To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine (10 page)

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by Debra Burlingame of Keep America Safe and Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies revealed other unconscionable acts by Gitmo Bar lawyers. Writing in the
Wall Street Journal
, Burlingame and Joscelyn revealed that some lawyers provided their terrorist clients with extremely inflammatory anti-American literature for them to share with other inmates. One of these was an 18-page color brochure from Amnesty International accusing America and her allies of “anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.” Another document was the transcript of a speech comparing American military physicians at Guantanamo to the Nazi doctors of the concentration camps. One lawyer was even caught drawing a map of the detention camp for his client, including the location of guard towers; others posted photos of Guantanamo security badges on the Internet.

Given these appalling actions, it’s perfectly reasonable for the American people to want to know which lawyers hired by the Justice Department had previously represented terrorists, and if they are now setting security policy in the Obama administration. However, when senators asked Attorney General Eric Holder to identify those lawyers and their current roles in the Justice Department, he at first refused, and then dribbled out small bits of information. After several months, Keep America Safe began running ads demanding that he disclose the names of all the terrorists’ lawyers. The ensuing controversy led news organizations to finally uncover the names.

The revelations embarrassed the Obama administration. One of the lawyers now working in the Department of Justice’s security division is Jennifer Daskal, formerly of Human Rights Watch, who in 2006 campaigned for the UN Human Rights Committee to condemn the United States for its actions in the “so-called ‘war on
terrorism.’ ” Daskal has also argued for closing Guantanamo and releasing those terrorists we cannot try in civilian courts, despite acknowledging “these men may . . . join the battlefield to fight U.S. soldiers and our allies another day.”

The Obama administration has the right to appoint anyone they want to fill spots at the Justice Department (assuming they can get Senate confirmation when needed) and to set policy as they see fit. But why the constant attempt at secrecy? If they want to appoint radicals and terrorist lawyers, why not just level with the American people about it?

The answer, of course, is that the American people would never accept what they’re doing.

There’s more.

On the
very first
bill he signed, President Obama broke his pledge to give the American people five days to review bills sent for his signature. According to a
Washington Times
analysis of data from the Library of Congress, President Obama failed to live up to his 5-day pledge on 32 of the 117 bills he signed in 2009. These included the 1,000-page, $787 billion stimulus package and the $400 billion omnibus spending bills for 2009 and 2010, enormous pieces of legislation filled with earmarks and political pay-offs.

Clearly, it’s difficult to competently debate legislation when no one has actually read it.

The record of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team is clear. Contrary to their promises to clean up Washington, the president, House speaker, and Senate majority leader have governed with a political
machine mentality that is more corrupt and secretive than anything we have seen in modern American politics.

Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised us. After all, it’s clear the Left cannot tell the American people the truth about their goals and the way they operate.

Imagine if candidate Obama, along with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, had in 2008 declared,

I’m not a fortune teller, but I can confidently predict that platform is not going to win any elections. Since the secular-socialist Left cannot tell the truth and survive, it uses deception and machine politics to gain power, with the goal of subverting and destroying traditional America—our economic system, our relationship to government, and our values.

 

 

 

O
ne of the most disturbing developments in modern American political life has been the rise of an anti-democratic political machine that increasingly controls Washington, many state capitols, and many cities and counties.

A political machine does not care about popular opinion. In fact, its very reason for being is to crush such opinion by the weight of organized money and manpower. And when it can’t crush public opinion, it seeks simply to outlast it.

Patience is a key element to a political machine’s survival. People get angry at politicians and they vote (as in the 2009 California spending and taxing referendum) or they turn out for tea parties (as hundreds of thousands did that spring). But they tend to quickly go back to their daily routines. Having expressed themselves, they think politicians will listen. And while we are engaged in our daily business,
we forget that the business of a political machine is surviving in power.

A political machine understands that an attack on any part of the machine is an attack on the whole machine. Therefore, even the most innocuous reform, if it affects the machine, can produce a furious counterattack as the machine brings to bear its full financial power and its organizational strength.

California provides a perfect example. In the early 1900s, the progressive movement led by Hiram Johnson shattered the old railroad-dominated political machine and inaugurated a period of genuinely popular government in the Golden State, with citizens gaining unprecedented power via the ballot initiative and the referendum. For well over a half century, California experienced constant reform and widespread popular involvement in government.

But when Californians passed Proposition 13—the anti-tax, anti-spending referendum of 1978—the Left realized popular political participation was undermining their goals. Thus, they created the California political machine—an interlocking coalition of interest groups that rely on government money and government-imposed rules to enrich their members at the expense of the rest of society. Beginning with Democratic State Assembly speaker Willie Brown in 1980, the Left have controlled California through a money-driven special-interest system that is impervious to popular opposition.

