With regards to our current political and economic circumstances, the question has been asked repeatedly: Is Barack Obama a Socialist?
The short answer is: Not really. After all, a Socialist could at least credibly pretend to know what he's doing. President Obama, when he isn't busy contradicting himself or leaving out the all-important details behind his broad policy ideas, gives the impression of being deer-in-the-headlights-ish, as if it were Amateur Hour at the White House. Socialists are usually masters of the message, really great in the black arts of propaganda so that even the worst of their leaders ends up beatified by (revisionist) history. No, one believes a real Socialist would have done this all so much better.
A second question is also asked: Is Barack Obama deaf, dumb and blind to the current realities of American Life?
The short answer is, again, No. Barack Obama is only all-too-keenly aware of the conditions of Modern American Life. After all, how else could he have presented himself as a viable alternative to what came before him, and credibly play that Class Warfare card that democrats (small 'd' intentional) love so much? He has to be aware of the conditions facing the Common Man, if only because someone in his position necessarily has to possess a passing knowledge about the lives of the Common People -- even second-hand knowledge -- if he's to make himself sound believable in their ears.
I don't think Barack Obama is dumb. He may be many other things, but stupid is not one of them. He does appear callous and self-absorbed, but that doesn't mean he isn't aware of what goes on around him. The White House Bubble is not all that thick, after all.
Which leads us to another question: If Barack Obama is not a Socialist, and he isn't stupid, and if he is aware of the present conditions of Life the United States (and he isn't insane), then how do you explain the behavior of someone apparently immune to the harsh realities of our circumstances, and who also finds it difficult to try something other than the same tried-and-failed-recycled economic policies? He doesn't seem insane, so one must assume that there's some other motivation that just hasn't been revealed to us yet.
Modern conservatives (small 'c' intentional) explain these questions away with a simplistic blanket-like notion that Obama is some sort of New Fangled Socialist, and the least intellectual amongst them -- the ones who have no clear idea of what Socialism really means, but they have been conditioned to regard even the mention of the word in the same way they would regard a public discussion of Menopause; as some disgusting perversion of the Divine Order from which the children and wimmenfolk need to be protected ...with guns -- suck that up, and from the perspective of their incurious nature (after all, they believe that some God has a plan we humans just can't understand, you see. They're not necessarily the smartest of people), the simple formulation "Socialist=Bad" is quite adequate for their purposes.
Modern liberals (small 'l' intentional) complain that, if, as they believe (or inferred), that Barack Obama IS a Socialist, then he's not been sufficiently Socialist enough to suit their tastes, and so they too think he's bad. But then again, most committed leftists suffer from the same disease as most committed conservatives: they're not exactly the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, either, and the real motivation behind both worldviews is simply "how can I avoid responsibility for this, that or the other?". The major difference? One side wishes to avoid responsibility on the cheap, and by apportioning all responsibility to an invisible and capricious non-existant entitity which they constantly beg for forgveness and protection, and who cannot ever be questioned, while the other regards the avoidance of responsibility for anything, for free, through the fiats of their own faceless, capricious, and impersonal God, i.e. Government, as a birthright. Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other...
In terms of political understanding vis-a-vis Socialism, the Die-Hard-Bible-Thumping-Bleeds-Red-White-and-Blue Conservative is simply misinformed; the Dyed-in-the-Wool-Eats-Belgian-Endive-Latte-sipping-Liberal is simply living an extended adolescence of reflexive rebellion without thought, with as much free stuff as they can steal.
That is not to say that Socialism is a good thing, nor is it to suggest that Capitalism (with the full force of "In God We Trust" behind it) is perfect, either. Where Socialism suffers from systemic flaws embedded within it's intellectual foundations, Capitalism suffers from the systematic flaws of the people who profess belief in it's own intellectual foundation.
