manufacturedhomelivingnews.com Manufactured Home Living News
A possible tidal shift is underway in America. It is the battle over the future of the American Dream, as will be unpacked from the facts, evidence and viewpoints that follow. In the wake of 4-decade high inflation, a largely open southern border, foreign policy disasters in Ukraine and Afghanistan, domestic policy woes in fuel, food, housing, automotive, and more have led millions who voted for Joe Biden some 18 months ago to regret that vote. In a recent White House ceremony to celebrate ObamaCare (the so-called dubiously named Affordable Care Act), media flocked to former President Barack H. Obama. A painfully awkward moment was captured on video. It shows Joe Biden wandering away from Obama and others, with apparently no one interested in Biden. At that event, Obama ‘joked’ that Biden was his vice president. Biden soon after ‘joked’ similarly. For those who have speculated or argued that Obama is quietly calling the shots for Biden who is trying to mouth the lines wanted evidence, the video clips below could be part of their case that Biden is President in Name Only (PINO). While interesting, these videos and tweet are stage props for the bigger issues impacting tens of millions daily. Namely, the steady loss of the American Dream during a Democratic administration that promised much and has delivered a nightmare to their own supporters and others instead.
Watch these 13 seconds and tell me who Democrats think is President of the United States. pic.twitter.com/deRELUAsuV
— BDW (@BryanDeanWright) April 5, 2022
If you haven’t read the recent related “Cui Bono?” article in this series, see that linked here and linked below.
WATCH: Former Pres. Obama refers to Pres. Biden as ‘Vice President’ pic.twitter.com/NavpDVMd4h
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 5, 2022
NOW – Biden: “My name is Joe Biden. I’m Barack Obama’s Vice President.”pic.twitter.com/1DZkytzsGR
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 5, 2022
Once the above tweets and videos began making the rounds, it seems that the 44th President posted the following on Twitter to gloss over the episode.
Always great catching up with @POTUS. Thanks for all you’re doing to help even more Americans get access to quality, affordable health care. https://t.co/vDYBIxjIy9
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 6, 2022
The Rigged System at Work?
Against that backdrop, recall that the Daily Mail reported on 12.1.2020 what former President Obama told CBS’ Stephen Colbert a few weeks after the 2020 election. “If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a frontman or frontwoman, and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, then I could sort of deliver the lines but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, then I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating,’ Obama said.
Perhaps those points are just coincidental?
As was noted in the previous op-ed, “Vlad the Impaler” with the foreign and domestic background facts regarding Ukraine, lifelong Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RJK Jr.) has referred to what’s occurring in the U.S.A. as a “corporate kleptocracy.” A kleptocracy is defined by left-leaning Wikipedia as follows. “Kleptocracy is a government whose corrupt leaders use political power to appropriate the wealth of the people and land they govern, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population.”
Ouch.
A longtime Washington Post journalist and longtime (now former) Democrat has said similarly. That’s Joel Kotkin. Kotkin is a “fellow in urban studies at Chapman University,” a contributor to Forbes and the Daily Beast, who is described as a liberal who is not a far leftist by MHLivingNews. Like RFK Jr., Kotkin has spoken about “The Rise of Corporate-State Tyranny,” the title to the video below.
Kotkin has numerous quotable quotes in his talk. After stressing he is not a conservative, then citing his liberal bona fides, he launches into a litany of concerns which could bring numbers of traditional Democrats or labor union members into a working class, middle class, retiree coalition that could form the basis for a new Republican (GOP) Party. Said Kotkin at about the 19-minute mark, “There is a potential coalition among minorities, among working class people, among middle class people, that want to restore the American Dream.” This is from a Berkley graduate who perhaps has only one serious break with the bulk of the GOP today, and that would be his opposition to deposed President Donald J. Trump. Other than that, the bulk of Kotkin’s talk is a sobering wake up call for the left and right about what he called “oligarchical socialism.”
