Have you heard the joke about Lou Dobbs? He is going to run for president. Except, it’s not a joke. He told this to Fred Thompson, old TV actor, now old radio guy, during an interview today. Maybe old Lou will be hot Sarah’s running mate. Go ahead, picture it and laugh a little. Now, on to a very serious matter!
Public parks and schools started the Socialism ball rolling.
How to avoid Socialism? Move out of the United States. By strong public demand, we are already there.
The U.S. warriors against socialism are the Tea Baggers . . . . . “a group that believes it is standing for true American rights by invoking memories of a fight that was actually about merely getting Americans some representation in the British Parliament and not about full independence” take every opportunity to tell us we are on the horrible path towards a place we already are. And do they hate it? No, they probably love every aspect of the U.S. that makes us socialist already. Writer Sam Smith put the following list together. Everyone could probably add to it and feel free to do that in the comments. I would add “roads” and “landscaping”. I like it when cities pay for nice landscaping for city buildings, trees and such. Also included in socialism: Paved Alleys. Football stadiums! (at least parts of them). Police Departments. Sheriffs. Dog parks (which I could not live without). You get the idea. The only thing on this list that pisses me off are stadiums, which are really ways for filthy rich team owners to get even more filthy rich. They should have nothing to do with benefiting from taxes.
Smith writes: “If Obama is leading America anywhere, it is – like his immediate predecessors – towards fascism. Socialism is about the state running things on behalf of the public; fascism is about the state running things on behalf of corporations.”
Tea partiers, right-wingers and Palinites seem to prefer that things be run by the corporations, so they see Obama as threatening that trend, which is definitely fascist. The most obvious example of this is how Obama’s going to extend the Afghanistan war, probably by at least another 10 years. This was the report tonight on NBC “news”. War is the ultimate job-creator and corporate controller of societies and workers.
To counteract that, you would think the public would like the idea of becoming socialist instead of fascist. Most of the American public actually has no problem with socialist programs we already have, like food stamps, Medicare, Veterans Care, and things that generally keep people alive.
The following is Smith’s list of what makes the U.S. socialistic already, at least a bit. If we could expand the socialist parts that keep us populist, we could fight the trend towards corporatism more effectively. But before the invitable, to give the tea baggers and right-wingers the change to get Evil Socialism out of our lives, here are a few things they could do:
- Return to the old system of fire fighting in which blazes were handled by private fire brigades hired by private insurance companies. Brooke Harrington described the practice in Economic Sociology: “If you wanted a fire brigade to come to your aid in . . . emergencies, you had to join a kind of club with private membership fees. It worked like this: you ponied up the fees, the club gave you a plaque to put over your front door, and then if fire swept through the neighborhood, the club dispatched help, but they only assisted paying members. So if you didn’t have that plaque over your door, the fire rescue teams would pass you right on by. It would not be uncommon to find that your house burned down while the one next door would be saved.” Sounds a little like our health insurance system.
- End public education. Public schools – which strongly aided the growth of America – are about as socialistic as you can get. Obama, it should be noted, is trying to help reduce this deleterious influence by converting public schools into profit-making charter operations.
- Close down all federal highways or sell them off to the highest bidder so they can turn them into profit-making roads using tolls.
- Abolish Social Security, Medicare, food stamps and all other such welfare programs.
- End all government interference with the banking and financial industries. This would have recently saved us hundred of billions in bailout funds.
- End all veterans programs including closing veterans’ hospitals.
- Sell off all public transportation to unregulated private interests.
- Close all public hospitals, end public subsidies to other hospitals and privatize all ambulance service.
- End all government regulation of food or health products.
- End the practice of government plowing streets after a snow storm. As Boston mayor James Curly put it, “The Lord brought it; let the Lord take it away.”
There.
Feeling better yet?
Bet you never realized what a bunch of closet socialists we are.
We got there, though, because – instead of hurling theories and cliches at each other – we decided on a case by case basis who could do a particular job best. And the funny thing is, it’s worked pretty well.
The Final Point: People who complain about the threat of socialism remind me of the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran’s hospital. When he was laid off he received unemployment insurance and then got a SBA loan to start his own business. His bank funds were protected under federal deposit insurance laws. When he retired he went on Social Security and Medicare. The other day he got into his car, drove the federal interstate to the railroad station, parked in the public lot, took Amtrak to Washington and went to Capitol Hill to ask his congressman to get the government off his back.”
SOURCE: Sam Smith’s A Brief Guide to Avoiding Socialism.
It seems that the British took 2% from the colonists. Not sure if it was VAT or whether above a certain level. Ringo Starr once mused that maybe the wrong side won the Revolutionary War. They’re horrible, what with their single-payer health care and until recently, free uni education for those who qualified. They are sprinting towards fascism today, as is the USA. Why, I don’t know. Maybe the fascists have that much power today.
The teabaggers should be worried about privacy rights, habeus corpus, their right to not be treated as criminals by Fatherland Security personnel if they travel, not be subjected to being detained on highways while dumb leos try to prove their manhood to the detainees as well as the erosion or elimination of the Fourth Amendment. The teabaggers should have been upset about these very things a long time ago and maybe before 2002. These things went on with the blessings of the teabarfers until 2009 February. It was just fine when a republikkkan was in power to do these things. I guess then a police state was patriotic. Now, it’s just wrong to these people.
I thought that the teabarfers had been exposed as pawns in a game where insurance companies had provided transportation to protestors to make trouble at town hall meetings. Didn’t the protestors get a ride on an air-conditioned bus and get lunch and maybe $10 or so for raising hell at the meetings? I thought that insurance companies and others had been behind it. iirc this should have told the teabarfers something. They’re pawns who don’t even know what they’re talking about. They don’t care if an expensive war of choice causes death and birth-defects. They only care if the welfare queens get a free block of cheese; which, of course, isn’t even the real issue.
There are a lot of people like the man in the final paragraph of the article. They are beyond reason. You might as well try to reason with a mad dog. Socialism isn’t socialism when they receive it. They earned it. All these others are a drag on the economy and they are responsible for the mess we’re in. If they would just get out of the way and let ME get what I’m entitled to then everything would be alright. And, no, don’t ask me to give up my social security. I paid into it for a hundred years and I’m not going to forego it because I’m the only person in the country who ever earned anything. In my case, it’s not socialism. How dare you suggest I am receiving anything for nothing! I’d give you a piece of my mind but I have to go now to the bank and see if my social security has been deposited in my account.