“Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move.”
Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky
Here are the calamities I see. Taking a cue from Saul Alinsky, President Obama is using the faux science of global warming to secure the power to redistribute wealth. Surrounded by advisors and administrators doing the heavy lifting, he delivers the message that fits within our current system. In Alinsky’s words, “it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.” Today, the system accepts the “green” movement with little thought for costs. Nothing will get in Obama’s way-not even “Climategate” or negative sentiment surrounding cap and trade, which is currently stalled in the Senate. He’s maneuvered right around both using the Environomental Protection Agency (EPA), just in time for the UN climate conference.
According to Ryan Lizza of The New Republic, “When Alinsky would ask new students why they wanted to organize, they would invariably respond with selfless bromides about wanting to help others. Alinsky would then scream back at them that there was a one-word answer: ‘You want to organize for power!'” After Alinsky’s death, The Washington Post reported in 2007, “a group of his disciples hired Barack Obama, a 23-year-old Columbia University graduate, to organize black residents on the South Side, while learning and applying Alinsky’s philosophy of street-level democracy.”
John Holdren is Obama’s science czar. The Canada Free Press reports: “[He] is directly involved in CRU’s [the Climate Research Unit’s] unfolding Climategate scandal. In fact, according to files released by a CRU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist and Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms ‘a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people.'”
Carol M. Browner is Obama’s climate czar. A year ago she was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society. This group calls for “global governance,” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. Her biography was removed from the website of its umbrella group, Socialist International, within days of her being appointed.
Regarding Climategate, The Washington Times reports: “Ms. Browner said the only people who still doubt global warming is happening and that humans are to blame are ‘a very small group of people who continue to say this isn’t a real problem, that we don’t need to do anything.’ … [S]he said she will stick with the consensus of the 2,500 climate scientists on the International Panel on Climate Change who concluded global warming is happening and is most likely being pushed by human actions.”
Next week Obama joins diplomats from 191 nations in Copenhagen for the UN climate change conference. Organizers have warned, “This could be the last best chance for a deal to protect the world from calamitous global warming.” So Obama will arrive with an early Christmas present thanks to his appointed EPA chief, Lisa Jackson, who announced Monday that greenhouse gases are a “danger to public health and welfare.” Jackson said “These long overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the U.S. government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform.”
Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll shows that 57% of Americans believe government is doing things that should be left to business and individuals. Here’s a solution, Mr. President: how about listening to them for a change?
E.J. Smith is Managing Director of Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. an investment advisory firm managing portfolios for investors with over $1,000,000 in investable assets.
