Monday, March 24, 2014

Survival of the Richest: Obama's Corporate Stimulus Package

& how'd that work out fer WE THE PEOPLE ,huh ?  & looky ,looky fucking nazis :0 ..always fucking nazis ..lurk~in    in the "background" & do u ever wonder how ole Nazi~Pol~osi got her "nickname"  Oops

After 125-years of operating in the Dayton region, National Cash Register (NCR) abruptly announced plans to relocate to Georgia on June 2, 2009. Starting in July 2009, NCR's worldwide headquarters will move to Duluth, Ga. Meanwhile, the company will transplant its manufacturing operation in Columbus, Ga. Overall, the move will cost Dayton more than 2,100 jobs. NCR's decision to relocate came as a shock to the Dayton community, which had had very little discourse with the company in the months preceding the announcement. Shock swiftly turned to resentment as Ohio's elected officials voiced their dissatisfaction with NCR's apparent indifference.
"I know that local leaders as well as our own Department of Development had reached out to NCR over a period of months," Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland said. "The response from NCR was not very encouraging. They never really asked for any specific assistance from the state and their decision was made devoid of any serious dialogue or consultation with the local community." (Strickland)
In an audio clip from his official website, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said, "I'm unhappy with NCR. They're a 125-year-old Dayton company that always had community support. Hundreds of workers and their families had built this company in the Miami Valley and I was not at all happy, nor was the Chamber of Commerce and the Mayor and others in Dayton, with NCR's executives' unwillingness to even work with people locally and unwillingness to talk to people from the Governor on down" ( "Brown Expresses Disappointment in NCR Decision and Vows to Help Affected Workers").
Yet, an even greater shock was the revelation that Georgia used money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to facilitate the NCR deal.
According to Senator Jon Husted (R-Kettering), the city of Columbus was planning to use federal stimulus funds to pay for the purchase of a former Panasonic building to accommodate NCR's coming manufacturing operation. In turn, NCR would lease the building back to Columbus. Husted was outraged over the possibility of federal stimulus money being used to subsidize NCR's relocation (Husted).
"So, essentially, Ohio's taxpayers are on the hook through the federal stimulus program to basically pay for NCR's move to Georgia," Husted said. "It's outrageous. I'm calling on our members of Congress to immediately act by asking President Obama and others to stop this" (ibid).
Echoing this outrage, Congressman Michael Turner (R - OH) said, "This is absolutely wrong and I voted against the stimulus package because the terms and details of the program were not defined. Here we have an example of where this is not economic development. Economic development is not stealing jobs from one community and moving them to another. It's essentially buying jobs. The people of Dayton, Ohio will be paying taxes and interest on Obama's stimulus package, which moved jobs out of their community." (Turner)
Georgia officials enticed NCR to relocate with over $60 million in incentives. This offer dwarfed a $31.7 million incentive package offered by Strickland. Yet, according to Husted, federal stimulus money constituted $5 million of Georgia's incentive package (Husted). NCR's official website confirmed this claim:
Approximately 870 jobs will be created at a new Columbus, GA site, which NCR will use to manufacture advanced ATMs, including intelligent deposit, to drive its leadership in the North America market. NCR is to begin recruiting immediately for its manufacturing plant. The City of Columbus plans to use stimulus funding, provided by the Economic Development Authority, to purchase the building for the plant, which will be leased back by NCR. ("NCR announces investment to create jobs, drive innovation and develop talent"; Emphasis added)
Husted isn't the only one who opposes such use of federal stimulus money. In June 3 letter, Congressman John Boehner (R-West Chester) and Congressman Turner (R-Dayton) appealed to President Barack Obama to prevent the use of economic recovery money to subsidize state-to-state job relocation.
In the letter, Turner and Boehner wrote:
"We think you would agree that federal stimulus dollars should not be used to allow one state to gain jobs at the expense of another state. It appears federal stimulus funds played a role in NCR's decision to relocate jobs from Ohio and centralize its operations in Georgia. Certainly luring jobs away from one state to another state violates the spirit of this law. We respectfully request that you direct Vice President Joe Biden, who has been tasked to oversee all stimulus spending, to take the steps necessary to prevent this from happening to other regions that are in economic peril." ("Reps. Boehner & Turner Ask President to Stop Federal ' Stimulus' Dollars From Being Used to Move Jobs from One State to Another.")
To be sure, Turner and Boehner share Husted's Republic predilection. Yet, opposition to Georgia's stimulus spending transcends partisan affiliations, as is evidenced by a June 3 letter written by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
In the letter, Brown stated, "The purpose of the ARRA is to create or retain jobs, not to relocate them from state to state. Stimulus funds should not be used in a manner that benefits one local economy at the expense of another, whether the request comes from Columbus, Georgia or Columbus, Ohio" ("Brown on Georgia Request for Funds to Build NCR Facility: Stimulus Should be Used to Create Jobs, Not Relocate Them").
Reiterating this contention, Strickland said, "I think that that is inappropriate use of stimulus dollars. That money was to be used to create job, not to move jobs from one state to the benefit of another state" (Strickland)
The NCR debacle is just the latest in a series of stimulus misappropriations that have cost Ohio taxpayers dearly. These include:
  • The use of $1.2 million to "save" the jobs of Columbus police recruits who will probably be laid off anyway in 2010 ("Police officers saved by stimulus may still lose jobs").
  • The allocation of $1.1 million to treat groundwater at the Cold War-era RMI Extrusion Plant, which was already ruled safe in 2007 ("Stimulus-funded cleanup of toxins might be moot").
  • The creation of a $57 million slush-fund to finance the study of projects that may never be constructed (LaHood Letter).
Husted contends that such episodes of stimulus mismanagement are attributable to the hasty manner in which the ARRA was passed (Husted). Only 12-hours after being penned in the office of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D - CA), the $787 billion fiscal stimulus was put to a vote. Not a single lawmaker had the opportunity to read the voluminous bill ("GOP Leader Boehner Floor Speech Opposing Democrats' Trillion-Dollar Spending Bill").
