Perry says Obama taking U.S. toward socialism
By Jason Embry | Thursday, November 12, 2009, 07:40 AM
Governor uses s-word in front of Midland crowd …
Gov. Rick Perry had some pretty strong comments about the Obama administration on Wednesday in Midland, saying, “This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”
By Eleanor Clift | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 9, 2009
News early Friday that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to President Obama shook the journalistic establishment. Perhaps it was a spoof, just like the Saturday Night Liveparody last weekend that made fun of Obama for his meager record compared with his grandiose campaign promises. The right will make it seem like a kids’ trophy for soccer participation, rather than accomplishment. That’s overly harsh, but correct in the sense that the award is more aspirational in recognizing what this gifted young president can do than about concrete achievements.
Obama needs to be humble in his tone and content, accepting this honor for all Americans. Coming as it does so soon after his failure to win the Olympics for Chicago gives it the whiff of a consolation prize. It also points up the gulf between how Obama’s conservative critics shape the debate in this country, and how much of the world looks at Obama. The change from Bush unilateralism to an America newly engaged with its allies and reaching out to its enemies is a huge shift and filled with possibility on everything from war and peace issues to climate change.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee was driven by a belief in Obama’s potential, along with a rejection of Bush-era policies. Coming just eight and a half months into Obama’s first term, the prize is far from an unalloyed blessing. It creates expectations that a single human being, even the leader of the Western world, is unlikely to fulfill. And rather than dispel the unfortunate narrative advanced by SNL, it is likely to feed into it.
Click the following link to read the rest of When Humor Attacks at Newsweek.com.
Embedding of the video has been disabled by Reuters, so click here to watch it on YouTube.
The People’s Cube – Obama shirts more popular than Che in China.
Moonbattery translates the Chinese characters as: “Serve the People!” — a Maoist slogan, and are written in Mao’s calligraphy.
The Global Phenomenon continues:
Obama’s Science Adviser Called for ‘Zero Economic Growth’
Friday, July 31, 2009
By Christopher Neefus
1977 textbook "Ecoscience" by John Holdren and Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich
(CNSNews.com) – At a time when it was popular among environmentalists to talk about capping pollutants, John Holdren was writing about placing “caps” on the U.S. economy itself–and working toward “zero economic growth.”
Holdren, who is now President Obama’s top adviser on science and technology policy, wrote in the 1970s that it would be “entirely logical” to cap the Gross National Product–the total productivity of the American economy.
“It is by now abundantly clear that the GNP cannot grow forever. Why should it?” Holdren asked in a 1977 college science textbook he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, titled “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.”
“Why should we not strive for zero economic growth (ZEG) as well as zero population growth?”
The pertinent chapter, “Changing American Institutions,” discusses what the authors perceived as problems in America’s social mores, government, and economic system, which they say makes it “the leader in humanity’s reckless exploitation of Earth.”
The United States, they argued, should focus on limiting the amount of physical product produced and in circulation.
Again, it would be “entirely logical,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote, “to set limits on the amount of product a nation needs and then strive to reduce the amount of work required to produce such a product (and, we might add, to see that the product is much more equitably distributed that it is today).”
Elsewhere in the chapter, Holdren and the Ehrlichs instead highlight economies less focused on economic growth, what they call “growthmania,” where product could be better distributed.
“That economists have clung to their ‘growthmania’ is not surprising,” they wrote. “After all, natural scientists often cling to outmoded ideas that have produced far less palpable benefits than the growing mixed economies of the Western world in the twentieth century.”
“The question of whether a different economic system might have produced a more equitable distribution of benefits is not one that Western economists like to dwell on.”
Consistent with many of the other arguments laid out in “Ecoscience,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs believe making the change to a zero growth global economy also requires curtailing Earth’s population. “How do we get from here to there? Population control, of course, is absolutely essential, with an eventual target of a smaller population than today’s.”
The authors admit that making such a change to the U.S. economy would be difficult because of ingrained cultural opposition, with two chief road blocks to zero growth and broad redistribution of resources.
The first problem, they say, is that it would be “a threat to some of the most dearly held beliefs of this society” and would “attack the Protestant work ethic.”
That work ethic, they write, insists that one must be kept busy on the job for forty hours a week” and work overtime or moonlight, “so that the money can be earned to buy all those wonderful automobiles, detergents, appliances, and assorted gimcracks that must be bought if the economy is to continue to grow.”
Holdren and the Ehrlichs, however, call that tradition “outmoded,” and say American attitudes must change to reflect their environmental situation.
The larger problem, the radical enviromentalists wrote, is that forcing the economy to be less productive would face opposition from those with money and political influence.
“The critical question, of course, is how to get around the extraordinary power interests that would be unalterably opposed to maximum income limits and (if possible) even more opposed to direct taxation of wealth,” they say on page 850.
“Greed and the desire for power are extraordinarily strong forces against any serious attempts to curb income and wealth,” and, “(t)he real sticky wicket would be direct taxation of wealth, since that would threaten the entrenched power of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Fords, Kennedys, and countless other beneficiaries of enterprising and acquisitive ancestors.”
“But once some system of further redistribution were established in the United States, it would then be justifiable to implement a transition to a (less productive) economy as quickly as possible.”
Before joining the Obama administration, Holdren was a professor at Harvard and the director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Mass. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and an M.S. from MIT, where he also received his undergraduate degree.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not comment on questions from CNSNews.com about Holdren’s stance on zero economic growth or whether it has changed since the 1970s.
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