Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, recently created a media flap when she said:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you!

But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Conservatives and libertarians took offense at Warren’s claim that the government has a superior claim to “a hunk” of people’s earnings merely because every individual lives in and benefits from a society to whose creation many other people have contributed.

The critics might well have been grateful for small blessings, however. Warren was prepared, rhetorically at least, to let people keep “a big hunk” of their earnings.

(more…)

One cannot turn on the television or radio without some talking head or so-called political analyst pontificating about how Newt Gingrich is grandiose, how Mitt Romney isn’t really a Conservative – and how they both have flipped on several issues – or how Ron Paul’s foreign policy is isolationist. Glenn Beck, to many people’s extreme disappointment, even went so far as to call Speaker Gingrich a Progressive (I guess ratings are down at GBTV). It makes for good news show content, to be sure. In certain respects there is truth to the critiques. But this hyper-critiquing and self-immolation also does two things that Conservatives and Republicans fall prey to each and every time the General Election cycle comes calling: It deflects from addressing the differences between the GOP field and the opposition; and it provides the opposition with talking points, opponent research and the luxury of hiatus.

Make no mistake, the primaries are where each party – when not in incumbency – needs to critique and evaluate their prospective candidates. A hard-fought primary, when devoid of “it’s my turn” establishment national party politics, usually results in the fielding of the best candidate, and a candidate who is sufficiently prepped to engage in the “main event.” But there is a difference between an intellectual meeting of the minds, where policy differences and a juxtaposition of experiences are proposed, examined and debated, and the childish, nonsensical “braggateering” (to coin a word); of trading insignificant insults; of executing a campaign of personality-based mudslinging.

As we approach the actual start of the primary cycle – yes, we haven’t begun the cycle just yet – this act of political stupidity is coming into play, yet again, among the front runners for the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination.

(more…)

Answering a question from Bill O’Reilly, Texas Governor Rick Perry created a buzz by responding that President Obama is a socialist, though the GOP candidate was quick to add that the president loves his country and simply doesn’t understand how America’s market-based economy works. If the president understood the private sector, Governor Perry explained, he wouldn’t pursue tax and regulatory policies that crush job-creators and prevent wealth creation.

There are two types of socialism. One is authoritarian socialism seen in the Eastern Bloc countries (many of which are now free-market economies) and some nations in Central and South America. It’s used by harsh and oppressive authoritarian regimes that repress their people.

The other type of socialism is a big-government philosophy that uses wealth redistribution to fund a massive nanny state of cradle-to-grave entitlements. We see this type of socialism in many Western European and Mediterranean countries that are friends and allies of our country, such as Spain, Italy, France, and Greece.

Governor Perry was referring to this Western European socialism. Those who support Western European-style socialist policies don’t understand the power of private markets, or government’s inefficiency and incompetence. President Obama believes that government has all the answers if led by enlightened leaders (as he fancies himself), and believes he will improve everyone’s lot. Perry referenced Obama’s infamous exchange with Joe the Plumber, where Obama infamously said when government spreads the wealth it’s better for everyone. (more…)

This week, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) targets Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren and her self-professed ties to the #Occupy movement in a new television ad running in the Boston, Springfield-Holyoke, and Providence, RI markets for a total buy of $596,000.

The ad, “Foundation,” can be viewed here:

Throughout the painful and paradoxical existence of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) we have been told by those in the mainstream media, as well as by sympathetic politicos, that at its root, at its genesis, the OWS Movement was both organic and legitimate. We were told that the movement was exclusively about a rebellion against high unemployment and crony Capitalism, even as those championing the cause disingenuously blurred the line between crony Capitalism and Capitalism. But, an honest examination of the underlying goal(s) of this movement – and who is serving to advance its agenda – exposes a nefarious, deceitful and dangerous reality.

The notion of “triangulation” is not new to American politics. Savvy politicians have triangulated messages and circumstances to their benefit ever since the creation of our country. One needs look no further than the debates that took place over the creation of the US Constitution to understand that even though our Framers and Founders were dedicated to their principles and positions, they were willing to employ rhetorical leverage to achieve their goals. Alexander Hamilton was a master at message triangulation.

