8 ms·

This seems very curious. Is there any information out there as to why Obama is supporting this?

adventured 11y ago
Surface statements: he believes it makes America safer. Reality: Obama believes in a large, powerful, intrusive central government. These spying powers are an immense source of power and ultimately control. Supporting vast domestic surveillance is consistent with his overall ideology.
- judk 11y ago
  You say that, but really why does President want control? Once you are elected president, you are set for life with millions of dollars of "speakers fees" and free favors forever. Some people have plans to conquer the world like Hitler or Stalin, but Obama is just sort of plodding along. Why does he care about getting all this power? What will he do with it?
innocentoldguy 11y ago
I'm not sure why it would seem curious or even mildly surprising. Obama is a self-proclaimed Marxist and has been from the start. Creating a centralized, unchecked position of power is what Marxists do; you know, for the good of the people.
- innocentoldguy 11y ago
  And down voting those truths people don't like to hear is exactly why he made it into office . . . twice.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    I down voted you because of the wildly inaccurate use of the term "Marxist". Most of Obama's policies have very little to do with what Marx wrote about; at best, you could call him a socialist on a handful of issues, moderate/mild-conservative on other issues, and a pro-establishment Democrat overriding everything. Words have specific meanings, and you shouldn't label all of your political opponents "Marxist" (or "communists", "reds", or even "fascists", "neocons", etc) just because some of those labels may have fit some political opponents in the past.
    - innocentoldguy 11y ago
      Read my other comment and read The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx. Obama's actions and Marx's document align quite well. I'd love for you to show me how they don't. I also have a question for you. Do we only call people Marxists once we're all properties of the state, residing in gulags, or dead? Or, do we see the slow movements in that direction early on and stop them? I personally prefer the latter.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Read my other comment and read The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx The Manifesto of the Communist Party was written by Marx and Engels, not Marx as sole author. > Obama's actions and Marx's document align quite well. I'd love for you to show me how they don't. Okay, sure. the Manifesto's most direct policy prescriptions are contained in Chapter 2 [0], where after acknowledging that particular steps will differ from country to country, it states that "[n]evertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable" and lists the following items: > 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Where has Obama advocated anything like this? > 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Certainly the US has something like this, with a suitably loose definition of "heavy", but that pre-dates Obama. > 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. Where has Obama advocated anything like this? (Proposing actually paying capital gains tax on the appreciation of capital assets transferred in inheritance -- e.g., treating transfer in inheritance like a transfer -- is far from abolition of all rights of inheritance.) > 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. Again, where has Obama advocated anything like this? > 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. The US, obviously, has a central bank, but that's not an Obama innovation. > 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. Certainly, the Obama Administration has supported some tweaks of existing communication and/or transportation regulation, but, again, where is there anything substantially like this? > 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. Again, where? > 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Same question as above, where has Obama advocated this? > 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. The first part of this is a process that private industry has led in this country, but where has Obama proposed anything to advance either part? > 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c. Much of the first two sentences of this had been advanced in the US prior to Obama, and is fairly (with "present" in the 1848 sense!) uncontroversial. Where has Obama done anything on the third? Where -- with specifics from both Obama policies and the Manifesto -- has Obama, in short, done anything that shows his actions "align quite well" with the Manifesto's agenda? [0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...