Kotkin said many ‘woke’ corporations are not interested in the USA or American interests. According to the YouTube transcript of the video above: “I think we have an oligarchy like the one in China. But the bad part of it is that they’re not interested in [American] national interests. Our companies are simply interested in using China and using China’s production to get things done.” Kotkin said “the heart of the Democratic Party wanted Bernie Sanders” but “they got Joe Biden.” And “if you want to understand how that happened you have to understand the politics of fundraising…”
Kotkin observed that “Michael Bloomberg, who increasingly symbolizes what the Democratic Party has become.” Kotkin thinks “it’s the corporations on top” of the Biden administration. He also asserts these corporations are very comfortable with doing business with dictatorial Communist China.
Note that by definition, a dictatorship isn’t a democracy, nor is an authoritarian rule in keeping with the ideals of the U.S. constitutional republic.
Kotkin authored a book entitled “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.” The book summary, per Amazon, is: “Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last seventy years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging.”
That is a description for the increasing loss of the American Dream. Indeed, the trends in wealth concentration buttress Kotkin’s claims.
Let me briefly segue and note that the American Dream isn’t dead, even if some describe it as being under attack and possibly on life support.
As an example that the American Dream is still alive, my wife Soheyla and I invited a couple over for dinner recently. Our family has attended a monthly non-political cultural luncheon that opens with prayer and the pledge which includes music, food, and friendly fellowship. The couple we invited has been active with that cultural group for years. We wanted to get better acquainted and to honor their volunteerism. Much to our surprise, during the evening and dinner we heard their story of escaping Communism in Eastern Europe. It was an extraordinary tale of life-risking daring that made the news at that time. After they experienced a period in a displaced persons or DP camp, they each came to the U.S.A. with essentially nothing. Decades later, they have retired after having owned several successful businesses. Hard work and personal motivation here in the land of opportunity paid off amazingly well for them and their family. They are hardly alone. To their credit, they are humble. They don’t put on airs or flaunt what they’ve achieved with others. They thank God and are grateful for what living in the U.S.A made possible. In their former communist homelands, they could not have accomplished what they achieved in America.
But juxtaposed against that true story, there are millions in America who have not been nearly so fortunate. Why those two realities are true is complex.
But briefly, what Kotkin, R.F. Kennedy Jr., left-leaning attorney turned award-winning journalist Glen Greenwald and others have argued is that the system in our nation has been rigged in favor of relatively few insiders. In principle, many more Americans could be living the American Dream. To do so, what Kotkin, Greenwald, RFK Jr. and others across the left-right divide describe and decry must be fixed.
The rigged or “kleptocracy” thesis could be described like this. Much (not all) of big corporate interests, big tech, and big media have rigged the system in their own favor. Deep-pocketed special interests have co-opted much of the Democratic Party – and some in the GOP – in order to leverage government policies in ways that benefit themselves while harming others. So, instead of a level playing field, where equal justice for all holds true, there are obvious benefits a few have over the majority of other Americans.
To Rescue the American Dream, the American Dream Must be Understood and Protected
Upward social and economic mobility has long been tenants of the American Dream. The opportunity for anyone of whatever background, race, creed, or color to own a home and have a business or trade that earns them a good living are foundational beliefs.
In the first article in this periodic series on the Tampa Free Press, the facts and evidence were laid out on the affordable housing crisis. Keep in mind that the basics of life are food, clothing, shelter (i.e.: housing), transportation, and some would also include healthcare, education/information, and the spiritual life.
America collectively is demonstrably the wealthiest nation on the planet, nevertheless the U.S.A. has a lower rate of home ownership than dozens of other nations. Several of these nations have a lower per-capita income than the U.S. does.
The three fact-packed articles below lay out other numerous key facts that clarify why the U.S. trails over 40 other nations in the rate of home ownership and how that problem could be addressed without new legislation being needed.
Meaning, the case can be made that the American Dream is not dead. As those articles explained, no new laws are needed in order to make affordable home ownership for millions of Americans possible.
However, the evidence suggests that the dream for a better life and for a home of one’s own has been obscured, threatened, and limited. If not for those in media, like the Tampa Free Press, that are willing to swim against the tide of big corporate media, one might wonder if the numbers of Americans who have some part of the American Dream would be smaller than it currently is.
