Trickle Up Poverty (6 page)

So I’m sitting with Teddy, the dog, on my lap watching the Science Channel when the cameraman suddenly took a dive, plunging us six thousand feet below the ocean surface. Next thing I know I’m looking at sea creatures I never knew existed. Teddy was probably looking at the fish swimming around dreaming about dinner. Me? I marveled at God’s incredible handiwork buried like hidden treasure deep within the water.

The announcer was going on about this fish and that mollusk when a new thought struck me. Each of those living creatures knows they must do two things in order to survive: hunt for food and hide from the predators who want to eat them. Every one of those deep-sea creatures is either prey or predator.

That got me thinking. Just like their aquatic fellow travelers, virtually every animal on earth works to both protect itself and to find its own food. There’s one exception: man. Man may be the only living being on earth that will rely upon others to feed it—and gives nothing to others in return!

On second thought, there is a parallel in the animal kingdom: the parasite—the original freeloader. A parasite attaches itself to the host body, exploits it, and gives nothing back. They don’t create anything original. They don’t contribute to the general good. What’s more, there isn’t anything beautiful or beneficial about a parasite—whether it’s a leech, tick, or louse.

Now my mind was whirling. It’s no wonder why the middle class is resentful of a government that is more concerned about the welfare and “benefits” of the freeloaders than about those of us who provide the income for the freeloaders. It’s no wonder Tea Partiers are boiling mad at the way their hard-earned money is being taken from them.

If you think this is all hot air and rhetoric, you are mistaken. Did you know that 60 percent of Americans are operating like parasites? How? According to the Tax Foundation, they receive more in benefits from the government than they pay in taxes. You might want to read that again.

Of course, when we talk about the government giving benefits, the “government” produces nothing and has nothing to give these “takers”—unless it first reaches into the pockets of the sheeple. So, it would be more accurate to say “60 percent of Americans receive more in benefits from the taxes paid by hard-working fellow Americans than they themselves put into the hat.”

Put another way, 40 percent of Americans are picking up the tab for 60 percent of the leeches. That is an unsustainable economic model. What happens when 60 percent becomes 70 percent? What happens if the “makers” get tired of underwriting the lifestyle of the “takers” and stop working so hard to generate income?

The whole country goes bust, that’s what.

Isn’t that what we’re seeing now?

Why should we support able-bodied people who refuse to work? Why should we educate and provide medical care for illegal aliens and their children? Why should prisoners be given such gold-plated treatment in prison where it costs $50,000 or more per year to give them everything under the sun: special religious meals, books, cable TV, dental cleanings, even porno. I’m not saying we should turn the prisons into Devil’s Island. But I would say something is wrong with a country that is so led by the liberal left that we are bled until there’s nothing left for us to give.

Like many people my age, I was raised to work and to work hard. Free-loading was out of the question. I’m not saying I was beaten with a rubber hose if I didn’t work. I’m saying my father and mother presented a view of work that was honorable. My father made me work hard with him polishing bronzes in the basement with acid, like a scene out of Dickens. And my parents showed respect to those who worked hard, too.

I can still picture Momma Savage sitting at the kitchen table with the plastic table cover, you know, talking while moving the bread crumbs around with a knife, sifting them. If she were to talk about someone in the building where we lived in the Bronx, she would say things like, “You know Paul the painter is a hard worker.” She’d say “hard worker” in almost a whispered tone as if looking up to him. It didn’t matter what the guy did, my parents had a respect for someone who worked to provide for his family. That was an important thing in my development as a child.

Look, my parents weren’t putting on a show for my benefit. They weren’t thinking, “Let’s show young Michael how to grow up.” They had respect for those who labored and contempt for the leeches—although there wasn’t a soul living in our building who didn’t put in long hours. Everybody we knew worked hard to provide for their family. The children were all well fed, although most of us were poor. We just didn’t know it. What’s more, each family did its part to keep the apartment building clean.

Nobody was a freeloader.

Nobody was looking for a handout.

Long after we left the neighborhood, another generation moved in from a different country of origin. It became clear they didn’t have the same appreciation for work. Frankly, most of them were on welfare. They had an entitlement mentality that was so ingrained they burnt their mattresses and threw them out onto the streets if they weren’t being fed—sort of like what you might see at a zoo on a Monday.

