Aha! Democrats Admit They ARE Socialists in Disguise

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by: bjwilson83

The Tea Party was raked over the coals for calling Obama a socialist, but we were right all along. At least now that the elections are over, Democrats are beginning to admit it openly. Not that David Sirota is well loved around here, but as the “best radio talk show host in Colorado”, with a regular morning show on 760 AM, he is part of the public face of the left. He is the equivalent of the right’s Mike Rosen. And he admits we live in a socialist society.

This Reagan-inspired paradox of cheering anti-socialist platitudes while supporting socialism in practice was the tale of Super Bowl XLV. The game began with a jubilant Reagan biopic that approvingly flaunted his red-baiting past, including his 1964 warning about America “tak(ing) the first step into a thousand years of darkness.” The game ended with victory for professional sports’ only publicly owned nonprofit organization, the Green Bay Packers – a team whose quasi-socialist structure allows Wisconsin’s proletariat to own the means of football production.

Green Bay’s win, though, doesn’t tell the Super Bowl’s entire socialist tale. The game was held in one of the NFL’s government-funded stadiums. Additionally, training for many Super Bowl players was subsidized by taxpayers when those players honed their skills at public high schools and universities.

Meanwhile, fans arrived at the event on public roads, the contest was broadcast on public airwaves, and the Navy spent $450,000 of public monies flying jets over the game in order to stage a momentary TV image.

[..]

Yes, even though we clearly embrace socialism in everything from professional sports to telecommunications, the politicians and corporations who frame our public dialogue have long stifled honest discussions of our socialist reality because they know such discussions would show that America primarily champions a particular form of socialism – a corporate socialism leveraging public resources for private profit.

Like the few municipal services that still remain in today’s era of Reaganomics, the publicly owned Green Bay Packers are a rare exception to this norm. That’s why the story of the team’s organizational structure is suppressed – because it shows the most important question facing our nation isn’t about accepting or rejecting socialism. We’ve already accepted it. Instead, the real question is about what specific type of socialism we want: the current kind that works only for those in the luxury box, or the kind that starts working for the rest of us?

I actually happen to agree with Sirota’s analysis of our society. Obama has been foremost in facilitating this leveraging of public resources for private profit. Companies like GE, GM, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. are government run entities, benefiting from bailouts and tax subsidies (with huge government strings attached) at the expense of the rest of us. This has had a detrimental effect on the economy, as those small businesses which account for 70% of all jobs are forced out of business, unable to compete with the tax dollars behind the big guys.

Politicians and corporations have most definitely stifled honest discussions of our socialist reality. Ahem! Particularly those who have bashed the Tea Party for speaking the truth. Sirota attempts to make his article palatable to the left by adding the word “corporate” to socialism, but that is redundant. Socialism is by definition government ownership of corporations. It matters very little who is technically calling the shots, the President or a CEO, when government and corporations are synonymous.

Tea Partiers and the left are actually protesting the same thing – a small number of powerful people fleecing the rest of us. Where we disagree with Sirota is that instead of fatally deciding “which kind of socialism” we want, the Tea Party wants to cut out the cancer of socialism entirely!

The left calls for more government, because they view big business and “the rich” as the ones exploiting the people. The establishment right calls for more business, because they view government as the entity exploiting the people. In reality, government and corporations have become the same thing. The Tea Party calls for less government, and argues against “crony capitalism”, which is the right’s term for “corporate socialism”. We need less big business, less big government, more small business, and more local control of government. We need free markets and federalism.

Maybe Reagan was a bit too much of a socialist. Perhaps we should elect somebody who will cut government spending and regulation more than he did.

14 thoughts on “Aha! Democrats Admit They ARE Socialists in Disguise”

ClubTwitty says:

February 11, 2011 at 10:21 pm

Do you understand the concept of ‘plural’? Can I then surmise that ‘Republicans demonstrate they are all idiots’ by linking to one of your posts?

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1. ClubTwitty says:
  
  February 11, 2011 at 10:24 pm
  
  That’s what li’l Ricky just said, must be true of all of you.
  
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ohwilleke says:

February 12, 2011 at 1:30 am

George W. Bush nationalized AIG, caused the government chartered by privately owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that collectively own 50% of the mortgages in America and took an 80% government interest in them (essentially buying 40% of the nations mortgages), took equity stakes in nine of the nation’s largest banks, brokered multiple banking mergers and sales, caused a government run entity to enter the commercial paper market, provided major loans to GM and Chrysler, federalized an entire industry (the previously private sector airport screening business), supported a major expansion of socialized medicine in the form of Medicare Part D.