- mullingitover 11y ago
  Ah, this explains why he's constantly advocating for the elimination of private property and for the state to own all means of production. Of course.
  - innocentoldguy 11y ago
    Yes, mullingitover, because that is the ONLY thing Marxism is about. Since you, and those who down-voted my posts, are so smart, please explain how Obama's attempts to increase state control over our energy, health care, economy, finance, and education are not Marxists ideals and leading us down that socialist path. Please explain how Obama's blocking of domestic energy supplies via the assertion of government ownership and regulation over massive amounts of acreage isn't Marxist. Please explain how Obama's maniacal zeal for progressive income taxes specifically targeting the rich is not Marxist. Please explain how Obama's desire to reinstate estate taxes isn't Marxist. Please explain how Dodd-Frank wasn't a giant leap towards the centralization of the U.S.'s financial system into the hands of the federal government. Please explain Obama's appointments of self-proclaimed Marxist Van Jones and his relationships with his mentor, and documented member of the Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis, and the links of David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett to the Chicago Communist Party. Instead of down-voting my posts, why not read The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx, for yourself and see exactly how Obama's policies align with that document's 10 steps. No, we're not to the gulag stage yet, but that is certainly the path Obama has us on. Read and see.
    - pdkl95 11y ago
      You seem to be confusing state ownership and management of industry with regulation of private industries. The state regulating and industry by banning various things or putting various requirements on the exploitation of common resources isn't anything like Marx's discussion of the state owning the means of production. > domestic energy supplies If you want to drill for oil on public land, your fellow citizens would like you to not fsck-up the land while you exploit it. Only in childish pure-capitalist fantasies does a business get to exploit common resources without without any social responsibility. > progressive income taxes Again, you apparently don't understand the difference between Marx's ideas of state ownership and modern economic theories, only some of which is even considered socialist. You tax the rich because they are the people with the money. Trying to squeeze it out of the poor with a flat tax is not only wildly socially irresponsible, it also creates social unrest. It also fails a producing revenue for the government. Oh, and you did know that progressive income tax started a loooong time before Marx was born, right? Even the ancient Romans had a progressive income tax. > estate tax Nothing specific to do with any of the economic suggestions discussed by Marx. Like the progressive income tax, limiting the dynastic accumulation of "old money" with an estate tax is a lot older than Marx. It's not like it even affects many people, contrary to the lies spread by many right-wing pundits. Are you leaving more than $5,430,000 to your kids? You did know that the estate tax exempts that amount, right? ... Ok, I have better things to do than to point out the errors in your fairly stereotypical GOP-propaganda-based view of the world. Obama has done more to continue Republican policies than any other modern president. You might want to take note of that - and do more reading about the history of politics on all sides. Obama and our current government have done some very worrying things (the Patriot Act power grabs that are the subject of this thread are a good example). I suggest focusing on these real problems if you want to accomplish something useful. Retreading old, easily debunked GOP is a waste of time and distracts from the actual problems that need to be addressed.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- guelo 11y ago
  So Bush was also a socialist?
  - Doji 11y ago
    Bush + Obama eschew privacy. Bush + Obama wage wars on terror. Bush + Obama spend shit loads of money. Bush + Obama bail out large corporations. I don't really care what word you want to use to describe them, but whatever word you pick, it applies to both of them.
    - jkestner 11y ago