In November 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in response to public anger over California’s machine politics as personified by his predecessor, Gray Davis. In an unusual recall election, Schwarzenegger ran as an outsider, beholden to no one, who would clean house in a state that was in a deep fiscal hole. Schwarzenegger had a string of early successes in office, but he was
unprepared for the ferocity he would encounter when he tried to enact reforms that threatened the Sacramento political machine.

In June 2005, Schwarzenegger called a special election and backed four propositions that were the centerpieces of his reform efforts. Two of these were controversial from the start. Proposition 76 would have authorized the governor to slow the rate of increase of state spending on education and other public services, while Proposition 77 would have transferred redistricting—the periodic redrawing of electoral districts—from the legislature to a panel of three retired judges appointed by the legislature.

Education spending is always a heated topic, so it was no shock that a June 2005 poll showed 35 percent supported Proposition 76 while 42 percent opposed it. Proposition 77, surprisingly, was also contentious (perhaps because of a distrust of judges), with the same poll showing 35 percent for it and 46 percent opposed.

However, Proposition 74—increasing the amount of time it takes for teachers to gain tenure from two to five years—and Proposition 75—requiring unions to obtain their members’ permission to use any portion of union dues for political donations—were initially very popular, earning 61 percent and 57 percent approval, respectively.

These two measures threatened the power of unions and would have substantially weakened the Sacramento political machine. So the machine responded with total war.

It was the most expensive special election in history, costing by some accounts more than $300 million. Unions alone spent more than $100 million in advertising and voter mobilization efforts. The result: all eight ballot initiatives were defeated, including the four backed by Schwarzenegger. Despite their initial popularity, propositions 74 and 75 lost by ten points or more. Propositions 76 and 77 were beaten by even larger margins.

A
Los Angeles Times
op-ed by broadcaster John Ziegler aptly summed up the result. It was titled “How the Liars Won”:

Of course, we’ve already learned just how little the truth matters to the secular-socialist machine.

The governance of a machine is always infused with lies and corruption.

The machine that currently runs Washington, D.C., is no exception. Having promised honest and accountable government, the administration picked a Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner,
who failed to pay his taxes. Then, Obama’s officials announced grandly they will do no business with companies that fail to pay their taxes.

Similarly, it made perfect sense for Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate committee overseeing mortgage lenders, to take a sweetheart deal from a mortgage lender. After all, if you’re going to work hard to get power, shouldn’t you get something back for your troubles?

After people become corrupt, it’s natural for them to bribe others in the same manner. That’s why rule-breaking, writing payoffs into legislative bills, and fawning over special interests is the modus operandi of the secular-socialist machine.

The machine uses government resources to enhance its power, pay off allies, and buy off others. We’ve seen political machines in America in the past, mostly at the municipal level. But the modern era is even more dangerous due to the emergence of a huge government in Washington with enormous power and resources. This has enabled secular socialists to use payoffs and special favors on a grand scale in order to construct a
national
political machine. And in order to maintain their machine, secular socialists have to pillage government assets to reward their friends and allies.

This machine is now running the country. The only question is whether it will become permanent, or the American people will dislodge it.

A prime example of the machine in action can be seen in the automobile bailout and in the ensuing bankruptcy proceedings for Chrysler. Although the Democrats and the mainstream media tried
to treat this extraordinary intervention as routine, it wasn’t. In fact, there was a time when we would have called it a scandal.

In 1921, for example, oil tycoon Harry Sinclair gave several prize head of cattle and around $269,000 to President Harding’s secretary of the interior, Albert Fall. In return, Sinclair got the exclusive rights to drill in an oil field in Wyoming. Sinclair’s no-bid contract exploded into the Teapot Dome scandal, the most notorious example of political corruption in America prior to Watergate.

Now, consider the Chrysler bankruptcy. Between 2000 and 2008, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union gave $23,675,562 to the Democratic Party and its candidates while giving just $193,540 to Republicans. In 2008 alone, the UAW gave $4,161,567 to the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama.

In return, in a rigged proceeding in which the federal government disregarded bankruptcy law in order to engineer a desired political outcome, the unions were made the primary beneficiaries of the Chrysler bankruptcy. The Obama Treasury Department strong-armed Chrysler’s creditors into a deal in which the UAW was given 55 percent ownership of the company while Chrysler’s secured creditors—investors who normally receive priority in bankruptcy proceedings—were left with just 29 cents on the dollar. These secured creditors included the state of Indiana’s teacher pension fund which, according to Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, lost at least $4.6 million in the bankruptcy.

As rotten as it was, the Chrysler bankruptcy was just a prelude to the General Motors bankruptcy, again brokered by the Obama administration. And once again, the big losers were the bondholders, who included substitute teachers in Florida and retired tool and dye supervisors in Michigan. Holding $27 billion in GM debt, they are receiving a 10 percent stake in the new company. In contrast, the UAW, which is owed about $20 billion from GM, is walking away with 17.5 percent of the company and a cool $9 billion in cash.