Did Obama channel Marx during State Of The Union? ‘Economic fairness’ is defining goal for U.S. progressive groups

Posted on January 25, 2012 at 12:36 PM EST

By Aaron Klein

In his third State of the Union address last night, President Obama channeled the mantra of U.S. progressive groups by repeatedly calling for so-called economic fairness in America.

Some progressives point to revolutionary socialist Karl Marx as divining economic theory that stresses “economic fairness.”

Also, late Harvard professor John Rawls, one of the most important philosophers of liberalism in the twentieth century, named his own theory “justice as fairness.” Some have previously pointed to Rawls possible influence over Obama. Rawls calls for ensuring distributive justice of resources.

The headlines in scores of U.S. newspapers and news websites today stress the centrality of economic fairness in Obama’s speech last night.

“Obama makes pitch for economic fairness in State of the Union address,” reported CBSNews.com

“In Address, Obama Makes Pitch for Economic Fairness,” reads a NY Times headline.

“Obama’s Address Centers on Economic Fairness,” reported the Associated Press.

Indeed, the fairness theme permeated the president’s speech.

Stated Obama: “We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Obama argued that “no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.”

He called for a “return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help us protect our people and our economy.”

Using the phrase yet again, Obama stated, “We need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.”

And another point in his speech, Obama stated, “When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford.”

Obama has previously used other speeches to address “economic fairness,” including a major policy speech in December 2011 that also centered on the idea.

Marxism

Lester C. Thurow, a founder of the progressive Economic Policy Institute, explained in his 2003 book, “Fortune Favors the Bold: What We Must Do to Build a New and Lasting Global Prosperity,” that Marx related the ideals of economic fairness while explaining how capitalism must end.

Wrote Thurow: “In addition to outlining the process whereby the system of capitalism would end, Marx went on to recommend a new system, communism, which would, he believed, eliminate the evils of capitalism.

“He never said much about the transformation of capitalism into communism, but in his vision of communism (outlined in an article entitled “Utopia”) it would create a new society where economic fairness and personal freedom reigned.”

Using the theme of economic fairness, Thurow went on to quote Marx’s own mantra, “To everyone in accordance with their needs. From everyone in accordance with their abilities.”

Radical groups and ‘economic fairness’

Thurow’s Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, which is funded by billionaire George Soros, has reportedly been influential in helping to craft White House policy.

This author’s most recent book, Red Army, documented how Health Care for America, the centerpiece of the EPI’s Agenda for Shared Prosperity, served as a foundation for Obamacare.

Like scores of other major progressive groups, the phrase “economic fairness” permeates the EPI’s literature and policy papers. In fact, the EPI describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, research to achieve a prosperous and fair economy.”

Last June, the EPI website argued, “Tax policy should be designed to promote economic fairness by pushing against the trend of ever-widening income inequality.”

The EPI, together with other progressive groups, including ACORN pushed for a loosely described Economic Fairness project. One of it’s partners in that project, United for a Fair Economy, says it seeks to raise awareness “that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart.”

The group’s official visions seeks a “global society where prosperity is better shared, where there is genuine equality of opportunity, where the power of concentrated money and corporations neither dominates the economy nor dictates the content of mass culture.”

Another organization in the Economic Fairness project is Citizens for Tax Justice, whose catch phrase reads, “Working for a fair and sustainable tax system.”

According to its website, the group fights for:

• Fair taxes for middle and low-income families
• Requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share
• Closing corporate tax loopholes
• Adequately funding important government services
• Reducing the federal debt
• Taxation that minimizes distortion of economic markets

Another group pushing the “economic fairness” theme is the Center for American Progress.

The Center is lead by John Podesta, who was co-chairman of the Obama-Biden White House Transition Team.

A Time magazine article profiles the influence of Podesta’s Center for American Progress in the formation of the Obama administration, stating that “not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan’s transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway.”

The economic fairness phrase so thoroughly permeates the Center’s literature that a search for the phrase on the groups’ website brings up hundreds of items, including major policy papers that use the term in both the title and in the text.

