“Here a Czar, There a Czar, Everywhere a Czar, Czar; Barack Obama Had a Farm…ahem a Commune”
Last time I checked, czars did not have the best track record throughout history… i.e. Ivan the Great; from his biography:
Other events of this period include the introduction of the first laws restricting the mobility of the peasants, which would eventually lead to serfdom, and change in Ivan’s personality, traditionally linked to his near-fatal illness in 1553 and the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna in 1560. Ivan suspected boyars of poisoning his wife and of plotting to replace him on the throne with his cousin, Vladimir of Staritsa. In addition, during that illness Ivan had asked the boyars to swear an oath of allegiance to his eldest son, an infant at the time. Many boyars refused, deeming the tsar’s health too hopeless to survive. This angered Ivan and added to his distrust of the boyars. There followed brutal reprisals and assassinations, including those of Metropolitan Philip and Prince Alexander Gorbatyi-Shuisky.
So what exactly is a czar by definition?
1. an emperor or king.
2. (often initial capital letter) the former emperor of Russia.
3. an autocratic ruler or leader.
4. any person exercising great authority or power in a particular field: a czar of industry.
It can certainly be assumed that definition #4 is the one being used by the White House, but much could be argued that the eventual role of these czar will be autocratic authority over that industry. There is nothing Democratic about czars or those with absolute power.
Why don’t we use all the retread titles of the past? Fuhrer, Emperor, Ruler, King, or Potentate?
Obama is appointing czars as quickly as the House Wives of new York charge their American Express cards. The latest czar picks (why do I feel like this is an NFL draft?) are for Executive Pay, Health & Wellness, and next on the list: Meditation…? By the end of this we all may be living on some hippie commune practicing yoga, drinking green tea, eating organic fruits and vegetables that we planted, and using cow farts to power our electricity (after taxes of course). This is just sheer insanity. The government wants to control every aspect of our lives whether it’s how we relax, eat, smoke, drink, exercise, get paid, etc. I don’t see where in the constitution it allows for such obtrusion into our lives.
Here is some information on the Executive Pay Czar:
The Obama administration on Wednesday appointed a compensation czar who will have broad discretion to set the pay for 175 top executives at seven of the nation’s largest companies, which received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal assistance to survive.
The mandate given to the new compensation official, Kenneth R. Feinberg, a well-known Washington lawyer, reflects the federal government’s increasingly intrusive role in the corporate affairs of deeply troubled companies. From his nondescript office in Room 1310 of the Treasury building, Mr. Feinberg will set the salaries and bonuses of some of the top corporate executives in America, including Kenneth Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America; Vikram Pandit, the head of Citigroup, and Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of General Motors.
The compensation of executives at some of the companies receiving aid provoked a firestorm of political outrage earlier this year. In revising an earlier proposal to set pay limits, the Obama administration has decided to take an approach that will leave the success or failure of the effort to curtail high compensation at the assisted companies in the hands of Mr. Feinberg. (Mr. Feinberg himself will not receive any government compensation.)
Instead of deciding compensation levels himself, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, decided to appoint Mr. Feinberg, a well-known mediator whose last high-profile assignment was putting a financial value on the lives of victims of the 9/11 attack, to decide the pay for the top 25 executives at the American International Group, Citibank, Chrysler, Chrysler Credit, General Motors, GMAC and Bank of America.
Just what America needs, another lawyer running things! This lawyer is only accountable to Obama and not “the people” and when a particular individual is establishing pay caps it can most definitely result in conflicts of interest and corruption. Not like that would be any different from the current political elite we have.
President Barack Obama eats his vegetables and exercises every day — and he really wants you to do the same.
From the White House garden to his picks for top health jobs, Obama is telling America’s McDonald’s-loving, couch-dwelling, doctor-phobic populace that things are about to change.
Don’t be fooled by the presidential burger runs. Obama and Congress are moving across several fronts to give government a central role in making America healthier — raising expectations among public health experts of a new era of activism unlike any before.
