Something absolutely outrageous happened last night in Congress, and I'm afraid a number of you missed it.
In an attempt to dramatize the phony outrage the Obama Administration and their accomplices in Congress are voicing over amendments they specifically authorized in order to exempt the bonuses from major campaign donor AIG as part of the Obama bailout legislation, they are targeting a new class of rich kulaks as Enemies Of the People...and dancing on the Constitution to do it.
In a move aimed specifically at AIG, the House voted to impose a 90 percent tax on bonuses given to employees with family incomes above $250,000 at companies that gotten at least $5 billion in government bailout money.Note that this was constructed so as not to apply to Northern Trust, the company that gave the Obamas their below market sweetheart loan for the mansion in Chicago Tony Rezco helped them buy. Nor will it likely apply to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae because of their government charter.
For all the kabuki outrage the actors on Capitol Hill are putting on for your benefit, the fact remains that that the AIG executives did nothing illegal, the bonuses in question were contractually mandated as part of their employment,and the Obama Administration knew about it and took extra care to see that the bonuses were protected as part of the ridiculous $783 billion bail out.
Even more serious, this kind of selective enforcement is blatantly illegal and strictly forbidden by the Constitution, which specifically prohibits ex post facto laws and bills of attainder- because the Founders realized that a jumped up government headed by a wanna be demagogue might come along and be tempted to use Congress to create punitive laws to attack his personal scapegoats and enemies.
Hopefully one of them will take this to court, where it will be revealed for what it is.
For those of you who don't know who the kulaks were, they were a class of prosperous, land owning farmers who resisted Stalin's collectivization. Because of that, they were doing far better than Stalin's forced collectives and making the government look as incompetent and short sighted as it actually was. The way Stalin dealt with them was to use propaganda to demonize them to the masses, appropriate their wealth 'for the people' and then send the NKVD in to ship them to Siberia as criminals.
That's exactly what we have here..where American citizens are being intimidated into returning money they lawfully earned to make tax cheats like Charlie Rangel and Tim Geithner look good and cover up what the Obama administration and its allies in Congress tried to slip through.
In this context,the ACORN mobs targeting the AIG executives' houses and the bill curently in the Senate establishing that mandatory domestic security force Obama wants to be 'just as strong, just as well funded' as our military takes on a sinister new context.
In Stalin's Russia, the term 'kulak' was easily expanded to include any of the State's enemies once the original kulaks were disposed of. Remember that before you succumb to the Obama Administration's little class envy shadow show.
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Chilling! Thanks for the history lesson on Stalin. I refered to some of your text, the reference was spot-on.
I was reading a new bio re Boris Yeltsin a month ago. It detailed how Yeltsin's father was reclassified as a 'kulak' & shipped to a barren industrial Siberian region for factory & foundry labour & work. The family had to dig a hole in the ground as a makeshift home. They had to create a door from bundled sticks & were allowed just enough coal & oil in order to survive the Winters. Most of the people were expected to die. ( Sc, Stalin's overpopulation solution )
What struck me re your column was your reference to the conveniently expandable nature of the term 'kulak' : Yeltsin's father was not in any conceivable fashion a 'kulak' , yet they reclassified him as some sort of 2d level kulak or honourary kulak or some such bureaucratic gobbledegook ( or gobbledygook ). That bureausilliness stuck to the mind perhaps more than anything else from that book whose title I can't call to mind ( even though it was just a month ago ! ) Hence you may understand how startled I was to see a direct reference re that subject from you en passant. This is not the 1st time. Either I'm prescient or you are prescient or we both are because we are hardly approaching matters from the same political angle & perspective! ( I personally hate the post-1978 Republicans as much as the Democrats. )
As Steve said, ' Spot - on ' !
signed, dragon or dinosaur
Thank you both.
Recommended reading: "The Black book Of Communism", which details the campaign against the Kulaks, the Stalin-created Ukraine Famine , and many other things leftists and 'progressives' in the West who championed the Soviets would rather be forgotten.
Dinosaur, we agree on much because in essence, I'm a classic liberal in the old sense of the word. So is Rush Limbaugh, BTW, as Joshua's Army member Ymarsakar noted.And so was Ronald Reagan. although I can understand that you don't see him that way.
Regards,
Rob
Nice article, and I had a very similar reaction to these news. There is another side to prosecution of these kulaks and the Russian people. When they were sent to Siberia and their farms were confiscated, their produce rotted. In fact there were very few farmers left who knew how to perform their job and there was mass starvation in the Soviet Union. Millions of people died. So as we watch this government attempt to focus all the public anger and attention at AIG executives, all the bankers in this country realize that they may be next. I am not a banker but I don't feel all that safe either. I have seen this movie before and know how it ends.
To ff : my busy schedule does not afford me a chance to follow radio commentators such as the 1 whereto you have made reference ; however, I do recall that that person was involved in a prescription-drug scandal some years ago. IF ( I emphasise IF ) that person was 1 of those supporters of the unconstitutional fed drugs prohibitions ( as was claimed at the time ), then he deserves every bit of opprobrium, infamy, & public disgracing which was meted out to him at the time. I emphasise IF because I was not an ear-witness to the comments which were imputed to him.
On a related subject, perhaps I can give you a fresh example of the GOPs vying with the Dems in pursuit of the prize of the biggest bunch of hypocrites. Recently, it was announced that growers of medicinal hemp in states wherein medicinal hemp is legal will not be the future subjects of unconstitutional fed persecutions. This is a small baby-step turning back towards the Constitution. It's 1 of only 2 things from the current Obama government I agree with ( the other is moving off-budget items back on-budget, though I agree with your cynical view that this probably is just front-loading the highest possible budget-numbers in order to make the lower 4th year, re-election year, numbers more palatable to the electorate, but I digress ).