As the CATO Institute noted not long before the 2008 election:

“President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson. Even after excluding spending on defense and homeland security, Bush is still the biggest-spending president in 30 years. . . . Total government spending grew by 33 percent during Bush’s first term. The federal budget as a share of the economy grew from 18.5 percent of GDP on Clinton’s last day in office to 20.3 percent by the end of Bush’s first term. The Republican Congress has enthusiastically assisted the budget bloat. Inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent.”

Republicans prohibited voluntary accurate labeling of U.S. farm products or additional inspections of U.S. farm products that would increase the marketability of these products abroad when concerns about the safety of imports of food from the U.S. in the absence of these inspections and labeling has led to riots in the streets of Seoul, South Korea. And, the Bush Administration has also strongly favored protectionist prohibitions on importing prescription drugs from Canada, despite the fact that there are no genuine reasons to doubt the safety of Canadian drugs. Both Bush and McCain have proposed setting government targets in imports of oil to the United States.

Pro-government conservatives have become one of the main constituencies for the Republican party as the Pew Research Center has noted for several years. They make up 10% of registered voters, and are 58% Republican.

Sarah Palin is a pro-socialist Republican who favors collective ownership of resources and equal per capita distribution of this wealth as well. As one news report noted in 2008:

“A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist-Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine-that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”

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1. ClubTwitty says:
  
  February 12, 2011 at 1:36 am
  
  Is the most ‘socialist’ of all the states, receiving nearly $2 from the federal govt for each $1 they pay into the US Treasury. Other red-ribbed states, Utah for example, are not that far behind–in spite of all their bluster about the feds, wanting to provoke armed stand offs with the feds enforcing resource laws on federal land, for instance.
  
  Like most such hypocrites, Palin may not admit it–pretending she ‘said no to that bridge to nowhere’–and the like, but, as was shown with that lie, her veracity is not in question, but indubitably in deficit.
  
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  1. ClubTwitty says:
    
    February 12, 2011 at 1:56 am
    
    Of the top 10 states receiving more in federal revenue than they paid in taxes, for 2005, 7 are solidly GOP.
    
    http://www.taxfoundation.org/t…
    
    #1 NM
    
    #2 Miss
    
    #3 Alaska
    
    #4 Louisiana
    
    #5 WV
    
    #6 ND
    
    #7 Ala
    
    #8 SD
    
    #9 KY
    
    #10 Va
    
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raymond1 says:

February 12, 2011 at 1:34 am

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c rork says:

February 12, 2011 at 4:57 am

David Sirota’s comments on the Super Bowl make Obama, and every Democrat for that matter, a Socialist.

Congrats to Blow Job for finally fitting all the pieces together

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1. nancycronk says:
  
  February 12, 2011 at 8:31 am
  
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Aristotle says:

February 12, 2011 at 5:06 am

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Irish Patti says:

February 13, 2011 at 5:37 am

I would prefer socialism than the christianist fascist plutocracy that the repubs are pushing.

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1. Aristotle says:
  
  February 13, 2011 at 10:24 pm
  
  … but if it’s a lie, it should be countered with the truth.
  
  The Dems are a capitalist party all the way, just not laissez-faire capitalists.
  
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  1. Irish Patti says:
    
    February 13, 2011 at 10:39 pm
    
    person in the Senate that speaks for me.
    
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Phoenix Rising says:

February 13, 2011 at 6:10 am

That some people are absolutists until the end.

Ayn Rand, idol of free-market libertarians everywhere, partook of government social service when she needed it, too; apparently, it’s all bad until it’s not.

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parsingreality says:

February 14, 2011 at 6:23 am

We could use a bit more socialism around here. In the meantime, I can quickly rattle off such socialist institutions as the entire military, the electricity running this netbook here in Austin TX, municipally owned like that of Longmont and Los Angeles, the Greenbay Packers, the removal of the Indians from lands that tough Americans wanted, the land surveying after that, the Homestead Act, and so much more.

But not enough. I prefer cooperation over competition and profits.

You see, BJ, words are only what we make of them. You hear “Socialist” and your hackles raise. I hear it, and I yawn.

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