Perhaps the most contemporary politician to masterfully employ the art of message triangulation was former Pres. Bill Clinton. In pursuit of re-election in 1996, Clinton senior advisor Dick Morris advocated for a set of statements, a set of policies, that differed from those of his fellow elected Democrats. These policies, which pandered to the ideological Middle and Right, included deregulation and balanced budgets, culminating in the false declaration, included in Mr. Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union Address, that the “era of big government is over.”

Triangulation, by way of definition, can be summarized as:

“…the name given to the act of a political candidate presenting his or her ideology as being ‘above’ and ‘between’ the Left and Right sides (or factions) of a traditional democratic political spectrum. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one’s political opponent (or apparent opponent). The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent’s ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue.”

The same triangulation tactics used by politicos to further their careers can also be used by organizations and movements. In the case of the OWS movement, the use of a triangulated message by Progressives serves to blur the line between crony Capitalism and Capitalism, luring the citizenry to focus on the word “Capitalism,” associating it with the idea of “unfairness,” while Progressives present the notion of redistribution of wealth – a Progressive, neo-Marxist tenet – as being “fair.”

(more…)

Over the past few weeks, we have brought your attention to how the unions behind the front group “We Are Ohio” are intertwined with the radical socialist/communist movement in America. First, we laid out for you who funds the vast majority of “We Are Ohio’s” campaign and how they have expressed not only support but provided coordination and accommodations for the “Occupy” movement, which is organized almost entirely by socialists who want to overthrow the American economy.

Then, we showed you that their “Statewide Youth Outreach Coordinator” is deeply involved in the “Occupy” protests around Ohio and openly decribes himself as a “revolutionary” whose goal is to implement communism in America. Now, “We Are Ohio” is hosting an official event with another radical self-admitted communist, Van Jones.

The American Dream Movement is flexing its muscle in Ohio. I’m coming to Columbus to be a part of it. This Thursday, November 3, we’re gonna Rock the Repeal of Senate Bill 5 and restore the voice of hard-working, middle-class Ohioans in their workplaces by voting “No” on Issue 2.

Yes, the “We Are Ohio” unions are bringing in the same guy who said this:

But in jail, he said, “I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’” Although he already had a plane ticket, he decided to stay in San Francisco. “I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.” In the months that followed, he let go of any lingering thoughts that he might fit in with the status quo. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.”

(more…)

From Entrepreneur:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has very different objectives from most small-business owners. Doug Schoen, a political pollster and Fox News analyst, recently surveyed 200 protesters and concluded that the majority of the movement’s members want higher taxes to redistribute wealth and heavier regulation on the private sector. But most small-business owners have been calling for less regulation and lower taxes to get the economy going again.

Moreover, most small-business owners believe in the capitalist system, while Occupy Wall Street expresses some anti-capitalist views. Take a look at some statements made in the movement’s first official release. “Corporations … have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions…. have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ health care and pay…. [and] have spent millions of dollars … to get … out of contracts in regards to health insurance.”

(more…)

Via PJ Tatler – #OccupyLA, October 1, 2011:

So the hippies are still hunkered down by Wall Street. Like their hero Bill Ayers (aka, President Obama’s terrorist buddy), they are admitted anti-capitalists who want more government-sponsored wealth redistribution, education recognized as a human right, and cradle-to-grave healthcare at no cost to the one receiving the healthcare.

That’s right, regardless of the claims to “Occupy Wall Street” in order to protest alleged financial wrong-doing (which is just leftist jargon for “shame on you for making a profit”), the real impetus because the gathering of these dirty hippies is union-sponsored socialism.

And President Obama is encouraging it.

That’s right, our sitting president is cheering the hippies on as they shut down traffic, drag their tarps from corner to corner, defecate who knows where, and dance in the streets with signs about the supposed wonders of socialism.

Not so ironically, the president’s already low poll numbers have fallen even further with these fine, upstanding citizens occupying our streets. (I guess they’re citizens, but to honest, the way Soros and Obama work, who knows?)

For example, the Gallup poll released on Friday, October 7, showed his approval rating at a miserable 38% and the disapproval numbers at an overwhelming 58%.  (I could be wrong, but I think even Jimmy Carter laughed at those numbers.)