That said, as Kotkin put it in the video above, numbers of:
- “academics,”
- “the media,”
- “the bureaucracy,”
- “tech oligarchy” and
- “with their running dog friends in “Wall Street”
have forged what he called a “bargain” with each other. If that sounds conspiratorial, perhaps on some “hiding in plain sight” level, it is.
But part of the point is that his description is obviously not just from those on the right who rail against leftist billionaires like George Soros. There are thoughtful voices on the left who have done their homework and have come to a similar conclusion as those from the right. Examples of such people are listed below.
Justin Haskins, the co-director of the Stopping Socialism Project at the Heartland Institute, shared some interesting points via an op-ed in the Epoch Times published on 4.20.2021 and updated the next day called “The Dirty ‘Great Reset’ Secret Behind Big Corporations’ New War…”
Haskins said, “In recent years, dramatic shifts in monetary policy, coupled with greater coordination between bankers, investors, government officials, and corporations, have ushered in an entirely new era of cronyism and the centralization of economic and social decision-making, one that poses significant dangers to individual liberty,” wrote Haskins.
Right-leaning Haskins made the following points, which sound eerily similar to what left-leaning liberals like Kotkin, RFK Jr. and Greenwald have said.
- “Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Starbucks, signed a statement opposing “discriminatory legislation” that aims to make elections more secure…”
- “Major League Baseball recently announced it’s moving its annual All-Star Game out of Georgia as a protest against the state’s new election requirements.”
Haskins rhetorically asks about what he describes as a war against conservatives, but which could be pitched as a war against the American Dream. “Why are so many large corporations and financial institutions embracing left-wing causes, alienating tens of millions of conservative Americans in the process? Although there are likely several important reasons, the biggest is cronyism—but not necessarily the old-fashioned kind of backroom dealing between corporate leaders and politicians that we’re all used to.”
“At the foundation of the change is the recent rapid increase in money-printing that has been pursued by central banks in the United States and Europe, which have increased the money supply by trillions of dollars in just a few years.”
That increase in the “money supply” is what more honest economists have said is the cause of what’s commonly called “inflation” of the money supply. By inflating the money supply, the effect is the devaluing of the purported value of fiat U.S. paper dollars. A recent survey says inflation is now the #1 issue for most Americans, with the largely open southern border crisis and the war in Ukraine ranking #2 or #3.
Haskins concluded his observations by saying: “Corporations are moving to the left for a reason, and it’s not because they have suddenly had a come-to-Bernie [Sanders] conversion. The Great Reset, like so many other movements in history, is all about money and power—and these days, there’s plenty of both available for ruling-class elites to get their fill.” Highlighting has been added for emphasis.
In support of his contention, Haskins cited third-party research along with statements by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its titular head, Klaus Schwab.
“Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, in an article about the initiative. “In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
But Haskins, perhaps knowing he would be accused of being a tin foil hat right wing conspiracy theorist, cited additional evidence.
“According to a report (pdf) by KPMG, thousands of companies worldwide already have ESG or sustainability reporting systems in place, including 98 percent of large companies in the United States.
Further, groups such as Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) have managed to get more than 3,000 investors and investor groups to agree to support businesses that embrace ESG systems. PRI’s signatories control more than $100 trillion in wealth, so you can bet that when they talk, big corporations are listening.” That describes out in the open economic muscle-flexing power and influence.
Summing up Haskin’s insights, it is simply a matter of fact that the WEF and its titular leader Schwab are planning a “Great Reset.”
The WEF openly said that by 2030: “You will own nothing. And you will be happy.” A tweet that makes that very point from the WEF Twitter feed is posted to illustrate. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it is a concept that global elites are demonstrably advocating publicly. It isn’t just Haskins or other conservatives who has drawn attention to this WEF “Great Reset” pitch. Democrat and liberal RFK Jr. again sounded the alarm about the Great Reset and the corporate financial elites on 3.12, 2021, just weeks after Joe Biden took the oath of office.
The case is made from concerned and informed professionals that the WEF is plugging at their Davos meeting of global elites, on their website and videos, apparently slick propaganda. For those in the working or middle class who might be reading or viewing WEF materials, it is a pitch for why the masses should gladly give up their rights to possessions and private property. Because if or when you own “nothing” that means you will be renting housing, transportation, clothing, electronics, etc.
