It's Happening Folks! by Ben Johnson
Late last month, a reporter asked the head of the Office of Public Engagement Valerie Jarrett what she would tell her close friend Barack Obama about the American uprising against his aggressive liberalism. She replied, “To stay the course and to know that it will get better.” Those were not idle words of comfort; they were marching orders. The president told the New York Times he runs every decision by Jarrett, and she has admitted to Vogue magazine, “I kind of know what makes [both Obamas] who they are.” When she speaks, Obama listens.
The day after the election, as pundits forecast how he would compromise with the Republican House, Barack Obama revealed that he planned to continue moving this country to the Left. As though he were invincibly ignorant to the will of the people, Obama told Democratic volunteers on a conference call, “We’ve just got to work harder to deliver the change the American people want.”
Last week, the Center for American Progress (CAP), which received significant seed money from George Soros, released a 47-page paper illustrating how he could do that: by ruling through executive order, as this author reported he would. Some of their proposals include blocking legislation passed by Congress, advancing the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and levying a new fee on foreign oil. Now, Soros is threatening to dry up the cash flow if Obama does not comply. Obama appears poised to continue shoving the big government liberalism Americans repudiated this month down their collective throat through executive action.
I Told You So….
My readers have long known this was in the works. On October 8, I wrote, “Obama Considering Rule by Executive Order in 2011.” Since then, others have jumped on the story. The most recent is a column today from Dick Morris and wife Eileen McGann entitled, “Obama Using Executive Authority to Implement Radical Agenda.” My original piece a month ago quoted an L.A. Times article that revealed Obama planned “to advance his agenda through executive actions he can take on his own, rather than pushing plans through an increasingly hostile Congress…That means more executive orders, more use of the bully pulpit, and more deployment of his ample regulatory powers and the wide-ranging rulemaking authority of his Cabinet members.” (Emphases added.) The evidence has continued piling up ever since.
Pressure from Soros’ Astroturf
Ben Feller wrote an article for The Huffington Post late in October entitled, “What Obama’s Post-Eelection Presidency Could Look Like.” [sic.] Feller said Obama “is already giving clues about how he will govern in the last two years of his term…He will use executive authority when blocked by Congress, and steel for scrutiny and investigations if the GOP is in charge.”
Just after the midterms, Karen Dolan posted an article on the website of the Soros-funded Institute for Policy Studies encouraging IPS members to “push Obama to finally do the right thing through as many Executive Orders as we can present to him.”
Now the Center for American Progress has not only outlined the strategy but provided several examples of executive authority Obama might use to bypass Congress. In making the announcement, CAP president and CEO John Podesta, who served as Bill Clinton’s last chief of staff, told the New York Times Obama “needs to rise above the definition of the presidency as just being a skirmish between Republicans and you…He’s capable of doing things on his own without them.” (Emphasis added.)
As with Jarrett, CAP is not an ordinary think tank. Time magazine called CAP “Obama’s idea factory.” When Green Jobs Czar Van Jones left the White House, he landed as a senior fellow at the Center, leading its Green Opportunity Initiative. More to the point, it is George Soros’ voice in Washington.
Soros Blackmails Obama?
Coincidentally, the same day the media reported CAP’s executive order strategy, word that George Soros had threatened to cut off Obama’s access to the Left’s wealthiest donors at a highly secretive “private meeting” leaked on The Hufffington Post. Arianna Huffington has been associated with Soros for at least ten years, since she ran the “Shadow Conventions” to drum up support for campaign finance reform. Last March, The Huffington Post received a $1.75 million grant to begin an Investigative Fund from George LaMarche, a member of Democracy Alliance – another funnel of Soros’ mega-bucks into politics, which happened to be the secretive meeting where Soros made his comments. He reportedly told the multimillionaire and billionaire donors “if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”
In his foreword to the report, Podesta wrote Obama needed to force hard-Left policies through the executive branch “to demonstrate strength, resolve, and a capacity to get things done.”
Soros’ leaked statement was the dagger behind Podesta’s report. Rule from the Left by any means necessary, or else.
Tips of the CAP
CAP laid out a strategy to promote “progressive change” in “The Power of the President: Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change,” compiled by Sarah Rosen Wartell. Echoing Obama, or perhaps vice-versa, Podesta wrote in the foreword, “Progress, not positioning, is what the public wants and deserves.”
CAP then divides government into six separate areas where Obama should exercise unilateral action. Aaron Klein gave a brief overview at WorldNetDaily , reproducing the pleasant-sounding subheads, like “Promote practices that support working families,” and “Replace costly, inhumane immigration detention policies with equally effective measures.” Who could oppose that?