This matter, a purely state matter, has been voted on & approved by 13 states including California. Heaven knows that I rarely agree with California re anything ; however, this simple, humane, Christain permission for severely ill, particularly dying, people to access a simple treatment which keeps them from vomiting from treatments such as chemotherapy which they must endure for such tragedies as cancer, & c, is the morally & legally right thing to do. California thus proves the veracity of the old adage that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Out steps the creepy Senator Grassley, whining & complaining & throwing a childish fit re this decision. Grassley, a Republican, had run the Senate financial budget committee during the GOP era. During that era, he pushed through every conceivable pork-barrel project ( I think they're now termed ear-marks ) for himself & his chums, & he pushed through a special new tax increase on Americans working abroad ( The US is the only Western nation to tax BOTH everyone working in the country --AND-- all citizens abroad. )
He has the cheek to be both a long-term partner in the fed budget mess & an hypocritical sneerer at the rights of the people in the states & the states themselves.
As Clarence Thomas, the only honest judge in the United States Supreme Court Legislature ( a friend of mine coined that expression & I want to give her full credit by stating that the term is not my invention ) correctly pointed out in his famous dissent to an anti-constitutional power grab by the Supremes re the states' medicinal hemp ca 2005, there is nothing in the constitution --NOTHING-- which grants any fed jurisdiction in this matter. There is nothing in Article 1, Section 8, which is the fed powers' enumeration section, which grants any jurisdiction to the feds. There is nothing in the Amendments which deals with this. Furthermore, the 9th & 10th Amendments explicitly state that if a power is not explicitly granted to the feds by Article 1, Section 8, or by the Amendments, then it resides with either the states or the people. The people of 13 states have voted democratically on this issue. This is none of Grassley's business. But, unfortunately, he is too, too typical of those patronising, hypocritical, priggish hypocrites on Capitol Hill which will recite their theatrical lines re how they oppose big government & big government spending. The notion that they would deny DYING people something which would keep them from throwing up is the sort of arrogance which angers me. I can't believe how low those creatures are.
Having long ago worked a number of 3d shifts ( over-night shifts ) in convenience stores during the decades, particularly in the 1980s Depression Era, ( for extra money, thereby allowing me to build some additional savings), I can assure you that I have witnessed every possible type of person you could imagine : the threatening drunks & alcoholics which were unable to comprehend that alcohol sales had specifically-limited sale hours ; the arrogant tobacco addicts which were killing themselves with their uncontrolled habits ( in some ways, they were the worst, I remember 1, obviously dying from cigarette smoking, with a yellow ring round their mouth, coughing & wheezing & with the remains of their latest cigarette still clinging to their mouth, angrily & arrogantly demanding their cigarette packs ) ; the early morning commuters which weren't on anything, just angry or half-asleep or drowsily brain-dead ; & then there were the quiet pot-heads ( I don't know if that term is still used ) drifting in & buying their Hostess Twinkies & saying please & thank you & behaving themselves & slowly paying for their purchases with carefully counted out nickels & dimes ( later quarters, depending on the decade ) & smiling & drifting out -- they were consistently the nicest customers. If the cops happened to be passing through for their free coffees (stores' own invariable policy -- they wanted the cops to stop by), the cops never bothered them & would carefully watch them as they left in order to confirm that they were pedestrians -- which they ALWAYS were. In short, they were better behaved than even the sober morning commuters.
With the exception of alcohol ( which was covered by a special, temporary constitutional amendment in the 1920s ), all of these 'recreational drugs' were legal at the fed level till the 1930s. In fact, hemp ( the real name ) grew as a common weed at the sides of the roads in this country. Somehow, everyone seemed to get by quite nicely sans unconstitutional fed regulations & fed propaganda. All the recreational drugs were legal at state level almost everywhere till roughly the end of the Edwardian Era ( ca 1910 ). The true hard drugs might require checking into a specially licensed house which would sell them at real cost, not inflated illegal costs. The guests would have to be sober before departing. These houses, in turn, as legal entities, could be inspected by the police at any time they chose. Houses of prostitution were also legal almost everywhere till the end of the Edwardian Era ( ca 1910 ). The girls were examined by doctors, licensed & photographed, & re-checked by doctors every single week. The Victorians & Edwardians were not such prudes PRIVATELY & amongst other consenting adults as the typecasting & stereotyping re them would suggest!
I'm not suggesting an extreme uber libertarian position, but, at the very least, the feds could be removed from the unconstitutionally invaded areas of personal rights & state-level decision making. But, other than an occasional honest Clarence Thomas, no-one, in either party, follows the very constitution which created their organisations ( viz, the houses of Congress, the US Supreme Court Legislature, & c ).
If, perchance, Obama really, really blows it, & the GOP storms into both houses of Congress, like they did in the 1994 mid-term elections, will they really introduce reform? Will they really abolish something specific by name? Will they really pull the feds out of an unconstitutional area? Or will they, after a brief spurt of activity, just mope & complain & point fingers & increase the budgets with more pork-barrel projects ( ear-marks ) & persecute people dying of diseases & the people supplying them with medicinal hemp? In other words, will they just be a bunch of creepy Grassleys? The Declaration Of Independence & the Constitution are printed on hemp. Oh, the irony!
I hope that example, just 1 of a multitude, will help to demonstrate that the GOP is not much of an improvement in comparison with the competing DEM brand.
Apologies for the length of this post. -- Best Regards -- signed, dragon or dinosaur
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