Kotkin and others are warning against the rise of a new feudalism. Feudalism historically includes serfs and lords. The WEF’s plan for the Great Reset is a slick repackaging of feudalism. Note that team Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan – which polling and results to his policies are widely being rejected by most Americans – is part of the Great Reset.
The serfs of yesteryear owned little or nothing and had only limited rights. It was the feudal lords that owned or controlled most everything.
‘Woke’ corporations warn of supposed threats to voting rights, which are in reality a protection of the integrity of one person, one vote elections. Two new documentaries claim they have fresh evidence of 2020 election fraud. A promo for the Dinesh D’Souza documentary, 2000 Mules, is posted below. The second video is an apparent copy of the “Rigged” documentary.
Woke corporations are often trying to influence states like Georgia, Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and others from election integrity efforts, as Haskins noted.
Isn’t it obvious that ‘woke’ or effectively left-leaning corporations feel they are benefiting from the status quo? After all, if they thought they were better off under President Trump, they would not be supporting Biden’s “Build Back Better” version of the Great Reset.
A recent speech by Biden found on the White House website given to some of those same corporate executives at the Business Roundtable illustrates that point in Biden’s own words.
Said Biden: “You know, we are at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy — not just the world economy, in the world. It occurs every three or four generations.” What will that change be that Biden spoke of on 3.21.2022? Per Biden: “We’re going to — there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it. And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”
Often left-leaning corporate “legacy” media have for years poo-poohed any talk of a sinister sounding, “new world order,” which Republican President George Bush (POTUS 41) and others have also spoken about for years. Per the 41st President of the United States (POTUS) during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, then President Bush (R) spoke about something that was “more than one small country; it is a big idea; a new world order,” reported Foreign Affairs.
Just days ago, on media on the left (CNN) and right (WND) reported on “The World Government Summit held March 29-30, 2022 in Dubai.” Per the World Government Summit’s (WGS) YouTube page, the “World Government Summit 2022” is “Shaping Future Governments.”
Per CNN’s Abu Dhabi-based anchor Becky Anderson: “Are we ready for a new world order?”
Once someone knows this background, a person would have to ignore the reality of rising feudalism under the guise of the “fourth industrial revolution” that Klaus, the WEF, and “Great Reset” “New World Order” clique are pushing.
The still below is from that WGS in Dubai. Corporate and government leaders from the U.S. and around the world took part in this recent meeting. Numbers of the same big business, big government, corporate media types that attend Davos and the WEF were also present for WGS 2022. If you are a small businessperson or invested in firm(s) that aren’t among those named or linked herein, the notion that “Business as Usual is Dead or Dying” ought to be a strong warning that the American Dream as an opportunity for all is apparently threatened.
That still above is from the video below, produced by the WGS at Dubai.
The WGS organization states they:
- “championed the mission of shaping future governments and creating a better future for humanity.”
- The seven previous annual meetings of the summit “have successfully established a new model to collaborate on an international playing field to inspire and enable the next generation of governments.”
Doesn’t that sound like an echo of what Biden told the Business Roundtable? Or what Bush 41 said? Or what Haskins documented from the WEF about the so-called Great Reset? Aren’t the obvious answers to each of those inquiries “yes”?
More Evidence, Courtesy of Ultra-Billionaire Warren Buffett
But if that isn’t enough proof that feudalism and a loss of the American Dream is increasing, listen to what one of the reportedly top 10 richest men on the planet said last summer to CNBC. For the context of the quotes that follow, see the CNBC Transcript: Billionaire Investors Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger Sit Down with CNBC’s Becky Quick for CNBC’s “Buffett & Munger: A Wealth of Wisdom.”
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) Chairman Warren Buffett said: “And, and besides, the bad guys win. They know more games.”
Berkshire Vice Chair Charlie Munger mused: “Well, the regulators aren’t [regulating]…” Munger cites the “securities business” which allowed investors to “to gamble more furiously” which he said “was a big mistake. It created a lot of misery all this we don’t wanna suck people into gambling for way more than they can afford.”