And you wonder why there’s anger in this country?

You’re surprised at the rage building against those who think everyone owes them a living. How did this happen? How did a nation of hardworking people get taken over by a nation of leeches? What happened to working toward a common good, not a common handout? What kind of government caters to the leeches and not to the hardworking people who work to give their money to those who work the system?

It’s unnatural. It’s insane.

It’s destroying my country.

As you will see in the next chapter, this trend is not happening by accident. Unlike trickle down affluence, which thrived under the free and open market philosophy of President Reagan’s administration, what we have now is trickle up poverty because of Obama’s Leninist-socialist economics. While some degree of socialist economics has been at work for a number of years under various presidents, it has reached new heights under this socialist-Marxist administration. I predict the middle class will continue to be impoverished unless this trend is reversed.

Obama’s Marxist-Leninist Roots

I chose my friends carefully … the Marxist professors and structural feminists.

—President Barack Obama

When I was a little boy, maybe between the ages of six to nine, I’d go on long rides with my father across the bridges into Manhattan to work in his antique store. His shop was on the Lower East Side of New York where he sold clocks and figurines, mainly 19th-century French bronzes. That was his specialty. I learned a lot about art because Dad put me to work cleaning off the patina. The nouveau’s who were buying them wanted them to look shiny, like gold.

So down in the musty basement I’d work long hours, scrubbing off the brown or black patina. After they were ready, I’d bring up the figurines to the store for my father to sell. Glad to be out of that dark basement for a few minutes, I’d smile and linger before I headed back to the dungeon. I’d watch the customers coming in and out of the store looking at this and that.

They’d see something they liked, ask my father the price and he’d tell them. Sometimes they’d pay it. Sometimes they winced as if biting down on a bit of raw garlic. They’d shake their heads and say they couldn’t afford his price. Whether they could afford it or were just trying to work my Dad over, I didn’t know. I took it at face value that they didn’t have enough money.

On the long ride home, I had time to think about many things including the exchange between my father and the customers. That’s when a new idea struck me. I thought how nice the world would be if the vegetable man could give me his vegetables and I could give him some of my father’s merchandise in exchange. Or how the butcher could give me meat to take home to my mother, and in exchange I’d give him a lamp from my father’s store. Or how the butcher might give the vegetable man a lamb chop and the vegetable man gave him some cucumbers.

I started to wonder, “Why wouldn’t such a system work? Then we wouldn’t need any money and everybody would be happy.” But then again, I was a child.

Awakening from my reflections on the ride home, I came to understand that not all people want to work, and not all people will work as hard as their neighbor to get that lamb chop. Some will refuse to work yet still expect something for nothing. And that’s the essence of communism, of socialism. Millions of people living in this country right now do not work and yet still gain an awful lot for nothing on the backs of the taxpayers.

Yes, they’re gaming the system with the help of the government.

As I grew older, I watched in disbelief as the handout crowd swelled in size during the mid-sixties under the light socialist revolution of Lyndon B. Johnson and his creation of the “Great Society.” I’m sure President Johnson’s intentions to end poverty were good. I can’t say for sure. I never met the man. But codifying socialized medicine for welfare recipients, known as Medicaid, continues to be a fiasco.

His dalliance with socialism forever changed America.

And not for the better.

Due to President Johnson’s socialist experiment to end poverty, American taxpayers have been forced to pick up the tab, spending trillions of their hard-earned dollars over the decades. In effect, Lyndon Johnson took from the middle class to give to the poor. Did his bailout program to end poverty work? Hardly. If anything can be said, the cycle of poverty in America has grown worse.

Which leads me to Barack Obama.

Here’s a man who, like President Johnson, is represented as a modern-day Robin Hood figure. You know, the Great Equalizer—taking from the rich to give to the poor. That’s the popular image of him, prepackaged and sold with a slick, Madison Avenue—style marketing to the masses. Obama got into office claiming he wanted to spread the wealth around. He flew into Washington like Superman as if he were the ultimate Righter of Wrongs and Champion of the Downtrodden.