So, what about Obama? He's certainly no J.P. Morgan-style Capitalist (although he realizes and makes use of the power of money to do on his own behalf that which he routinely dismisses as evil when done by others), but he's certainly not a Stalinesque Socialist (although he's proven not to be immune to the often-delusional powers of the Cult of Personality). But that's small consolation: there doesn't seem to be an in-between, either. Obama wanders all across the political and economic landscape: he's for Big Business today, and then excoriating it the next. He claims the mantle of Defender of the Downtrodden, and then suggests and enacts policies which often ensure there's more Downtrodden then there were before. How to explain all the contradictions?
There's but one possibility left. It's called Managerialism.
Managerialism is a philosophy (well, not quite) first postulated by James Burnham, in 1940, in his book "The Managerial Revolution". To summarize, Burnham stated that traditional Capitalism was dead -- the proof was in the triumph of Nazi Germany over Britain and France -- but that traditional Socialism would not take it's place. Instead, what would evolve was a system in which the two would be combined in a slapdash fashion, by a class of people he called The Managers; a class of technicians, teachers, lawyers, politicians, media moguls, scientists, trade unionists and industrialists who would take 'the best' of both systems, as needed, to instead create a State in which they manipulated the levers of power -- silently and behind-the-scenes -- for their own benefit.
The Managerial State, run by a Managerial Class who had no loyalties to anything beyond itself, not party nor country, not religion nor social class, dedicated to a single-minded purpose, was to be the wave of the future. We would all be ruled by a self-interested elite who would manipulate economies and governments to suit their selfish purposes. It would be a caste of powerful people who understood that the purpose of obtaining power was to exercise it to your own ends.
Outwardly, the Managerial State would appear to be Capitalist: one could still own private property or industry, make a ton of cash, and retain the status associated with great wealth or fame, but these would be facades to be put in service to the needs of the Caste. In return for this subservience to the caste, the Managers would receive special privileges, economic, political, legal or what-have-you, granted to them through this new Managerial System. The point is not to get rich (although that often happens as a matter of consequence with Managerialism) but to have the power to reshape society in ever-subtler ways which jibe with the Caste's personal outlook or immediate need. Managerialism is, then, a way by which those who have access to power trade their skills, reputations, and wealth for the ability to make other people live the way THEY want them to, while retaining for themselves a privileged -- and anonymous -- status.
The Manager, then, is a fixer and a parasite. He or she usually sets things up so as to benefit from ideas, policies, or laws that are, on the whole, detrimental to the rest of Society, and often earn their living from the work of others (much like the Capitalists they seek to replace). The Managers are well-camouflaged behind a multi-levelled, bureaucratic Government, Think Tanks, and Lobbyists; their ideas become enshrined in Laws written in large measure by them, their status is maintained by their ability to put money and votes into the accounts of politicians, and through it all, they nibble away at the margins of life changing this or that factor of daily existence, affecting the activities, thought processes, spending habits, and personal and political opinions of millions. Without anyone knowing who they are and what they do.
Burnham had to revise his original premise in 1944's "The Machiavellians". The uber-efficient centralized states of Hitler and Mussolini, in losing the war, ultimately failed in their main goal -- world domination under a Managerial State run for the benefit of those at the top -- and their ideological fellow-traveller Josef Stalin (in winning the war) pretty much crapped all over the old Socialist bromides about Brotherhood, Fraternity, and Equality that had been used to advance Socialism. Burnham's new mantra was that Managerialism did, in fact, succeed (and it's hard to argue about this: Germany lost the war, but Hitler's rogues' gallery of ruthless administrators and managers was the most efficient murderer and plunderer of millions the world has ever seen). That Germany, Italy, and the Soviets had failed of their promise was not the fault of Managerialism, per se; it was the fault of the individuals involved.
In a way, Burnham set up the ready-to-hand defense that Socialists have used ever since to describe the massive failures that always result from the heavy-handed adaptation of Socialist thought: Totalitarian Socialism would work... if only we could find the right Dictators to run it!