As with everything, the devil is in the details, which have gone unreported.
Cloward-Piven, Here We Come
The CAP report suggests Obama make it easier for Americans to sign up for public assistance programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid. It suggests the president overcome “bureaucratic hurdles designed to insure [sic.] income eligibility” by “simplifying and consolidating…public benefits application” requirements. In addition to spending less time assuring the “eligibility” of each applicant, the government should be “directly certifying families for one program is they qualify for another” – e.g., so the 14 percent of the U.S. population that receives food stamps would automatically be eligible for government health care or other services.
The report insists enrolling as many Americans as possible in social welfare programs will not lead to government dependence nor bust the budget. Government handouts, it argues, “increase self-sufficiency.” Since “the vast majority of antipoverty programs are not entitlements – their budgets will be no more or no less than what Congress allots to them.”
This is precisely the Cloward-Piven Strategy. In their 1966 article in Nation magazine entitled, “The Weight of the Poor,” they decried “cumbersome…investigatory procedures (which cost 20c for every dollar dispersed).” Instead, “As delays mount, so should the public demand that a simplified affidavit supplant these procedures, so that the poor may certify to their condition.” This will flood the system with new welfare recipients.
If government funds for these programs run out, the Democratic Party can point to the long lines of poor, naked, sick masses huddling for warmth and demand the Republican Party pony up or have these deaths on their conscience. If the past is any indication, most Republicans will cave in. Meanwhile, bottom-up pressure from Soros-funded groups will demand more radical measures. As Cloward and Piven wrote, “The ultimate aim of this strategy is a new program for direct income distribution.”
Jails? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Jails!
Under the category of replacing “costly, inhumane immigration detention policies with equally effective measures,” CAP offers a novel idea: just let illegal immigrants roam free. “The massive increase in the practice of jailing noncriminal immigrants is costly and unnecessary,” it stated. Instead, “detention should be the practice of last resort.” Minors, the elderly, and “the sick” enjoy a “presumption of release.” Virtually all illegal aliens without a criminal record – except breaking the law to enter this country – should be given a court date and released, perhaps with an ankle bracelet any felon can remove. CAP continues, “When detention is warranted, the agency will adopt alternatives that are in the least restrictive setting possible.” It suggests expanding the “Legal Orientation Program that provides detained immigrants with information about their rights” to all facilities where illegals are held.
This policy is the Cloward-Piven Strategy for immigration. It assures the maximum number of illegal aliens remain in the United States by fleeing authorities or exploiting legal loopholes. As I have noted, increasing the number of Hispanics voters is part of the Obama-SEIU plan to create a permanent left-wing voting majority.
Don’t Pass “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? Don’t Listen
As a measure of the brazen power grab CAP/Soros is advising, they suggest Obama unilaterally allow open homosexuals to serve in the military, even though that is currently illegal. Soros’ think tank instructs Obama to “mitigate the impact of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy if Congress does not repeal it.” CAP advises Obama to allow out-and-proud homosexuals to continue serving in the armed forced for the rest of the war, “in the interests of national security.”
Obama could also begin to “[c]ollect data on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans in federal surveys.” This is to aid “organizations interested in applying for federal funding to support programs designed to improve the well-being of this group of Americans.” It is true homosexuals die an average of 8-21 years younger than their straight counterparts, suffer higher infectious disease levels (especially STDs), and are driven by rampant depression into drug abuse or suicide more than those in the traditional nuclear family.
These disparities reflect less about “discrimination” (do diseases discriminate?) than the inherent dangers of promiscuous homosexuality. However, to the Left all disparities are caused solely by the rampant discrimination of an evil nation founded by their modern totems of iniquity: white Christian males. The Left would like to use these disparities to drive new Affirmative Action or hate crimes laws granting LGBT members special privileges. Collecting statistics is a first step to this end.
Nation-Building in Afghanistan
Its foreign policy section calls for full-out nation building in Afghanistan, demanding “the Karzai government” implement “political reforms that increases [sic.] accountability for government actors.” Set revenue goals for the Afghan and Pakistani governments to produce a set amount of money, and help “create a legal and economic framework that plans for the responsible development of Afghanistan’s mineral deposits…and a governance framework that represents affected communities and ensures that that this wealth benefits the Afghan people.”
The report also asks Obama to “increase financial, technical, and training assistance to the Palestinian Authority.”
