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| 11-19-2011, 09:22 AM | #1 |
| The "Fascist Communist" | |
| 11-19-2011, 01:06 PM | #2 |
 Originally posted by smc  I've been checking some of the comments below news articles off of sites like Yahoo, I've noticed a reoccurring theme. Apparently there is a small segment in the US that is convinced that Obama is a Fascist Communist. Now, I was always with the understanding that a Fascist Communist would be a good example of an oxymoron. I'm still not seeing how that relates to Obama. I started to think about the whole right / left thing that is going on in the US and Canada right now and perhaps this new blending of opposites isn't so unusual after all. Obviously not to the extremes of Fascism and Communism, but perhaps there is some blending of opposites depending on your viewpoint. Some of my friends think I lean too far to the right yet on this forum I'm apparently a lefty. On the righty side....I don't particularly believe in the whole union thing being a firm believer in measuring the amount you get paid based on what you do / your productivity rather than how long your bum has been stuck to the same seat. I also believe there should be user fees for services or those services will become unsustainable (like Greece). I get very annoyed with people that want to use the tax dollars that I pay so that they don't have to get up in the morning to go to work. On my lefty side, I don't believe certain services are sustainable if opened up to the markets. It's all about human nature and how it opens it up for eventual abuse. I also believe that without proper regulation (not red tape), the world market is doomed to fail. Without proper regulation, there is no way to keep governments and corporate interests semi-honest and on a tight financial leash. I think there are enough examples recently to put to bed the whole "self regulating/self correcting" market viewpoint. I also don't particularly like what the financial markets now represent. I hope my kids are inspired to do something real. I'm not sure that their kids will look up to them if the only stories they can share are ones based on slaughtering the competition and downsizing. So what about you...are you a lefty or a righty or somewhere in between?  ) I suppose I'm "none of the above"..........I do closely relate to a "sewer socialist" though.......... Sewer Socialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quote: Sewer Socialism was a term, originally more or less pejorative, for the American socialist movement that centered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and existed from around 1892 to 1960.[1] The term purportedly was coined by Morris Hillquit at the 1932 Milwaukee convention of the Socialist Party of America, as an ironic commentary on the Milwaukee socialists and their perpetual boasting about the excellent public sewer system in the city  IF we would have listened ALL of western history would have been quite different..........  I love this ant-socialist line........ Quote: "they say the factories produce immorality, tuberculosis, and crime. I don't believe it. Rear a girl in a proper home, with a proper mother, and she will not go wrong because she receives low wages"  Last edited by jeffkrol; 11-19-2011 at 01:14 PM. | |
| 11-19-2011, 02:34 PM | #3 |
| Originally posted by smc I've been checking some of the comments below news articles off of sites like Yahoo, I've noticed a reoccurring theme. Apparently there is a small segment in the US that is convinced that Obama is a Fascist Communist. | |
| 11-19-2011, 08:42 PM | #4 |
| Originally posted by jeffkrol I do closely relate to a "sewer socialist" though.......... Sewer Socialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Milwaukee Sewer Socialism - Wisconsin Historical Society I have a history book that was written during WW1. The book was then re-released during the depression (includes a section about how the war ended and the financial issues that were unfolding during the time of it's writing). It's an interesting read as unlike many history books that report the facts and issues "after the fact", the book tries to pull together some understanding but the history is just unfolding. You see quite a few parallels between the first part of the 1900s and today. Originally posted by boriscleto You can thank the Doughy Pantload aka Jonah Goldberg for that. Quote: Goldberg's career as a pundit was launched following his mother Lucianne Goldberg's role in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal | |
| 11-20-2011, 07:11 AM | #5 |