What does this have to do with Barack Obama and Solyndra? Quite frankly, in the example of Solyndra -- a company so badly managed, producing a product that no one wants and at prices that make a mockery of the Capitalist model (Solyndra manufactured solar panels at $6 each and then sold them at $3!) -- you have the clearest example of Managerialism, and really Managerial Socialism, that one could contrive.
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The main structural defect of Capitalism is that it often creates surpluses. These surpluses cannot always be sold at a profit, which is the point of Capitalism in the first place, and they can't just be given away. Capitalism may have the ability to produce goods and services at prices affordable to the consumer, but eventually it saturates it's markets with cheap products which cannot be sold at prices that justify the expenditure of labor and resources, and it doesn't know what to do with surplus goods except throw them away The solution to these problems are largely to be found advances in technology -- one technology replaces another -- or in a program of planned obsolescence in which products are purposely made to eventually break or wear out faster, so as to necessitate being replaced more frequently.
There's also an unrecognized defect in Capitalism; in some cases, it is impossible NOT to distribute the products of Capitalism, so that great masses of people benefit from products and services without having to actually pay for them. Capitalism cannot, for example, light the streets at night for one group while simultaneously making them dark for every other group, and the large armies of specialists that Capitalism also brings into being can often find demand for their skills and services outside the employ of the Capitalist, proper.
The Market Solution to overproduction is either simply to stop producing until prices stabilize, or to rejigger the rules of the marketplace. Factories close, or they are moved to places where expenses are lower so as to maximize profit. Workers are laid off, contracts are voided, capital investment shifts from one unproductive industry to those judged to be more productive or promising. All of these actions have knock-on effects that ripple throughout an entire economy. Eventually, the wealth of the nation becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and the landscape becomes littered with the hulks of rusting factories and lower living standards, which then become ameliorated to a certain extent by the emergence of new products, processes, and technologies. The process, then, is cyclical, but it's not always quite predictable. Today's market bust is tomorrow's market boom, but there are often other factors which come into play at varying levels, say, regulations, political changes and wage scales, which can either be beneficial or detrimental.
The system sometimes has too many variables to ever be entirely stable or predictable, and so to eliminate the variables people seek to manipulate the levers of government or law in their favor. These changes are not always fair, nor are they always effective, and sometimes they are merely temporary.
Now consider the basic principles of Socialism: recognizing that industrial output and market forces create wealth, the Socialist aims to arrest this production only so much as to avoid the creation of a surplus. This surplus is anathema to a civil and fair society because so long as it exists it will create distinctions in class and wealth amongst people, leading to civil unrest. Some will be able to amass for themselves a larger share of this surplus, and thus, become Rich, and others will be unable to do so, and so they become (or stay) Poor. So long as the Rich and the Poor fight over the surplus -- the Rich in order to stay that way, the Poor to overcome the conditions of their poverty -- there will be conflict. Socialism considers this conflict to be inevitable.
Socialism seeks to eliminate the problem of civil strife caused by class distinction and differences in wealth by gearing production to consumption. It seeks to ensure that industry creates 'just enough' while avoiding the wastage of a surplus. It supposes to make all Men truly equal by ensuring that everyone has exactly the same. However, since Socialism routinely ignores bothersome details that Capitalism embraces, like market forces and human nature ("There is no such thing as Human Nature" -- Chairman Mao), this is only theoretically possible. The mechanism which Socialism calls into being -- the government bureaucracy -- to oversee this artificial levelling is usually a poor judge of what 'just enough' truly means; it usually ends up producing 'not enough', and because it stifles creativity and personal initiative, destroys the work ethic (why work harder or better if there's nothing in it for you?), and does it's level best to ensure that the best and brightest are discouraged from achieving distinction (because if they did, the bureaucrat would be out of a job), it often creates 'not enough' with the added features of poor quality, short supply at the wrong time, and inflated prices. Instead of making us all Truly Equal, it only succeeds in making us all Equally Miserable.