Nevertheless, on the same day that the Gallup poll was released, President Obama stood behind a podium at the White House and told Americans: “I think [Occupy Wall Street] expresses the frustrations that the American people feel. …People are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”

Note to President Obama: It’s not working.

(more…)

I had lost touch with my friend and businessman Domingo Bernardo many years ago, and he finally turned up on Facebook.  Domingo’s story is an incredible one:

My father “earned” his way out of Cuba by working essentially as a slave on the sugar cane fields for 2 years, where more than 25% of the people died within a year from malaria, as a punishment for asking for an exit visa.  We went back to Spain with the clothes on our backs (I was a toddler).  When Franco died, many Spaniards (my whole family is from Spain, my parents were in Cuba for only a few years), figured Socialism would come in, so many (like us) left, running from socialism to a country where we knew no one, had no jobs, and didn’t understand the culture or the language.  Socialism always does that — creates an incentive for the bright, the educated, the entrepreneurs and the wealthy to leave, leaving the country with what?  So we came to the U.S.

I learned English at 14, worked hard to get out of the ghetto, got into Cornell with a special language waiver, managed to get a Cornell engineering degree, then joined the Navy. Part of the reason I served was that I felt like I owed the country something for taking us in. I got hurt in Bosnia,came home, worked hard to establish a business, and now I’ve left my country, because I can’t take the Socialist slant anymore, and I am so tired of the regulations that make it almost impossible to do business in the U.S.  When I closed my home theatre installation business, I was not an engineer; I was a paper-filler-outer.  I have ZERO incentive to start my business in the USA between the taxes and the regulations.  The last straw was this summer; there are now over 6,000 lamps I can no longer use in jobs.  If I do, there is a fine of $5000 PER LAMP all for some hoax called Global Warming.  By the way, the new “better” lamps are from 4x to 10x costlier, and the “environment-killing” lamps are being used in every other non-EU country.

You need to understand Domingo as I did.  We were on the same dorm floor freshman year.  All he did was study.  He busted his ass, and every other day he talked about how grateful he was to the U.S.  He always intended to join the Navy, despite us (at the time, foolish liberals) trying to talk him out of it.  For this man to do all he has done, then leave of his own free will?  Wow. (more…)

I occasionally broker commercial loans between finance companies and small businesses.  It gives me a lot of pride when I bring together an American entrepreneur who is ready to risk all his assets on his own business, with a finance company that sees a way to help that businessman and make a profit himself.

For the past month, I’ve been working with a financier to bring funding to 30 entrepreneurs, eager and ready to start up their businesses.  Yesterday I had the most dis-spiriting conversation of my professional career with my financier, whom I’ll call “Joe”.

Joe has a credit line with a Gigantic American Bank.  The Federal Reserve has slapped the Bank, and all other banks big and small, with new regulations regarding how they loan their money, who they loan it to, and issued a mountain of compliance rules.  The Bank cannot rely on their internal compliance auditors any longer, either.  They must use independent auditors.

The Bank, in order to remain in compliance, must shove all these same regulations and compliance rules onto whomever they loan money to, including Joe, who also must engage an independent compliance auditor.  Joe must shove all these same regulations and compliance rules onto whomever he loans money to, including these entrepreneurs, who also must engage an independent compliance auditor.

The cost of all these regulations and compliance audits, at the entrepreneur level alone, is $30,000.   It costs a heck of a lot more as you move up the chain.

The entrepreneurs cannot afford this.

As a result, the entrepreneurs’ dreams of starting their own businesses die on the vine.  They now must go back into the depressed job market to (not) find a job.

(more…)

If you thought the class warfare tactic was being used successfully by the Progressive Left to instigate strife between the upper and lower classes in the United States you need to re-examine what you think you are seeing. With declarations by three Congressional Black Caucus Progressives that target the TEA Party, we witness a pathetic attempt by special interest Progressive Leftists to re-package the contrived charge of racism against what is essentially Middle Class America.

