A Tyrannical Government Takeover In The Making

If you're a regular reader here, you've seen warning after warning of this over the past few months.  If you're new, I urge you to consider this extremely disturbing development (emphasis mine):

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document.

The government at present has the authority to seize only banks.

Do you understand the implications here?  This means that the federal government can come out and whip up panic about any company, saying it's 'too big to fail', and then simply take over it in the interest of protecting the 'broader economy'. 

Here are some more details:

The administration's proposal contains two pieces. First, it would empower a government agency to take on the new role of systemic risk regulator with broad oversight of any and all financial firms whose failure could disrupt the broader economy. The Federal Reserve is widely considered to be the leading candidate for this assignment. But some critics warn that this could conflict with the Fed's other responsibilities, particularly its control over monetary policy.

The government also would assume the authority to seize such firms if they totter toward failure.

Besides seizing a company outright, the document states, the Treasury Secretary could use a range of tools to prevent its collapse, such as guaranteeing losses, buying assets or taking a partial ownership stake. Such authority also would allow the government to break contracts, such as the agreements to pay $165 million in bonuses to employees of AIG's most troubled unit.

What happened to the idea that failing businesses should fail?  This is everything that American capitalism fought against when it was first formed.  This is classic socialism, and a giant step toward outright Communism, where the State controls everything.  This is what the Obama administration has been doing: whipping up panic, then swooping in and taking over.

Hot Air has more analysis:

[P]eople do not deposit cash in hedge funds or insurance companies.  They invest in them, and assume certain risks when they do.  The Obama administration wants to socialize the risk by placing the government as a guarantor of sorts for the investors, but that will make people less likely to invest rather than more likely.  Part of the lure of investing comes from the potential reward of greater growth of funds than what can be found in bank accounts and bonds.  Limiting risk means limiting gains, and we can expect investors to shield themselves further than they may have in the past under those circumstances, while government spends more money in regulatory activity and the economy sags from lack of capital investment.

And that's assuming we have a Treasury competent at the task.  As Byron York notes, we hardly have a Treasury at all:

Late Monday, the Obama White House announced it has finally found a candidate to become the number-two official at the Treasury Department under Secretary Timothy Geithner.  Turns out he was in the White House all along.

Neal Wolin, a veteran of the Clinton Treasury Department who last month left his post at the Hartford Financial Services Group to become a White House economic adviser, will now become Deputy Secretary of the Treasury — if, that is, his various seven-figure bonuses and stock options from Hartford pass populist muster on today's Capitol Hill.

Obama also found candidates for a couple of other top Treasury jobs.  But they face what could be weeks of investigation and confirmation proceedings in the Senate. And that means that at this moment — when we've just had the unveiling of Geithner's long-awaited plan to deal with the toxic assets that still threaten the economy — it's quite possible we could reach May with just a handful of top officials staffing what is arguably, in this financial crisis, the most important department in the U.S. government.

This is the first leg of a complete government takeover of America.  If the financial industry -- including investments and the stock market -- falls, you can count on energy and health care coming next.  When that happens, America as we know it -- and as the Founders designed and intended it -- will cease to exist.  When the government controls your savings, your income, your investments, your ability to travel to/from work or leisure locations, the cost of all goods (through energy), and every decision about what medical treatments you can or cannot obtain, what is left?

Nothing.  You have become a slave to government, and America has become transformed into a communist state.

This is no surprise to people who understand who Barack Obama is: a radical, anti-American, Lefty liberal Marxist.  He pledged to re-make America, and he is doing so.  The financial industry is the first major milestone in doing that, because it will eliminate free markets.  Why do that?  Because free markets cannot be artificially controlled by government, and control is the key.  Obama has just one agenda: to take over as much of America as possible as quickly as possible.  That's the only realistic explanation for the way he has conducted himself over the past few weeks and months.

In support of that notion, I give you excerpts from Jerry Pournelle's insights on how tyrants come to 'save' us (emphasis mine):

The sad truth is that democracy itself is often unstable. Intellectuals lose faith. Democracy is not flashy. It falls out of fashion. The intelligentsia feel scorned, unappreciated, and turn to new theories. 