Socialism aims to produce goods and services (as directed by the State) in such a way as to use up labor, materials and capital so as to avoid raising the real living standard of the average person in disproportion to anyone else. No one, technically, gets rich, and correspondingly, society stagnates as innovation and enthusiasm, experimentation, and principled dissent are systematically squashed in the name of Equality.
There is virtually no difference between , say, a defunct Lehman Brothers and a defunct Solyndra, one company's demise the result of Managerial Capitalism, and the other of Managerial Socialism. I say 'virtually' because they both came into their current circumstances by much the same means, even if they are involved with different industries.
Lehman Brothers, and the other Too Big to Fail corporate entities that more-or-less collapsed in the autumn of 2008 were the result of Capitalist Managerialist policies of the 1980's and 90's. They bought and paid for the politicians who removed some of the legal and financial safeguards that allowed them to start investing (always other people's) money in riskier ventures; they shaped the mindsets, politics, and economic theories of the armies of MBA's in the Vanguard of Profit through endowments to the universities; they established the premise that while investments can sometimes fail, only customers should suffer the consequences. Lehman, and the others, must be protected from the consequences of failures, and that the larger the failure, the more protection they were entitled to. This was all a matter of Vital National Economic Importance. What was Good for Lehman Brothers was Good For America, when times were good, but when they go south through gross incompetence, someone other than those responsible should be made to pay,right?
The same things can be said of those companies that advocate for an extremely-skewed version of 'Free Trade' in which industrial plant is sent to China or India -- and the jobs that go with them -- in order to maximize profit by avoiding higher labor, benefit and tax costs. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that we will one day, soon, see products labelled "Made in America" in which the only portion actually made or assembled here will be the sticker itself, and it will all, by an act of a hand-picked (through campaign contributions and alliances of conveniences) Congress and President of the United States acting for the benefit of those with the cash to make it so,
That's what Managerial Capitalism ultimately aims at; maximization of profit, no possibility of loss, all protected and insured by the United States Government, that is to say, the American Taxpayer.
Solyndra, on the other hand, is a prime example of Managerial Socialism in action, only with a veneer of Capitalism applied to make it appear more reputable. It's sort of like when you were a child, and your mother made you take your nasty-tasting medicine by adding a spoonful of sugar to it. Lehman may have been Too Big to Fail, but Solyndra was, from the very beginning, Designed to Fail.
Green Energy, for all the promises the Industry makes, is mostly a boondoggle. It is an industry based upon a faulty proposition -- the cult of Man-made Global Warming -- that cannot be proven scientifically, or at least cannot proved with our current levels of technology and understanding. The Green Energy industry promulgates the fallacy that it is possible to produce something from nothing, or at the very least, to produce something 'for free'. Yes, the wind does, indeed, blow free: it just doesn't always blow where you need it to, and neither does the sun shine equally in all places or through heavy overcast, nor can one tap the extreme heat of a volcanic vent, or control the power of the tides, without making enormous investments in money, labor, or materials that often make the premise a self-defeating prophecy of waste and futility.
Green Energy is not a panacea: it is an adjunct, at best, a stopgap, at worst.
The fact is that we already possess a cheap, clean, environmentally-friendly source of almost limitless power with little pollution, and it's called The Nuclear Power Plant. However, the words "Nuclear Power Plant" instill a feeling of dread and dismay in most people, and because of this, the facts about Nuclear Power are often overlooked, obscured, or deliberately misstated. Especially by those who have a vested interest in making certain that the facts remain hidden.
So, if a company like Solyndra cannot deliver what it promises, or do what many say cannot be done, why then does it exist?
Because it was created as a deliberate exercise in Managerial Socialism, and the current regime is amenable to Managerial Socialism, that's why!