A small sampling includes, “Small Businesses Support Fairness,” “The Economy Grows When Everyone Pays Their Fair Share,” and “Middle-Class Economic Security Begins with Paycheck Fairness.” Each of those articles describe economic fairness doctrine.

The Center’s research paper, “Understanding Mobility in America,” describes “the fairness or unfairness of access to economic opportunities” in the U.S. Another paper describes the role unions can play to “restore economic fairness.”

The phrase also appears prominently in literature from the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies. That group, too, describes itself as “working for economic fairness.”

Harvard professor

In attempting to divine Obama’s economic policies, some have pointed to Rawls, who died in 2002.

Lawrence Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard, taught Obama and has been described as an early mentor to the future president. Tribe was Rawls’ Harvard colleague and wrote about Rawls’ theories.

Chris Underation, writing in the American Communication Journal’s Winter 2011 edition, examined Rowls’ influence on current legislation.

“Using the paradigm of social justice set forth by John Rawls—a philosophy Obama evidently picked up during his time at Harvard—this article will examine contextually the rhetoric used by the president to push for healthcare reform,” Underation noted.

Prominent among those theories was Rawls “A Theory of Justice,” which he later redefined as Justice as Fairness.

In that theory, Rawls called for first establishing equal basic liberties for all citizens and then ensuring distributive justice of resources.

Writing in the NY Times last October, Bard College professor Steven V. Mazie pointed out “Rawls would argue that Occupy is fully justified in its criticism of the political and economic structures that propagate massive concentrations of wealth; he saw the ‘basic structure’ of society as the ‘primary subject of justice.’”

Regarding Rawls call to ensure distributive justice, the website ProgressiveHistorians.com crossposted an article entitled, “Obama, John Rawls, and a Defense of the Unreasonable,” describing how affirmative action fit Rawls mantra.

“Rawls said that there would be equality of opportunity with regard to positions of power. He also said that inequalities, which were necessary in a non-Marxist society, would ‘be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.” This last bit became known as the “difference principle.’”

“What Rawls was getting at, put simply, was that if someone was going to get a leg up from the system, it should be the least fortunate, not the most. A perfect example of this idea is affirmative action: since we can’t make hiring and college admissions completely fair, they should be biased toward those who need them most.”

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott

Aaron Klein is a New York Times bestselling author, journalist and WABC radio host.

Hi Peter, here's another interesting article on the president's State of the Union address.

Quote:

Hi Peter, here's another interesting article on the president's State of the Union address.

Obama is the most blatantly anti-business and anti-growth president in American history