"This is what happens when you railroad something through without examining it," Husted said. "We have one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing. Frankly, one bill created a problem that they're now using another part of the same bill to solve. It's horrible. It's a waste of tax dollars" (Husted).
Husted stated that the recent revelations concerning Georgia's use of ARRA funds raises broader questions regarding the allocation of stimulus money.
Husted said, "We know about this, but how many other cases are there in this country where we are allowing one state to outbid another state for jobs that already exist? How many hundreds of millions in stimulus dollars could be wasted doing this kind of a thing. It's unconscionable. In Ohio, we used our stimulus money to balance the budget. But, other states that aren't in our situation are apparently using their dollars to basically buy businesses that exist in other states" (ibid).
Indeed, Husted poses a disturbing question: Just how many other states have used stimulus dollars to curry favor with corporations? If this is the case, corporate interests stand to become the chief beneficiaries of the federal stimulus program. If stimulus money is being used by states to court corporations, then taxpayer dollars are being used to subsidize the relocation of already existing jobs. Such a state of affairs hardly fosters economic growth. Infrastructure is not being built, just displaced. Meanwhile, the fiscal stimulus, which is constituted by taxpayer dollars, only stimulates Big Business. In this sense, the Obama Administration's economic recovery plan could actually be nothing more than the conduit for an enormous wealth transferral to corporate interests. Simultaneously, the economic recovery plan could be fostering a social Darwinian climate where states must use stimulus funds as weapons in a struggle for economic survival.
This postulation gives rise to an even more disturbing question: What if the federal stimulus program were designed to facilitate the aforementioned wealth transferral to corporate interests and the emergence of a Darwinian societal model? Given the ideological pedigree of several of the parties involved, establishing the motive for such a radical agenda is not so difficult. One need look no further than Pelosi to discern intimations of a revolutionary spirit that can be traced back to the Enlightenment. During a commencement address at the north campus of Miami Dade College, Pelosi invoked the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum ("Pelosi Delivers Commencement Address at Miami Dade College's North Campus"). According to James H. Billington, this phrase was also invoked by the adherents of the so-called "Promethean faith" (6). These adherents, which endeavored to create a "new reality," included "early romantics, the young Marx, the Russians of Lenin's time" (6). Billington expands on the context of the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum as it was invoked by these socialist revolutionaries:
The new reality they sought was radically secular and stridently simple. The ideal was not the balanced complexity of the new American federation, but the occult simplicity of its great seal: an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid over the words Novus Ordo Seclorum. In search of primal, natural truths, revolutionaries looked back to pre-Christian antiquity--adopting pagan names like "Anaxagoras" Chaumette and "Anacharsis" Cloots, idealizing above all the semimythic Pythagoras as the model intellect-turned-revolutionary and the Pythagorean belief in prime numbers, geometric forms, and the higher harmonies of music. (6)
To understand this "radically secular and stridently simple" reality sought by the early socialist revolutionaries, one must first understand the "Promethean faith" that underpinned their crusade. According to Billington, the Promethean faith held that science was the new lantern of salvation that would "lead men out of darkness into light" (6). Such a religious conviction constituted a form of secular Gnosticism, as is evidenced by its parallels with traditional Gnosticism's doctrine of self-salvation. Moreover, it also constituted vintage scientism, the belief that science should be universally imposed upon all fields of inquiry. For the socialist revolutionaries, the universal imposition of science included the realm of governance. Hence, the emergence of scientific totalitarianism, exemplified by Marx's "scientific socialism."
In the scientifically regimented state, the citizen becomes little more than an amalgam of behavioral repertoires whose every thought, feeling, and idea is the product of external stimuli. From the scientistic vantage point, the populace's motivations can be calculated and systematized, thereby allowing those few conditioners who are accountable to no moral master to develop economic and technological stimuli that can produce the desired patterns of mass behavior. Such a societal model is known as a Technocracy, which Frank Fischer defines as follows: "Technocracy, in classical political terms, refers to a system of governance in which technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions" (17).
According to Fischer, the Marxist concept of a planned economy has been strongly influenced by technocratic theory:
In practice, the technocratic concept of the administrative state has been most influential in the socialist world of planned economies. Given their emphasis on comprehensive economic and social planning, the technocratic theory is ready- made both to guide and to legitimate the centralized bureaucratic decision-making systems that direct most socialist regimes. Easily aligned with the ideas and techniques of scientific planning, particularly those shaped by Marxist economists, technocratic concepts have played an important role in the evolution of socialist theory and practice. (25)
Thus, one could reasonably argue that the economic ideas of Marxist theoreticians have been heavily informed by the technocratic paradigm. A variation of the technocratically-inspired Marxist planned economy became entrenched in the United States during the 1930s. Semiotic intimations of this entrenchment are discernible with the placement of the Great Seal on the one-dollar bill in 1935. As Billington previously stated, the "new reality" sought by the socialist revolutionaries of the Promethean faith "was not the balanced complexity of the new American federation, but the occult simplicity of its great seal: an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid over the words Novus Ordo Seclorum" (6). Such a sociopolitical Utopian vision was popularized and codified as revolutionary doctrine during the Enlightenment. Several occult secret societies, chiefly Freemasonry, provided the incubators for this sociopolitical Utopian vision. Reiterating this contention, atheist scholar Conrad Goeringer states:
[S]ecret societies and salons, lodges of the Freemasons and private reading clubs would become the focal points for the sedicious and "impious" activists of the Enlightenment. Masonry required that novitiates pass through a series of degrees, accompanied by symbolic ritual, whereupon the secrets of the craft were gradually unfolded; the metaphors of masonry, the remaking of humanity as early masons had remade rough stone, soon served as a revolutionary allegory. This became the new model of revolutionary organization — lodges of brothers, all seeking to reconstruct within their own circle an "inner light" to radiate forth wisdom into the world, to "illuminate" the sagacity of the Enlightenment. So pervasive and appealing was this notion that even relatively conservative and respected members of society could entertain the prospect of a new Utopia, "or at least a social alternative to the ancient regime...." ("The Enlightenment, Freemasonry, and the Illuminati")
