Political reporter Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic writes:
No wonder Valerie Jarrett dropped out of the bidding for Blago's blessing. Who wants to be crummy U.S. Senator when you get to be fixer-in-chief for the new quasi-nationalized economy?Barack Obama has launched the era of the political economy [well, I think George W. Bush and his minions gave it a good push in that direction], where, to an unprecedented degree, the White House will determine the course, structure and function of the American economy; where, if reports of $2 trillion worth of stimuli are to be believed, the size and scope of the federal government has the potential to nearly double over the course of eight years. He's already shifted the paradigm's default from private enterprise to public action. To the extent that your program or pet cause gets to share in the spoils, it must justify itself to the Obama administration.
Everyone who wants anything from the federal government has to interface with the now conjoined office of intergovernmental affairs and public liaison in the Obama White House. To head this office, Obama has appointed his best friend and most trusted counselor, Valerie Jarrett. Jarrett has appointed as her chief of staff Michael Strautmanis, one of the Obama family's best friends and another trusted confidant. Traditionally, the intergovernmental affairs portfolio and the OPL portfolio have been kept separate, although Karl Rove unified them in the Bush White House.
Cecilia Munoz, a senior vice president at the National Council for La Raza, is a powerhouse who knows everyone in Washington. She's going to be the formal director of intergovernmental affairs. Tina Tchen, another long-time Obama friend, will be the head of the office of public liaison. Additional staff appointments will follow; usually, the deputies in these offices aren't big names; the names being considered for the sub-department portfolios in the Obama administration would have been credible candidates for the top jobs themselves.
The bigger the federal government gets, the more important these offices become. They'll probably be THE powerhouse in the Obama White House from the perspective of politics, constituency relations, interest and client groups, the Washington community, state, local and tribal governments. Jarrett won't just pass messages between the outside world and the president. Her job will be manage the relationship between the outside world and the president, and, vitally, she and her staff will have the juice to make decisions about how the Obama administration relates to just about every external constituency.
And how about having a Senior VP of La Raza stationed right at the chokehold?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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34 comments:
"Who wants to be crummy U.S. Senator when you get to be fixer-in-chief for the new quasi-nationalized economy?"
Steve, the Chicagoization of the American Economy is nothing new. What do you think all that unpleasantness in the 1860's was about?
I just want to state, for the record, that the Iraq war, the minority-housing push, the Katrina aftermath and the reckless spending of the last 8 years have been awful. But nothing scares the shit out of me more than a nationalized government being run by people from La Raza. Bush-Obama will be the next Pierce-Buchanan.
When the German economy was really hosed after WWII, the German finance minister finally just declared all economic regulation ended.
The economy recovered overnight.
Isn't that the only stimulus that would work?
Chicago has long been called "The City That Works."
Corruption and self-dealing are human traits.
Residents of Chicago have long understood the depth of municipal corruption, but they seemed satisfied that, over-all, the city works.
We'll see how this model works on a national scale.
You know, during the late Presidential campaign the fastest way you could get the media to label you a irrelevant racist lunatic was to suggest that Obama is a socialist. Yet here we have it: Obama is a socialist. A clear-quill, 200-proof socialist. He and his gang will use the government, which they will run, to take over everything.
This is how the Leftists' patient toil of decades pays off. They get to elect their candidate, a dedicated socialist, without ever discussing the policies he wants to implement.
It is wonderful. Books about it will be studied avidly centuries from now just as people still read about, say, the Borgias.
In the future all political movements will strive to achieve what American leftists achieved: ruling their entire program off limits for public mention, let alone debate.
"You say Obama is a socialist? That is hate speech and you're a Nazi. Everyone knows that the Nazis killed all the socialists in 1938 or something. You're just mixing McCarthyism with racism. Your words will be de-indexed by Google. You will never work in this town again. If you don't wise up, you'll never play the piano again. I don't know you-- actually, I never knew you! Guard! Guard! Take me back to my cell!"
