providing a good opportunity to enact social and economic changes espoused by the democratic platform? Sure is in my view. But why are we surprised? This is what the Democrats and the President promised. It’s the perfect smoke screen. Their spending stimulus is focused on their social and economic priorities.
So back to the President’s motives. He has clearly stated that he believes in redistributing wealth. But so do a lot of people, especially those who are poor. I think it’s a big leap to link his actions in office to a plot to deliberately cause a financial collapse and an economic crisis in order to redistribute wealth. Besides, the collapse has already happened. Does he really need to continue to undermine our financial system? This week he went before the cameras and piously denounced earmarks and in the same breath proudly announced the signing of a spending bill filled with earmarks. You see, he’s got a whole lot of help in Congress. I’m still shaking my head.
On the other hand, his values pertaining to sanctity of life (abortion, human embryo stem cell research) and other social issues are jaw dropping. Alan Keyes characterizes his position on abortion survivor as an “incomprehensible violation of conscience”. Yet his approval ratings are still high, though they’re beginning to drop.
I too am suspicious of the people he liked to hang out with. But his agenda so far is what the Democratic platform promised. It’s in writing and you can read it on the Democratic party website (http://www.democrats.org/a/party/platform.html). President Obama didn’t hatch these ideas, but he intends to carry them out with the help of Congress.
So we need to ask ourselves: what can we/should we do?
I’m gonna say “ridiculous.” I usually assume men, even those with whom I disagree, have honor and will uphold their word and their oaths. When President Obama swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he thereby swore to uphold the purpose of the Constitution, which is “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Any plan such as that of Cloward and Piven would be a temerarious act of risking these sworn conditions, and I cannot presume to assign such a plan to the mind of our President. This sounds more like the strategy of Ozymandias than any rational world leader. (Then again, maybe Obama enjoyed the movie a bit too much….)
I think the question may be looking at the situation too simply. We are not a purely capitalistic society, but a mixed economy. The Republican party argues for a swing more toward the “capitalism” end and the Democratic party argues for a swing more toward the “socialist” direction. The Democratic party, now that they are in almost unchecked power obviously will swing the economics toward the socialist direction (note all the claims that we are feeling the effects of “unfettered capitalism”). What is the ‘proportion’ supposed to be according to the Constitution? I don’t know – I’m certainly no expert there.
So, I guess one basic question to ask when you consider your proposition is “Does the President think the US should change to socialism as the basis of its economy?” The question you ask about the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” has an underlying opinion that he does. I doubt it. He certainly wants it to be (and is changing it to be) MORE socialistic. But I think that he likely believes in a mixed economy for the US, not pure socialism. The mix he believes in, obviously involves much more socialism.
Our country was designed for checks and balances. Right now, the checks are almost totally missing and we are swinging quickly one direction.
After writing all of this, I recognize that I personally spent more time writing and rewriting this response than I did on many other things that deserved my attention this week. May God help us to keep our eyes focused on His Kingdom, and not be distracted by or confuse it with any other here on Earth.
If President Obama intended to honor his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, he would have vetoed the “stimulus” package that was recently sent to him. Virtually nothing in that bill was within the Constitutionally specified authority of the federal government. We’ve not had a president in many a year that has truly sought to “protect and defend the Constitution”. What they choose to protect and defend is their power base and that of their party.
I don’t think its any surprise that a liberal such as Obama is pursuing socialism, that’s kind of a given. If there’s any conspiracy, its to make the people of this country as dependent upon government as possible since that’s the goal of all socialists.
The sad truth is that Obama’s economic policies are not that different from President Bush’s. Its odd to me that we question Obama’s motives when he’s at least up front about his liberal leanings but we didn’t seem to question the motives of George Bush when he claimed to be a free market proponent yet pursued these same policies.
Yes – the theory is plausible. Obama is power hungry. Socialism gives him more power. Socialism eventually leads to Communism then to Fascism. Dictatorial control is the ultimate power trip.
Obama is the quintessential politician. After leaving Harvard, he could have done a variety of things from a career development perspective. Why politics? Power.