The State of The Union: Big Problems Demand Bold Lies

- F. Swemson Tuesday, January 31, 2012

For the last 5 months or so we’ve been hearing the same thing over and over again from the Obama White House, and we heard it yet again as the central theme of last Tuesday’s State of the Union address. The root cause of all of our problems, and especially our out-of-control national debt, is the fact that the wealthiest Americans are not paying their fair share of our national tax burden.
Listening to it reminds me of the painful screech of a shrill harpie who ran for mayor of NYC in 1997, a socialist named Ruth Messinger, whose entire platform could be summed up by her campaign slogan “Let’s make rich real-estate developers pay their fair share of taxes.” If there’s a class of people more overtaxed than NYC real estate developers, I’m not aware of it. Her platform, of course, was a time honored and proven Democratic party standard, based on one of the oldest of legal principles dating back to the Code of Hammurabi: “Thou shall hate thy landlord”. Fortunately for New Yorkers, they had a strong incumbent named Rudy Giuliani who trounced her quite handily.
The missing co-star of Obama’s most recent theater of the absurd was Warren Buffet, who, despite his great wealth, apparently doesn’t yet understand the workings of a true free market economy. I suspect they’ll also be saying the same thing about Mitt Romney, now that he’s released his recent tax returns showing that his average tax rate for the last 2 years was about 14%. What we’ll never hear, of course, when the left talks about Mr. Romney’s taxes, is the fact that he actually paid about $3 million in taxes for each of those 2 years. That’s close to 500 times what the average American who filed a return actually paid. It seems to me that the least they could say to him is “thank you”.
But getting back to the Obama / Messinger platform, let’s do the math and see if the numbers actually bear him out. For the 2009 tax year 138 million Americans filed returns. The average tax rate paid by ALL of them was 11.06%. The top 1% of earners, paid 36.7% of the total tax revenues, ($318 billion), at an average tax rate of 24.01%. The idea that the rich don’t pay their fair share is already looking a bit suspect, isn’t it? So let’s assume for the moment that Obama’s twisted view of reality is correct, and that the richest 1% really aren’t paying their fair share. Obama’s talking about a 5-6% surtax on them, and a raise in the capital gains rate from 15% to 20%. If that’s the case, I say let’s screw the greedy bastards and double their overall average tax rate, from 24% to 50%. That should really solve the problem, right?
Well, not exactly. When you do the numbers, you’ll see that the total added revenues of $159 billion gained from soaking the rich to that extent are barely enough to cover Obama’s deficit spending for 10 weeks. Hmmmm…. Yep, he lied again!
So, to summarize, Obama was LYING about what percentage of their income the top 1% actually pays in taxes. And since the bottom 36% of all Americans who filed a return paid ZERO taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.7% of all taxes, Obama was LYING when he says the rich aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. Of course by implying that this non-existent problem is the cause of our economic woes, anyone capable of doing the basic math can see that Obama was LYING once again.
Of course that’s not the only issue Obama lied about discussed during the address. He also made it a point to stress how his administration was going to focus on bringing back manufacturing jobs to America. And he spoke of how his administration was opening endless square miles of federal property to oil & gas exploration. Now these are two things that America truly does need. There’s only one problem, however. Obama was LYING through his teeth when making these claims, because as the last 3 years have clearly demonstrated, Obama is doing everything he can to prevent a rebirth of American manufacturing, as well as everything he can to prevent America from becoming energy independent by exploiting our own enormous energy resources.

Obama is the most blatantly anti-business and anti-growth president in American history

Obama is the most blatantly anti-business and anti-growth president in American history. The facts speak for themselves. He’s the 1st President to violate bankruptcy laws by turning over control of privately owned companies to his union supporters. He’s the 1st President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state they’re allowed to locate a factory.
 He’s the 1st President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, while loaning a foreign oil company (Brazil’s Petrobas), that’s partly owned by his puppet master George Soros, billions of dollars of the American taxpayer’s money to develop Brazilian offshore reserves. Obama’s the 1st President to threaten medical insurance companies if they publicize the reasons for their rate increases., and he’s also the 1st President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
 Since we know that the only way to get the American economy growing again is to get the federal government the hell out of the way of what’s left of our free enterprise system, the only rational conclusion to be drawn from this is that Obama is indeed intentionally trying to destroy our country’s economy. Talk about high crimes and misdemeanors…. Wow!
To cut to the chase, Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro, aka Harrison J. Bounel, aka Bari M Shabazz is a congenital LIAR. He’s a Marxist radical and a dedicated follower of the teachings of Saul Alinsky. Anyone wondering why he’s done some of the crazy stuff he has, need only read Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals”, and the “Cloward Piven Strategy” for a step-by-step guide to all of Obama’s actions since he moved into the White House. And lest anyone think that he is unique in American politics, we should all be aware that the progressive’s relief pitcher, Hillary, still waiting patiently in the wings, is also an Alinsky disciple, as her senior’s thesis at Wellesley in praise of Alinsky proves to all willing to take the time to read it.
Since socialism has only failed every time it’s been tried, one wonders what the history books will eventually say about the Obama regime when our great grandchildren are taking their first American history class. It won’t be something worthy of great drama or romance, in the way that Dr. Zhivago romanticized the Russian Revolution. After all, they only had one czar. My guess is that it will wind up as a sad, pathetic and dirty little footnote to the record of the early 21st century, something akin to what happened to America while Woody Allen’s character Miles Monroe was in cryo-stasis in the movie Sleeper. When the film began, he woke up to learn that America had been destroyed when a fellow named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead.