It won't work very well.
Among other things, losers won't be happy and will have money to make things miserable for the Obama corrupt group.
Say your Defense contract gets canceled, or your company (say, GE, or Caterpillar, or Kenworth) gets hammered by the "Green" movement. Are you just going to slink away as in Chicago (and go somewhere else)?
No. You will fight with everything you've got. Since there is nowhere else to go.
What could possibly go wrong?
Chicago works because it has a white mayor.
Folks should take a hard look at my hometown of Washington, D.C.
At one point it had over 50,000 on the municipal payroll.
This is in a city that at the time had less than 600,000 residents.
The only good thing - if you can call it that - is that were so ass deep in alligators now, that it remains to be seen if Obamanomics can even take hold.
What happens if there is no recovery?
Or at least a very weak one?
This sort of thing scares me. I don't like to think that when/if the nationalists/nativists return to power they will take socialist economics as a fait accompli and start reversing the "reverse" discrimination wreaked by the left. Nationalism + socialism = I don't want to think about it.
The right needs to hit back with color-blind, anti-regulation, anti-corporate citizenism. Screw the bailouts - return money to the citizens at tax time. Crack down on unlimited liability in banking - let the market do the "regulating". Defend Christmas, but downplay sexual issues. Get the small businessmen on board - the ones who make money the old-fashioned way (you know, by selling things to people) rather than by race-hustling. Get the anti-war / veterans' organization to even notice that Gates is Obama's Pentagonman - Obama can extend LBJ-style nation-building and the Republicans can take the blame.
I swear if there isn't a movement among conservative / classical liberal intellectuals to build a new party right now, bad stuff is going to happen.
My prediction - Obama will ignore health care because the benefits would be spread too thin, and because he needs corporate connivance. His leftism will be interest group leftism, not Bismarckian provider-state stuff. This will increase both anger and expectations of state largesse, and the groups that complain the loudest will get the richest.
The petite bourgeoisie need institutions to protect them right now.
"Anonymous said...
I swear if there isn't a movement among conservative / classical liberal intellectuals to build a new party right now, bad stuff is going to happen."
That's not going to happen. Conservatives don't really have that much in common with classical liberals. The operative word in "classical liberal" is "liberal".
Yes, I want lower taxes, but not at the cost of legalizing gay marriage, or endorsing the reigning free-trade orthodoxy.
There are currently not enough conservatives in this country to have a conservative country. It follows that either 1.) We will not have a conservative country, 2.) We will, but only in a portion of the old (and now doomed) republic, or 3.) a lot more new conservatives must be made - perhaps some former liberals (undoubtedly white liberals) who have been screwed by the new regime.
"The right needs to hit back with color-blind, anti-regulation, anti-corporate citizenism."
One thing I'm waiting for people to explain is why blacks or mexicans would ever support "citizenism" instead of old fashion ethnic politics. Why would it be in there interests to all of a sudden turn against AA and all the double standards with the wind on their back?
White nationalism is the only answer.
"To head this office, Obama has appointed his best friend and most trusted counselor, Valerie Jarrett. Jarrett has appointed as her chief of staff Michael Strautmanis, one of the Obama family's best friends and another trusted confidant."
Excuse me, but doesn't this smack of nepotism? At the risk of sounding rude, it seems that Americans are quite tolerant to this kind of (semi-)corruption. Bill Clinton appointed his wife to an important position (chairwoman of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform) and JFK actually made his brother Attorney General! Even if these things were legal, how could they be tolerated?
"That's not going to happen. Conservatives don't really have that much in common with classical liberals. The operative word in "classical liberal" is "liberal".
Yes, I want lower taxes, but not at the cost of legalizing gay marriage, or endorsing the reigning free-trade orthodoxy." - Mr. A.
Then maybe we really are doomed. I mean ... gay marriage? Really? Our people are getting turned into national socialists by rape gangs in minority-dominated prisons ... the Mexican government is sending soldiers across our border to aid in inserting their criminals into our territory ... people are getting persecuted for questioning affirmative action ... and gay marriage is really a big deal?