After the Enlightenment reached its nadir with the bloody French Revolution, Masonic political activism seemed to decline and most lodges became relatively benign organizations. However, Dostoevsky's "fire in the minds of men" still pervaded some strains of Freemasonry, as is evidenced by more subversive enclaves like the P2 Lodge in Italy. The Knights of the Golden Circle, which played a significant role in agitating the Civil War, could be another case in point. Some vestiges of the revolutionary faith are also discernible with the addition of the Great Seal to the dollar by 32nd degree Freemason Henry Wallace. Researcher Michael Howard articulates the rationale underpinning Wallace's introduction of the Great Deal:
Wallace's reasons for wanting to introduce the Great Seal onto the American currency were based on his belief that America was reaching a turning point in her history and that great spiritual changes were imminent. He believed that the 1930s represented a time when a great spiritual awakening was going to take place which would precede the creation of the one-world state. (95)
It is possible that such sociopolitical Utopian ideas also resonated with President Franklin Roosevelt, who was a 32nd degree Freemason. This contention is strengthened by the technocratic pedigree of FDR's New Deal. In the early days of the 1932 election, technocratic theoretician Henry A. Porter published Roosevelt and Technocracy. The book raised an interesting question: "Will TECHNOCRACY be the New Deal?" (45). Based on his observations of FDR's policies, Porter gravitated towards the affirmative. In fact, Porter made no effort to conceal his approval of FDR: "Only skillful statesmanship--the statesmanship of Roosevelt, and sound economic principles--the principles of Technocracy, can lead us out of the valley of Chaos and Despair into which we are plunging" (71). Meanwhile, technocratic enclaves in California even promoted "the granting of dictatorial powers to Franklin D. Roosevelt" (Akin 83).
Indeed, the New Deal facilitated the technocratic restructuring of America. One case in point was the Social Security Act, which was inspired by a retired physician named Dr. Francis Townsend. Cribbing from Looking Backward, a piece of normative fiction by Freemason and socialist Utopian Edward Bellamy, Townsend developed a federal program that would have allocated $200 a month to unemployed citizens over the age of 60 (Crabtree 104). According to Townsend's hypothetical plan, the recipients of this financial assistance would be required to spend their allotments of $200 within 30-days (104). Although Congress did not pass the Townsend Bill, the legislation did inspire the Social Security Act (105). In this sense, Social Security was one of many New Deal machinations that originated with technocratic theoreticians. James Dowell Crabtree reiterates: "In this way, one might say that the Technocrats did indeed have an indirect influence on the New Deal, by way of the contributors to their doctrine (Bellamy) to an activist who espoused their ideas of guaranteed income (Townsend) and finally into law" (105).
In fact, the socialist pedigree of the Social Security Act is candidly reaffirmed by the U.S Social Security website, which features a tribute to Otto von Bismark. It reads:
Germany became the first nation in the world to adopt an old-age social insurance program in 1889, designed by Germany's Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The idea was first put forward, at Bismarck's behest, in 1881 by Germany's Emperor, William the First, in a ground-breaking letter to the German Parliament. William wrote: ". . .those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well- grounded claim to care from the state."
Bismarck was motivated to introduce social insurance in Germany both in order to promote the well-being of workers in order to keep the German economy operating at maximum efficiency, and to stave-off calls for more radical socialist alternatives. Despite his impeccable right-wing credentials, Bismarck would be called a socialist for introducing these programs, as would President Roosevelt 70 years later. In his own speech to the Reichstag during the 1881 debates, Bismarck would reply: "Call it socialism or whatever you like. It is the same to me." ("Brief History")
In addition to this program of "guaranteed income," the New Deal would create a vast constellation of government agencies. These included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), and, most notably, the National Recovery Administration (NRA) (Crabtree 106). Of course, such labyrinthine organizational compartmentalism reflected the massive bureaucratization endemic to technocratic models of governance. Crabtree observes that this new "[c]entralized and functional" monolith was similar to the continental administration advocated by Technocracy Inc. (106). The impact of this model would leave a "permanent mark" on America's federal government (106). The era of Big Government had begun.
In The New World Order, H.G. Wells synopsizes the New Deal as follows: "The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?" (46).
Of course, socialism is disseminated on the popular level under various appellations and in a myriad of forms. For instance, in 1933, Hitler candidly admitted to Hermann Rauschning that: "the whole of National Socialism is based on Marx" (Martin 239). Nazism, which was merely a variant of fascism, was derivative of Marxism. The historical conflicts between communism and fascism were merely feuds between two socialist totalitarian camps, not two dichotomously related forces. Benito Mussolini once opined: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." This was precisely the form of socialism that the New Deal enshrined.
Joseph R. Stromberg elaborates on the Corporatist features of the New Deal:
Herbert Hoover was a major architect of peacetime corporatism. As Commerce Secretary he encouraged the cartelistic integration of trade associations with labor unions. As President, he pioneered most of the New Deal measures, which had the unexpected effect of prolonging a depression itself caused by governmental monetary policy. In the election of 1932, important Business liberals shifted their support to FDR when Hoover refused to go over to a fully fascist form of corporatism. By contrast, the Roosevelt Administration pushed through the National Recovery Act, which openly sanctioned the cartelizing activities of trade associations, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, cartelizing the farm sector. The Wagner Act of 1935 integrated labor into the nascent system. ("American Monopoly Statism")
Sheldon Richman reiterates this contention:
Roosevelt's National Recovery Act (NRA) attempted to cartelize the American economy just as Mussolini had cartelized Italy's. Under the NRA Roosevelt established industry-wide boards with the power to set and enforce prices, wages, and other terms of employment, production, and distribution for all companies in an industry. Through the Agricultural Adjustment Act the government exercised similar control over farmers. Interestingly, Mussolini viewed Roosevelt's New Deal as "boldly... interventionist in the field of economics." ("Fascism")
According to Srda Trifkovic, Corporatism as it was implemented in Mussolini's Italy, was a central preoccupation of the policy professionals that surrounded FDR: "Roosevelt and his 'Brain Trust,' the architects of the New Deal, were fascinated by Italy’s fascism--a term which was not pejorative at the time. In America, it was seen as a form of economic nationalism built around consensus planning by the established elites in government, business, and labor" ("FDR and Mussolini, A Tale of Two Fascists").
