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Obama Taking Us On Path To Fascism

By HERB DENENBERG

During the last presidential campaign, I said there was a light whiff of fascism coming from the Obama campaign. That was based on its habit of improperly trying to repress criticism of every kind. Example: A Chicago radio station was planning on airing a critic of President Obama, who was publicizing the candidate’s close association with terrorist Bill Ayres. The Obama campaign organized a call-in campaign to flood the station with calls and prevent the critic from being heard. Anther example: The Obama campaign warned that any critics in Missouri would be subjected to prosecution there if they voiced criticism that was not true. There was a “Barack Obama Truth Squad” made up of prosecutors and sheriffs to keep critics in line, promising rebuttals and prosecution in appropriate cases (NewsBusters, September 29, 2008).

Now that whiff has turned into a strong stench of fascism, as the Obama Administration uses the vast resources of the federal government to squelch criticism and silence and intimidate critics. Here are some of the recent examples of that:

• The administration has organized a concerted campaign to marginalize, demonize, de-legitimize and destroy Fox Cable News simply because it, virtually alone among broadcast outlets, originates strong criticism of the Obama Administration and asks tough questions about what it is trying to do. Obama spokesmen, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Senior Advisor David Axelrod have said, in effect, that Fox is just an arm of the Republican Party and is not a legitimate news organization. Obama spokesmen say the station has a perspective. There are several answers to this. First, its news programs (as opposed to its opinion and commentary programs featuring the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck) pre- sent both sides of issues in a fair and balanced manner, and that has been confirmed by the survey of a respected research organization. The Pew Research Center found, by a wide margin,  Fox had the most objective coverage of the last presidential campaign. Second, it is true that opinion programs have a “perspective, ” but that is true of all opinion programs including those on other networks such as MSNBC. Third, the White House doesn’t complain about networks or broadcasters with a Democratic perspective, even though they dominate the dial. In fact, with the exception of Fox, all the major broadcasters have a liberal and Democratic Party perspective, admittedly some in much stronger form than others. The White House is not only trying to intimidate Fox but is clearly also trying to fire a warning shot at any broadcasters that might take the same path as Fox. This is the way Fox reported that development (October 19, 2009): “White House chief of staff Mr. Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want “the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox.” Obama senior advisor Mr. Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is “not a news organization.”

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• When a health insurance company that marketed Medicare policies tried to warn its policyholders that Obamacare would hurt seniors’ insurance programs, the Department of Health and Human Services issued on a gag order on such communications with policyholders. It also said that the warning was misleading, which it was not. The gag order was since revoked, but its initial promulgation tells you something about the mentality of the White House and its attitude toward criticism. The Washington Post reported on the “gag order” as follows: “The federal government has ordered health insurers to stop telling Medicare beneficiaries that proposed health reform legislation could hurt seniors and jeopardize their benefits. The government might take enforcement action against insurers that have tried to mobilize opposition to the legislation by sending their enrollees “misleading and confusing” messages, a senior official of the Department of Health and Human Services said in a memo…” Query: Who will take action against Mr. Obama for the countless lies he’s telling in an effort to sell Obamacare?

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• Mr. Obama and his administration are willing to tell lies,  and big lies, over and over again, perhaps on the Goebbels theory that if you tell a big enough lie often enough it will be believed. One of the Obama lies that I found particularly irksome was his claim after the Senate Committee passed a version of Obamacare that it was a bipartisan product. In fact, Obamacare had finally garnered one Republican supporter (Senator Olympia “Republican in Name Only” Snowe, R., Me.) out of a Congress with 535 members. What’s worse, in the legislative process, the Republicans were frozen out and “did not have a seat at the table” to use one of Obama’s favorite figures of speech.

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•  Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have expressed support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would abolish the secret ballot in union elections. This shows the willingness of Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party leadership to do anything to satisfy the demands of one of their voting constituencies. In this case, it’s the labor bosses, who want to revive their fortunes by making it easy to organize new unions – without the need to pass the test of a secret ballot obtaining the right to organize a union.

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•  Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have been willing to indulge in outrageous anti-democratic techniques to get legislation passed: Not reading a bill before it is signed, not posting the bill on the Internet prior to voting on it, as promised, and keeping negotiations secret and one-sided, also in conflict with promises.

I’ve emphasized one aspect of fascism – its objective of the forcible suppression of opposition. But it also qualifies under the other elements, including the suppression of private enterprise and putting it under centralized government control. That is one hallmark of the Obama Administration, it expands government, contracts the private sector and places new and unprecedented power in the hands of a centralized, expanding government bureaucracy.

This government expansion also is a restriction of our freedom because as the government gets bigger, the individual citizen gets smaller. Consider some of the belief systems of his Czars. Ron Bloom, the manufacturing czar thinks the “free market is nonsense.”

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The part of Obama’s fascism that includes growing the govt at the expense of the private sector is the primary driver of his deepening recession, characterized by no real economic growth(a hallmark of non-free enterprise economic systems) and increasing unemployment.
All of his “programs” or “plans” are designed for one purpose only: Increasing his power at our expense.