There are other pressures. Republics stand until the citizens begin to vote themselves largess from the public treasury. When the plunder begins, those plundered feel no loyalty to the nation—and the beneficiaries demand ever more, until few are left unplundered. Eventually everyone plunders everyone, the state serving as little more than an agency for collecting and dispensing largess. The economy falters. Inflation begins. Deficits mount. Something must be done. Strong measures are demanded, but nothing can be agreed to. 

In Weimar Germany the price of a postage stamp went to 8 billion marks. In China, Latin America, many of the new African nations, inflation has exceeded 1000%. The middle class is destroyed. The economy collapses. Democratic institutions cannot cope.

Enter the strong man, who will save the state. 

For more than two thousand years the decline of democracy has been the precursor of the tyrant, who comes on stage as the nation's protector. Sometimes he will do no more than end the strife: better a single master than hundreds who cannot agree. Julius Caesar was such a one, Francisco Franco another. They promise no more than order. They do not seek to reconstruct the nation, and they do not construct a full-fledged totalitarian state. So long as their rule is not opposed, so long as the people are silent, then most are safe.

Hitler was hailed as a semi-mystical hero who would purify Germany ... In 1929, on his fiftieth birthday, Stalin was hailed as: the greatest military leader of all times and nations; Lenin's Perpetuator Creating the Theory of Construction of Socialism; The Theoretician and Leader of the Fight for Peace and Brotherhood among the Peoples; the Military Genius of Our Time; Mirrored in the Literature of the Peoples of the World; Teacher and Inspired Leader of the World Proletariat; Coryphaeus of World Science; The Peoples Happiness; Brilliant Thinker and Scholar. The praise for Great Stalin gushed forth, and not merely in the Soviet Union. Western intellectuals seemed equally eager to heap praises on the dictator who was transforming Russia into a modern nation. The era of social engineering was at hand.  

By 1938 Stalin had murdered more than 12 million people, nor was this any great secret. The full horror was still hidden, but it was impossible to hide it all. The evidence was there, but Western intellectuals refused to look...  Even when Stalin formed a pact with Hitler, giving  him access to still more victims, a hard core of intellectuals continued to give him allegiance. Why should they not?  They had already accepted the worst.

Self-deception never ends.

The truth is that no nation is safe. Tyrants seldom come openly, their hands dripping with blood, their eyes blazing with hate. More often they come as friends of the people, tireless workers for the public good, heroes who will save the nation; who will cut the Gordian knot of parliamentary babble; who will carry out the people's will.

They come with promises. If we will disarm ourselves, they will provide professionals to protect us. If we give over our property they will assure us jobs. Crime will be abolished. Poverty will vanish. Together we will build a nation worthy of the future.

The temptation is large, because we all, at one time or another, have longed to have an end to striving; to create the future and have done with it. Can we not, by one supreme act, solve all human problems? The way will be hard, but after heroic effort the straggle will be over. War on poverty; war on ignorance; war on illness; war on cancer, mental illness; one supreme act of war, and then eternal triumph. The strife will cease . . .

We know better, of course. We all know the price of liberty; eternal vigilance. Jefferson said it well: "the tree of liberty is a delicate plant. It must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

If Obama gets his three legs of the America-killing stool (financial, energy, health care), I think the case can reasonably be made that he will become a tyrant.  He's already shown no hesitation to silence those who dissent, and he has embraced a zealot-like following that mindlessly follows his dictates no matter how self-destructive or hypocritical they may be.  Do we really think he'll moderate when his hand influences essentially all areas of American lives?

I'm currently reading George Orwell's 1984, and I have to tell you that, although the book is fictional and thus deliberately exaggerated to make its point, there are some incredibly disturbing parallels with today's events.  I will write a full review when I finish it, but I highly encourage you to read the book and draw your own comparisons.

The bottom line is that if we want our kids, grandkids, and future descendants to grow up in a free, prosperous America like the one with which we have been blessed, this absolutely must stop.  NOW.  Before it's too late.  Spread the word about what's happening to everyone you know, get informed, and start letting your voice and votes be heard at every possible chance.  The future of America literally depends on it.

There's my two cents.