Not surprisingly, comparisons between the Obama Administration and the FDR Administration abound. The cover of the Nov. 24, 2008 edition of Time Magazine featured Obama wearing FDR's characteristic fedora and clenching FDR's familiar cigarette holder in his teeth. The cover reads: "The New New Deal." Such comparisons are not without substance. Examining Obama's strategy for dealing with the bankruptcy of General Motors, Steven Malanga writes:
But we are entering quite a different age right now, one in which the President of the United States and his hand-selected industrial overseers fire the chief executive of General Motors and chart the company’s next moves in order to preserve it. Conservative critics of the president have said that the government’s GM strategy is one of many examples of an America drifting toward socialism. But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. It is a turn-of-the 20th century philosophy, updated for the dawn of the 21st century, which positions itself as an antidote to the kind of messy capitalism that has transformed the Fortune 500 and every corner of our economy in the last half century. To do so corporatism seeks to substitute the wisdom of the few for the hundreds of millions of individual actions and transactions of the many that set the direction of the economy from the bottom up.("Obama and the Reawakening of Corporatism")
While Malanga fails to identify Corporatism as simply another variety of socialism, his assessment of the Obama Administration's co-option of GM is absolutely correct. Moreover, his observations concerning the Corporatist "notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society" underscores the technocratic character of Corporatism. Again, the concept of a Technocracy originated with the sociopolitical Utopians of the Enlightenment, which, in turn, spawned all modern socialist revolutionary movements. This is the ideological heritage of those who people the Obama Administration. It is also the ideological heritage of Pelosi, who proudly invoked the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum. That the stimulus bill was penned in Pelosi's office in a rather obscurantist fashion suggests that a radical agenda is being enacted.
In fact, Pelosi has ties to socialists of both the communist and fascist ilk. The fascist side of Pelosi’s pedigree may be found by exploring the background of one of her major benefactors, Gordon Getty, the son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. While he is a republican, Getty has acted as a “major fundraiser for local and national Democratic Party candidates” and has even contributed to Pelosi’s campaign coffers (“Gordon Getty”). Gordon’s deceased brother, J Paul Getty Jr., provides a bridge between Pelosi and old-school Nazis.
J. Paul Jr. was a director of TCI, a high technology firm based in Sacramento (Carey). In 1970, J. Paul Jr. made Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing TCI’s president (ibid). What is little known about von Bolschwing is the fact that “he became a Nazi party member at the age of 24, the only member of his family to do so” (ibid).
At the age of 30, von Bolschwing took his Nazi political activism to a whole new level when he joined the ranks of the Nazis’ dreaded elite secret police, the SS (ibid). Von Bolschwing’s deeds as an SS captain would help build a Justice Department case for the revocation of the Nazi’s U.S. citizenship (ibid). Pete Carey elaborates:
According to the Justice Department, as an SS captain he [von Bolschwing] helped plan the expulsion of Jews from the German economy and developed anti- Jewish propaganda to force their emigration from Germany (ibid).
In 1938, von Bolschwing was collaborating with a group of Palestinian Germans who, according to a history of the SS by Heins Hohne, “lined their pockets by certain extramural activities” (ibid). Von Bolschwing was also spying on the Zionist Hagana army, a Jewish paramilitary organization that was part of the British Mandate of Palestine and would later become the nucleus of the Israeli Defense Force (ibid). These activities would cease when the British expelled von Bolschwing from Palestine for espionage (ibid).
The expulsion, however, did not end von Boslchwing’s Nazi activism. He reemerged in Romania as a government “oil expert” and, in 1941, assisted the leadership of the Iron Guard, Romania’s fascist political (ibid). With von Bolschwing’s help, the Iron Guard fled to Berlin after having “gone on a three-day rampage in which many jews – the estimates vary considerably – were killed” (ibid).
That same year, von Bolschwing may have played a role in the Aryanization of Dutch property when he joined the Bankvoor Oenroerende Zachen (ibid). It is the assertion of investigations that the Amsterdam bank forced the sale of “Dutch Jewish farms, businesses, homes and securities” (ibid).
In August of 1941, it appears that an anti-Nazi veneer was being constructed for von Bolschwing. With no formal charges against him, von Bolschwing was thrown into a Gestapo prison and then inexplicably released in April 1942 (ibid). In 1945, von Boslchwing assisted American troops entering Austria in the capture of Nazi officials and SS officers (ibid). This helped von Bolschwing gain the trust of U.S. Army Intelligence and the Nazi was soon working for the CIA as the end of World War Two gave rise to the East/West dialectical climate of the Cold War.
The Western power elite and their agents that comprise the sinister elements within the Intelligence Community hoped to use Nazis to manage the Cold War dialectic. The power elite required the existence of the Soviet menace to provide an adequate pretext for world government, but they could never let the communist world become powerful enough to overwhelm them. The Nazis who escaped prosecution at the end of the war were supposed to help maintain the delicate balance. For this purpose, former Nazi spymaster Reinhard Gehlen “helped the CIA build a spy network in postwar Europe, then became head of postwar German intelligence activities” (ibid). It is believed that von Bolschwing “became the controller of Gehlen’s CIA operation after Gehlen returned to the German government” (ibid).
Von Bolschwing immigrated to the United States in 1954 and worked several less-than-flattering jobs until he gained citizenship five years later (ibid). It was at this point, according to Carey, that von Bolschwing’s “career took a sudden upward turn” (ibid). It is almost as if the American power elite were waiting for von Bolschwing to gain the legitimacy he needed to be elevated. Carey shares some of von Bolschwing’s impressive resume:
He became an assistant to the director of international marketing at Warner Lambert Pharmaceuticals Co., developing close ties to the company’s president, the late Elmer Bobst, and its honorary board chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Alfred Driscoll, according to a close associate.
