Do you happen to remember not so long ago when attaching the “S word” to a serious White House contender was considered to be an unforgivable PC offense? That’s obviously no longer the case.
Since then, socialism has not only gone mainstream, but is channeling Democratic presidential hopefuls as rapidly far left to the Pacific Ocean as their competing speedboats can carry them.
Let’s at least give self-described socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders some credit for publicly outing himself long before it was fashionable, even in liberal circles. Not only that, the Vermont independent candidate is viewed by many as a likely 2016 Democrat primary pick to overtake Hillary’s increasingly lagging front-runner pace.
And after all, why shouldn’t liberal Democrats embrace socialist Bernie as one of their own? Even their National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz apparently can’t distinguish any real philosophical disagreements.
When Chris Matthews queried her four times about what that difference was on his July 30 “Hardball” show, it was as if he was posing a trick question. Who can blame her for such legitimate confusion about this distinction without any apparent difference?
Take their common “income equality” mantra, for example. Karl Marx expressed this same basic doctrine as: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The fundamental idea, of course, is to transfer unfair property ownership and prosperity to central state control so that populist politicians and their appointed bureaucrats will redistribute “free stuff” more equitably.
But there’s a problem with this concept. As published in an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report titled “In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All,” the proposed solution prescribing government-led redistribution funded by tax increases upon “wealthier individuals” and “multinational corporations” didn’t work out quite as planned.
Between 2000 and 2010, 34 of the OCED member nations borrowed heavily to prop up expansive social programs intended to lift their economies, while five of the most “unequal” countries – Israel, the U.S., Turkey, Mexico and Chile — largely abstained.
As a result, from 2011-2013 the economies of those unequal countries grew nearly five times faster than the others. Meanwhile, as for the results of Greece’s social transfer spending which grew most quickly of all between 2000-2012 . . . well, you probably know how that turned out.
Nevertheless, it’s hard to find much daylight between socialist philosophies of Bernie, Hillary and a broadly anticipated Joe Biden-Elizabeth Warren White House left wing bid. All favor heavy taxation of successful individuals and businesses; universal European-styled healthcare; more green energy subsidies; ever-expanding EPA regulatory agendas founded upon upon junk climate science alarmism; unconstitutional national and international gun control regulations, and anything else that will extend Big Government influence over virtually all aspects of our lives.
Joe Biden’s recent transparently advertised secret meeting with uber-liberal Elizabeth Warren reflects growing party panic over Hillary’s coronation as their 2016 representative.
President Obama’s press secretary Josh Earnest signaled further evidence of this peril in an unambiguous warning, quoting his boss saying that Biden’s choice for his 2008 ticket was "the smartest decision that he has ever made in politics," one that “should give you some sense into the president's view into vice president's aptitude for the top job." Notably, no mention was made attaching wisdom to Hillary’s appointment as his secretary of state.
Hillary’s future primary campaign prospects will depend heavily upon influence from big insider power players. One is her campaign chairman John Podesta who formerly headed the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP), served as chief of staff to her husband, and acted as counselor to President Obama.
Podesta comes from the Saul Alinsky School of attack politics, with CAP functioning as their liberal media message talking point machine.
Another priority advocate is billionaire Tom Steyer , a heavyweight hedge fund operator who throws big bucks support to Democratic candidates who oppose the Keystone pipeline and who favor “green energy” over fossils.
Caught between Steyer and other anti-Keystone environmental activists on one hand, and powerful union leaders who favor jobs it will provide on the other, Hillary has remained deafeningly mute on the issue.
Where any of this primary election campaigning will ultimately lead – for either political party – is any ones guess. Individual winning odds among the wide and diverse field of Republican candidates are particularly difficult to predict.
Yet as for the contest winner among Democrats, there’s an even larger question: Does that choice really make much of any difference?
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom”(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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