Let’s do everything we can to prevent that prophecy from coming true.

Winter thaw: Occupy plotting spring chaos. Protests to target NATO, G8 summits, Democratic convention

Posted on January 28, 2012 at 12:29 PM EST

by Aaron Klein

A coalition of U.S. radical groups, including the Occupy Movement, are preparing protests to target the Democratic National Convention in September in Charlotte, N.C.

The Occupy movement is likely to escalate months before the Sept. 3-6 event. A slew of extremist organizations, some tied to President Obama, are preparing protests to coincide with major NATO and G-8 summits slated for Chicago in May.

The plans for the Democratic convention are posted on a central website, ProtestDNC.org. More than three dozen organizations, including labor, anti-war and so-called civil rights and immigrants rights groups are joining together to initiate a coalition.

The group calls for:

• Good jobs for all! Economic justice now – Make the banks and corporations pay for their crisis!
• Money for education, health care, housing and all human needs, not for war and incarceration!
• Justice for immigrants and all oppressed peoples! Stop the raids and deportations!

The protest coalition is complaining that the city of Charlotte has already denied their requests for permits to march. The city told the coalition that the DNC itself has reserved major parks in Charlotte during the convention.

The protest website warns the radical groups will take to the streets regardless of whether permits are issued.

“Organizations including Occupy movements across the country are already planning to mobilize to be in the streets of Charlotte during the DNC,” it states.

Along with Occupy, other groups endorsing the scheduled DNC protests include the Revolutionary Students Union, the Students for a Democratic Society and Workers World Party.

One endorsing group, which calls itself the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, is also a main organizer of the protests being schedule for Chicago’s NATO and G-8 summits in May.

The anti-FBI Committee is led by Tom Burke. It has been seeking to lead activism against the FBI’s reported ongoing terror probes of Chicago and Minnesota anti-war groups.

Burke, a former school custodian-turned-stay-at-home-father, belongs to the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a group mentioned in subpoenas and search warrants issued in the same FBI terror probe.

KleinOnline previously reported Obama has ties to the Chicago anti-war activists and groups being probed by the FBI, including Hatem Abudayyeh, the executive director of the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN.

While serving as a paid director of the far-left nonprofit Chicago Woods Fund, Obama helped to provide two grants to the AAAN. Obama served at the Woods Fund alongside Weather Underground terrorist-group founder Bill Ayers.

AAAN was founded by a longtime Obama associate, Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi’s wife, Mona, is president of the Arab American Action Network.

Meanwhile, Occupy itself has zeroed in on the upcoming NATO and G8 summits. The anti-Wall Street movement reportedly even opened a headquarters in Chicago within walking distance of the locations at which the summits are scheduled to take place.

Chicago will be the first American city other than Washington to host a NATO gathering.

It will be the first time since 1977, in London, that both NATO and the G8 will hold meetings in the same city at the same time.

Such meetings have drawn mass protests that turned violent.

The 1999 WTO event in Seattle devolved into widespread rioting in which more than 40,000 protesters, some using violent tactics, descended on the city, prompting police to use tear gas and rubber bullets. The clash became known as “The Battle of Seattle.”

The G-8 summit has similarly drawn violent protests.

A 2001 riot at a G-8 meeting in Genoa, Italy, left one person dead and hundreds injured. Also, in the run-up to a G-20 economic summit in Pittsburgh in 2009, police reportedly fired pepper spray at marchers who threw rocks and garbage.

Preparing for such outbreaks, the Chicago Sun-Times last July quoted Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy saying he was training 13,000 officers under his command for mass arrests of protesters.

“We have to train for mass arrests,” McCarthy said. “We have to train 13,000 police officers in arrest procedures and containment procedures. At the same time, we will not stop patrolling the city.”

