The Sunshine Empire

I was reading a news story about ancient irrelevant former variety show host Andy Williams today and he apparently said into a microphone that he thought that President Obama wanted the country to fail. If you ask “who the hell is Andy Williams” your grandparents will probably be able to tell you. Williams stated that “Obama is following Marxist theory. He’s taken over the banks and the car industry. He wants the country to fail.” Now this dovetails nicely with what my orange governor said on CNN this morning throwing around the “he took over the auto industry” meme as well with this whole Socialism chestnut.

As much as it is now a cool tag line for those in the conservative movement frustrated with losing an election to him, do most that call Obama a socialist actually know what a socialist is? The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines a socialist as a follower of socialism of course, but they define socialism as:

1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

Now let’s look honestly at this definition as compared with the actions of President Obama. Now those against the President often say, as the orange fancy governor of my state did, that he “took over the auto industry.” Did he really? The federal government under the Obama administration did institute a bailout plan for two of the big three auto makers in this country. In the case of General Motors the federal government received a stake in the company but nowhere near outright ownership of the entire company. So in the eyes of conservatives, who certainly did not call George W. Bush a socialist for his auto bailout from his Treasury department, governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods amounts to a 60% stake in one single company of many. But that is not the only “bailout” that conservatives will mention.

The TARP banking industry bailout is another common complaint from conservatives and earl grey ingrates. In the minds of conservatives the TARP bailout was signed into law by President Obama and this allowed him to nationalize our banking system. Reality tells a different story. The TARP program was signed into law by President George W. Bush and was pushed by his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. This program only provided re-capitalization of banks with the federal government getting small stakes in only certain banks. God forbid the taxpayer get something in return for having to pay for the orgy of de-regulation that allowed banks to over-leverage and indulge in destructive credit default swaps. But quite the contrary to their false point that Obama “took over the banks” the Administration resisted the calls earlier in the year to actually nationalize the banking industry. If that was actually his plan wouldn’t he have done it then? Funny how your paranoia doesn’t jive with actual facts.

But facts have been antithetical to the health care reform debate that has been characterized by screaming and guns and other such nonsense. I am so sick of knocking down the obvious outright lies when it comes to the current debate that at this point it’s willful ignorance on the other side’s part. But the common line from this is that Obama wants a government takeover of our health care. More to the point of the socialism meme though stories often tell of the horrors of Canadian and British style health care systems. While a handful of politicians have said that they think those are both good ideas, the Obama administration has put forward exactly zero legislative proposals that would resemble in any way those two systems. When faced with such facts we automatically go to the mythical slippery slope and what Obama’s secret plan must be, not his actual proposals.

When we look at the President’s actual proposals you have to stretch to the breaking point to find any correlation between the definition of socialism and what the President has actually been doing and proposing. The argument when presented with facts becomes about what he’s probably laying the groundwork for and not what he has actually done. What this comes down to is it’s fun to say socialist because it sounds evil. There are still many in this country that remember the days when the Soviet Union and the specter that it cast on freedom loving Americans. The truth of the matter is the socialist name calling is more about casting the President as “not one of us” and less about the actual definition of socialism. Hell, even a proposal to increase the marginal tax rate to the level that Ronald Reagan had it at was cast as socialist capital redistribution. So much like settled matters like his birthplace and his religion, this is about nothing more than getting you to believe that the man 10 million more Americans voted for is not one of you.