And every coup the left is pulling off in the US has an equivalent twice as bad in Europe. Critics of Islam getting arrested, assassinated, assaulted. When France and the UK have completely Islamified themselves, their nuclear arsenals will be in the hands of people who believe it is both racist (leftspeak) and unholy (jihadspeak) to criticize them. (Apparently leftism and Islamic fundamentalism are fully compatible, who'd've thought?)
In Europe, creeping Islamification takes a back seat to issues like regulation of agriculture.
Sure, I'd give up free trade and gay rights to save Western civilization. Anybody?
Welcome to African-style politics. This is old news to whites from southern Africa. The economy there is:
1) Personal till for the governing elite and those in tow
2) Means to control the population
Whites are there to act as cash-cows and pay the taxes.
Forget about your fancy military, infrastructure and high-tech. The new infrastructure is, as Steve pointed out, the "human infrastructure", meaning those humans who preferably have the right tan, and those who are towing the Obama line. Obama sure has maxed out his power.
Piper,
When dealing with African governments (Obama is just African-light) you need to get off western style logic. It’s all about power. And no, not western power as in aircraft carriers, missiles, tanks and crack troops, but the power to mobilise the masses and execute economic control. The power to decide whether you are allowed to work as an engineer or not. The power to decide whether a company is hiring correctly or not. The power to decide who gets to go to medical school and who does not. The power to exact race-based differential taxes and to confiscate property at will. Ultimately the power to send in the rabble to kill off any opposition, the way Mugabe has done.
"Conservatives" have let all this soft power through the door for decades, thinking it’s a type of buy-off. Let the liberals have control of the schools, the unis, the unions, the churches etc., and we control things that matter such as foreign policy, the economy and the military. But they did not realise that it was the beginning of a new political system. Immediately after the Civil Rights legislation, this type of power began establishing itself. And nobody noticed.
testing99 said...
This is where your "non-racialism" catches up with you. Obama style African politics rather destroys the economy than give a racial opponent anything.
The defence industry will simply die off and be bought up by foreign competition from Britain, France and Germany, if you are lucky.
The losers will siphon their money off and place it in Switzerland before they invest in a country which is tipping non-white as the years go by. What’s the point of getting another GOP admin in for just 4 more years when Obama’s LaRaza chick is going finalize the social engineering Teddy began in 1965? It’s like having another dance on the Titanic. No, the wealthy Americans are going to start moving their money to safe havens.
It’s all happened before in places like southern Africa. But you people were too stuck up with being moral and non-racial to notice the game on the ground.
The right needs to hit back with color-blind, anti-regulation, anti-corporate citizenism. Screw the bailouts - return money to the citizens at tax time. Crack down on unlimited liability in banking - let the market do the "regulating". Defend Christmas, but downplay sexual issues. Get the small businessmen on board - the ones who make money the old-fashioned way (you know, by selling things to people) rather than by race-hustling. Get the anti-war / veterans' organization to even notice that Gates is Obama's Pentagonman - Obama can extend LBJ-style nation-building and the Republicans can take the blame.
You know why this won't happen?
Gay marriage.
I never thought I'd see an issue more divisive, and stupider, than abortion, but check it out, we got one.
As someone commented, the center of power over the United States economy is moving from New York City to Washington DC
"Anonymous said...
Then maybe we really are doomed. I mean ... gay marriage? Really? Our people are getting turned into national socialists by rape gangs in minority-dominated prisons ... the Mexican government is sending soldiers across our border to aid in inserting their criminals into our territory ... people are getting persecuted for questioning affirmative action ... and gay marriage is really a big deal?
Sure, I'd give up free trade and gay rights to save Western civilization. Anybody?"
Yeah, it's a big deal. And by the way, people are being persecuted for opposing gay marriage, and by the same people who are persecuting others for opposing affirmative action.