And the sheeple bought the cartoon version based upon their first impressions. Who can forget the excitable ejaculation by one enraptured supporter who, after listening to Obama, bubbled, “I never thought this day would ever happen. I won’t have to worry about putting gas in my car! I won’t have to worry about paying my mortgage! … if I help Obama, he’s gonna help me.”1

There you have it. She speaks for millions who were taken in by this

fable.

But during the 2008 election cycle, I wasn’t buying Obama’s grandiose rhetoric of “hope and change.” I dug deeper. I pulled back the curtain to see what kind of change Obama was envisioning. I studied how he was educated. I saw what was important to him. I focused on the people he associated with—in short, I did my homework. Which is why I knew Obama was no Robin Hood. The opposite is true.

I warned you Barack Obama was a stealth candidate.

I saw through him.

I saw the red flags of socialism.

Is Obama a Marxist-educated Mole?

I maintain that Barack Hussein Obama is a naked Marxist.

More than that, he’s a Marxist with a Leninist complex. Does that sound far-fetched? Why would I make such a provocative claim? What evidence, if any, exists to back me up? Plenty. I realize that the mainstream media laugh off my assertion because most of them are so far gone down that road they’re unaware of their own conversion.

These phonies don’t know socialism from sausage.

The fact of the matter is that Obama’s indoctrination began in 1970 at the impressionable age of 10.2 That’s when his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, introduced young Obama to radical activist, Frank Marshall Davis, in Hawaii. I’m not sure why Grandpa Dunham thought that it would be a good idea to connect his grandson with a communist, but he did. I would have thought a grandfather would have protected his grandchild from such a radical influence, someone whose sympathies didn’t line up with America’s best interests.

Obama’s half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, explained, “Our grandfather thought [Mr. Davis] was a point of connection, a bridge if you will, to the larger African-American experience for my brother.”3 If anything, Davis appears to be a different kind of bridge—a bridge to the dangerous doctrines of communism.

For his part, Frank Marshall Davis, who had migrated to the islands from Chicago, was a black poet, journalist, and a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).4 By his own admission in a weekly column of the Honolulu Record, Frank served on the national executive board of the Civil Rights Congress, which, at the time, had been identified by the Attorney General of the United States as a Communist subversive organization.5

There can be no doubt that Frank Davis embraced communist views. The FBI had assembled a thick file on Frank Davis’ participation in, writings about, and speeches regarding his interest in communism dating back to 1931.6 According to one FBI report, Davis “has been active in affairs of the Hawaii Civil Liberties, a Communist front, and occupies the position of Chairman of the Legal Action Committee of this organization.”7 Robert Kempa, a communist party-member-turned-FBI-informant, recalled collecting CPUSA dues from Davis and discussing their mutual interest in communism:

Late in the fall of 1950, I started contacting Frank Marshall Davis in connection with Communist Party matters, and relaying to him information received from my superior contact in the Communist Party, either James Freeman or [redacted].

During a portion of 1950, 1951 and part of 1952, I continued contacting Frank Marshall Davis and also transmitted dues for the Communist Party received from him to my contact above. During the period of my contacts with Frank Marshall Davis, he advised me that his wife, Helen was a member of Group #10…. During a portion of 1951 [redacted] took over contacts with the Davis group but I resumed contacting Davis in 1952 and continued meeting him on Communist Party matters until I left the Party in June of that year.8

There’s more. Dr. Kathryn Takara, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa knew Frank Marshall Davis personally for fifteen years. She called him a “socialist realist” and noted that Davis “espoused freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy.”9

Why does any of this matter?

In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama shares fond memories of developing a close relationship with Frank Marshall Davis, who treated the young Obama “almost like a son.”10 He’d spend hours listening to Davis’ poetry and seeking his advice regarding his college and career choices. In other words, Obama sought out a Communist to be his mentor. Let’s not forget the fact that Karl Marx was co-author of The Communist Manifesto upon which the ideology of communism and socialism are based.