CNBC’s Becky Quick observed Munger’s previous comments: “Charlie, you said communist China is doing all the things that we [the U.S.A.] should be doing right now…” Neither Munger nor Buffett said she was mistaken. Think about the left-leaning billionaires, including Buffett, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, or others who have pumped hundreds of billions into China instead of the U.S. Ponder what Kotkin observed about Bloomberg, above. Buffett said later in that interview that: “since pretty much a little after we met financially we could associate with people who we wanted to associate with.”
Buffett said that in terms of “the whole [COVID19] pandemic” that “it just shows you how a very advanced economically world can get disrupted by something that in, in ways that, even when you’re in it, you can’t predict. And the economic impact has been this extremely uneven thing where I don’t know how many but many hundreds of thousands or millions of small businesses have been hurt in a terrible way, but most of the big, big companies have overwhelmingly have done fine, unless they happen to be in cruise lines or, you know, or hotels or something.”
Munger followed that up by saying: “the Chinese simply [have a] totalitarian state, they simply shut down the country for six weeks. And that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.” Doesn’t that sound like an endorsement by Munger of Xi’s Chinese brand of totalitarianism?
And given that China has once again shut down Shanghai swatches of their country due to a resurgence there of COVID-19, was that Chinese “shut down” that Munger praised in the summer of 2021 really so effective?
In a prior TampaFP column, paltering was described because it is so commonplace among certain business leaders and politicians.
But as Abraham Lincoln noted, it is not easy to keep deception (lies, half-truths, etc.) straight.
Buffett is an intelligent and financially successful person. But he contradicted what he said earlier in the same interview about that “you can’t predict” a pandemic. Per that CNBC interview, Buffett said: “But the biggest thing you learn is that the pandemic was bound to occur, and this isn’t the worst one that’s imaginable at all. And, we all, society has a terrible time preparing for things that are remote but are possible and will occur sooner or later. There’ll be another pandemic, we know that, we know there’s a nuclear, chemical, biological, and now cyber threat. And we, you know, it has, each one of those has terrible possibilities.”
Buffett said that “Politicians in this country want more power. The rich want more power.” (Highlighting added).
In a sense, those two sentences sum up what Buffett and Munger were saying to CNBC’s Quick.
- Buffett and Munger appear to be fine with China’s totalitarianism.
- In some ways, that is apparently what they want for the U.S.
- What they said and indicated were in alignment with what the WEF called “Great Reset” in which most will “own nothing” which implies that a few – like the elites themselves – will own everything between the favored few. In short, modern feudalism.
- Note that the WEF Facebook page, pre-COVID, noted that year that “Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and 28 other top business leaders share their…advice.”
- Connecting these dots requires some effort. But in a relatively short time, someone can read this and see how these dots connect to the vanishing American Dream. Some are quite openly pitching a new feudalism, “Build Back Better,” a “New World Order,” a “Great Reset” where you are supposed to “own nothing” and “be happy.”
While this may be news to some, for others, this is part of a multiple decade trend. Said former California Governor Jerry Brown (D), the system is rigged by those who have the money to buy the politicians that run the government. The quotes that follow are from an interview with Gov. Brown from 1996.
What Can Be Done to Recover the American Dream?
Perhaps surprisingly to many, the legal tools needed to deal with such issues already exist. There is no need to wait to pass new laws or regulations. What is needed is to vigorously enforce existing laws.
On 5.11.2021 the following letter was published on WND, which they’ve permitted this writer to republish. Note this was published weeks before what Buffett and Munger said about U.S. regulators.
The Solution to Big Tech and the Oligarchs
Anyone who thinks Big Tech will be reined in by regulations has not been paying close attention. The following cases exposed years of documented corporate, regulatory and accounting failures. They spotlight massive corruption and mainstream media misses.
- Enron
· Theranos
· WorldCom
· VW “Diesel-Gate”
· Solyndra
· Bernard “Bernie” Madoff
· WeWork
· Lehman Brothers
· Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac (Government Sponsored Enterprises/GSEs).