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WWI......................> WWII Law of unintended consequences......... Yet we never learn from history.. More recent history........ http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4544/sewer_socialism_down_the_drain/ Quote: Norquist and the city brought in United Water, a subsidiary of French-owned multinational Suez Environnement, promising cost savings and major benefits. Unfortunately, United Water cut staff by one-third, cut back on quality control and unleashed numerous discharges of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Michigan. The city terminated its contract with United Water but kept the system in private hands and recently turned the sewage system over to another French firm, Veolia. Numerous U.S. cities that have privatized their water supply—Atlanta, Ga., Indianapolis and Gary, Ind., Stockton, Calif., and Hoboken, N.J., among others—have experienced a variety of severe problems including sharp price increases, infrastructure failures and plummeting water quality. http://www.thenation.com/blog/last-sewer-socialists Quote: American politics being what they are, Zeidler was never accorded the full measure of honor due him in his own land. But the rest of the world will continue to take inspiration from the recollection of the white-haired Milwaukee socialist whose faith in the possibility of a better world withstood the batterings of depression, war, McCarthyism, the Cold War, and the Nixon, Reagan and Bush eras, "The concept that motivates us is a community good as opposed to the concept of an individual pursuing their own self-interest and that somehow the public good comes out of that," Zeidler told me not long before his death, still raising the red flag he carried across the 20th century and into the 21st. "Our concept is that a pursuit of the good of the whole produces the best condition for the good of the individual." http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/21/the_last_socialist_mayor http://www.milwaukeepublishers.com/excerpt.html Last edited by jeffkrol; 11-20-2011 at 08:03 AM. | |
| 11-20-2011, 10:15 AM | #6 |
| Originally posted by jeffkrol WWI......................> WWII Law of unintended consequences......... Yet we never learn from history.. More recent history........ Sewer Socialism Down the Drain? -- In These Times "Numerous U.S. cities that have privatized their water supply—Atlanta, Ga., Indianapolis and Gary, Ind., Stockton, Calif., and Hoboken, N.J., among others—have experienced a variety of severe problems including sharp price increases, infrastructure failures and plummeting water quality." The Liberal government has undertaken a program to privatize government programs for the railway, medical records, B.C. Hydro, B.C. Ferries, medical services such as food and cleaning. BC Hydro; BC Hydro's various facilities generate between 43,000 and 54,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually. Barely 17 months after he was appointed to what many believe is the best job in the public sector, BC Hydro boss Dave Cobb is walking away from the high-profile, $550,000-a-year post to return to the private sector. The bookkeeping manoeuvre enabled the Crown corporation to claim a profit of $447 million last year, rather than a deficit of $249 million. BC Ferries; This one is particularly interesting as it shows how blind market rules can balloon government costs for a certain types of services. Foreign national David Hahn was hired almost nine years ago to remove BC Ferries from government interference and to run it more like a private corporation. He has come under heavy fire for his $1.2-million annual compensation, as well as for a $315,000-per-year pension he is set to collect. BC Ferries has said it expects to lose $20 million in the fiscal year 2011-2012. This is in spite of a total overseas entries to Canada through BC from 2009 to 2010 being up 9.1 per cent year over year. Fares have risen significantly under Hahn's management, noted that vehicle traffic is at an 11-year low and passenger traffic is at a 20-year low. “It shows how BC Ferries has been run aground since the BC Liberals started treating our ferries as a cruise ship experience instead of an integral part of our transportation network and part of the highways,” BC Ferries boss David Hahn retiring early at the end of this year BCRail; The current provincial government has been accused of fabricating falsehoods about the state of its debts and viability in order to justify the deal with CN. Police raided BC Legislature Dec. 28, 2003 over corruption regarding the sale. Controversy over CN's management of the line has focused on layoffs, toxic spills and other safety concerns, and cuts in service to some regions. Government statements posted online from the BC Legislature; We are seeing a shocking trend towards privatization schemes in our province: railway, medical records, B.C. Hydro, B.C. Ferries, medical services such as food and cleaning. Many of them are fraught with mismanagement and end up costing us more. Fines, derailments, broken ferries, broken promises, dirty hospitals — all a product of the bottom line. The 3Ps — public-private partnerships. I see them more as pilfering the public purse. To