“His contacts at Warner Lambert were way out of proportion with his job,” the associate said. “Driscoll continued to write him recommendations for many years.” (ibid)
As was stated above, it is believed von Boslchwing took over Gehlen’s operation after Gehlen went back to Germany (ibid). Is Pelosi a conscious or unconscious agent of this postwar Nazi infrastructure?
Another intimation of Pelosi’s socialist propensities is the relationship between von Bolschwing and William Newsom, a retired state appeals judge and the father of current mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. William Newsom became acquainted with von Bolschwing in 1969-70 when he was an attorney for TCI (ibid). Newsom and von Bolschwing traveled Europe together on Behalf of TCI during this period of time (ibid).
The Pelosi family is extremely close to William Newsom. Pelosi’s brother-in-law was once married to William Newsom’s sister (Finnie) The Newsom family has shown a fascination with socialist ideas, and Gavin has even put some of those ideas into political practice during his mayoral career. In 2002, Gavin launched a universal healthcare program entitled Healthy San Francisco and declared that the plan “can be duplicated across the country if our elected officials are willing to take risks instead of continuing the status quo” (Newsom). Under Gavin, San Francisco also joined the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement that would seriously retard economic and technological growth in industrialized nations in the name of reducing greenhouse gases (“Gavin Newsom”). Such measures are recognized by astute observers as socialism and similar initiatives have been promoted by socialists of both the fascist and communist ilk.
Pelosi’s thinking has also been shaped by Marxists of the communist variety. On March 17, 1999, Congresswoman Pelosi made a floor statement on behalf of the recently deceased Vivian Hallinan (Pelosi, “On the Passing of Vivian Hallinan”). Pelosi referred to the Hallinan clan as “one of San Francisco’s great Irish families” (ibid). During a March 25, 1999 floor statement, Pelosi shared a tribute to Vivian Hallinan written by Seth Rosenfield in the San Francisco Examiner. Rosenfield’s tribute revealed that Hallinan “held ‘socialist’ views” and that, during the 1980s, Hallinan had “befriended Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s Sandinista leader” and had met Fidel Castro (Pelosi, “On the Passing of Three Extraordinary Women”).
Rosenfield’s tribute also revealed that, in 1952, Ms. Hallinan had convinced her husband, Vincent Hallinan, to run for president as a candidate of Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party (ibid). In 1948, Wallace had campaigned for president on the Progressive Party ticket with firm backing from the Communist Party USA. Wallace’s election bid was hurt when the former Vice President refused to purge the Progressive Party of communists. While Wallace may not have been a communist, the communist wing of the Progressive Party certainly had an unhealthy influence on Wallace’s thinking. Edward and Frederick Schapsmeier elaborate:
Progressive party stood for one thing and Wallace another. Actually the party organization was controlled from the outset by those representing the radical left and not liberalism per se. This made it extremely easy for communists and fellow travelers to infiltrate into important positions within the party machinery. Once this happened, party stands began to resemble a party line. Campaign literature, speech materials, and campaign slogans sounded strangely like echoes of what Moscow wanted to hear. As if wearing moral blinkers, Wallace increasingly became an imperceptive ideologue. Words were uttered by Wallace that did not sound like him, and his performance took on a strange Jekyll and Hyde quality – one moment he was a peace protagonist and the next a propaganda parrot for the Kremlin. (181)
While Wallace may have been an unwitting parrot for the Kremlin, Hallinan’s hobnobbing with Soviet surrogates such as Castro and Ortega suggests that she was anything but one of the naïve innocents of the Progressive Party. The evidence weighs heavy in favor of the contention that the Hallinans were ideological communist. Pelosi’s political career suggests that some of that ideology has rubbed off on her.
Pelosi’s association with the Getty and Hallinan clans have produced a dangerous political radical that draws her beliefs from the worst features of both fascist and communist thinking. What is especially disturbing is the fact that this particular radical is the Speaker of the House. Worse still, the federal stimulus package was penned in the Speaker’s office. Again, it is important to note that the stimulus bill rushed to a vote without being reviewed by a single lawmaker. Did Pelosi fear that lawmakers might identify the radical elements of the ARRA?
With outrage over the NCR stimulus debacle growing, the Obama Administration's response has been predictably evasive. In a June 5 article in the Columbus Dispatch, Jack Torry reported that the White House "appeared yesterday to rule out using federal stimulus money to help Georgia officials build a manufacturing plant for NCR Corp., which is moving its headquarters from Dayton to Georgia" ("No stimulus cash for NCR's move, officials assure"). While the Obama Administration might have "appeared" to prohibit the subsidization of NCR's relocation with stimulus money, appearances can be deceiving. Torry further reports:
A White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no stimulus money has been awarded, "and the administration obviously had no role in the relocation," noting that NCR had decided to move before Georgia officials said they would apply for the money.
But the official added that the Department of Commerce, which has control over the money, won't allow it be used to encourage "corporate relocation from one U.S. region to another and will review every request very carefully."
However, the Commerce Department seemed to leave the door open to using stimulus money to help Georgia build a plant for NCR. (Ibid)
If the Commerce Department will "leave the door open" for this appropriation of stimulus money, then how many other projects will be financed with ARRA funds for the purposes of facilitating corporate relocation? After all, the construction of a plant was one of the concessions that Georgia had made for NCR’s move. Again, such a state of affairs hardly fosters economic growth. Instead, it fosters an adversarial climate where states become the proverbial dogs fighting for scraps from the master's table. Several detractors of the stimulus package have reiterated this contention:
Critics of incentives say despite the Obama administration’s claim that stimulus funds won’t be used to fund jobs transfers, the popularity of incentive programs guarantees that stimulus money will be used to fund transfers, at least indirectly. NCR, for instance, will be consolidating manufacturing operations at the new Columbus facility. (Dougherty)
Stimulus money becomes a weapon of economic warfare. Meanwhile, Big Business invariably profits from the struggle. Taxpayer dollars, which constitute the federal stimulus package, are used to subsidize corporate relocation. Infrastructure isn't built, just displaced. Those states that cannot curry favor with companies are left to fend for themselves. Such a state of affairs can be synopsized with a single aphorism: "Survival of the fittest."