Over the past two weeks we have experienced some incredibly caustic declarations by three Congressional Black Caucus members: US Rep. Maxine Waters (P-CA), US Rep. Frederica Wilson (P-FL) and US Rep. Andre Carson (P-IN). All three, evidently, have little respect for their own President who, just after the shooting of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), called for “toning down the rhetoric.”

On August 20, 2011, while speaking to a friendly audience at a Los Angeles “community summit,” Maxine Waters, a member of both the Progressive and Congressional Black Caucuses in the US House said:

“I’m not afraid of anybody…This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to Hell.”

On August 22, 2011, at a Miami, FL, town hall meeting, Frederica Wilson, again, a member of both the Progressive and Congressional Black Caucuses in the US House said:

“Let us all remember who the real enemy is. The real enemy is the Tea Party…The Tea Party holds the Congress hostage. They have one goal in mind, and that’s to make President Obama a one-term president.”

Also in attendance was one Jesse Jackson of Rainbow/PUSH, a community organizing group that pressures institutions – both financial and otherwise – into doing things that would otherwise be considered ridiculous, like offering low-interest housing loans to unqualified buyers and coercing municipalities into hiring lower-scoring minority applicants to positions regarding public safety in the name of “diversity.” Rev. Jackson, a leader in the community organizing movement of social justice before he was eclipsed by one Barack Obama, compared the TEA Party to opposition to the civil-rights movement. “The Tea Party is a new name on an old game…Dr. King fought a ‘tea party’ in Alabama.”

(more…)

Case in point: College students take a pass on GPA redistribution.

Oliver Darcy, a recent college graduate, proposes that students with good grades contribute their GPA to their academically sluggish friends. He argues that this is how the federal government takes wealth from the country’s high wage earners and distributes it to the low income earners.

“They all earn their GPA,” said Darcy in an interview with “Fox and Friends.” “So we asked them if they’d be interested in redistributing the GPA points that they earned to students who may be having trouble getting a high GPA.”

Darcy, who films his encounters with teachers and fellow students, doesn’t have much luck selling this theory.

He said many students on college campuses support high taxes on the rich, but when put into relative terms, cringed at the thought of spreading around their academic wealth (Fox News).

This reminded me of my own experiment I once conducted with similar results. It was during a weekend and those of us working at my office were working nights. The office decided to order pizza. As we were getting our orders, I let it be known that I did not have any cash on me. However, I did not mention that I had brought leftovers and wasn’t interested in the first place. At any rate, we were fresh off a big office debate on healthcare and taxes. I thought this little learning lesson was too good to pass up. Once the pizza arrived I made my way over to the boxes and began stacking my plate. I even made critical comments of some of the selections. I purposely honed in on the orders made by the office socialists. Out of a group of, say, 12, there were only three of them. As you can imagine, they were none too pleased over me rummaging through their pizza.

(more…)

Las Vegas CEO Steve Wynn drew attention for a boardroom rant denouncing the intolerable business climate fostered by the White House. He’s hardly the first. What’s happening is emblematic of a bigger problem.

On a Monday conference call, the casino magnate credited with revitalizing Las Vegas slammed President Obama, declaring him “[T]he greatest wet blanket to business, progress and job creation in my lifetime.”

Wynn’s statement was remarkable for two reasons: First, the hotelier has been a staunch supporter of the Obama administration from the beginning and still considers himself a Democrat. Even more remarkable, it’s historically out of character for CEOs such as Wynn to express their views in such blunt terms on political matters.

“A lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, ‘Oh God, don’t be attacking Obama.’ Well, this is Obama’s deal, and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America,” said Wynn, “The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution, and maybe ‘we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest or (are) holding too much money.’ We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists.”

Business is being hammered, he said. “I’m telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States.”

“Each time in history that a society has tried to materialize a utopic vision of a perfect world, it has produced the most brutal and criminal regimes.” – Mario Vargas Llosa

Nobel Laureate and Atlas Templeton Leadership Fellow, Mario Vargas Llosa, was once a typical left-wing artist.  But after witnessing first-hand the evil regimes created by government socialism, he is now one of the world’s most important free market advocates.