Any health care reform plan that Obama signs is almost certain to call for nutrition counseling, obesity screenings and wellness programs at workplaces and community centers. He wants more time in the school day for physical fitness, more nutritious school lunches and more bike paths, walking paths and grocery stores in underserved areas.
The president is filling top posts at Health and Human Services with officials who, in their previous jobs, outlawed trans fats, banned public smoking or required restaurants to provide a calorie count with that slice of banana cream pie.
Even Congress is getting into the act, giving serious consideration to taxing sugary drinks and alcohol to help pay for the overhaul.
I really hope he appoints Richard Simmons as one of, if not THE, czar. Wagyu beef required for everyone!
And the soon to be named Yoga Czar:
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) says he’s found a cost effective way to address chronic pain, stress, and other illnesses: meditation.
Ryan is urging policymakers to consider adding “mindfulness education”–learning to reduce one’s own stress level–to healthcare reform legislation.
“Every day, I meditate for at least 45 minutes before leaving home in the morning,” Ryan wrote on his website. “I find it makes me a better listener, and my concentration is sharper. I get less distracted when I’m reading. It’s like you see through the clutter of life and can penetrate to what’s really going on.”
At a hearing last week, Ryan asked HHS Secretary Kathleen [Sebelius] to keep in mind the positive effects of mindfulness when re-working the nation’s healthcare system…
…”I think it’s a prevention strategy that I know has the potential of paying huge dividends,” Sebelius said.
My additional suggestion for a czar is Tommy Chong for weed czar – this would help our economy as well as “like, totally relax us, man” – His official title: Joint Chief of Grass.
The Establishment Hates Rocking the Boat
Many of us, who continue to read blogs and stay on top of political news, are aware of both the DNC and the RNC and what the parties have turned into.
Republicans and Democrats used to have clear differences between the two, but now they are just a blurred combination of one another. The point of the two party system was being able to have a choice; namely freedom.
The more I see how congress votes and what each representative or senator puts into their bills, the more I realize, at such a young age, that the government has become power hungry and spend happy. Congress couldn’t care less where the money comes from; the more “bacon” they bring home to their constituents and their special interests, the more money they receive in donations and campaign contributions as well as a little extra padding in their pockets.
We are being “represented” by an elite political class or, as I like to refer to it, the Politburo. This is a class of career politicians who have never worked outside of classrooms or as a lawyer or on their parent’s campaign. They have no idea what it is like to be average citizens in the United States working to live and living to work. Those of us who work 9-5 jobs day in and day out, just to make enough money to pay the bills, know what our priorities are and what really matters in this world. The political elite is reminiscent of the ‘popular’ clique in the high school I attended. It was mainly dependent on the income and social status of parents. Those whose parents belonged to a country club, played tennis, golfed, and went yachting were deemed ‘acceptable.’ However, regardless of your personality, looks, or good will if you didn’t measure up you were stuck in the middle rungs; never quite making it to the upper echelons of high school popularity. Many went on to ivy league schools, not because they were intelligent, but because they could afford it or they had connections. After spending 4 years hiding away in the bubble of elitism, some could quote text books or famous philosophers, while many were still incapable of doing anything. One thing was for sure; they never left their comfort zone to experience life in order to truly understand the difference between intelligence and wisdom; life-experience. Leadership tends to be a mixture of inherent characteristics as well as learned qualities through personal accomplishment and strife.
I was so incredibly appalled at what I saw and what I heard during the 2008 election cycle. I thought, based on character and integrity, the choice was obvious. I was wrong. The ticket had two very honorable, down-to-earth, decent human beings who, having made it through tremendous struggles, were overlooked due to race baiting, liberal media bias, propaganda, elitism, ivy league degrees, and the usual ‘Bush sucks’ sentiment.
One of my favorite books is the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery, and my favorite part of the story is when the Little Prince meets the Fox and discovers the meaning of friendship. The book teaches us what really matters after you tear away all of the materialistic aspects of the outside world. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential, is invisible to the eye.”