profit from doing public services means just one more hand in the purse, and the analogy that the private sector can do it better is now showing that this is untrue. The government's contract with Maximus, for example, comes to mind: a privatized program instituted by the government with no real business case or long-term analysis. The company today is paying fines for poor-performance levels anticipated, most likely, as part of its business costs. Unfortunately, the government refuses to make public what those fines really are. [ Page 1982 ] There is no improvement to service as seen before the service was privatized. In fact, services are inferior and will prove to be more expensive. The government cut staff significantly before turning MSP systems and operations to Maximus, so today people compare how bad delivery was before or how it was as bad as compared to the day the services were first cut in order to accommodate the private company. BC Legislature - Hansard Interim Index (Subject and speaker entries), First Session, 38th Parliament | |
| 11-20-2011, 11:25 AM | #7 |
| Originally posted by smc I've been checking some of the comments below news articles off of sites like Yahoo, I've noticed a reoccurring theme. Apparently there is a small segment in the US that is convinced that Obama is a Fascist Communist. Now, I was always with the understanding that a Fascist Communist would be a good example of an oxymoron. I'm still not seeing how that relates to Obama. Quote: I started to think about the whole right / left thing that is going on in the US and Canada right now and perhaps this new blending of opposites isn't so unusual after all. Obviously not to the extremes of Fascism and Communism, but perhaps there is some blending of opposites depending on your viewpoint. Some of my friends think I lean too far to the right yet on this forum I'm apparently a lefty. On the righty side....I don't particularly believe in the whole union thing being a firm believer in measuring the amount you get paid based on what you do / your productivity rather than how long your bum has been stuck to the same seat. I also believe there should be user fees for services or those services will become unsustainable (like Greece). I get very annoyed with people that want to use the tax dollars that I pay so that they don't have to get up in the morning to go to work. Unions are about the people who profit off labor not being able to gang up on each worker as a helpless individual: the particular rules are a different matter, not the basis of people having unions: unions actually *preserve* the capitalist system in a way by providing a check on unsustainable greed and the oligarchies that develop when it's all about who individually or as a class has most of the *money.* If unions aren't something we like these days, it's actually because of the Right's *union -*busting* laws and deregulations that have meant that the only unions that can survive have to be big enough to be almost the same *size* as a big corporation. No locals anymore or one-shop-unions: that came from the Right, not the unions themselves. Quote: On my lefty side, I don't believe certain services are sustainable if opened up to the markets. It's all about human nature and how it opens it up for eventual abuse. I also believe that without proper regulation (not red tape), the world market is doomed to fail. Without proper regulation, there is no way to keep governments and corporate interests semi-honest and on a tight financial leash. I think there are enough examples recently to put to bed the whole "self regulating/self correcting" market viewpoint. I also don't particularly like what the financial markets now represent. I hope my kids are inspired to do something real. I'm not sure that their kids will look up to them if the only stories they can share are ones based on slaughtering the competition and downsizing. So what about you...are you a lefty or a righty or somewhere in between? I'm not defined by this. It's an analogy with flaws, but if you imagine bending the 'political spectrum' as they reckon it, (with Libertarians as 'far right' and Greens as 'Far Left' around into a circle, I'd be somewhere around the zone where *those* two sort of start blending together: I believe in keeping personal responsibilities personal and social responsibilities social. If you look at that circle and see where the actual edges are, The Right tends to want to mandate personal responsibilities with social power: ie, 'govern people's lives based on 'morals' and turn our social responsibilities to each other into a social-darwinist 'rugged individualist' (if you're rich) thing. Whereas the 'Left' if you mean Communism wants to subordinate it all to some notion of 'the common good.' ....via control. (Yes, I'd be more on the 'left' by either reckoning. But. I'd be up or down there where Greens and social libertarians meet: I'm not wanting to 'compromise' so much between Commies and Nazis, ( how you might define a 'moderate' these days, with the Dems and Republicans as 'less extreme' Commies and fascists respectively: ...I value other things entirely: personal and minority freedom *and* social and environmental and economic cooperation. There's a reason we have a government and guarantees of liberty. And that reason is not just a means to an end for wealthy interests to stack the deck in their own favor, and for controlling religious factions to impose their own authority on everyone. . | |