Collectively, that list involved hundreds of billions of dollars in losses by investors. Various types of fraud, corruption, and deception occurred. Because taxpayers and the broader economy were impacted by Lehman Brothers and GSEs housing-finance scandals, those cost Americans trillions of dollars.
John Kenneth Galbraith said: “Regulatory bodies, like the people who comprise them … become, with some exceptions, either an arm of the industry they are regulating or senile.” Bingo.
Modern robber barons are dominating information and capital. Cold Fusion’s documentary about the Theranos’ scandal observed: “It’s the illusionary effect where if you repeat a lie enough times people start to believe it, especially if you have credible names surrounding the product.”
Problematic products are from corrupt companies.
Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes is shown with then Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama. In the massive Enron scandal, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are shown with then President George W. Bush (R). Those establishment politicians are sufficient to make the point of the “illusionary effect” of “repeating a big lie enough times” when “credible names” are involved.
Harry Markopolos and his colleagues spent years trying to get public officials and mainstream media to expose the massive Bernie Madoff fraud they knew existed. Forbes says Madoff losses may have exceeded $50 billion.
Other regulatory failures are hiding in plain sight. The New York Times quoted Warren Buffett: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Buffett’s “class” profited wildly in the 2008 and 2020 economic upheavals. How? CNBC quoted billionaire Bill Gates: “I didn’t even want to meet Warren because I thought, ‘Hey this guy buys and sells things, and so he found imperfections in terms of markets, that’s not value added to society, that’s a zero-sum game that is almost parasitic.'”
The CDC defines parasitic: “A parasite is an organism that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expense of its host.”
Buffett said, “The most important thing for me is figuring out how big a moat there is around a business. What I would love, of course, is a big castle and a big moat with piranhas and crocodiles.”
When carefully examined, these oligarchs and their businesses employ “parasitic” “moat” and “sabotage monopoly” methods. They create a slow-motion monopoly of various markets. Experts like James Schmitz say monopolies “inflict great harm on low- and middle-income Americans.”
The solution? Enforce existing laws. Break these pernicious giants up. They cause social, economic and moral harm. Once broken up, watch the economy and America soar. ##
Since that May 2021 letter to the WND editor, Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes has been convicted. The system may grind slowly, but once the public becomes aware of corruption and the media and political leaders make it an issue, change begins to take place.
It should be obvious that prayer and the inspirational example of thousands of years of faith in overcoming often incredible odds are part of the solution to what’s been occurring in the U.S.A.
- Voices on the left and right are saying that antitrust action – the breakup of monopolistic oligarchs by using antitrust, RICO, and other existing laws – is necessary if the American Dream is to be restored.
- Certainly, voting wisely in the upcoming primaries and 2022 midterms and in every election is important.
- Getting and staying informed is vital. Who says? God. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4.6).
Just days before Christmas, on 12.21.2021, the Baptist Global News ran a column that explained why there is still so No Room at the Inn, which shed light on homelessness and a lack of affordable housing in America. There is an obvious connection that can be made by people of faith, of whatever background, to these issues. Because the case can be made that subtle theft through deception is at the heart of what’s gone wrong in America. Other nations are also struggling with this global ‘reset’ underway.
The quotations below are not intended to make it seem like all religions are alike. That said, it is worth noting how Christians, Jews, Muslim, and Asian (Eastern) beliefs or philosophy have points of similarity.
Deception – paltering, oft-repeated propaganda, subtle to big lies – are a key element of what’s gone wrong in America. But as the millions who voted for “Build Back Better” Biden have come to regret that vote, what is necessary is to see the role that what Time’s Molly Ball called a “cabal” of “thousands” that worked together to take re-election away from President Donald J. Trump.
Trump Trigger Warning?
After years of withering anti-Trump media attacks, numbers of Americans were weary. Some have a difficult time handling the very name “Trump.” In several ways, it is understandable. But whatever the deposed President Trump’s weaknesses and flaws may be, his administration’s policies were demonstrably better than what Biden has delivered. American politics, right or wrong, is often boiled down to binary choices. This or that candidate. This or that policy. Trump with his business and media experience boiled down many of his messages very simply. For example, “America First.”