In the case of Green Energy, and Barack Obama's championing of the Green Cause, corporate entities like Solyndra serve several purposes. For a start, they tap into people's fear that without Green Energy we're headed for a dreadful future wherein we're all waist-deep in toxic sludge, developing skin cancers galore, breathing poisonous vapor and drinking slimy, filthy water that you wouldn't offer to a Muslim. This fear is useful to those who are of a manipulative bent. Second, they give the impression that the only alternatives to this dreadful future is a false choice between maintenance of the status quo, or a great, big, ugly concrete cone with the potential firepower of millions of Hiroshimas just one inattentive worker or structural defect away from destroying the human race and genetically altering whatever survives so as to provide them with permanent orange afros. Thirdly, they give the false impression that there is a solution to the problem upon which someone might make some money, making it appear as if Big Business is funding it all, and not the taxpayer.
But the Green Energy movement serves another, subtler and harder-to-see political and ideological, purpose.
When one considers the history of Global Accords on Global Warming, one begins to detect a certain pattern at work. Accords like those tentatively reached under the Kyoto Protocols all operate on the same premise; in order to combat a (mostly-manufactured) threat to everyone on Planet Earth, the industrialized nations of the world are (in theory) volunteering to arrest their own economic growth and progress, while the Emerging Economies are routinely exempted. Hence, you get a program wherein the United States enforces ever more restrictive CAFE and pollution standards, and mandates lightbulbs that don't work upon it's industries and citizens, while China, India and Mexico are not required to do likewise.
In practical effect, the Industrialized West volunteers to halt it's progress dead in it's tracks with a sea of red tape concerning energy use and pollution standards, while the less-developed nations of the world 'catch up', utilizing the very processes that have been declared a threat to every organism in the Solar System! Theoretically, we'll all be made equal; one party by eschewing progress, while the other launches itself upwards by using the (supposedly bad) methods of the past. Given enough time -- and the proper direction of resources, because it's always about directing things, or more to the point, WHO gets to direct things -- while the Gross National Product of the United States declines, that of Indonesia rises, until both are roughly equal, and since one nation has voluntarily denied itself the ability to innovate, when parity is reached there will be virtually no economic or technological advantage for one side or the other to exploit for it's own benefit, and they'll stay equal.
Lenin always said "Capitalism will sell us the rope with which we will hang it."
In the 22nd Century say, Indonesia and America might very well resemble each other in terms of real wealth, economic potential, technological sophistication, and societal organization and cohesion. At least that's the theory, anyway. Socialism will, defacto, have been brought to every corner of Planet Earth without the need for violent revolution or open warfare: the West will have brought it about by a misguided sense of responsibility for the welfare of complete strangers in the name of a flimsy scientific theory given an almost religious imperative and legal framework, the Non-West will have achieved parity by cheating and granting itself privileges it denies it's competitors under international agreement. It's Managerialism on a global scale.
Solyndra is much like many other Green Economy corporate entities. It cannot produce what it says it can, so it cannot ever make an honest profit. And they know it. If Solyndra had to go to the Market (i.e. use the traditional tools of Capitalism) and seek investors, or acquire credit from the usual sources, it would be laughed out of the room. There's a lot of theory in there, and some promises, but there's not much in the way of foreseeable profit in the venture. Companies like Solyndra, therefore, are forced to go the route of appealing to the Investor of Last Resort, The Government, with much the same argument as Lehman Brothers used to game the system in it's favor: What's Good for Solyndra is Good For America...and, by extension, the World!
And when Solyndra's flawed business model dovetails with the Regime's political or economic policy needs, then an (alleged) conspiracy is born!