In what sense are you defending western civilization by undermining one of it's fundamental bases?
The right needs to hit back with color-blind, anti-regulation, anti-corporate citizenism.
Enough post-racial utopian nonsense. Grow up. There is a ethnic-racial struggle for control of the United States going on here.
Besides the cheap labor, the great bonus to the elites of flooding the United States with non-whites is that the newly constituted citizenry will more easily chuck the Constitution into the garbage can. Get it?
Basic fact: The United States Constitution is an expression of a particular people. So wannabe tyrants are forcing those particular people to become a minority voting block and then the difficult business of getting rid of the constitution becomes a whole lot easier.
"What do you think all that unpleasantness in the 1860's was about?"
LOL yeah it was all about tariffs!
steve why don't you do a review of that australia movie? with the white yuppie star combo and their noble brown child?
could the message be any clearer?
May be I am wrong, but Obama named the most respected and capable people to manage the economy, energy, the military, etc. He seems to have reserved for himself only a few social programs, in education, welfare, etc. This personal budget, to be implemented by the Chicago neighborhood organizer crowd, may offend your sensibility, but if is the price for good governance in all the other fields, it is well worth it.
I don't really see how this is worse than the military industrial complex we've already got.
On a more interesting note, why is Obama wearing a wedding band in the photo taken at Occy?
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1866765_1815175,00.html
Richard H - One thing I'm waiting for people to explain is why blacks or mexicans would ever support "citizenism" instead of old fashion ethnic politics. Why would it be in there interests to all of a sudden turn against AA and all the double standards with the wind on their back?
White nationalism is the only answer.
Way back sometime before 9/11, before I became a parent, my politics were sort of fuzzy liberal/left. ie just like most liberal/lefties. Not very logical, warm & fuzzy, emotional, you get the idea.
Post 9/11, parenthood and looking into the abyss of the right of centre (not spelt wrong, Im a Brit) blogosphere I became a pretty standard conservative - for a while.
Now Im much more in tune with Richard H.
If it were just a matter of getting enough people to sign up to some sort of racially egalitarian, citizenist, conservative agenda things would be fine, thats whats on offer from the MSM and mainstream right(ish) political groups in the US and UK. But it aint gonna happen because the empirical facts of the past few decades are clear. Non-whites are never going to sign up to it, look at the exit polls going back years and years.
Its not even a matter of AA, which doesnt apply everywhere in the west, not officially anyway. Given the chance non-whites dont vote conservative overall. Building a political program that ignores this is a nation destroying dead end for Republicans (and British conservatives too).
The problem of the future is not trying to turn liberals away from the dark side of misguided racial egalitarianism, laudable though that is, and not that we shouldnt try. Its turning conservatives away from misguided racial egalitarianism.
"It's not enough for the man of color to gain. The white man has to suffer."*
That's the only way I can square Obama's (and the CBC's and NAACP's) racial advocacy with his support for immigration, legal and illegal. Otherwise he's just another party-first Dem.
Question is, how would this attitude express itself on all the other issues, if at all?
*I forget whom I'm paraphrasing here. Remind me, someone, please...
You know why this won't happen? Gay marriage. I never thought I'd see an issue more divisive, and stupider, than abortion, but check it out, we got one.
Stupid for the left. Gay marriage and all the other queer issues reveal the ultimate end of political correctness.
Don't hire gays, like the military? We'll drive you off college campuses, ban your recruiters, and ban ROTC programs (while creating worthwhile departments like Critical Queer Studies).
Don't allow gays to be scoutmasters? We'll defund you and force the government to kick you off every piece of property.
Don't support gay marriage? We'll get you fired from your job and drive your business under. (And the left works in sync - if gays are boycotting a business then every major city in California will find some reason not to give you a contract).
This is the end-result of PC: mind control. Shutting down dissent. Brainwashing. And it's closer to reality than you ever thought possible.
J sed:
"May be I am wrong, but Obama named the most respected and capable people to manage.."
