Analysis: Pendulum swings to financial restraints (Tom Raum/AP)

WASHINGTON – Capitalism can't always be trusted. If you're too big to fail, you're too big to make all your own decisions, according to the emerging view in Washington.

Three decades after Ronald Reagan launched a determined campaign to ease government regulations on business, the pendulum is swinging the other way.

"Too big to fail is the right size to regulate," declares Rep. Al Green, D-Texas.

Riding a wave of public anger over Wall Street greed and government bailouts, the Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a far-reaching plan for "better, tougher, smarter" rules over big financial companies. The plan would crack down on major — but now lightly regulated — players such as hedge funds and traders of exotic financial products.

We will now get a chance to see how the youth that voted for “change” (without knowing what that change would be) will respond to “mandatory volunteerism”, a draft of our young people. Yes, you heard the Obama-speak, “mandatory volunteerism” is yet another Orwellianism in the string of transparent, ethical, bipartisan, no earmarks, different way of doing things Obama promises during the campaign for President.
The House passed a bill yesterday (H.R. 1388) which includes disturbing language indicating young people will be forced to undertake mandatory national service programs as fears about President Barack Obama’s promised “civilian national security force” intensify.
The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, was passed yesterday by a 321-105 margin and now goes to the Senate.
Under section 6104 of the bill, entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, the legislation states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”
That is how socialism works, and we are hurling rapidly toward it.
With all the focus and attention on the TARP, the so-called “stimulus” bill, the nationalization of huge chunks of our economy and the various issues economic – lost in the weeds have been a host of destructive “programs” being developed and passed by the Obama-Democrat machine.
This act . HR 1388, started as the “Serve America Act” and is cloaked in feel-good rhetoric and supposedly noble goals, but it is nothing more than another Washington power-grab – this time targeted at non-profits and education – and ultimately at indoctrinating a whole new generation of Obamanistas into forsaking individual liberty and free will for the Statist worldview.
Here are just a few of the lowlights in the legislation:
1. The bill will substantially increase the size and reach of an existing federal government program;
2. The bill will burden taxpayers with more than 5 billion tax dollars at a time when we should be cutting back, not spending more;
3. The bill will steer funding and volunteers for public service away from churches, individuals, neighbors, and others who would like to lend a helping hand and toward organizations selected by bureaucrats;
4. The bill is full of vague language and has insufficient safeguards to prevent left-wing special interest groups from using tax dollars to advance their agenda in the name of “community service;” [Surely we have not already how the Obama ACORN machine committed massive voter fraud across the battleground states? Is this an end-run to dominate the political structure for decades to come and secure the current socialist agenda to its ultimate goals?]
5. The bill risks politicizing charity and community service by funneling funds and volunteers toward the preferred organizations picked by ideologues;
6. The first 25% of this bill is really education legislation, and should be in an education bill at the state level; and
7. The bill will compound the disincentives created by new limits on federal tax deductions for charitable giving, thereby decreasing the role of families, churches and other local organizations in their communities.
When you look at the details – one realizes that it’s far worse than even that… more along the lines of full-scale indoctrination camps toward Statism. The legislation will, in many circumstances, force our children to participate in charitable activity as part of school – and that activity may well be chosen by or approved by a bureaucrat. The bill causes a federally chartered, Washington-based institution to, essentially, pick priorities and winners and losers in the charitable universe – undoubtedly putting many charities at a significant disadvantage…
None of this even considers the lack of Constitutional basis for such a massive federal intervention into local charities and volunteerism… but when does that ever stop anyone in Washington? And when coupled with the soon-to-be-reduced lower tax deductions for charities, the Obama-Democrat machine is massively shifting the focus of charity from the individual to the State. Transition to Socialism, Phase II.

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