First uttered by Herbert Spencer, this dictum has been given currency by Big Business. Stephen T. Asma elaborates:
Spencer coined the phrase survival of the fittest, and Darwin adopted the parlance in later editions of his Origin of Species. Spencer used this principle--where competition for limited resources results in the survival of the inherently "better" candidate--to explain past, present, and future social conditions. Darwin never extended the principle beyond the biological realm and remained wary of Spencer's speculative extrapolation into the sociological. Social Darwinism is really social Spencerism, but the fact that the idea has been misnamed has not made it any less powerful.
What, then, is this idea? According to Spencer and his American disciples-- business entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie--social hierarchy reflects the unwavering, universal laws of nature. Nature unfolds in such a way that the strong survive and the weak perish. Thus, the economic and social structures that survive are "stronger" and better, and those structures that don't were obviously meant to founder. ("The new social Darwinism: deserving your destitution")
Indeed, the very same monopolistic capitalists who financed the rise of communism and fascism abroad embraced social Darwinism. Of course, being a secular humanist, Asma attempts to divorce the mantra "survival of the fittest" from Darwin’s theory. However, Adrian Desmond and James Moore reveal that Darwin's notions of progressive biological development cannot be so easily separated from social Darwinism:
Social Darwinism is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin's image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start -- 'Darwinism' was always intended to explain human society. (xxi; Emphasis added)
Thus, Darwin's theory of evolution was not formulated in a vacuum. As is evidenced by the contents of his notebooks, Darwin already harbored a pre-existing Weltanschauung that he was attempting to scientifically dignify. This Weltanschauung embraced savage, unregulated competition and free trade, which are two pillars of modern monopolistic capitalism. Evidently, Darwin was not so “wary of Spencer’s speculative extrapolation into the sociological.” Spencer’s “speculative extrapolation” of evolutionary theory was no theoretical error. It was the logical outworking of the Darwinian Weltanschauung.
The contention that Darwin's theory of progressive biological development was based entirely on unbiased observations is flatly bogus. Evolutionary theory was merely Darwin's biological rationale for "competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality."
Of equal interest are those parties that seem to have shaped Darwin's Weltanschauung. One of Darwin's dinner guests was Harriet Martineau, a sociologist and Comtean sociocrat (264). Her Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated was recommended to Darwin by his sisters (153). Martineau characterized the poor as the "gangrene of the state" and endorsed the genocidal Poor Law Amendment (153-54). Secret commission reports concerning this unpopular law were made available to Martineau by Lord Chancellor Henry Brougham (153). Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated also did " more to the pave the way for the new Poor Law than all of the government propaganda" (153). Martineau was a "darling of the Whigs," a political party that promoted the Poor Law Amendment Bill (153). Martineau reiterated the Whigs' platform, contending that the reforms being proffered by the bill would encourage self-sufficiency among the poor (154). This contention was patently bogus. By immediately thrusting unskilled paupers into a competitive job market, the Whigs were actually "decreasing labour costs and increasing profits" (154). Thus, one could convincingly argue that Martineau was merely the whore for corporate interests.
That Martineau's corporate apologia influenced Darwin is highly likely. Her work drew the attention of Freemason Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather. Writing to Darwin during his Beagle voyage, his sisters revealed that: "Erasmus knows her [Martineau] & is a great admirer & everybody reads her little books & if you have a dull hour you can, and then throw them overboard, that they may not take up your precious room" (Qutd. in Desmond and Moore 153). Erasmus Darwin would develop "every important idea that has since appeared in evolutionary theory" (Darlington 62).
Moreover, Martineau subscribed to Malthus' concept of carrying capacity, a myth that was central to Darwinian evolution. Astride Martineau's "edifying homilies," Malthus' theoretical eschatology enjoyed widespread exposure (Desmond and Moore 153). Martineau's proselytizing was very effective. One pundit insisted that credence to Malthus' demographic prognostications promised to do "more for the country than all the Administrations since the Revolution" (qutd. in Desmond and Moore 154).
In fact, Darwinism and Malthusianism are actively promulgated within orthodox academia because of the political and social capital that they afford for an elite few. L. Fletcher Prouty elaborates:
We're still operating under the principles of Haileybury College -- Malthus and Darwin -- even though both of them are ridiculous. It's been proved today that our ability to produce food is 70 times greater per farmer than it was in the time of Malthus. It's been proved that Darwin never did discover the origin of the species -- no scientist has ever described the origin of any species. But those two doctrines were implanted by the East India Company's mind-control techniques so thoroughly that we still believe them. (Ratcliffe)
The logical bankruptcy of Malthusianism and Darwinism has never dissuaded the ruling class from vigorously promoting these two doctrines. Malthus' Essay overlooked the role of human innovation in the enhancement of subsistence production methods. Still, Malthus concluded that society should adopt certain social policies to prevent the human population from growing disproportionately larger than the food supply. Of course, these social policies were anything but humane. They stipulated the stultification of industrial and technological development in poor communities. With the inevitable depreciation of vital infrastructure, society's "dysgenics" would eventually be purged by the elements. According to Malthus, such sacrifice guaranteed a healthy society. Of course, the only parties that would profit from such a societal configuration were those who occupy the highest layers of socioeconomic strata. Likewise, Darwinism's logical insolvency betrays the theory's true function as a mechanism for social control. Darwinism has never demonstrated one instance of speciation. Moreover, the theory's preoccupation with survival as the sole purpose of existence cannot account for human cultural institutions like art. However, Darwinism provided the pseudo-scientific rationale for genocide and oppression. These are two practices that elitists have refined and turned into virtual "arts." All that Darwin did was scientifically dignify the bloody medium employed by the aesthetic terrorists of oligarchy.