Most respected and capable according to whom?
Reg Cæsar,
You Americans must be as uneducated as is often contended in Europe and South Africa. You act like its the first time in modern history this sort of thing is happening. Just try and look beyond the borders of little ole USA.
"...story abut the aussie couple and their noble brown child."
That reminds me of an aussie movie,Rabbit Proof Fence, out some years ago about 3 aboriginal mixed bloods who were supposedly taken in crates like animals, from their families to concentration camp like institutions to be trained for white use. The 3 girls escaped and make their way back to the homes hundreds of miles away.
Something smelled wrong--it was sent in the 1930s and the makers seemed to go over board with nazi-like camp details and one detail--shaving the head of a child who tried to escape--was taken straight from the recent, highly publicized stories about the laundries in Ireland.
The girls themselves, now old ladies, said the movie was not really their story though they didn't elaborate on the details. As it turns out, the 3 girls had not been transported in crates, but taken by a social worker (I think that was her function), as passengers on a boat and train, had stopped for lunch and lemonade and so on. I forget what the "camp" was like according to the real story. Probably not too nice, but now I am very suspicious of what was portrayed in the movie as real. Also--the girls had been taken from their families because of parental abuse, which the families admitted.
According the director, he got a call from an excited australian with the means to make this story which just had to be told and you know the rest.
I have read some of the controversy surrounding this picture and the situation of the aboriginals. I used to think blaming liberal extremes on "communists" was silly (I was in high school during the 60s, and virulently anti-war), but apparently the communist part is a factor to be reckoned with in Australia and members of this party to push the worse case scenarios concerning white treatment of non-whites, often to pure fantasy as certain elements in "Rabbit Proof Fence" seem to indicate. Perhaps an Australian could elucidate?
Karl Rove continues to fly under the isteve radar. Why choose Bush or Palin as Presidential candidates? It puts Rove in a position of influence. Why tolerate massive budget pork? It increased Rove's influence because he was the ultimate decider and distributor. Why isn't Rove ever criticized in the Republican press, even after the collosal long term pain element of the play to the base strategy became apparent? Because the source spigot may dry up.
The reason to try to turn whites away from 1. multicultism to 2. hardass anti-affirmative action color blindness instead of 3. white nationalism is that 2. appeals to more people's sense of fairness. 3. theoretically helps whites more than than 2., but it really only helps us more directly. 2. helps us quite enough.
Lots of people are going to be turned off by the idea that the playing field is unfair in their favor. Ward Connerly and Thomas Sowell hate affirmative action; think how many Ward Cs and Thomas Ss there are among white people. I'm not saying the WNs aren't useful; WN yelping about racial epithets like "redneck"* balances out the opposite.
Keeping things color-blind allows us to keep black conservatives on our side and proselytize among East Asians. Any future anti-AA government of the US or the UK is going look a whole lot more like color-blind, hardass Denmark or Thatcherite Britain than something dreamed up by Jared Taylor. (And David Duke?? So-called white nationalist who likes Islam??)
"Enough post-racial utopian nonsense. Grow up."
Do you really think Steve Sailer's philosophy is utopian? Have you confronted him about it? I'm not trying to insist that you do, but he could defend it a lot better than I can. I can't write a clear sentence to save my life.
... I mean, like, I though utopian meant "postive", rather than "grim portents of doom". Shows you what I know.
Affirmative action for whites? Is that what you people want? If so I'll have none of it. Let me off at post-racial doomland.
Keeping things color-blind allows us to keep black conservatives on our side and proselytize among East Asians
November 2008 - 95% of blacks vote for Obama. Well, phew, at least we've got those 5% of black conservatives in the bag. And looking back from 2008 to 1972 we can see that the black vote has never failed to be overwhealmingly Democrat.
Good luck turning that 95% into something approaching 50ish%.
The East Asian vote, has been solidly Democrat since the early '90s. Again, good luck with that.
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