(old found draft post) Hands off my 401k

Oct 25, 2008 @ 8:35

This must have been inspired by some Obama advisers who wanted to get rid of 401ks. Their plan was to force the same contributions and give Americans something like a 2% return off it. This would have effectively decreased the wealth of Americans as more money would need to be saved for retirement (out side of the government plan) and this savings would have no tax favoured status. I haven’t heard anything about this recently though, so that is good news.

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http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/democrats-to-kill-401ks-for-privatized-social-security/

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/23/pethokoukis-on-401k-demolition-socialism/

“Socialism Now to Be Called ‘Sustainable Capitalism'”

From StopTheACLU:

Update your Newspeak dictionaries. Comrade Al Gore has issued a decree that we are now to refer to eco-Marxism as “sustainable capitalism.”

Gore makes a fist and gets ominous: “Business and markets cannot operate in isolation from society or the environment. … We must develop sustainable capitalism.”

I expect The Left to conceal themselves by hiding by changing word definitions.

There are other terms such as Progressive:

Barack Obama is a communist by birth, breeding, education, and profession. His grandparents were communists, his parents were communists, his teachers were communists, his friends are communists, his colleagues are communists, he’s a communist. Duh.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the current euphemism for “communist” is “progressive.” This is not even a new usage. My father’s parents always called themselves “progressives,” for instance. In fact they were CPUSA members. (Before Grandma fell down the stairs at Juilliard and smashed her frontal lobe, one of the last messages she imparted to me was that Frank Rich writes a really great column.) “Progressive” is also all over the place in my ’80s Soviet Life magazines. And La Wik helpfully informs us that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is (a) the largest voting bloc of Democrats in the House, and (b) the affiliation of the Speaker. And now, of course, the President. Summary: the Cold War is over. Communism won.

The small ‘c’ is well-taken, of course. Obama’s faction is the disorganized, SDS, “Maoist,” or “New Left” wing of American communism. Ie, not the organized, CPUSA, “Stalinist” or “Old Left” wing – which both my grandparents and Obama’s first mentor Frank Marshall Davis were in, whose decline I think was as much cause as effect of the Soviet collapse, and whose remnants were really more for Hillary. And certainly not the defunct Trotskyite wing, whose carcass so weirdly morphed into “neoconservatism.”
[…]
If there’s one thing to remember about Alinskyism, or indeed progressivism as a whole, it’s that it is the perfect mental framework by which the lordly can do evil, while convincing themselves and/or others that they are small voices sticking up for good. [Link: Unqualified Reservations]

Sigh.

“They presented themselves not as socialists, but as left-leaning and progressive”

I like Ann Althouse’s blog It is one of the first blog I read. I liked the connection to Wisconsin and Madison and especially the photos of my old campus.

But this is silly:

In any case, I don’t think it’s right to call the New Party “socialist.” I remember this party. One of the founders was UW lawprof Joel Rogers. They presented themselves not as socialists, but as left-leaning and progressive. I realize that for right wingers that counts as “socialist,” but let’s not be inflammatory.

In Milwaukee, the party was filled with people from various Marxists parties and the Socialist Party USA. Basically, they wanted to have more of an impact then the Marxist and Socialist. Hence the “New”.

Her readers call her out on it in the comments:

Unfair only if one changes what the word socialist means.
[…]
I don’t see what that article does other than confirm that the New Party was, in fact, socialist. They want socialism, but the founder’s defense against being called socialist is that they don’t give the state as much weight as socialists. You can’t enact all of that progressive garbage without the force of the state, so his defense is an empty one.
[…]
“international workers right” come on Ann. Especially you should see through the lingo here.
[…]
What are the policy and social positions that -Socialists- have that Progressives and The New Party don’t?
[…]
A progressive tax system based on the ability to pay. “

From each according to their means.

“A Bill of Rights for America’s Children, guaranteeing true equality of opportunity by providing equal access to comparable education, health care, nutrition, housing, and safety…. Full employment, a shorter work week, and a guaranteed minimum income for all adults; a universal “social wage” to include such basic benefits as health care, child care, vacation time, and lifelong access to education and training; a systematic phase-in of comparable worth and like programs to ensure gender equity.”

To each according to their needs.

“The New Party believes that the social, economic, and political progress of the United States requires a democratic revolution in America — the return of power to the people. Our basic purpose — reflected both in our own governance and in our aspirations for the nation — is to make that revolution happen.”

Viva la revolucion!
[…]
In fact, I think the only way that would be more accurate to describe the New Party than socialist would be to call them Marxist.
[…]
I’ve researched the NP, and I believe it to be entirely fair to describe them as socialist at best. The Chicago chapter, in particular, was a hotbed of outright communists, the type of people for whom “socialist” was a conservative tag.
[…]
At the very least, Obama does not hold capitalist views or ideals.

And so on.

Update: The Powerline blog has recovered scrubbed early web pages where the New Party claims him from 1996.

Anti-Americans