Marketplace of Ideas Blog

Dick Morris, former consultant to President Bill Clinton and to Republicans, posted this after the upset in Massachusetts last week:

After Obama succeeds in jamming health care changes down the collective throats of his embattled constituents, his next move will be to bring overt socialism to the United States in the guise of regulatory reform.

The legislation he seeks to pilot through the Senate (it already passed the House) literally gives the Secretary of the Treasury the power to seize any company in any sector which, in his judgment, is in danger of insolvency and whose failure would cause systemic damage to the national economy (aka — too big to fail).

Once the government has seized a private business under this horrific law, the Secretary of the Treasury is empowered to fire its management, replace its board of directors, wipe out the equity of its shareholders, and close any divisions or parts of it he wishes. Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez would envy such power.

Exploiting concerns that another global meltdown might be around the corner, the Obama legislation effectively brings socialism to the United States.

There’s no other term for it.

Perhaps we’ll learn more about this in tonight’s State of the Union speech, which is a different speech from the originally drafted version. In his past week of appearances, Obama zigged in a more conciliatory fashion before zagging into economic populism by taking on those nasty banks (which he asked to help rebuild the economy a month ago) and Wall Street.

It will be particularly interesting to hear his rationale for the upcoming bank tax, which will of course be passed on to the affected bank’s customers. Our Janus president simultaneously wants banks to do what banks are supposed to and then wants to punish banks for doing too much of what they are supposed to do.