-By Frank Salvato
Like many conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans who didn’t want to ape the caustic rhetoric of the neo-Marxist Progressive-Left used during the entirety of the Bush Administration, I promised myself to refrain from immediately assuming that Barack Obama was going to bring with him to the White House the backroom politics of Chicago’s Democrat Machine. I employed the Reagan doctrine of “trust but verify.” Well, the verdict is in and the political tactics and policies that Barack Obama has brought to the Executive Branch are not only of the old school “Chicago Way,” they are literally neo-Marxist and naïve.
Let me explain the “Chicago Way.”
Chicago and Cook County, Illinois, have been under Democrat control for as long as I have been alive and before. Most of us grew up watching newsmen like Fahey Flynn, listening to radio journalists like Wally Phillips and reading print journalists like Mike Royko, we were provided a daily examination of the Richard J. Daley Administration; we were afforded an advanced degree in Chicago-style political politics. It is the politics of smoky backrooms and “old boy networks,” patronage, pay-to-play contracting, and governmental protection and appointment of campaign contributors and their families. In Chicago, if it’s about power or money for the elected class and/or the enrichment and advancement of their political allies it most likely becomes governmental policy and viewed as necessary for “saving grace” of society.
From Mr. Obama’s campaign staff and tactics to his initial executive actions, from his White House cabinet appointments to the administration’s protection of AIG, each and every action has been textbook Chicago politics, and why not. Barack Obama cut his teeth and “rolled his bones” within the caldron of Chicago’s political arena.
In a previous article titled, This Is What a Vote for Obama Gets You, I tried to convey, if even in the most rudimentary of ways, what we could expect if Barack Obama were to be elected President of the United States. Well, that has come to pass and we are now faced with the prospect of having to – of needing to – abandon our apathy for governmental oversight while becoming learned in political and governmental current events.
Two disturbing examples of why we have to return to the frontlines of governmental and political oversight present in the issues of the AIG bailout and newly passed legislation to recoup bailout monies used to satisfy retention incentive bonuses set in place before any bailout monies were issued.
The feigned outrage by some of the very people who manufactured the subprime mortgage crisis (specifically US Rep. Barney Frank and US Sen. Chris Dodd) over the $165 million dollars in contractually obligated retention bonuses is, in fact, a traditional Chicago political tactic to redirect attention and deflect.
Consider this question: Which would cause you to be more outraged, $165 million in retention bonuses paid to Americans so that they would stay beyond their contracts to finish the projects they were hired to do, or billions of dollars being funneled, not only to corporations that have already benefited from the taxpayer bailout, but to foreign banks?
While the Washingtonian elected class – especially the Democrats – are howling about $165 million dollars in retention bonuses, the same corporation responsible for satisfying these contractual obligations, AIG, has paid out billions of dollars – billions – to corporations like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, whom have already received taxpayer bailout monies. Additionally, because AIG is an international corporation, they have issued billions of dollars – billions – to foreign financial institutions: $13 billion to British banks, $17 billion to German banks, $19 billion for French banks and $5 billion to the Swiss. In all $62 billion in taxpayer monies have been sent to foreign financial institutions. Glenn Beck did a fabulous job of breaking down the math.
So, while the Obama Administration and the neo-Marxists in Congress (specifically US Rep. Barney Frank and US Sen. Chris Dodd) focus the media’s attention – and public outrage – on $165 million in contractually mandated retention bonuses that are, admittedly, repugnant to accept at this economically troublesome time (not to mention unpatriotic) there is little attention being paid to corporate double-dipping and the outsourcing of American taxpayer dollars to private foreign financial institutions.
To add insult to outrage, the US House of Representatives – led by one of the most inept and ideologically motivated Speakers in the history of the United States, Nancy Pelosi – has passed legislation, by a 328 to 93 margin, that would levy a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that have received at least $5 billion in government bailout money.
While this legislative move sounds good at first reading and certainly panders to the public’s outrage, it flies in the face of contract law and threatens the Capitalist system of the West to its core. It spotlights the incredible danger of ruling by emotion; of hastily ramming legislation through the congressional process. It also spotlights the reason why the Founders and Framers crafted a system by which legislation was debated first in committee and then on the floors of the House and the Senate. Congress, under the agenda-driven stewardship of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have usurped that process to craft legislation since the beginning of the 111th Congress, instead crafting legislation behind closed doors employing only their crony fellowship. Their legislation has enacted laws that void contracts and outsource taxpayer money to foreign financial institutions.
It would all make for an interesting movie script if we weren’t talking about the future of our country and the state of nation we want to bestow upon our children and our children’s children.
This is classic Chicago politics. When you are doing something detrimental to your political well-being, something that would, without question, motivate the electorate to remove you from office, when you are enacting policy that you know the public would overwhelmingly oppose; distract, deflect and re-direct. Pander to the electorate’s sitcom attention span by tantalizing them with a “bright, shiny thing.” It works every time in Chicago, that’s why Illinois is cobalt blue.
So, pay no attention to the ongoing raid of the US Treasury by the neo-Marxists hell-bent on making the American people conform to the one-world order. I mean really, global warming is afoot!
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Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal . He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us
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