In response, radical groups held a press conference last August in downtown Chicago demanding permits to march during the world summits in May.

Joe Iosbaker of the United National Antiwar Committee, one of the groups planning protests, warned, “The wars and economic policies of the NATO and G8 nations are not just and will be met by protest.”

Iosbaker is a University of Illinois-Chicago office worker and a union steward for his SEIU local whose home was raided by the FBI last September reportedly as part of the same terror probe investigating material support for jihadist groups by Chicago groups.

Obama is also tied to Iosobaker.

WND reported Iosbaker and his wife, Stephanie Weiner, worked as leaders of the Chicago New Party, a controversial 1990s political party that sought to elect members to public office with the aim of moving the Democratic Party far leftward to ultimately form a new party with a socialist agenda.

WND previously reported on evidence from the New Party’s own newsletters showing Obama was a member of the New Party.

Another group planning to protest at the May summits is Code Pink, which also helped to lead the 1999 WTO riots. Code Pink’s co-founder, Jodie Evans, was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign.

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott

The True Face of Occupy Wall Street

Posted by Rick Moran Bio ↓ on Jan 31st, 2012

Editor’s note: To get David Horowitz’s perspective on the OWS movement, see his lead feature in yesterday’s issue, Communism Reborn. For the whole story behind Occupy Wall Street and how this movement marks a new phase in the rebirth of the communist Left, read the new broadside by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, Occupy Wall Street: The Communist Movement Reborn. This essential pamphlet exposes the roots, leaders and hidden agendas of the radical movement and its war on capitalism and free societies.

More than 400 Occupy Wall Street protesters in Oakland were arrested after a wild night of violence, vandalism, and confrontations with police. “Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares,” reports the New York Times. The rioters also broke into historic Oakland City Hall, smashing display cases, spray painting graffiti on the walls, cutting electrical wires, and with the crowd chanting “Burn it! Burn it!” set fire to an American flag. City authorities estimate that damages to city property amounts to about $5 million since the protests began last October.

A CNN headline reporting on the riot: “Occupy Oakland demonstrations, arrests inject new life into movement.” Perhaps this is true. But at the cost of rampaging rioters destroying public property? What kind of movement needs that kind of impetus to receive “new life”?

The Oakland riot is proof positive that whatever claim to innocence and idealism the movement purported in the early days of occupations around the country has been lost to the gimlet-eyed revolutionary left, now openly seeking violent confrontation with authorities using the bodies of the naive and foolish who still believe that OWS is a protest against income inequality and corporatism. Cadres of organized leftists came prepared to the Oakland protest with homemade gas masks and shields — a clear indication that they fully expected to provoke a police response. Innocent protesters do not come armed with “bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares.” The transformation of the occupy movement from protest to “direct action” — the preferred tactic of the European Communist Left for generations — is nearly complete. There can be no sniveling denials from OWS apologists any more: The driving force behind the OWS movement — the goal of those who control the streets — is revolution and the overthrow of America’s capitalist system.

The mob action in Oakland occurred after authorities refused to allow the OWS demonstrators to make the Kaiser Convention Center their headquarters. Given the cavalier and negligent attitude toward health, safety, and sanitation at OWS sites around the country, it would seem logical that the authorities felt they had little choice but to deny the OWS use of any public venue that could degenerate into a cesspool of disease and crime.

The protesters refused to heed calls by police to back off and began to tear down barricades, destroy construction equipment and fencing, while refusing to disperse. Several hundred protesters then marched to the Oakland Museum of California where there were more arrests as the police tried to protect the priceless artifacts from potential vandalism.

Given what happened next, they were right to do so.

The mob moved on to City Hall where the protesters say they found a door ajar — which sounds fantastical — and police say the demonstrators broke in. A video purportedly shows an OWS demonstrator using a crowbar to pry the door open.

There is no argument about what happened when the protesters got inside the building.