As I’ve said, Barack Obama is a naked Marxist, a classic Red Diaper Doper Baby. Which is why in the pages ahead we’ll explore the poisoned seeds of socialism planted in Obama’s education and philosophy. We’ll examine Obama’s affiliations, his choice of czars and inner circle, and put his strategy and actions under the Savage microscope. Along the way, you’ll discover that, for decades, Obama has had “friendly associations with communists and terrorists, ranging from Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis in his youth in Hawaii to communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in Chicago when he was doing community organizing and running for political office.”11

These associations and his conversion to their way of thinking are clearly seen in all the czars that he has appointed. One after another, by their own admission, is a Maoist, Marxist, Leninist, or socialist. That’s an absurd claim, you say? It’s not absurd—it’s alarming. And in a moment, we’ll take a look at what these czars believe, including Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom, Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg, Science Czar John Holdren, Climate Czar Carol Browner, Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein, former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, and former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn.

Let’s start with Barack’s own admission about his pursuit of Marxism. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama freely admits that he sought out Marxist professors in college: “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists.”12

What are we to make of this personal disclosure?

Was his interest in Marxism a casual thing? Perhaps nothing more than a passing flirtation with liberal ideals? Did he study it to impress the liberal girls on campus, you know, like some sort of genius spouting heady Marxisms? Or, was the young, impressionable Obama aligning himself with Marxist ideology? Did he become a disciple of Marxist-Leninist philosophies? And, more important, is he functioning in the White House as a closet Marxist revolutionary?

Pause there for a moment.

Many of us have changed in our beliefs in adulthood from the days of our youth. I am one of them. When I was young and inexperienced, I was once a liberal—never a Marxist or follower of Lenin, but I was admittedly a liberal. There’s an old adage that says, “Those who are not a Marxist at 20 have no heart, and those who are still one at 40 have no mind.” Obama is at the age of enlightenment in that he’s over the age of forty. We can only assume that his politics have changed somewhat—but we really don’t know how far they may have changed from his early enchantments with Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky, the fathers of communism.

Back to my original question:

Is Barack Obama a casual or a serious disciple of Karl Marx?

Dr. John Drew, a contemporary of young Barack at Occidental College, witnessed Obama’s total immersion and participation in Marxism. To understand the significance of this, you must know a few basics about John Drew. While a student at Oxy, John wrote his senior honors paper on Marxist economics and, by his own admission, was a dyed-in-the-wool Marxist and founder of the only Marxist student association on campus. What’s more, he was well aware of the grave implications of being a “Marxist revolutionary.” He explains:

I did not take my status of Marxist revolutionary lightly in the fall of 1980. To me it was a serious business. It meant that I was an enemy, in a sense, of the U.S. government. It meant that I was an enemy of the wealthy people who were ruling the country. And it meant that I was willing to take whatever sacrifices … to confront that power structure. So for me, being a Marxist college student wasn’t sort of a light-hearted walk in the park. It was a dead-serious statement that was impacting my career, my relationships, and my studies.

In other words, he had a serious Marxist BS detector.

After being introduced to Obama who, he was told, “was one of us,” John spent long hours discussing their mutual interest in Marxist theories. He came to view Obama as a “blood brother” and a “member of this revolutionary elite that was going to turn around our country when the revolution hit.” There’s another firsthand observation of Obama the Marxist student worth noting. John recalls:

He wasn’t an idle explorer of intellectual Marxism. I know this is kind of incendiary, but he was basically a Marxist-Leninist. He believed that there was a revolutionary class that was going to turn around our whole nation, redistribute wealth, change control over private property.13

Are you starting to get the picture?

Is it any surprise, then, that candidate Obama spoke of “spreading the wealth around”? That’s Marxism Economics 101. Or, that after a hundred days in office masterminding the nationalization of America’s largest automobile company, General Motors, President Obama said, “We’ve begun the work of remaking America … I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made, but I’m not satisfied.”14

He’s not “satisfied” because he’s only getting started with his Grand Marxist—Leninist Makeover of America. Obama hasn’t completed his long march toward nationalizing (that’s code word for a Leninist-style government takeover of private industry) the banks, the mortgage industry, and the healthcare system. Along the way, he’s engaging in massive federal land-grabs in the western states. It’s all about chaos, command, and control. Obama’s radical actions and beliefs are 100 consistent with the teachings of