01 Jan 2009 Black Leader Speaks Against the Radical Underpinnings of Obama’s Bailout Agenda

Washington, DC – President Barack Obama has now laid the groundwork for sweeping government intervention in the free market with his announcement of new government requirements for its continued support for struggling American automakers.

Mychal Massie, the chairman of the Project 21 black leadership network, had this to say about Obama’s announcement:

I am not aware of any part of the U.S. Constitution in which the government is given the right to dispense taxpayer money to private institutions and then use that ability to hire, fire and make other major decisions for that business.  But I am aware of Saul Alinsky’s infamous rules for radicals.  So is the President, having been a disciple of Alinsky’s teachings since his days as a community organizer.

These rules are now being employed at the peril of our economy.

Alinsky’s eight rule advocated keeping up pressure so critics are kept off balance.  We have seen this is the relentless march toward the heavy regulation of our financial and manufacturing sectors to the brink of nationalization.

Alinsky’s ninth rule advised making the threat more terrifying than the reality.  It is the exactly the opposite of FDR’s first inaugural assertion during the Great Depression that the “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  Today’s dire assertions about the futures of GM and Chrysler without government involvement plays into this strategy

Then there is Alinsky’s twelfth rule of personalizing and polarizing targets, with a preference of demonizing individuals rather than institutions.  That’s what we saw with the AIG executives before and are seeing now with General Motors’s Rick Wagoner.

What must not be forgotten is Alinsky’s first rule: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”  In whipping up the anger and the fear of the American people, Obama is attempting to blind people to the power of the free market.

We must not forget that ours is a society based on and reliant on a vibrant free market.  To upset it with overregulation and domineering government intervention could be crippling now and for generations to come.

I am the owner of both GM and Chrysler vehicles.  I don’t want these prominent American companies to go out of business, and I don’t want their workers or the workers of their subsidiaries to lose their jobs.  That being said, however, I do not want the government – especially this government – to be in the power to call the shots.

This nation was founded on a rebellion against a tyrannical government.  We should not now create a new one in our haste to return to the comfort of years past.

Project 21, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, has been a leading voice of the African-American community since 1992.  For more information, contact David Almasi at (202) 543-4110 x11 or [email protected], or visit Project 21’s website at www.project21.org/P21Index.html.