Watch the short video here:

(more…)

The arrest of 30 angry anti-capitalists from Art Uncut, the group who busted up a U2 concert at Glastonbury 2011 while toting a huge balloon insisting “U Pay Your Tax 2,” indicates that people are fed up with being dictated to by socialist-minded do-gooders who talk the talk but, in their own lives, refuse to walk the walk.

The target of Uncut’s “Pay Up” ire is U2’s lead singer Bono, a man who entreats international governments to support global aid organizations, but who allegedly refuses to contribute his share of the taxes needed to fund the good works he supports.

With the help of rock stars and Hollywood collectivists, Marxist-minded politicians have hammered home the message that only by “sharing” can a person truly be caring.  Without realizing the ramifications of the share-the-wealth philosophy, those who’ve worked hard to portray capitalism as evil and promoted the merits of reordering the economic structure have invited the turmoil currently raining down upon their own heads.

Presently, the message to pay up is being directed towards anti-capitalists whose extravagant hypocrisy is being called into question by the very people they’ve indoctrinated.

It’s the same story everywhere: the little people have shame heaped upon their heads for not doing enough, giving enough, caring enough and above all not sharing enough.  In the name of fairness and good will, those with plenty have insisted that those with less take a smaller and smaller piece of the pie while the ones doing the asking sacrifice little or nothing.

(more…)

British MEP Daniel Hannan, who gained international recognition several years ago for his passionate denunciation of Keynesian economics in general and then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown in particular, visited The Heritage Foundation last week to discuss his new book. Provocatively titled “The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America”, it does not disappoint. Armed with firsthand experience with the failures of socialism in Europe, Hannan’s message to America is simple: Don’t repeat our mistakes.

Before his speech, he sat down with Heritage for an “In The Green Room” interview to discuss his warning to America. But despite Hannan’s deep concerns, he was clear that we have not yet reached the tipping point and remained optimistic that Americans can right the ship.

(more…)

Last September, federal agents conducted a search of the homes of 23 left-wing, anti-war activists, several of whom are union activists from Illinois and Minnesota.  The searches were in execution of warrants “seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation,” stated Steve Warfield, a spokesman for the FBI in Minneapolis, at the time.

In Chicago, among those whose homes were searched was Joe Isobaker and his wife Stephanie Weiner (a founder of AFSCME Local 3506). Isobaker was, at the time, a Chief Steward with the 24,000-member SEIU Local 73 and an activist, as well as a writer for Fight Back, a Marxist magazine.

According to the Star Tribune, the search was part of a “mysterious, ongoing nationwide terrorism investigation with an unusual target: prominent peace activists and politically active labor organizers, a number of them in Minnesota.” (more…)

I was seeing red this morning when I read this first-person account of 3^rd grade socialist indoctrination in Millwaukee Public Schools.

It came from Dale Weiss, an MPS teacher and devoted radical.

“The process of addressing budget cuts with my students taught me an incredible amount,” Weiss recently wrote. “I learned that laying a social justice foundation for young students is a complex process. I learned when issues are addressed, they need to be revisited many, many times.”

“Social justice foundation?”  Oh wait, dear readers, the giddy and proud Ms. Weiss explains how she set the 8- and 9-year olds up for a fall:

“Several weeks later, right as the bell was about to ring at the end of the school day, I casually mentioned to my students that I wanted to learn more about doing art with children since Ms. Sue [the art teacher] would not be with us next year. The students clearly were taken off guard:

“But I thought if we wrote letters to the school board there would be more money for MPS and we could keep Ms. Sue.

“Michael and Dakota read their letters at that meeting, and they asked for more money for our school. I really thought we would get more money. But now I don’t think it happened.

“Looking at the disappointment on their faces, I realized I had unintentionally led my students to conclude that if we believed something to be unfair and took action, the unfair situation would turn into a fair one. I remembered saying over and over: ‘There is always something you can do to try to turn the unfair situation into a fair one.’

Yet my students heard something quite different. In their hope and optimism as 8- and 9-year-old children, they knew that their actions would bring about a miracle. My heart sank; I felt I had let my students down.”

To Ms. Weiss and other unionists, the students are little more than political pawns in their game.  They’re setting them up to do their dirty lobbying work.

(more…)