As the elite's traditional theocratic power structures were gradually transmogrified into technocratic power structures, the oligarchs changed as well. No longer were they simply nobles whose "divine right to rule" was legitimized by the dominant ecclesiastical authorities. Now, they were Transnationalists and Internationalists whose primacy was dignified by the infallible principles of "Science." Together, the Transnationalists and Internationalists have advanced the cause of globalism, which Malachi Martin characterizes as "sociopolitical Darwinism":
[T]he thing that seems to bind these two groups [Transnationalists and Internationalists] most closely in practical terms is that at heart, and philosophically speaking, both are sociopolitical Darwinists. Of course, the Pope doesn't for a moment imagine that such activists as these are likely to take time out from their total immersion in world affairs to formulate their basic group philosophy in the same way that the Humanists have. There is no Internationalist or Transnationalist equivalent of Professor Paul Kurtz's Humanist Manifesto II.
Still, in John Paul's assessment, both of these globalist groups operate on the same fundamental assumptions about the meaning of human society today. Both agree on the face of it that the most important single trait that pervades the life of all nations is interdependence. And both agree that interdependence is a progressive function of evolutionary progress. Evolutionary, as in Darwin.
In practical terms, both of these groups operate on the same working assumption Charles Darwin arbitrarily adopted to rationalize his feelings about mankind's physical origins and history. If it worked so well for Darwin, they almost seem to say, why not expand the idea of orderly progress through natural evolution to include such sociopolitical arrangements as corporations and nations? In this view, the most useful of Darwin's concepts is that of human existence as essentially a struggle in which the weakest perish, the fittest survive and the strongest flourish.
When applied to sociopolitical arrangements, this Darwinist process seems almost to dictate the Internationalist and Transnationalist one-world view of things. The continuing clash and contention in the world as it has been until now has resulted in a slow evolution of those who have survived from one stage of interdependent order to another. From time to time, natural "catastrophes" have intervened, forcing "nature" to take another path. But at each new stage, interdependence has become more important and more complex.
The greater the interdependence between groups, the higher the evolutionary stage, the more the balance achieved between interdependent groups results in the common good. The view of the Internationalists and Transnationalists is that they are the ones who are equipped to bring mankind to the highest level of the sociopolitical evolution. Their effort is to bring together into one harmonious whole all those separate parts of our world that have not yet "evolved" into a natural cohesion for the common good. (314-15)
Sociopolitical Darwinians of both the Transnationalist and Internationalist ilk make the same sort of “speculative extrapolation” that Spencer made, extending the concept of evolution to “ such sociopolitical arrangements as corporations and nations.” In fact, Spencer was warmly received by many monopolistic capitalists, who were the precursors to the Transnationalists of today. For instance, Andrew Carnegie welcomed Spencer to a banquet in America in 1882. While there, Spencer openly expressed his affinity for the monopolist:
However imperfect the appreciation of the guests for the niceties of Spencer's thought, the banquet showed how popular he had become in the United States. When Spencer was on the dock, waiting for the ship carry him back to England, he seized the hands of Carnegie and Youmans. “Here," he cried the reporters, “are my two best American friends." For Spencer it was a rare gesture of personal warmth; but more than this, it symbolized the harmony of the new science [Social Darwinism] with the outlook of a business civilization. (Hofstadter 49)
In fact, Darwinian vernacular came to comprise Carnegie’s personal lexicon:
Not only in his published articles and books but also in his personal letters to business contemporaries, Carnegie makes frequent and easy allusions to the Social Darwinist credo. Phrases like “survival of the fittest," “race improvement," and “struggle for existence" came easily from his pen and presumably from his lips. He did see business as a great competitive struggle... (Wall 389)
The same held true for John D. Rockefeller, who maintained that: “growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest ... the working out of a law of nature…" (Ghent 29). Ironically, Rockefeller also declared: “Competition is a sin.” Evidently, Rockefeller accepted the Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest” insofar as it could legitimize his own hegemony in business. Thus, Rockefeller financed the rise of communism, which eradicated even legitimate competition under the pretext of egalitarianism. Eustace Mullins explains the rationale underpinning Rockefeller’s support of communism:
“Although Communism, like other `isms,' had originated with Marx's association with the House of Rothschild, it enlisted the reverent support of John D. Rockefeller because he saw Communism for what it is, the ultimate monopoly, not only controlling the government, the monetary system and all property, but also a monopoly which, like the corporations it emulates, is self-perpetuating and eternal. It was the logical progression from his Standard Oil monopoly.” ("The Rockefeller Syndicate")
While the internal contradictions of Rockefeller’s Weltanschauung reveals a slightly disingenuous adherence to the Darwinian conception of competition, other monopolists concluded that they were “naturally selected in the crucible of competition” (Milner 412). Thus, many of them implemented the same tactics employed by Rockefeller. Like Rockefeller, several monopolists financed communism’s rise in hopes of expunging their competitors from the marketplace and maintaining their evolutionary primacy.
Likewise, several monopolists financed the rise of fascism, specifically Hitlerian fascism. As was previously established, fascism is more succinctly categorized as corporatism, the marriage between Big Business and Big Government. Like communism, corporatism facilitates the formation of monopolies by regulating competitors out of business.
Ultimately, both communism and fascism share a core dialectical commonality: evolutionary theory. Ian Taylor explains:
However, Fascism or Marxism, right wing or left--all these are only ideological roads that lead to Aldous Huxley's brave new world, while the foundation for each of these roads is Darwin's theory of evolution. Fascism is aligned with biological determinism and tends to emphasize the unequal struggle by which those inherently fittest shall rule. Marxism stresses social progress by stages of revolution, while at the same time it paradoxically emphasizes peace and equality. There should be no illusions; Hitler borrowed from Marx. The result is that both Fascism and Marxism finish at the same destiny - totalitarian rule by the elite. (411)
In the case of the fascist (i.e., corporatist) regime that has become entrenched in America, its evolutionary character has been demonstrated by the President's subtle repeal of the global gag rule (Sullivan). The NCR stimulus scandal further elucidates the Obama Administration's pervasive social Darwinism.