| 11-22-2011, 02:30 AM | #8 |
| What is the difference between Fascism and Communism? | |
| 11-22-2011, 06:46 AM | #9 |
| Originally posted by fisheye freak Answer? Not much !Fascism is central government control with financial concessions to cronies of the party. Communism is central government control with financial concessions to cronies of the party. | |
| 11-22-2011, 07:19 AM | #10 |
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I like this answer.......... Quote: Deregulation and lower taxes at the top have created a new class of corporate plutocrats. They spend hundreds of millions to tilt elections. They want to control government by starving it and shift their taxes onto everyone else. They want to send more to the top, less to the bottom, and squeeze the middle. People they elected gave us a devalued dollar, budget and trade deficits, foreclosures, unemployment, a shrinking middle class, a depression, the biggest transfer of wealth in history, torture, rendition, concentration camps, secret tribunals, invasion under false pretenses, spying on citizens, ignoring laws, suspending civil rights and war that never ends. Must we wait for genocide to call this what it is? Fascism is when capital controls government. Fascism is the idea that big business should do whatever it wants. This idea gnaws at America like a viperous worm. It kills unions, jobs, the economy, the middle class. No democracy has come into existence or long endured in the absence of a strong middle class. When plutocracy replaces democracy, oligarchy and dictatorship follow. Plutocrats like Krupp brought Hitler to power, thinking they could profit. The Koch brothers and their ilk are making the same mistake; they’re unleashing hate they can’t control. It happened to Italy and Germany; it’s happening here. James Sutton Des Moines | |
| 11-22-2011, 07:27 AM | #11 |
| Originally posted by jeffkrol (I understand that his target is to make Government small enough to flush down the toilet!) | |
| 11-22-2011, 07:43 AM | #12 |
| 11-22-2011, 08:07 AM | #13 |
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Yes we are still "free".............. AIG's Greenberg sues U.S. for $25 billion - chicagotribune.com Quote: The former head of the American International Group sued the U.S. government for $25 billion on Monday, claiming officials should have bailed out AIG instead of taking it over. Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and his Starr International Co. accused officials of discriminating against AIG. | |
| 11-22-2011, 08:13 AM | #14 |
| Originally posted by Nesster With all due respect and sympathy to these views - the US is far from being communist or fascist, and far from being run solely for the benefit of big money. There are far too many different factions and corporate philosophies and political opinions amongst the rich. It isn't like they all have to be a part of a politburo or carry a party card. What there is is too much big money influence in politics - and therefore too little is done for the common good. To a good extent, this has always been the case throughout our history, though there have been times of greater or lesser orientation. These days, one of the big things - kind of like during the heyday of newspapers - there is a convergence of money, interest, and control associated with the election process. You have to have a media presence (and the media is big money owned), which costs a lot of money (which means you have to solicit big money), and you have to kowtow to the media's 'journalism'. There may be a conservative or liberal bias, but more importantly there is a class bias to the whole set up: the people involved are all upper middle class to wealthy, and therefore have an understanding amongst themselves. Just depressing how one man, unelected, could have so effectively permeated the Debt Super Committee and predetermined the outcome. All outside the democratic process! | |
| 11-22-2011, 08:50 AM | #15 |
| Originally posted by stevewig Yes, I of course you are correct! Just depressing how one man, unelected, could have so effectively permeated the Debt Super Committee and predetermined the outcome. All outside the democratic process! What you have in Norquist is a dictator (someone who isn't elected but controls what the government does). | |
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