      This is a point that needs to be beaten into our collective heads to get past the WWE-style "competition" fostered by the two parties, and start talking about the ideas. Unfortunately, every time we get close to that realization, the parties bring out "The next president will appoint several Supreme Court Justices that will have a decades-long impact" knowing that we'll swallow the lesser of two evils. I regret to say that worked to make me vote major-party the one time (Kerry, ick), but we have to think even longer-term to break out of this two-party cycle.
  - bcheung 11y ago
    It's not one or the other. Bush was neither a socialist, nor a libertarian but he was definitely pro war and had special interests in the middle east.
  - adventured 11y ago
    The US Government nearly doubled in size during his time in office, with his party having significant Congressional power, and he didn't try to stop any of it. He helped create vast new agencies that are extremely expensive to maintain. He created Medicare Part D. He launched two sizable wars, and expanded the military dramatically. At a minimum, Bush was/is a fan of big, intrusive government. The more accurate description might be to say he's a proponent of really big government. He's very far away from being a proponent of small government or Capitalism.
wwweston 11y ago
People sometimes think this is about an individual president/politician's values or policy thinking. That might be the case, but over the last decade I've started to think that there's a different explanation. Sometimes I call it the "Giant Robot Theory of The Presidency" -- that is, I suspect that occupying the white house is to no small extent a lot like climbing into the cockpit of a large and complex piece of anime mecha. It mediates your senses, your reality is "augmented" in a number of ways, you have information being fed to you from various subsystems. You're empowered, but you're also somewhat isolated by the cockpit, too, and it's easy to start to think about reality in terms of what the various feeds and subsystems are telling you and think about your actions largely in terms of the controls in front of you. Perhaps at first you focus that way because it's all so new and awesome and exciting, then later because you just got used to it while barely noticing how totally you accepted this interface to the world. Over time the system itself shapes your perceptions and thinking, and you think less like what you were before you climbed in and more like the system itself. That's a colorful metaphor for saying that once you're in the leadership of an organization, you see like the organization does, because you "see" via the organization, but I think it adds something. (BTW -- it's also true of everyone to some extent. It's a useful exercise to think about exactly what kind of mecha you've climbed into and how it's influencing you.) I think this tendency may be more pronounced in organizations with strong mission-oriented and ends-justify-means cultures.. like, say military/defense/national security orgs, which we intentionally staff with people we train to set the value of human autonomy and even life (theirs and others) below various goals and "interests."
- closetnerd 11y ago
  > That's a colorful metaphor Colorful yet probable. It's part of the reason I've started to believe that someone with strong conviction like Ron Paul would actually be best for a while.
- pmalynin 11y ago
  The White House is a Reaper that indoctrinates its crew.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  I somewhat subscribe to the same theory, but it's augmented by the idea that there is stuff out there we just don't know about and never will. Daniel Ellsberg (the leaker of the Pentagon Papers) described it perfectly when talking about how he briefed Henry Kissinger upon Kissinger's appointment as National Security Advisor under Nixon: "First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn't even guess. In particular, you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn't know about and didn't know they had, and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well." http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...
tunesmith 11y ago
I think he thinks that the population hasn't fully considered what could really happen if it were truly impossible for law enforcement to engage in targeted surveillance.
- pgrote 11y ago
  ... or what has been prevented. It is a shame more open records aren't available as to what was done with the data. Transparency could be a key.
- adventured 11y ago
  Obama knows that's not the case at all. Lack of any targeted surveillance is not the alternative. The alternative is to have to get individual warrants that are targeted, specific, limited. The political machine that Obama is part of hates this alternative.
- jrs235 11y ago
  But I thought the surveillance, at least the data collection, isn't targeted. No one has an issue with proper, specific search warrants.