I know I’m not the only person in my age group to understand the Little Prince, but I am few and far between who actually applies it. What I have noticed during my young life thus far is the fact that those who appreciate honesty, morals, and ethics are usually those who have experienced something in their lives where they have been “enlightened” to a point where they have seen the “bottom” and know what it means to struggle. When people have to build their lives back up again or work like there’s no tomorrow to make it to the other side, they appreciate what so many others take for granted and they value those things that so many lose sight of; because, let’s face it, our society has become spoiled and we’ve lived beyond our means for too long.
Sarah Palin is the epitome of struggle and accomplishment. She represents the antithesis of the establishment and the elite. She is someone who you could sit down and have a heart-to-heart with and feel as though you have been friends for years. She is the quintessential Reagan type persona who so many have been waiting for. I feel funny saying that since I was only born in 1981, but I’ve done a bit of research
I even have a $1,000,000 bill with Reagan’s face on it hanging in my cubicle. For all I know that $1,000,000 bill will be worth something soon due to all of this spending and the inevitable inflation!
Sarah Palin has fought her own machine and once you fight that monster under the bed it will keep coming after you for revenge. We saw that during the Alaska legislative session this past year in her attempt to nominate a decent conservative man as the next Attorney General. We also see it at the national level where Republicans continue to fear her and turn their noses up at her. The Republicans better be careful because the GOP’s approval rating is not doing too well either. When Sarah Palin releases her FEC filings for SarahPAC I whole-heartedly believe that we will hear the creaking of “old geriatric” jaws dropping around the beltway.
The DNC is just as bad and just as corrupt, if not more so. Obama is part of the Machine. He came from the most politically corrupt city in the nation; Chicago. He brought this style to Washington D.C. along with a slim resume and only 143 days of working experience in the Senate. I am doubtful that Obama can manage a hot-dog stand let alone the highest office in the land.
We have seen him sign legislation behind closed doors after he stated that he would make transparency a priority; and we have seen him sign over 18,000 earmarks within his first 100 days after he railed against them. We have seen him pay off his union buddies and not fire the head of the UAW but fire the head of GM. (The Union contributed nearly $400M to his campaign). We have seen him argue against Bush’s outrageous spending, but he has spent more than all presidents before him combined and in only 3 month’s time!
Barack Obama is not “change” or “hope.” He is the very essence of what it means to be establishment and beholden to lobbyists and special interests. Too many people were born yesterday in 2008, when it was obvious that the vitriol and hatred spewed towards Sarah Palin should have been reason and proof enough to vote for her ~ she isn’t the establishment and she isn’t in the pocket of the media, the lobbies, or anyone else. She scares the pants off of the Democrats, the Republicans, and the media for that very reason.
The D.C. elite have removed themselves so far from the purpose of their roles, as set forth in our constitution, that they all need to be thrown out as soon as humanly possible (2010). So let me start the chant “Throw the Bums Out.”
We have seen throughout history the effects of the ruling class trumping democracy and none of those societies have ever ended peacefully and quietly. One of the more humble and honest of politicians said the following when asked to run for re-election:
“We draw our Presidents from the people. It is a wholesome thing for them to return to the people. I came from them. I wish to be one of them again.” ~ Calvin Coolidge
The media elite and the Politburo went after a woman’s family and continue to dump on her even after she lost the VP slot and has been quietly doing her job in faraway Alaska. People may find themselves asking why? The answer to me is blatantly obvious, but to others, maybe not. She is a threat to everything they hold dear; the very epicenter of their control and power. She stands true to her morals and principles and does not back down from them, nor does she feel ashamed. She cannot and will not be manipulated to play machine politics and kowtow to the good old boys. The people that the GOP prop-up in the media or select to give counter addresses are the people who won’t “rock the boat.”