Green Energy Producers, you see, live and die by government subsidy and tax code changes, in much the same way that America's Too Big To Fail financial institutions lived and died by TARP, Freddie and Fannie, and keeping the SEC and IRS out of their books. In fact, many of these companies (I happen to have some idea, having once worked for one of them) are often deliberately started just to get access to government subsidies, or take advantage of the regulatory changes which are called into being by a Manangerial Class which advocates on their behalf. The Managerial Class gets it's pound of flesh in various ways (usually, by being 'in on the ground floor' -- there's hardly a Congresscritter who doesn't have a portfolio full of companies you never heard of, many started with tax dollars, or which is full of companies which do business with the government). There often never any intention whatsoever of building a going, profitable concern; the original point was to get the subsidy money, divvy it all up, and then run like Hell, with the politicians, bureaucrats and lawyers protecting your retreat, with a little extra reserved for their services.
That's how we get to Solyndra: a company called into being on a premise which is 99% lie (Man-made Global Warming), which produces a product -- strictly for appearances sake -- for which there is little to no market, at a price which cannot be sustained, and from which no one will never earn a profit. Solyndra and it's prime investors are given $535 million taxpayer dollars -- money taken from the productive through coercion in the form of taxes -- that otherwise would have gone to other purposes, and which might have increased many people's real wealth or standards of living, while eating up materials and labor for no apparent good purpose, all in the service of a politically-useful cause, i.e. proiding the appearance of useful economic activity without actually engaging in any, and thusly, not improving anyone's actual economic condition.
Solyndra, all things considered, probably had more value as a political backdrop than it ever did as a corporation.
And who benefits?
Barack Obama got himself a $500,000 campaign donation from the founders of Solyndra. The owners of Solyndra got themselves a sweetheart bankruptcy deal in which they will (apparently) make themselves more money than they originally put into the venture, while screwing 1,100 workers and the American Taxpayer in the process.The Green Energy mob got themselves a valuable propaganda victory in which a President and Vice President of the United States touted the economic utility and viability of their otherwise unprofitable -- and politically-suspect -- cause. And it was all brought into being by the unseen hand of the Managerial Class; the Lawyers, Politicians, Bureaucrats, Technicians, the Unnamed 'Experts', the Think Tanks, Political Action Committees, Advocacy Groups, Lobbyists and the long list of stupid and gullible people who eat their b.s. up without a second thought, often begging for seconds.
What did we get for $535 million? An empty factory, and 1,100 people who got temporary paychecks which were just another part of the plan to waste resources without raising living standards.
If it seems to you that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing, if he seems detached when a BP spills billions of gallons of Oil into the Gulf of Mexico, if he seems more concerned with saving the jobs of unionized slobs who are net tax eaters rather than generators, if Obama seems obsessed with rebuilding roads and bridges after all-but-promising $7-a-gallon gasoline, and if he seems overly preoccupied with the technicalities of rule and legislation rather than with the nuts-and-bolts of it all, or overly-eager to give an empty speech in front of a hand-picked audience of rabid supporters rather than elaborate on meaningful subject and issues, then here, perhaps, is your answer:
Barack Obama knows exactly what he's doing, and he doesn't care if you ever figure it out. He has bigger fish to fry than your stupid job, and you keeping your house, or whether or not you get Medicare-subsidized Viagra instead of an illegal alien; he has a world to reorder according to his tastes and preferences, you see, which is also what those who put him into power want him to do, too. Because, let's face it, Barack Obama is a product of the Managerial Revolution, himself: a recipient of Affirmative Action, educated in the Elite schools, politically-connected, who made his previous livings either sucking off the teat of the taxpayer (i.e. Community Organizer, Senator) or in being paid (well) to do work of no real economic value or benefit to others (Harvard Law Review), and paid for by the fruits of Capitalism. He's managed, with the help of others within the Managerial Class, to put himself into a position from whence to better manage the rest of us, all the better to change the way we live, work, and think, according to their own, extremely suspect and perhaps warped, sensibilities and preferences.