Anyone could run on the policies Trump did. Indeed, prior to Trump, candidates such a Patrick “Pat” Buchanan, former Arkansas Governor Michael “Mike” Huckabee, and former Senator Richard “Rick” Santorum had similar platforms.
Buchanan was a former President Regan speech writer. Reagan famously quipped “The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Reagan was making the point that big government often fails to do its job successfully. Didn’t Munger and Buffett say as much when they said that regulators often fail to regulate?
Reagan told CBS’ 60 Minutes in 1975 that “”If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.” Facism is another name for what occurred in National Socialist Workers Party (NAZI) and Adolf Hitler led pre-World War II Germany. While Reagan should have said leftist instead of liberal, that statement rings true. Who said?
Benito Mussolini led the fascists in pre-WWII Italy. Per Mussolini, “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power,” per Roanoke.
Isn’t that what the voices from the left and right quoted herein have described? Big business, “corporatism” working in close collusion with government (state) power to rule?
Dark Grace and Lessons Learned
The dark grace or silver lining to Biden’s first year in office for thinking people may be that it’s ripped up the belief that big government is the answer to every problem. Biden has arguably proven Reagan’s quips correct. Per DataLabUSAspending.gov, the federal government “In 2021, the federal government spent $6.82 trillion.” After all that record federal spending, why have millions suffered, while a relatively few have benefited? Obviously, the Biden scheme hasn’t worked for “We the People.”
Rahm Emanuel (D) was former President Obama’s chief of staff and also served as Mayor of Chicago. Emanuel is known for the maxim: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” BrainyQuote says the back half of that quotation is “And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
The case can be made that time and again, avoidable crises were either allowed to occur and/or they were even sparked by poor policy choices that resulted in a crisis. So, not only do some in politics use a crisis to do what they couldn’t before, some are willing to allow or cause a crisis to occur in order to use that ‘crisis’ to put in place policies that may have been rejected under normal circumstances.
Examples of allowing a crisis in order to ‘solve’ a crisis include the housing-financial crisis of 2008. The then contemporary news clip below demonstrates that the seeds of the housing crisis were known years in advance. The warning signs were often ignored. Instead, the nation was allowed to go into the most serious recession since the Great Depression. From that ‘great recession,’ money and power continued to gravitate into the same ‘big corporate’ hands that were often involved in causing the crisis in the first place. Coincidence?
That housing and financial crisis was followed by pools of investors later buying up housing as rental property at discounted prices. Many of the rich literally got richer, while others lost. Some are predicting that a new housing bubble is forming. If so, will Americans look back months or years later and realize that shrewd players gamed (rigged) the system and made money going up, and will later make money after a housing bubble bursts? Meanwhile, Biden literally told the Business Roundtable that “Our economic strategy has worked.”
What? Tragic, but true.
Trump warned Americans about some of the same concerns outlined herein.
Ponder that list of years of regulatory and mainstream failures cited above that included Madoff, Enron, WorldCom, Theranos, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 2008 housing-financing fiasco. Each of those scandals went on for years. While different, they all had in common an apparent “confidence scam” thread. The problems were hiding in plain sight with regulator failing to act until years later.
To sum up and draw this to a close, the following takeaways emerge.
- Federal agencies and politicians that are supposed to protect the public often fail to do their job early on and then scandalous problems develop.
- The political and legal system can work to punish sometimes giant “white-collar” crimes, but it often requires significant heat (attention) and public outrage before it kicks in. For example, once a billionaire, Bernie Madoff was once thought untouchable. But after years of Harry Markopolos pressing his whistleblowing, the fraud finally came to a head. Madoff was exposed, arrested, and prosecuted – eventually dying in federal prison.
- The battle for election integrity is far from over. The 2020 election has aroused millions. There are efforts in various states to tighten up laws that appear to have tilted the presidential race in favor of Joe Biden, though early on election night it appeared that President Donald J. Trump was headed for reelection. Election audits and prosecutions of election fraud are underway.
- But behind the scenes, time and again, deep pockets are pulling the levers of power. They are pressing for a reset of the economy. Much of that could be dealt with via existing laws, which include antitrust (anti-monopoly) legislation that provides for criminal as well as civil penalties.