Read My Lips: New Petroleum Taxes
The CAP report suggests the president levy a “temporary $2 per barrel fee on the nearly two-thirds of U.S. oil imported from other nations,” which would allegedly only “raise gasoline prices by an estimated 2 cents per gallon.” But taxes in a Democratic administration are like government programs; as Ronald Reagan said, they are “the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Rigging Academic Standards
The Obama administration has made war on “for-profit” colleges – DeVry, Corinthian, Phoenix, etc. Stephen Spruiell has noted in NRO, “for-profit schools are the latest front in the Obama administration’s campaign to control as much of the higher-ed industry as possible.” The Wartell-compiled paper provides another weapon: The Department of Education may base accreditation, not on academic standards, but “graduation rate, job placement rate, loan default and loan repayment rates,” and other non-academic criteria. That is, instead of rating whether colleges adequately teach students, they rate them based on their students’ achievements after graduation. The move is another set of special, ex post facto standards crafted specifically to punish an identifiable industry the president hates.
“The People’s Will”? He Won’t
What startles is not that liberals openly advocate anti-democratic means to achieve their goals; they always have. After all, George Soros said last week, “Today, China has not only a more vigorous economy, but actually a better functioning government than the United States.” Obama has praised “an activist Attorney General’s office and Justice Department” since his 2001 interview with Chicago public radio. Virtually every major triumph the Left has won has been imposed by unelected judges or bureaucrats, from removing prayer from schools and God from America’s public life to allowing abortion on demand.
What startles is the brazenness of it all. The Huffington Post reported on the results of a recent poll: “Almost 60 percent of likely voters now say cutting the yearly budget shortfall is the priority, even if that means the government can’t spend on new education programs, develop alternative energy sources or enact [Obama’s] health care overhaul or alternative energy policies, an Associated Press-GfK poll found.” (Emphasis added.) That is, the American people do not want any of the measures the president or the Democratic Party campaigned on or promised to deliver. Pure force is their only trump card. Obama has faced the biggest electoral repudiation since the 1930s, and still he vows to run roughshod over his country in pursuit of radicalizing the economy, the culture, and large segments of the population.
What Comes Next
Here’s what we can expect in the coming months:
Look for an aggressive agenda in the lame duck session of Congress, focused especially on passing the DREAM Act and repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Obama has already met last week with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and gay activists, respectively, to push those measures. Sen. Joe Lieberman – suggested by RINOs as McCain’s (or a generic GOP candidate’s) vice presidential choice in 2008 – said last week, “There’s more than 60 senators, I’m certain, who are prepared to vote for” putting gays in the military. Sadly, he may be right.
After January, Cabinet agencies will issue regulations at a faster clip. His most visible target will be the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide as a “pollutant.” The EPA considered, then rejected, banning fishing gear and traditional bullets this summer. Obama has taken steps toward nationalizing millions of acres of land in the American West. In June, Obama extended same-sex benefits to overpaid federal workers.
However, every agency will roll out reams of red tape, a process that has already begun. The National Labor Relations Board, including former SEIU/AFL-CIO lawyer Craig Becker, may implement card-check. OSHA will ratchet up ergonomic standards and loosen the strictures restraining workers from suing their employers. As the EPA caps coal emissions from above and the administration makes construction of new plants an impossibility, OSHA’s companion mine regulation agency, MSHA, will pressure the mines from below through tighter worker standards and increased safety suits.
Stealth amnesty will continue apace. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services draft memo that surfaced this summer contemplated ways to enact “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.” In June, eight Republicans led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, wrote a letter to President Obama asking about a possible executive-granted amnesty. His war against Arizona will spread to any state that steps up enforcement under the guise of fighting discrimination. Obama will continue to create crisis conditions to blackmail Republicans into voting for a comprehensive amnesty bill.
However, the issue closest to Obama’s heart will be an activist role in racially charged issues. His citation of racial disparities will lead to increased federal intervention in every aspect of life, especially from Eric Holder’s Justice Department.
Obama will rule increasingly through executive orders and appeals to the United Nations.
George Soros’s billions will continue to fund faux “grassroots” uprisings, as they have for amnesty, and socialized medicine. Politico quoted Soros spokesman Michael Vachon as saying that Soros told the Democracy Alliance “liberals need to be more forceful and should create pressure from the Left.” As I have repeatedly noted, this gives Obama desperately needed cover to continue moving Left. And Obama will match their efforts by conscripting as much of your tax dollars as possibly to create propaganda aimed at convincing Americans his every action only has their interests at heart.
Believe It and Prepare
Just before the midterm elections, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said, “I can’t believe he’s going to continue to ignore the wishes of the American people if his party has a very bad day November 2.”
McConnell and the Republicans had better not only believe it but devise a strategy to prevent, block, and reverse Obama’s liberty-destroying measures – or to
remove their source from office.