In
his classic 1932 book, Toward Soviet
America, Communist Party boss William Z. Foster wrote about how “The United
Soviet States of America”
will come about. As a result of various capitalist crises, the national
government would assume more and more control over the economy. “In finance,”
he wrote, “it will mean the nationalization of the banking system and its
concentration around a central State bank…” Foster is dead, but the Wall Street
financial “bail-out” plan offered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in
coordination with the Federal Reserve, will bring about a socialist America.

It
would be an exaggeration to say that we are getting close to anything
resembling the Soviet system. But it is also a big mistake to call this a
“bailout.” It is socialism. Why are so many in the media afraid of using this
term?

Over
at Political Affairs Magazine, a
publication of the Communist Party USA, writer John Case is gloating. His article about the crisis is headlined, “A Dose of Socialism to Forestall Disaster.” He
thinks that Paulson and Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke have been
reading the works of closet Marxists.

But
none of this is secret. At a time when many pieces of legislation before
Congress take up thousands of pages and do their best to hide pork barrel
spending, Paulson’s three-page plan for Wall Street socialism is
straightforward and simple. If passed by Congress, Paulson would assume the
dictatorial power and authority to designate financial institutions “as
financial agents of the Government” and order them to perform “all such
reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as
may be required of them…”

The
bill gives Paulson automatic access to $700 billion and raises the limit on the
public debt to $11.3 trillion. He gets the power to issue regulations, hire
people, establish various financial “vehicles,” and take other “necessary
actions.” 

Conservative Senator Jim
Bunning is brutally honest, saying that “…the free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America.” He
said Paulson’s plan “will take away the free market and institute socialism in America. The
American taxpayer has been misled throughout this economic crisis. The
government on all fronts has failed the American people miserably.”

“After reviewing the
Administration’s proposed bailout plan, I believe it is completely
unacceptable,” said conservative Senator Jim DeMint. “This plan does nothing to
address the misguided government policies that created this mess and it could
make matters much worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy.
This plan fails to oversee or regulate the government failures that led to this
crisis. Instead it greatly increases the role for Secretary Paulson whose
market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year…”

Every
newspaper in America
should print a
copy of his plan. Every news anchor and commentator should read it out loud
to the American people. The American people have a right to know that President
Bush and Congress are officially creating a socialist America.

Over at the
“conservative” Fox News Channel, however, some commentators think this is just
great. “I love it,” Fred Barnes of the “conservative” Weekly Standard said of the
temporary market rise in response to the anticipated Paulson plan.  “Look,” Barnes said,
“when I keep hearing this is going to cost a trillion dollars, and so on, it
may not cost anything.” The U.S. may “come
out ahead” in the long run, he confidently predicted. He praised Paulson and
Bernanke for acting “boldly.”

Another
“conservative,” Charles Krauthammer, was almost giddy. “It took FDR a decade
to put in place all the institutions of the New Deal,” he commented. “Paulson
and Bernanke did it in ten hours. I mean, in one night, they created a whole
new world.”

However, on the
September 21 edition of Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pointed out that
Paulson has already been caught making reassuring but false statements about
the crisis. In March, also on Fox News Sunday, Wallace had asked him, “Are more Wall Street firms in danger, at risk, of going
under? Paulson replied, “I’ve got great confidence in our financial
market, our financial institutions. Our markets are resilient. They’re
flexible. Our institutions, our banks and investment banks, are strong.”

And this is the guy
being entrusted with virtual dictatorial power over Wall Street? Rather than
praise him for his intellect and ability, why aren’t Barnes and Krauthammer
demanding that Bush fire him?

The
liberal media are, of course, also trying to keep the American people in the
dark about what is happening. The Washington Post deceptively calls it a
“rescue plan.”

The
“debate” taking place in Washington and the media is being carefully
controlled. The Republican Bush Administration supports the plan and
Congressional Democrats want to take it further. The Democrats want even more
federal involvement in the firms that are being acquired. In other words, it is
a question of how much socialism they want. The Democrats want more socialism;
the Bush Republicans want slightly less. But it is still socialism.