The establishment wants to bring up non substantive stories about this woman’s family when Obama’s family is far from classy. He has an illegal aunt living in the slums of Boston, a half-brother in Kenya living on a $1/day in a hut, another half-brother just hospitalized for cholera, and another half-brother just detained and turned away by customs in the UK for sexually assaulting a 13 year-old girl. He was also born out of wedlock and has more half siblings than previously mentioned. Joe Biden’s daughter was recently caught on tape at the age of 27, snorting a bunch of cocaine and she has been arrested before for drug possession and obstructing the law. I’m curious as to why we didn’t hear about this in the media? How many people in this world have had family members who have made mistakes and gotten into trouble? Do we have control over family members? And at what point as a parent do you let your children make their own mistakes so they can learn and become responsible adults? I can’t choose my family but I can certainly choose my friends and associations. That’s the difference between Sarah and Obama. She didn’t choose to associate with domestic terrorists, radicals, or members of the Communist Party USA. She just had a daughter who made a mistake and suffered the consequences for it.
I take extreme offense to anyone who judges Sarah Palin based on the decisions made by her daughter. Take it from an unruly, rebellious child writing this opinion. My parents did the best they could with what they had. They taught me that doing drugs was bad, they didn’t let me go to parties that were unsupervised, and they told me about pre-marital sex. We spoke, we discussed, and they parented. I made my decisions accordingly. My parents never bent my elbow and forced me to drink, they never told me to hop in bed with someone, they never told me to put something up my nose to “feel good.“ Those were my decisions and I should be the one who is judged, not my parents. The only way that we truly learn is by being allowed to make our own mistakes and applying those lessons in the next phase of our lives.
Sarah Palin is fighting this bipartisan backlash from both sides of the aisle; from both political machines in her state of Alaska and the lower 48. She is the citizen pundit, the all-American politician, the person who is tired of the way things are and she decided she could make a difference by getting involved. I’m curious as to whether the elite have a pocket constitution or realize that only half of the founding fathers had a formal education. Ben Franklin and our first president, George Washington, were two of those men. They wrote about regular citizens representing the government and the fear we should have if the government ever became too powerful. Sarah Palin knows this and she believes in the founding principle of Federalism. If people would only open their eyes and their ears.
Rob Harrison from The Spyglass writes the following:
Gov. Palin is now in a difficult, though probably inevitable, position. She is opposed by a bi-partisan coalition of the machine politicians in Alaska, who oppose each other on policy but share a common higher loyalty to the old boys’ club and the perks and procedures to which they’re accustomed. Gov. Palin has the support of a strong majority of the Alaskan people, but only a minority of the state’s politicians. This has meant that the State Legislature has been in full foot-dragging mode through the entire session – a fact which they now intend, via the Democratic Party PR department (aka the MSM, specifically the New York Times), to blame on her.
That the MSM will coordinate with the Democratic/Republican machine in Alaska on this is, I believe, a sign of their deepest agenda here—not just their general bias against conservatives, but a deeper bias yet: as much as they bleat about “speaking truth to power,” they are not the outside critics of the machine that they pretend to be. Rather, they are a part of the machine. They are inside the corridors of power, that’s where they want to be, and they really have no true understanding or interest of the world outside those corridors.
This is true, I believe, even of the conservatives within the MSM; which is why a lot of the elite conservative writers have been almost as unfair to Gov. Palin as their liberal colleagues. If a Democratic version of Gov. Palin were ever to emerge, a true reformer who bucked the party machine, I don’t think the likes of Eleanor Clift and Paul Krugman would be any kinder to that individual than the likes of David Brooks and David Frum have been to Gov. Palin. The initial MSM reaction to the appointment of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to Hillary Clinton’s vacant seat in the U.S. Senate certainly supports that thought.
Thomas Sowell also wrote an opinion entitled “Not One of Us,” in which he expresses the need to embrace Sarah Palin and explains why it is that those who are part of the Republican Elite have trouble doing just that.
Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism. But the conservative intellectuals who seize upon President Obama’s pragmatism to give him the benefit of the doubt are obviously bending over backward for some reason.
With Governor Palin, it is just the opposite. The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny. People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence.
Governor Palin’s “inexperience” is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Sarah Palin has. Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.
Governor Palin’s candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grass roots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.
Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight, and disheveled Chambers, she said, “He’s not one of us.”
The trim, erect, and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was “one of us.” As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.
The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Governor Sarah Palin provokes today.
[...]
Why did it matter so much to so many people which of two previously little-known men was telling the truth? Because what was on trial was not one man but a whole vision of the world and a way of life.
Governor Sarah Palin is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life– an overdue challenge, much as Chambers’ challenge was overdue.
Whether Governor Palin runs for national office again is something that only time will tell. But the Republicans need a candidate who is neither one of the country club Republicans nor– worse yet– the sort of person who appeals to the intelligentsia.
The recent Rasmussen Polls only further drive home Sowell’s point when we see that the elite Politburo had an overwhelmingly unfavorable view of the recent Tea Party protests that took place across the nation. Governor Sarah Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, actually attended one in Wasilla, AK, and Governor Palin, herself, applauded the efforts of the protesters and even mentioned them in her 45 minute Pro-Life Speech last Thursday in Evansville, IN.
These Tea Parties show the disparity between the elite and the working class of America, the engine of the economy and the majority of this nation’s citizens. The Tea Parties are the embodiment of what most Americans desire of their government, which is representation, ethics, reform, principles, and their own interests served; not the ego of a politician or the pockets of the lobbyists.
But maybe it’s not best listening to someone from the states. Maybe it’s better to hear similar dislike and apathy toward the elite establishment from across the pond to further grasp that this concept and this problem is not exclusive only to us.
The New Snobs of Labour have gathered this week in Manchester for their party get-together. Snobbish? You bet. Our country is now governed by an elite that denies being elite. Our ruling class flaunts its state education, yet attended the best comprehensives in the land.
Of course, David Cameron’s cocooned background (Eton and Oxford) isn’t ideal preparation to lead the country, but David Miliband didn’t exactly grow up on a council estate either. Nor did I. However, like all those from the genuine middle I grew up around those who did. We went to school with them. We still see them. We couldn’t avoid seeing them even if we wanted to.
But for the new ruling class, which we might call the New Labour core vote, those from council estates are, knife crime aftermaths aside, invisible.
“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cant’ have both.” ~ Louis D. Brandeis
Mo’ Money; Mo’ Power: Geithner to Change Regulation Rules
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers that the changes are needed to fix the flaws exposed by the current financial crisis, the worst to hit the country in seven decades.
The goal is to repair a system that has proven “too unstable and fragile,” he said.
“Over the past 18 months, we have faced the most severe global financial crisis in generations,” Geithner said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. “To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.”
The administration’s proposal, which will require congressional approval, would represent a major expansion of federal authority over the financial system. It would impose tougher standards on financial institutions judged to be so big that their failure would represent a risk to the entire system.
It also would extend federal regulations for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives, exotic financial instruments such as credit default swaps that were blamed for much of the damage in the meltdown.
The administration also wants larger hedge funds to be required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In addition, the administration proposed the creation of a systemic risk regulator to monitor the biggest institutions. Geithner did not designate where such authority should reside, but the administration is expected to support awarding this power to the Federal Reserve.
The plan also includes a measure that Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed before the committee on Tuesday to give the administration expanded powers to take over major nonbank financial institutions, such as insurance companies and hedge funds that were teetering on the brink of collapse.
Should hedge funds be regulated? Of course they should, but the issue is whether or not they will be, since they have so much control on Capitol Hill. I also have a major concern with those who are stating they will have the oversight responsibility or who really want these regulations. The Federal Reserve, Geithner, Bernake, Barney Frank, Obama, etc. are all responsible for the collapse of the market and had a major role to play in it. Why would I want any of these yahoos having accountability and responsibility for oversight and business management?
Most of these players received kickbacks from Wall Street and hedge fund managers – there is a major principle-agent issue here (conflict of interest).
I have a feeling this is all fancy rhetoric to hide what is really going on here… The nationalization of banks and possibly the intent to nationalize more than financial institutions. The government wants complete power and control to shape society – welcome to Statism.