Surface statements: he believes it makes America safer. Reality: Obama believes in a large, powerful, intrusive central government. These spying powers are an immense source of power and ultimately control. Supporting vast domestic surveillance is consistent with his overall ideology.

judk 11y ago
You say that, but really why does President want control? Once you are elected president, you are set for life with millions of dollars of "speakers fees" and free favors forever. Some people have plans to conquer the world like Hitler or Stalin, but Obama is just sort of plodding along. Why does he care about getting all this power? What will he do with it?

innocentoldguy 11y ago

I'm not sure why it would seem curious or even mildly surprising. Obama is a self-proclaimed Marxist and has been from the start. Creating a centralized, unchecked position of power is what Marxists do; you know, for the good of the people.

innocentoldguy 11y ago
And down voting those truths people don't like to hear is exactly why he made it into office . . . twice.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  I down voted you because of the wildly inaccurate use of the term "Marxist". Most of Obama's policies have very little to do with what Marx wrote about; at best, you could call him a socialist on a handful of issues, moderate/mild-conservative on other issues, and a pro-establishment Democrat overriding everything. Words have specific meanings, and you shouldn't label all of your political opponents "Marxist" (or "communists", "reds", or even "fascists", "neocons", etc) just because some of those labels may have fit some political opponents in the past.
  - innocentoldguy 11y ago
    Read my other comment and read The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx. Obama's actions and Marx's document align quite well. I'd love for you to show me how they don't. I also have a question for you. Do we only call people Marxists once we're all properties of the state, residing in gulags, or dead? Or, do we see the slow movements in that direction early on and stop them? I personally prefer the latter.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Read my other comment and read The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx The Manifesto of the Communist Party was written by Marx and Engels, not Marx as sole author. > Obama's actions and Marx's document align quite well. I'd love for you to show me how they don't. Okay, sure. the Manifesto's most direct policy prescriptions are contained in Chapter 2 [0], where after acknowledging that particular steps will differ from country to country, it states that "[n]evertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable" and lists the following items: > 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Where has Obama advocated anything like this? > 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Certainly the US has something like this, with a suitably loose definition of "heavy", but that pre-dates Obama. > 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. Where has Obama advocated anything like this? (Proposing actually paying capital gains tax on the appreciation of capital assets transferred in inheritance -- e.g., treating transfer in inheritance like a transfer -- is far from abolition of all rights of inheritance.) > 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. Again, where has Obama advocated anything like this? > 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. The US, obviously, has a central bank, but that's not an Obama innovation. > 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. Certainly, the Obama Administration has supported some tweaks of existing communication and/or transportation regulation, but, again, where is there anything substantially like this? > 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. Again, where? > 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Same question as above, where has Obama advocated this? > 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. The first part of this is a process that private industry has led in this country, but where has Obama proposed anything to advance either part? > 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c. Much of the first two sentences of this had been advanced in the US prior to Obama, and is fairly (with "present" in the 1848 sense!) uncontroversial. Where has Obama done anything on the third? Where -- with specifics from both Obama policies and the Manifesto -- has Obama, in short, done anything that shows his actions "align quite well" with the Manifesto's agenda? [0] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-m...
mullingitover 11y ago
Ah, this explains why he's constantly advocating for the elimination of private property and for the state to own all means of production. Of course.
- innocentoldguy 11y ago
  Yes, mullingitover, because that is the ONLY thing Marxism is about. Since you, and those who down-voted my posts, are so smart, please explain how Obama's attempts to increase state control over our energy, health care, economy, finance, and education are not Marxists ideals and leading us down that socialist path. Please explain how Obama's blocking of domestic energy supplies via the assertion of government ownership and regulation over massive amounts of acreage isn't Marxist. Please explain how Obama's maniacal zeal for progressive income taxes specifically targeting the rich is not Marxist. Please explain how Obama's desire to reinstate estate taxes isn't Marxist. Please explain how Dodd-Frank wasn't a giant leap towards the centralization of the U.S.'s financial system into the hands of the federal government. Please explain Obama's appointments of self-proclaimed Marxist Van Jones and his relationships with his mentor, and documented member of the Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis, and the links of David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett to the Chicago Communist Party. Instead of down-voting my posts, why not read The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx, for yourself and see exactly how Obama's policies align with that document's 10 steps. No, we're not to the gulag stage yet, but that is certainly the path Obama has us on. Read and see.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    You seem to be confusing state ownership and management of industry with regulation of private industries. The state regulating and industry by banning various things or putting various requirements on the exploitation of common resources isn't anything like Marx's discussion of the state owning the means of production. > domestic energy supplies If you want to drill for oil on public land, your fellow citizens would like you to not fsck-up the land while you exploit it. Only in childish pure-capitalist fantasies does a business get to exploit common resources without without any social responsibility. > progressive income taxes Again, you apparently don't understand the difference between Marx's ideas of state ownership and modern economic theories, only some of which is even considered socialist. You tax the rich because they are the people with the money. Trying to squeeze it out of the poor with a flat tax is not only wildly socially irresponsible, it also creates social unrest. It also fails a producing revenue for the government. Oh, and you did know that progressive income tax started a loooong time before Marx was born, right? Even the ancient Romans had a progressive income tax. > estate tax Nothing specific to do with any of the economic suggestions discussed by Marx. Like the progressive income tax, limiting the dynastic accumulation of "old money" with an estate tax is a lot older than Marx. It's not like it even affects many people, contrary to the lies spread by many right-wing pundits. Are you leaving more than $5,430,000 to your kids? You did know that the estate tax exempts that amount, right? ... Ok, I have better things to do than to point out the errors in your fairly stereotypical GOP-propaganda-based view of the world. Obama has done more to continue Republican policies than any other modern president. You might want to take note of that - and do more reading about the history of politics on all sides. Obama and our current government have done some very worrying things (the Patriot Act power grabs that are the subject of this thread are a good example). I suggest focusing on these real problems if you want to accomplish something useful. Retreading old, easily debunked GOP is a waste of time and distracts from the actual problems that need to be addressed.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