There
is a bipartisan note: both sides agree that there should be a new government
board assigned to monitor America’s
transition into a socialist economy. 

Both
major party presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have not
objected to the proposed federal takeover, although McCain has raised questions
about giving Paulson too much power.

Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck
Baldwin, who has been endorsed by Rep. Ron Paul, is ripping the Democrats and
the Republicans. “That deer in the headlights look on the faces of
Obama/Biden/McCain/Palin when discussing this crisis should tell Americans
everything they need to know about these candidates,” he said. “Not one
of them is letting on they know what’s really happening, much less how to fix
it!”

He said, “So far, the only solution being talked
about is more of the same failed monetary policies that got us into this mess
in the first place―more fake money, more debt, more usury. It is time to demand
a return to sound money.”

On
the House side, 31 members of the House of Representatives have voiced public
objections in writing to going further down the socialist road. They are
members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the Caucus of House
Conservatives. They have sent a letter to Paulson and Bernanke.

Rep.
Mike Pence, the former chairman of the RSC, said, “The Administration’s
request amounts to the largest corporate bailout in American history. Congress
should act, but should act in a way that protects the integrity of our free
market and protects the American taxpayer from more debt and higher taxes. To
have the freedom to succeed, we must preserve the freedom to fail. Any solution
to our present crisis must preserve our essential economic freedom.”

“Government bailouts and takeovers are nothing
new,” points out financial advisor Ric Edelman.

He cites the following: “In 1971, Richard Nixon
rescued Lockheed by providing $250 million in loan guarantees. When the Penn
Central Railroad failed in 1971, Nixon created Amtrak. Jimmy Carter gave $1.5
billion in loan guarantees to Chrysler in 1979. Under Ronald Reagan, the FDIC
in 1984 spent $4.5 billion to rescue Continental Illinois, which still holds
the record as the largest U.S. bank failure. Then, during the S&L crisis of
the 1980s, George H. W. Bush approved the bailout of 747 savings and loans at a
cost to taxpayers of $124.6 billion. In 1998, under Bill Clinton, the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York
bailed out Long Term Capital Management at a cost of $3.6 billion. During the
Mexican Peso Crisis, Clinton arranged for loans
and guarantees to Mexico
totaling almost $50 billion. Then, following the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks, George W. Bush approved $15 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees
to aid the faltering airline industry. This year, the Federal Reserve approved
a $30 billion credit line to help JP Morgan Chase acquire Bear Stearns and
engineered takeovers of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG. The names, dates and
amounts are different, but that’s about it.”

In fact, however, the massive scope and price
tag make the Paulson plan far different.

Meanwhile,
some “progressive” economists and writers are urging the Democrats in Congress
to take the plan much further by implementing the first phase of a global
tax. 

James Parrott
of the Fiscal Policy Institute says that Washington
needs to establish a “new regulatory regime that covers all financial
institutions (including hedge funds), controls risk and introduces a tax on
financial transactions to help repay U.S. taxpayers for coming to the industry’s
rescue.” A tax on financial transactions, which would affect stocks and mutual
funds, could be part of a global “Tobin Tax,” named after the late Yale University
economist James Tobin, to bring in billions and even trillions of dollars a
year to national governments and international institutions such as the United
Nations.  Such a plan has usually been
marketed as a way to diminish “global financial instability.”

Dean Baker of
the Center for Economic and Policy Research says that “The
government should impose a modest financial transactions tax, comparable to the
one in the United Kingdom.
This can both restrain excessive trading and raise more than $100 billion a
year in revenue.”

One cannot exclude the possibility of such a
proposal being slipped into the final legislation. It is being reported that
Senator Christopher Dodd, Democratic chairman of the Banking Committee, has
been circulating a 44-page version of the bill. But Dodd’s Banking Committee website only has a three-page summary. What is in the rest of the proposal?

The next few days are critical. The American
people can stop this rush into socialism, if only the liberal and conservative
media start telling the truth about the socialist “new world” into which we are
about to enter.

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