There is no other way to explain Barack Obama and his policies other than to conclude that it's all been deliberate, and that the deliberation has some ultimate purpose that goes beyond the shallow argument of Capitalism vs. Socialism. It explains Healthcare over Economy. It explains the bombast of "Pass the Bill" when there is, in fact, no such Bill -- in any written form -- to pass. It explains going on vacation when disaster strikes, it explains playing golf after starting a third American War for no apparent national interest. It goes a long way to identifying the Two Obamas; the one who can appear to be so caring and concerned, making speeches that could make it rain gumdrops, and the reality on the other of a man who seems to not give a good goddamn. It explains a man who claims to be above petty, partisan politics, but then goes out and creates a vast and complex political theatre around his morning dump; accusing, pointing fingers, sneering, dismissive and condescending.
I used to think that Barack Obama was just plain unequal to the task of being President of the United States, that he was ill-suited by experience and viewpoint from holding the highest office in the land. I believed he was simply yet another in a long line of democratic (small 'd' intentional) party cardboard cutouts who have repeated the same Socialist boilerplate for fifty years, only in a better suit and with better speechwriters. The stuff about turning back the rising tides, and bringing peace, brotherhood, and a chicken in every pot was just the sort of thing you'd expect a liberal politician to say. His mantra of Hope and Change was simply a recycling of every political bromide ever uttered since the days of Julius Caesar. Barack Obama, The Messiah, I thought, was always a creation of the Media;just someone with an interesting biography (that someone else wrote for him), or who gave a good speech (written by someone else) who would either grow into the job, or be constrained by cooler heads in Congress (who turned out to be even dumber than I had at first feared or realized) and the realities of the Constitutional System.
I was wrong. Once you begin to think of Obama in terms of Managerialism you can begin to see the beauty of a true genius at work; the contradictions begin to make sense. Appoint a tax cheat as your Secretary of the Treasury, appoint a plethora of 'Czars' who operate extra-Constitutionally to oversee and reorder the economic system, play golf during an earthquake or bask in the summer sun as citizens are flooded out of their homes by a hurricane, bail out GM and Chrysler to keep the union money and votes coming at the same time as you attach the string that they pay back the loan while creating Federally-mandated products for which there is no market; pour billions into an Economic Stimulus which ensured that turtles could safely cross highways through specially-constructed tunnels (and tell me, how do the turtles know the tunnels are there for their safety?) and in which 'shovel-ready project' means "shovel money into the pockets of those who will repay me later". It's how you get an Economic Competitiveness council or somesuch in which the Chief Appointee is someone infamous for maximizing his company's profit by offshoring everything in sight, avoiding taxes on it all legally, and then appealing to the Treasury for a bailout of his own.
It explains how a Man can, with a straight face, decry crony capitalism as destructive to a fair and equitable society one day and then the next get his cronies (allegedly) a $535 million government-backed loan guarantee which leaves them whole in the event of a bankruptcy your own advisers said was coming. Like I've said, you have to assume that these things can only happen if Barack Obama is anything but stupid or insane, which leaves only a third possibility; the impetus must go much deeper than just money or electoral advantage.
The only difference between the Bridge to Nowhere of 2008 and the Turtle Tunnels to Nowhere of 2011 is which side of the Managerial Coin got the contract, and their utility to the overall Cause of the current crop of Manager. In the case of Solyndra, the Cause is one which is are near and dear to people currently in power. Somewhere there has to be a balance, but in order to get to it, I think, we'll have to start changing our own mindsets and begin to try to divine the true motivations of the movers and shakers. The new Totalitarians are not always out for money, although they like it very much, as much as they are in it for the ability to reorder the world according to their tastes and prevailing attitudes. If, in so doing, they happen to get rich, that's just another benefit, incidental to the original intent.
Once you've understood this simple fact: they're not always in it for the money or visible benefit, it becomes easier to combat the Managerial Class, and hopefully, begin to restore some semblance of Liberty and sanity in this country.
Yes, I believe that Barack Obama knows exactly what he's doing, it's just that the vast majority of confused Americans don't know, or can't see, why he does it.
Barack Obama is not a Socialist as we would generally understand the term. It's much more insidious than that.
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