Socialism 101

(You can’t legislate morality or social change.)

Socialists always mean well; they have the best of intentions. The road to the financial hell we’re facing is paved with the good intentions of socialists.

In the late 1970’s after the takeover of the Democratic Party by McGovernites in 1972, the fellow travelers in that party began working to find some method of appeal to grass roots people – the “common man” – that had just overwhelmingly rejected them for (of all people) the hated Richard M. Nixon.

Among those efforts were the ones that used supposed racial injustice in the home loan industry to claim that legislation was needed to insure racial equality in issuing mortgages. Under President Jimmy Carter with large Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress, the Community Reinvestment Act was passed and signed into law. This legislation set the stage for today’s economic meltdown. In hindsight, it was inevitable.

The legislation did not specifically require lending institutions to make high-risk loans but an institution's CRA compliance record was taken into account by the banking regulatory agencies when the institution sought to expand through merger, acquisition or branching. This legislation spawned a large number of “housing advocacy groups” who discovered they could legally extort millions of dollars from banks that were attempting to expand by threatening to file complaints and hearings held by the banking regulatory agencies. Community activists’ intervention at yearly bank reviews resulted in their obtaining large amounts of money from banks, since poor reviews could lead to frustrated merger plans and even legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Banks donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to “housing activists” like ACORN at about the same time they had were to apply for permission to merge and needed to comply with CRA regulations.

What is even more egregious is that ACORN received millions upon millions of tax dollars from various institutions of the U. S. and State governments and then applied that tax money to helping elect socialist-leaning legislators who wrote regulations and spending bills to funnel ever more money into the coffers of that corrupt institution. In the election cycle of 2008 ACORN was sued for voter fraud by around two dozen states and the ACORN’s founder’s brother was charged with embezzling several million dollars from that organization.

Barack Obama’s campaign funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to ACORN in 2008 through supposed non-partisan, non-profit subsidiaries of ACORN.

In late 2009 as a result of some “investigative reporting” by a young man posting as a pimp and a young woman posing as a prostitute surreptitiously videotaped ACORN employees in at least an half-dozen offices assisting this young man and woman on skirting the law on mortgages, income taxes and almost unbelievably offered assistance in their setting up houses of prostitution featuring teenaged illegal immigrant women.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress moved quickly (for them) to cut off funds to ACORN but the cutoff was temporary and before year’s end, at least one liberal Federal judge had ordered the ACORN funding reinstated.

ACORN, with its record of large-scale voter fraud on behalf of socialist Democrats, poses a greater danger to the U. S. system of government than any other single source at this time.

As a result of further legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, financial requirements to obtain housing loans were continually diminished over the 1990’s so that literally millions of loans were made to people whose credit histories clearly showed them to likely be incapable of repaying the loans they were granted. The laws of supply and demand worked and housing prices tripled over the 15 years from 1992 to 2007.

Lending institutions were not worried because federally established corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with banks like Wachovia bought their worthless paper and bundled these mortgages into “securities” and “derivatives” and hid their nature from investors. Those who knew how to “game” the system got filthy rich (this was truly dirty money) and bailed out before the crash. Others seem to assume that the housing “bubble” would go on forever. Not only U. S. investors but investors world-wide were caught in the cascade of exposure of the worthless paper held by supposedly “conservative” banking institutions.

“Central planning” does not work. The 1989 crash of the Soviet Union should have demonstrated that fact to the whole world. Socialists in the United States still believe that if it’s the “right people” doing the central planning, it will bring about eventual utopia.

Socialism is naïve in the extreme: it believes it can change human nature. There will always be those who make wrong choices in their lives and such mistakes must be corrected by individuals – not governments. Certainly the citizenry can opt to provide a “safety net” for people – individuals or communities – overtaken by disasters, as in natural disasters for communities and catastrophic health problems for individuals.

We are incapable of completely eliminating poverty or the sloth that often causes poverty. Poverty in the USA would be considered wealth in many nations around the world and yet socialists want central planning by government to do ever more.

A careful examination of the financial crash of 2008 will show its roots in socialism and the naiveté of U. S. politicians over the past 30 years. Of course some of these politicians have known what was happening and either encouraged it or did nothing to stop its progress.

If you’d like to see the healthcare system in the USA crash just like the housing and financial markets then continue to elect more socialists to the U. S. Legislature and the Presidency like we did in 2008. Also you will want to support the “cap and trade”, “card check” and healthcare legislation promulgated by socialist Democrats in the House and Senate and supported by President Obama as well as supporting the additional deficit spending in current bills before Congress.

What will happen when the healthcare system including Medicare/Medicaid and the Social Security System crash just like the housing and financial markets? What will happen when the whole economy crashes? Then we can try again the failed experiments like those in the Soviet Union and Communist China with the same results – loss of freedom and abject poverty for the “common man”.

Can it happen in the USA? You bet it can! As Edmond Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Conservative voters all over the USA met at “tea parties” (TEA – “Taxed Enough Already”) and political rallies in huge numbers and they have tried to stem the socialist tide in Washington. Those same conservative voters are urging conservative political candidates to run for office and to challenge “moderate” and “liberal” Republicans in primaries for the Congressional elections of 2010.

Will it be enough? God only knows!

December 15, 2009