The platform of “change” is a rallying cry to the masses. Get optimal support of the populace, all of the sudden the power base of the USA gets flipped upside down. Redistribution of wealth embodies welcome change to the masses, and once that vision flickers in the minds of the populace it quickly becomes a burning and violent fire.
The idea that Bill mentions above, relating to business/market seeking to provide value to the community versus value to shareholders is correct. Unfortunately, greed typically trumps altruism among those folks that can exact such sweeping change. So, C-level execs (most in the waning years of their careers) typically act with a “scorched earth” mentality, maximizing shareholder return such as to maximize their own income – leaving the carnage/mess behind them for others to concern themselves with after the fact. So, business/market forces will likely remain complacent, until the transition to Socialism is complete.
Think about it. Free-market economies thrive on innovation and access to capital (hence the name Capitalism). Building off of Hugh’s point above (i.e. start at the simplest denominator/explanation, etc.), the most fundamental root to a thriving free-market economy is that the market establishes equillibrium without external intervention; thereby, ensuring that true equillibrium is attained, based on the flow of capital within the construct of the economic fabric. So, if you are truly bent on transforming an economic system that is capitalistic – move swiftly and precisely towards disrupting the existing system’s lifeblood (e.g. access to capital). Once that disruption exists, the entity (e.g. Obama and the Democratic Party) that establishes the subsequent false equillibrium holds the keys to the kingdom.
Ask yourselves what is happening right before our eyes? Our financial system (e.g. the structure by which capital flows) is being interfered with, in order to create the false equilibrium. Government already has acquired a controlling interest of the financial system; therefore, we have already crossed into Socialism.
Did anyone catch the Executive Order that Obama made law, regarding the allocation of many, many billions of dollars from ARRA to build infrastructure (e.g. roads…”shovel-ready” projects)? Probably not, because the liberal media just glazes right over things like that. In short, only companies employing unionized workers can get those contracts awarded to them. That is Socialism at work. Government telling business/market how to organize, cutting the legs directly out from under another fundamental capitalistic principle – free enterprise, organize as you will to gain competitive advantage, capital will flow to the prevailing business models that result in competitive advantage, etc.
In the end, the party in power stays in power, and the leader of that party grows in power to a point that it entirely changes the political and economic landscape to further its own agenda (Kev’s initial point earlier…politicians all have an agenda). Sad but true. Unfortunately, some of those politicians are very bright and think in a comprehensive manner, even when the agenda is entirely off-base and truly destructive to the national interest that they were elected to serve.
I could go on far too long on this topic – so let me leave you with another person’s perspective on the state of affairs before us. Before turning to that, I do need to emphasize what we all know, God is sovereign and in control. Whatever God allows to happen in our nation will be the best possible way for him to glorify himself; however, it might mean that we are going to have a lot more sufferings to rejoice in along the way.
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“Something of Historic Proportion is Happening” by Pam Geller
I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied [History] all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist, but, they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, and there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 – 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know can never pay back. Why? We learned just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom, or why, or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.
Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “We the People,” who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California) over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then allow mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children, if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla, Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary (Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)
Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning.
I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises.
Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission. And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression].
Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe and across the world.
He did it with a compliant media – Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and…. change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.
Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years – a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency – it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.
Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe – and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.
Pamela “Atlas” Geller
Anyone who voted for or signed the ‘stimulus’ bill should be tried for treason.
Thanks for the input and keen insights. Let me now add another wrinkle as to a motivation for the President’s fiscal plan of action. Notice what Dick Morris says in the following interview regarding the “conspiratorial” nature of the President’s underlying plan to nationalize banks. Is this #1 plausible #2 possible, or #3 just ridiculous?
I’d say its possible. Communists and Socialists have long known they won’t get in through the front door in the United States (although I think that’s not as true as it used to be) so I wouldn’t put it past them to create a crisis to which nationalization of the banks is seen as the solution. Contrived crises have brought many a totalitarian to power in history and when something works well it gets used over and over.