| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
| Locked on 10/28/2008 10:11:05 AM PDT by Admin Moderator, reason: |
Posted on 10/28/2008 7:07:17 AM PDT by SJackson
|
Obama's Stealth Reparations |
|
By Paul Sperry
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, October 28, 2008
While he was an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama told a Chicago radio show host that he sought "major redistributive change" for the benefit of fellow blacks.
He was speaking in the context of the civil rights movement, and how it had fallen short of "economic justice." Although John McCain and other Republicans are afraid to say it, his remarks can only be interpreted to mean one thing: economic reparations for slavery.
This is yet another example of Obama's lack of candor and deception about his true radical agenda during this campaign, as well as the mainstream media's failure to vet such serious issues and force them out into the open where voters can see them and have a fair chance to evaluate them before they go to the polls.
In 2001, Obama said it's a "tragedy" the Constitution wasn't radically interpreted to force redistribution of wealth for blacks, and it's still an issue of concern for him today. And he suggested he wants to effect "major redistributive change" through legislation.
He complained that during the civil-rights era, "the Supreme Court never ventured into issues of redistribution of wealth" for blacks, and that the Warren Court was not "radical" enough.
"One of the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change," he said while serving as a state lawmaker and University of Chicago lecturer. "And in some ways, we still suffer from that."
That was in 2001. Now those coalitions, led by ACORN and other radical urban community organizers, hope to deliver Obama to national power along with a legislative majority working on their behalf.
"Maybe I'm sharing my bias here as a legislator, but I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts," he added. "The institution just isn't structured that way."
Obama explained that justices felt uncomfortable forcing school districts to pay the extra expense to make the necessary changes to accommodate their desegregation rulings. They would rather not get involved in issues of direct remuneration. Legislators, on the other hand, would have no such qualms about making people pay.
He said the process of redistributive change and "economic justice" is "administrative and takes a lot of time" -- things that are best left to a federal administration and legislature.
In a separate interview, he said the framers of the Constitution had an "enormous blind spot" regarding slavery -- no argument there. But then he said that the Constitution -- in spite of its subsequent proper amendments giving blacks full citizenship and rights -- still "represents the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day."
This echoes what he wrote in his 2006 autobiography about the Constitution being "marred by the original sin of slavery."
Question: Does Obama want to further amend the Constitution in some way? It seems he thinks something is missing, left undone. Does he want to institutionalize reparations somehow? It's a serious question he should be compelled to answer, if he would only give reporters outside his fawning entourage a chance to ask it. (He hasn't held a press conference in over a month.) Remember, Obama was a constitutional lawyer and would know how to get the amendment ratification process started with the right majority in Congress behind such a movement.
Back in August, Barack Obama said Washington shouldn't just offer apologies for slavery, but also "deeds." Don't worry, he said, he wasn't talking about direct reparations.
I wasn't put at ease then, and I'm definitely not now.
"I consistently believe that when it comes to ... reparations," Obama told a gathering of minority journalists, "the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds."
A few days later, he clarified his remarks, saying he was not calling for direct cash payments to descendents of slaves, but rather indirect aid in the form of government programs that will "close the gap" between what he sees as white America and black America.
In other words, stealth reparations.
He says government should offer "universal" programs -- such as universal health care, universal mortgage credits, college tuition, job training and even universal 401(k)s -- that "disproportionately affect people of color."
Obama's 2006 book and Web site outline a plan calling for essentially a government bailout of the inner cities, which he describes as "repositories for all the scars of slavery and violence of Jim Crow." Among other things, he proposes:
This is just a down payment on the "economic justice" Obama has promised the NAACP -- financed by "tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth," he says in his book.
And the indirect aid he's proposing now could quickly turn into cash transfers once Obama is safely ensconced in the White House -- with perhaps a filibuster-proof majority of Democrats at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Claiming "blacks were forced into ghettos," Obama is certainly sympathetic to the idea of reparations. His church has actively petitioned for them for decades. And he's strongly suggested there's a legal case to be made for them.
"So many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow," he said. "We still haven't fixed them."
He assumes the economic gap is a legacy of discrimination and largely unrelated to personal responsibility. He also makes it seem things haven't gotten better for blacks, despite statistics showing enormous economic gains and a rising black middle class ("Better isn't good enough," he insists). He also assumes, like his spiritual mentor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that America is "still run by racism." Obama claims "institutional racism" still exists in America, without offering any evidence that legalized discrimination still remains in this country, even in its most backwater parts.
Another Obama confidante, Rev. Michael Pfleger, has asserted that white people have a moral obligation to surrender their 401(k) funds and other assets, which he suggested properly belong to blacks.
Obama himself has said more needs to be done to "cleanse America of its original sin." He said he cannot "brush aside the magnitude of the injustice done, or erase the ghosts of generations past, or ignore the open wound, the aching spirit, that ails this country still."
"The problems of inner-city poverty arise from our failure to face up to an often tragic past," Obama said.
He also wrote in his recent autobiography that he sympathizes with militant black activists who fear that "white Americans will be let off the hook" for past crimes, such as "a hundred years of lynching under several dozen administrations."
"I understand these fears," Obama said, and agrees that the government has a "responsibility to make things right," suggesting there is at least some legitimacy to militant demands for payback.