guelo 11y ago
So Bush was also a socialist?
- Doji 11y ago
  Bush + Obama eschew privacy. Bush + Obama wage wars on terror. Bush + Obama spend shit loads of money. Bush + Obama bail out large corporations. I don't really care what word you want to use to describe them, but whatever word you pick, it applies to both of them.
  - jkestner 11y ago
    This is a point that needs to be beaten into our collective heads to get past the WWE-style "competition" fostered by the two parties, and start talking about the ideas. Unfortunately, every time we get close to that realization, the parties bring out "The next president will appoint several Supreme Court Justices that will have a decades-long impact" knowing that we'll swallow the lesser of two evils. I regret to say that worked to make me vote major-party the one time (Kerry, ick), but we have to think even longer-term to break out of this two-party cycle.
- bcheung 11y ago
  It's not one or the other. Bush was neither a socialist, nor a libertarian but he was definitely pro war and had special interests in the middle east.
- adventured 11y ago
  The US Government nearly doubled in size during his time in office, with his party having significant Congressional power, and he didn't try to stop any of it. He helped create vast new agencies that are extremely expensive to maintain. He created Medicare Part D. He launched two sizable wars, and expanded the military dramatically. At a minimum, Bush was/is a fan of big, intrusive government. The more accurate description might be to say he's a proponent of really big government. He's very far away from being a proponent of small government or Capitalism.

wwweston 11y ago

People sometimes think this is about an individual president/politician's values or policy thinking. That might be the case, but over the last decade I've started to think that there's a different explanation. Sometimes I call it the "Giant Robot Theory of The Presidency" -- that is, I suspect that occupying the white house is to no small extent a lot like climbing into the cockpit of a large and complex piece of anime mecha. It mediates your senses, your reality is "augmented" in a number of ways, you have information being fed to you from various subsystems. You're empowered, but you're also somewhat isolated by the cockpit, too, and it's easy to start to think about reality in terms of what the various feeds and subsystems are telling you and think about your actions largely in terms of the controls in front of you. Perhaps at first you focus that way because it's all so new and awesome and exciting, then later because you just got used to it while barely noticing how totally you accepted this interface to the world. Over time the system itself shapes your perceptions and thinking, and you think less like what you were before you climbed in and more like the system itself. That's a colorful metaphor for saying that once you're in the leadership of an organization, you see like the organization does, because you "see" via the organization, but I think it adds something. (BTW -- it's also true of everyone to some extent. It's a useful exercise to think about exactly what kind of mecha you've climbed into and how it's influencing you.) I think this tendency may be more pronounced in organizations with strong mission-oriented and ends-justify-means cultures.. like, say military/defense/national security orgs, which we intentionally staff with people we train to set the value of human autonomy and even life (theirs and others) below various goals and "interests."

closetnerd 11y ago
> That's a colorful metaphor Colorful yet probable. It's part of the reason I've started to believe that someone with strong conviction like Ron Paul would actually be best for a while.
pmalynin 11y ago
The White House is a Reaper that indoctrinates its crew.
joezydeco 11y ago
I somewhat subscribe to the same theory, but it's augmented by the idea that there is stuff out there we just don't know about and never will. Daniel Ellsberg (the leaker of the Pentagon Papers) described it perfectly when talking about how he briefed Henry Kissinger upon Kissinger's appointment as National Security Advisor under Nixon: "First, you'll be exhilarated by some of this new information, and by having it all — so much! incredible! — suddenly available to you. But second, almost as fast, you will feel like a fool for having studied, written, talked about these subjects, criticized and analyzed decisions made by presidents for years without having known of the existence of all this information, which presidents and others had and you didn't, and which must have influenced their decisions in ways you couldn't even guess. In particular, you'll feel foolish for having literally rubbed shoulders for over a decade with some officials and consultants who did have access to all this information you didn't know about and didn't know they had, and you'll be stunned that they kept that secret from you so well." http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...

tunesmith 11y ago

I think he thinks that the population hasn't fully considered what could really happen if it were truly impossible for law enforcement to engage in targeted surveillance.

pgrote 11y ago
... or what has been prevented. It is a shame more open records aren't available as to what was done with the data. Transparency could be a key.
adventured 11y ago
Obama knows that's not the case at all. Lack of any targeted surveillance is not the alternative. The alternative is to have to get individual warrants that are targeted, specific, limited. The political machine that Obama is part of hates this alternative.
jrs235 11y ago
But I thought the surveillance, at least the data collection, isn't targeted. No one has an issue with proper, specific search warrants.