- The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act also provides for criminal as well as civil penalties. RICO Laws may be applicable in several instances involving corrupt behavior linking corporate power with government official actions or failures to act.
As a disclosure, this writer is not registered with either major political party and hasn’t been for years.
That said, in the foreseeable future, the Trumpian-style “America First” candidates who press for limited government are the ones worth supporting. It doesn’t have to be the ex-President Trump himself, so long as it is candidates that are as committed to his pragmatic agenda. Because his agenda was working for the working class, the middle class, minorities, retirees, and small to medium sizes businesses too.
American history, closely examined, is a battle of powerful interests that have periodically tried – often successfully for years on end – to rule over the broader common interests. The British used the military to enforce crown and corporate monopoly interests. That is why founding father Thomas Jefferson said he wanted to see strong anti-monopoly provisions in the U.S. Constitution.
Indeed, much of global history is a struggle of freedom for the many vs. rights limited only to the powerful few. While this writer disagrees with many of the policies of House Majority Whip James “Jim” Clyburn, his point below on the value of history is spot on.
Jews annually celebrate Passover, which commemorates the liberation of the Israelite people from the slavery in Egypt.
Roughly 15 centuries later, Jesus of Nazareth – known by Christians as Jesus Christ or the Messiah – came to liberate the people from spiritual blindness and slavery to sin. That is near the heart of what is celebrated during Holy Week’s commemorations of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, the trial, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus on Good Friday, and his resurrection from death on Easter Sunday.
It would be foolish for Americans to think that the tidal shift occurring in American politics could occur absent a strong moral and religious component. Who says? How about founding father and America’s first president, George Washington?
It has been said that there may be 1 million local, state, and federal laws in the U.S.A. If so, it should be obvious that human laws alone can’t keep people bad people in check and thus the masses of “We the People” free.
Rather, it is a combination of eternal laws, as summed up in the Ten Commandments, and eternal vigilance in defense of what makes human liberty practically possible. The quotation below is from a inauguration speech from 1967, from then Governor Ronald Reagan. Recall that Reagan was a Democrat before he became a Republican and later the 40th President of the United States.
“Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” With all due respect, that last line from Reagan isn’t correct, but he has a point. In the biblical era, Israelites went from freedom to servitude to freedom again several times. But each loss of independence took decades or even centuries to recover from. Much of eastern Europe and the old communist-led Soviet Union finally regained their freedom, but it took generations for that to occur.
Few are more passionate about protecting personal liberty than those who have lived without it.
Those who escaped from communist Cuba, Vietnam, nations in Eastern Europe, or socialist Venezuela are among those who the most enthusiastic about being anti-socialist and anti-communist. They are also often among those who spot authoritarianism under the fascist or any other label for what it is.
Abraham Lincoln was quite right. While some say it is a paraphrase, the point above holds true. If Americans lose our liberty, it will be lost from within.
Let us not allow the modern robber barons and their political and bureaucratic henchmen to hijack our American Republic.
Because the powers that be declared war, and it is high time that We the People wake up and intelligently fight back in lawful ways.
Prayer, the historic examples from the past that are often inspired by people of good will and faith, plus honest and ‘never quit’ effort. In “A Tapestry of Lies…”, the Tampa Free Press shared with readers this quotation by Will Shetterly: “Politics is a dirty business, but if you do not do politics, politics will be done to you.” Sadly, that’s true. Let all people of good will strive to make American politics and American law, coupled with an application of Divine Law, work together to achieve the American Dream for all. ##
L. A. “Tony” Kovach is a multiple award-winner in U.S. and European history, including the prestigious Lottinville Award from the University of Oklahoma. Kovach and his wife Soheyla are the co-founders and publishers of MHProNews.com and MHLivingNews.com. Their son Tamas Kovach helped edit this article and is their heir apparent. Tony Kovach and/or his publications have been referenced by others in mainstream media, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the National Association of Realtors (NAR) Journal of Real Estate Studies, federal, university-level, nonprofit, and other sources.
###
That’s a wrap on this installment of “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) (See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHLivingNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing. For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com. This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position, and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Recent and Related Reports:
The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.
