Topic category:  Government/Politics

Congressman Ron Paul (R. Texas) is defending the Obama administration against charges that it is "socialist" or has "strong socialist leanings" and insisting that the Obama Administration is "very much like the [Bush] administration," that is, "very much...corporatist" (http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?BLOG,tx14_paul,blog,999,All,Item not found,ID=100426_3695,TEMPLATE=postingdetail.shtml).

That's wishful thinking.

Paul notes that "in many ways [Obama] can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist."

About that, he's right.

Paul's also right that Obama is not "an outright socialist." Obama is a stealth socialist. He knew that he never would have been elected President as an outright socialist, so, like ACORN, he did not claim to be socialist.

Paul distinguishes socialism and capitalism as follows: "Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers."

The key word is "nominal." For the people, Paul is making a distinction without a difference. The result is the same: individual freedom is lost as government of, by and for the people perishes from the earth, replaced by Big Government controlled by a radical elite controlling the people.

Paul cites Obamacare and "cap-and-trade" as proof that he is right to characterize Obama as a corporatist:

"A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care 'exchanges'. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.

"Similarly, Obama's 'cap-and-trade' legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in 'carbon trading.' This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade."

Will someone please play that video showing a young Obama explaining that he favors "single payer" but thinks that it must be achieved incrementally? Obama is a stealthy socialist, not Bush-like. See "Barone: Of course Obama wants a single-payer system" (August 10, 2009) (http://hotair.com/archives/2009/08/10/barone-of-course-obama-wants-a-single-payersystem/).

Paul believes that his "more accurate description of the President’s agenda" stops "the President and his defenders [from] easily deflect[ing] [the socialist] charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry" and "forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses."

That's playing the game Obama wants to play.

What Obama does NOT want is to be recognized as a stealth socialist.

That's why "Joe the Plumber" ruined Obama's day when presidential candidate Obam said that he wanted to "spread the wealth" and "Joe" replied that it sounded like socialism to him.

Paul's goal seems to be to win a debate with future statists inevitably playing the blame game.

Paul: "Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist. We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion. Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place. Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution."

Being able to say "I told you so" is small consolation. The Obamatization of American needs to be stopped instead of debated by future historian. The solution is to expose the stealth socialist in the White House immediately, NOT (1) to offer technical distinctions of interest to academicians but no interest to most Americans or (2) to equate President Obama with former President George W. Bush instead of to recognize fundamental differences between them.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.