At this juncture, it is important to present a disclaimer lest more partisan audiences are led to surmise that a Republican presidency would dismantle the corporatist machinations of the Obama Administration. A cursory evaluation of the preceding regime thoroughly demolishes any such notions. The Republican White House of George W. Bush was dominated neoconservatives. While they were consistently characterized as "anticommunists" and "pro-Americans," the neoconservatives supported the New Deal. Irving Kristol, the "godfather of neoconservatism," states in his book Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea that neocons: "...accepted the New Deal in principle..." (x). Later in his book, Kristol writes:
“In a way, the symbol of the influence of neoconservative thinking on the Republican party was the fact that Ronald Reagan could praise Franklin D. Roosevelt as a great American president-praise echoed by Newt Gingrich a dozen years later, when it is no longer so surprising.” (379)
It is interesting to note that "godfather" Kristol was a Trotskyist in his youth. Kristol makes it clear that he is unrepentant: "I regard myself lucky to have been a young Trotskyist and I have not a single bitter memory" (13). The statist tradition of FDR's Marxism was also carried on by the neocons, as is evidenced by Kristol's own words: "Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable" ("The Neoconservative Persuasion").
Moreover, the neoconservative-dominated Bush regime exhibited the very same Darwinian propensities as its successor. Preemptive warfare was a centerpiece of the neoconservatives' foreign policy' According to Anisa Abd el Fattah, this doctrine is distinctly Darwinian in character:
The idea of preventive wars, which we now call preemptive strikes, became popular during the rise of Social Darwinism and Eugenics, and led to the mass killings of those deemed weak, handicapped, poor and of inferior races throughout Asia, Europe, and the European colonies in Africa. The idea of perpetual war, and disaster as a means by which to accelerate the evolution of the human species was also popular during that era, as it is now. (No pagination)
Compelling though the neoconservative case study may be, a recent diatribe by none other than Rush Limbaugh most forcefully illustrates the dialectical commonalities between Republican “conservativism” and Democrat “liberalism”:
We lost the election. But they're going to lose down the road. They will not control government forever, and when our turn comes, we are going to turn the power of government against the left. We are going to investigate them. We are going to hold public hearings. We are going to humiliate them. We're going to nationalize their unions. We're going to fund our groups for a change... We're going to do exactly to them what they have done to us. We're going to build and use the Big Government that they have built and turn it right against them. We are gonna turn the power of government against the left, and against Democrats in ways they cannot imagine. They will not know what hit them. They are using the law. They are using government to advance a cause that is un-American. We are going to use the power that the left is centralizing in the federal government to punish them, to break 'em up, and to make them pay for this. It's time for tit-for-tat. Nice guy playing by the rules when they don't, is over. It's time they got a taste of their own medicine, and it's going to happen, folks, because they're not going to hold power forever... We're gonna come after the left's favorite corporations. We're going to come after your favorite political constituents. We're going to come after your favorite media outlets. You want to try the Fairness Doctrine? Fine. We'll impose it on network television. We'll impose it on newspapers. You want to try censorship? Fine! We will censor you when we get the control of the government back. We will reapportion districts using the Census to help conservatives. We're going to turn the power of government against the Democrats and the left and weaken and you break you into little pieces. Because, my friends, the day has passed when we can become passive and be passive about what they are doing. We will use the political and the legal system as they have and are, and we will use it to promote our party and to diminish theirs. We will use the power of government and legal system to promote our movement and our agenda, just as they are... If they are going to bastardize the American system, if they are going to make this government large and powerful and intrusive, someday they're going to lose it. But they're going to lose it after having amassed all this power. We will control it, and we're going to turn it right back against them. (“Our Time Will Come, Liberals”)
In other words, Limbaugh and his fellow travelers are not committed to dismantling Big Government. Instead, they wish to harness it like some impersonal force and redirect its totalitarian machinations against their dialectical rivals on the so-called “left.” No doubt, such a shift in power would only witness more scandals like the NCR stimulus debacle. Ultimately, the political left and the political right merely constitute competing criminal syndicates in a battle for hegemony in the emergent world order. Obama is just the latest marionette in a series of puppets for sociopolitical Darwinians. His presidency, like so many others, is devoted to preserving the survival of the richest.

Sources Cited

About the Authors

Phillip D. Collins acted as the editor for The Hidden Face of Terrorism. He co-authored the book The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship, which is available at www.amazon.com. It is also available as an E-book at www.4acloserlook.com. Phillip has also written articles for Paranoia Magazine, MKzine, News With Views, B.I.P.E.D.: The Official Website of Darwinian Dissent and Conspiracy Archive. He has also been interviewed on several radio programs, including A Closer Look, Peering Into Darkness, From the Grassy Knoll, Frankly Speaking, the ByteShow, and Sphinx Radio.
In 1999, Phillip earned an Associate degree of Arts and Science. In 2006, he earned a bachelor's degree with a major in communication studies and liberal studies along with a minor in philosophy. During the course of his seven-year college career, Phillip has studied philosophy, religion, political science, semiotics, journalism, theatre, and classic literature. He recently completed a collection of short stories, poetry, and prose entitled Expansive Thoughts. Readers can learn more about it at www.expansivethoughts.com.
Paul D. Collins has studied suppressed history and the shadowy undercurrents of world political dynamics for roughly eleven years. In 1999, he earned his Associate of Arts and Science degree. In 2006, he completed his bachelor's degree with a major in liberal studies and a minor political science. Paul has authored another book entitled The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, From Antiquity to September 11. Published in November 2002, the book is available online from www.1stbooks.com, barnesandnoble.com, and also amazon.com. It can be purchased as an e-book (ISBN 1-4033-6798-1) or in paperback format (ISBN 1-4033-6799-X). Paul also co-authored The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship.
A comprehensive collection of Collins articles can be found here.

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