Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D, Illinois 9th District), whose husband has been convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion, was recently interviewed by the far-left website “truthout” and served up some rather unsettling thoughts on economics and the role of government.
You’ll remember truthout for its scoop back in 2009; it was the first site to report the big news that Karl Rove had been indicted. Unfortunately for this “news” site, Karl Rove was never indicted. That was a spot of bother, indeed, impugning the site’s veracity just a bit. You may also know that original editor, Marc Ash, was ousted from the site by a coup from within when it was discovered he was making $140,000 a year off the donors and left-wing foundations supporting the site. But he’s all for the downtrodden masses, ya know?
Now that we have established the forum upon which Schakowsky appeared, let’s look at some of the extreme things she said.
The interview began with the most likely of subjects given the national debate: as Joe Biden said, that three letter word–jobs, jobs, jobs. Schakowsky, of course, stuck to that debunked idea that government “creates jobs” and indulged her inner Keynes in every answer.
Saying she just couldn’t understand how people could say government doesn’t create jobs, Schakowsky indulged in the typically Keynesian fantasy that all left-wingers wallow in. She imagines that jobs created by the government are economic boosters because the money such people are paid will be spent in the general economy. This, she absurdly says, means that everyone is a “job creator” because they spend money.
Of course, her logical fallacy is that all this money she claims is an economic salve is nothing but government subsidies and, therefore, a drag on the economy. It is tax money flowing from the pockets of real workers into the pockets of faux workers and spent as a drain on the productive members of the economy, not a boon to them. Her plan is simply an un-American redistribution of income, not a jobs program.
Schakowsky then claims she is against “class warfare” and trumpets the idea that President Obama is trying to “stop a war on the middle class that has been going on for decades.” Unfortunately, the actions of this President and his party make the lie to that statement, too.
Sadly, class warfare is about all they’ve got at this point. Their other “solutions”–the stimulus, bailouts, central control schemes, czars–have all failed miserably, so stirring hatred between the classes is the only ploy they have left to cajole people to vote for them. Showing her utter economic ignorance, Schakowsky again reiterates that “rich people” are not job creators, and calling them that is “class warfare” as far as she is concerned.
Then she claims that Republicans want to institute a “Dirty Air Week” because they want to deregulate the EPA and other wildly overzealous arms of Obama’s regulatory regime that are destroying any chance of economic recovery. Naturally, she doesn’t think the American people “buy that.” Interestingly, she doesn’t “get” that the loss of the House and the near loss of the Senate in 2010 was the majority of voters buying just that, the idea that Obama and the Democrats have gone too far and are destroying any chance of an economic recovery.
Schakowsy goes on to talk of gutting the military, decrying the Citizens United decision, and talking of her empty stunt from 2007 when she claimed to have lived off food stamps for a period of several months. Apparently she wants to repeat the stunt.
One of Schakowsky’s final answers was telling, though. It reeked of victimology but was amusing for its admission that these occupy this and that protesters haven’t a clue what they are protesting about.
I think we need to do some better organizing. I think we also need to hold out real solutions and at least clarify what the demands ought to be. Everyone cannot allow the American dream to slip. That’s what these people are experiencing, the American dream just slipping through their fingers. They have to understand they are the victims. The perpetrators, the banks, no one’s going to jail, they’re getting their bonuses, and now they don’t want to lend any money. They don’t want to refinance. They don’t want to do anything for these homeowners. The better response is to really get mad.
Notice that right at the beginning, Schakowsky admits that these silly protests are wholly unfocused, pointless and need someone to “clarify what the demands ought to be.” That is hilarious for revealing how true left-wingers like Schakowsky view these silly, unfocused protests.
But the key point is where she hopes to get Americans to feel like they are “victims.” That is the key to the left’s power. They want everyone feeling like victims and dependent upon Democrats to give them stuff. She goes on to make the lie to her own claim that she and Obama are trying to eliminate class warfare by attacking the left’s favorite boogeymen, “the banks.” She wants to inflame fear, hate, anger and violence against them.
This shows the complete lack of any real solutions from the like of Schakowsky. This is a woman that wants insurance companies eliminated, wants all doctors to be government employees (and government has done such a great job with the post office and Amtrak, eh?), and wants “the rich” to be destroyed. In short, this woman wants the full panoply of left-wing, communist-style “solutions” to what she thinks ails America. She wants an end to capitalism and private property. She wants to tear down and destroy everything that has been at the root of what made America great to replace it with a dependence society of government-controlled drones.
In all this she is exactly like the President, a man who is the most extreme, most anti-business, anti-capitalist President this country has ever seen.
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