In calling for a "new order," he invoked the memory of abolitionists and their "willingness to spill blood and not just words ... that helped force the issue of a nation half slave and half free."
Apparently, Obama is under the delusion such a division still exists in this country, and that radical action must be taken to unshackle blacks from whatever fetters he imagines are holding them back.
"I'm reminded that deliberation and the constitutional order may sometimes be the luxury of the powerful," Obama said. "And that it has sometimes been the cranks, the zealots, the prophets, the agitators and the unreasonable -- in other words the absolutists -- that have fought for a new order." By cranks, zealots and agitators, he is no doubt referring to all the radicals -- from Wright and Pfleger to Frank Marshall Davis and Bill Ayers -- with whom he has surrounded himself.
Just what is this "new order" he and all his absolutist pals have in mind for America? And why keep it such a mystery from voters?
“Another Obama confidante, Rev. Michael Pfleger, has asserted that white people have a moral obligation to surrender their 401(k) funds and other assets, which he suggested properly belong to blacks.”
WTF...??....earth to mars...good lord...let me just write you a blank check.
it is a proven fact that giving them everything only makes them expect more.....
This communist puke will shred the Constitution and piss on what’s left. The biggest global shift ever......and it will be the downfall of this republic.
If I was black, I’d be insulted by all of this.
He’s tried “Spreading the Wealth”
For the last week of the campaign I suggest McCain use the word reparations. It’s time to stop beating around the bush and start scaring the bleep out of people as to what an Obama election would mean.
Reparations will continue to be done by stealth, as they have been for the last 40 years ($40 trillion in wealth transfers),
because the grievance mongers will never allow this to be “over”.
Booker T. Washington:
There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well.
He, alone, is not the scary part. His voter turn out could give him a 60 seat Senate that would be filibuster proof. That not only means any legislation they want to pass, controlling both houses of Congress with no veto, but any Federal judiciary they want to appoint for LIFE terms. We are talking about liberal constructionists who legislate from the bench.
If we do not stop this our nation is taking a turn for many years to come. Simply changing Presidents, even Congress, will not reverse the damage. I am praying for a conservative turn out. Wish I could go to a battle ground state to man the phones.
I agree that we should all be concerned about the problems of poverty, the inner city, gangs, and all the related problems. But, it is overly simplistic and demagogic (sp?) to blame that on racism.
The issues with gangs, for example, have their roots in the utter breakdown of the black family structure in the past 40+ years. Do you know that about 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock now? In 1960, about 10% of black babies were born out of wedlock. Gangs are made up largely of young black men who don’t have a father in the house. The breakdown of the black family was not caused by racism. BARACK OUGHT TO BE INTELLECTUALLY HONEST about an issue like this, as even he says his upbringing was hurt by the absence of his own father.
Young men of all races and backgrounds, who are raised in a fatherless home, are more likely to get in trouble with the law, drop out of school, and have difficulties in life. Young girls in such situations are more likely to fall to all of these problems, plus they are more likely to start having babies as teenagers, which colors their entire lives.
I don’t know what Barack wants to do about inner city schools, but, some urban school districts already spend more per capita than the national average. So if he thinks we should just throw more money at urban school districts to get better results, I’m not buying that.
The last few days, as I was listening to some of these earlier Obama recordings, it became apparent he was really talking about reparations, but was politically astute enough to use terms like “redistributive justice” instead.
And guess what...if Dems get super majority...who's gonna stop it?
I believe the Congressional Black Caucus has enough power to push it through...maybe little bits at a time...but it'll eventually get through.
Hope I'm wrong.
When the constitution is shredded, the union is defunct, and we have the right to secede.
Finally, the ‘r’ word getting some press. IMO, it’s been a big, unspoken factor for the black vote, and they feel they’ll directly lose $$$ if BHO loses. There’s going to be serious emotional backlash from it, from ‘feeling robbed’.
yep, I sincerely believe you are right, it will be the beginning of the end.
I’ve been preparing mentally by reading disaster novels and learning to enjoy fantasy.
We’re going to sign up for social security early while it’s still there and zone out.
for later
The only thing that will satisfy blacks of Obama and Wright's ilk is for there to be two hundred years of slavery with them as plantation owners, and whites as slaves.
The blood shed in the Civil War and the trillions of dollars spent since Johnson's "Great Society" just "aren't enough".
Of course, Obama actually has zero legitimacy on this issue, as his ancestors were never slaves, unless it was to Muslims in Kenya.
I doubt the American public would long stand for the concept of Black reparations in any form or even policies that tend to favor Blacks.
I don’t believe he believes any of this crap. He lives in a neighborhood with rich whites. He and Michelle want nothing to do with the black man in America. He’s saying this to get elected. There are a lot more things he wants to do to this country that are a lot worse than slave reparations.
We have to learn from Rome, which descended into a series of emperors and was never able to restore an actual Republic, although they still had senators and a nobility of sorts, power was what ruled the day.
America without freedom, liberty and our constitution will just be another two-bit short-lived blip in history's pages. We need to spread free market liberty combined with the bill of rights to all corners of the globe to complete our destiny, not let the depravity, corruption and slavery enter our shores from abroad.
Gird your loins!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.