A more than century-old architectural model of City Hall was damaged in its display case, electrical wires were cut, soda machines thrown to the floor, graffiti was sprayed on the walls, other display cases were smashed, windows were broken — a demonstration of lawlessness and lack of respect for property that even has some OWS leaders around the country saying it probably wasn’t a good idea.

Other OWS sympathizers took to the streets in “solidarity” with those arrested during the Oakland riot. CNN reports:

The mass arrests, described by police as the largest in city history, appear to have injected new life into the Occupy movement as protesters in a number of American and European cities took to the streets Sunday to express their solidarity with the Occupy Oakland group.

Marching in solidarity with rioters who took part in what one Oakland official referred to as “domestic terrorism,” is a curious way to demonstrate one’s peaceful intentions.

The mob then moved on to the YMCA where most of the arrests occurred. As expected, OWS blamed the police for everything. In statement issued after the riot and while city employees were wiping graffiti off the walls and sweeping the broken glass off the floor, OWS Oakland claimed:

“Contrary to their own policy, the OPD gave no option of leaving or instruction on how to depart,” the group said in a news release. “These arrests are completely illegal, and this will probably result in another class action lawsuit against the OPD, who have already cost Oakland $58 million in lawsuits over the past 10 years.”

The occupy movement in Oakland was originally warmly embraced by city authorities, including Mayor Jean Quan who spoke glowingly of the movement’s objectives and even gave city employees time off to attend protests that shut down the Port of Oakland last fall after the demonstrators threatened violence against port employees. But as the weeks dragged on and the encampment in front of City Hall turned into a haven for crime and rats, draining the city’s budget and tying up police, Quan attempted to edge away from the increasingly violent occupation by forcing the closing of the tent city. This resulted in another riot and harsh criticism from other officials and the local media.

Now, Quan has fully reaped what she sowed. Like most Democrats around the country who initially praised the OWS movement to the skies, and now find themselves backing a revolution, Quan has placed herself in a difficult political situation. She has responded by harshly criticizing the group, saying that she will seek monetary damages from the organization and that protesters who are convicted will participate in “restorative justice” by cleaning up garbage in a nearby slum. She condemned OWS tactics, saying that they were “a constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward them” — an ironic statement considering the fact that Oakland’s police union sent the mayor a letter criticizing her for sending “mixed messages” on dealing with the OWS demonstrators.

What has the OWS movement cost the city? In dollar terms, at least $2 million in cleanup costs since October with at least that much in police overtime and other costs. And while police were busy trying to protect property from the modern day Vandals seeking to sack City Hall, there were 5 homicides over the weekend and responses to 911 calls were delayed, according to police. Police Chief Howard Jordan told the Los Angeles Times that “personnel and resources dedicated to Occupy reduce our ability to focus on public safety priorities.”

All of this does not bode well for cities caught in the OWS crosshairs. Matthew Vadum wrote in FPM about the planned demonstration in Chicago during the G-8 summit where the organizers, including OWS founders Adbusters, have all but openly called for violent confrontations with authorities during the meeting. Their violent rhetoric barely conceals their desire to force police to respond to their provocative tactics:

And if they don’t listen … if they ignore us and put our demands on the back burner like they’ve done so many times before … then, with Gandhian ferocity, we’ll flashmob the streets, shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe … we’ll make the price of doing business as usual too much to bear [ellipses in original].

While there are no outright calls for violence, a reasonable person cannot mistake their intent.

Democratic politicians like Quan and President Obama will seek to use the rhetoric of the OWS movement without openly embracing the protesters. If Republicans are smart, they won’t let the Left get away with this subterfuge. It should be hammered home to voters between now and Election Day that the violence being perpetrated by OWS movements across the country is the result of a calculated effort to overthrow the existing order. And those who imitate the language of revolution — couching the violent rhetoric in terms of “fairness” or “income inequality” — should be called to account for aiding and abetting those who seek to destroy the essential character of the United States and replace it with ill-conceived ideas of “justice” and revolution.