Patriot Politics

It’s beginning to seem like everyone associated with the White House is carrying around Mao’s Little Red Book or something:

This is Obama’s manufacturing czar, Ron Bloom, who “kind of” agrees with Mao, “that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”  If you only “kind of” agree with someone, wouldn’t you try and find someone with whom you agree more to reference in a speech?  I mean, isn’t face time with an audience full of peeps deserving of your truest inspiration?

Who is Ron Bloom?  How do you get from investment banking to special assistant to the United Steelworkers union?  Is it by cozying up with the moneymen?  Now that Ron is manufacturing czar AND car czar, do we have any doubts that the future of industry is going to be shaped with a union bias?

Obama, upon appointing Bloom to his position, said, “We must do more to harness the power of American ingenuity and productivity so that we can put people back to work and unleash our full economic potential.” Can you spot a euphemism in that sentence?  Sure you can.  Can you spot the adulterated whitewash focus on Ron Bloom’s credentials as an investment banker union official?  You can do that too!

Are we to believe that Chrysler debtholders were eager to accede $6 billion in secured debt for $2 billion without some persuasion from Mr. Bloom or his predecessor Steve Rattner?  (Yes, that Steve Rattner, late of . . . wait for it. . . United Steelworkers.  Evidently when Steve had a little bribery and extortion problem, the Obama Administration didn’t look too far for his replacement.)  USAToday, in a laughable sentence, sums up what is an all too familiar circumstance when it comes to Obama appointments, which have the tendency of mirroring the level of previous experience of Barry himself:

His résumé may not be packed with car industry experience and political know-how, but in a few short weeks, Ron Bloom has become one of the most powerful people in the auto industry.

Please.  Save us from the legions of socialist thinkers in the Obama Administration who are comfortable saying things like this:  “In today’s world the blather about free trade, free-markets and the joys of competition is nothing but pablum for the suckers.” Would that be some dissonance out of a Wall Streeter?  Did all the money and power at Lazard corrupt Bloom’s thinking about capital markets and free enterprise?  Or was the greater truth revealed at USW?

Or maybe it was when, as an impressionable young graduate, Bloom worked as . . . wait for this, too. . . an organizer at SEIU?  Nothing like a little stint in organizing to inspire a career: After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1977, Bloom worked as a labor organizer. At the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation’s largest unions, he came to the conclusion that unions lacked the technical skills to negotiate with management teams and their advisors at the bargaining table. “Unions were being backed into corners by companies and couldn’t understand on a sophisticated level, the company’s arguments,” he once said. “Labor needed to be armed with the equivalent skills.”

We seem to think all these truths became self-evident when Ron found a home at the USW.  It appears the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) might share them, too.  DSA’s Spring 2007 publication mentions DSA ties to the USW, according to Trevor Loudon (h/t The Real Barack Obama).  Loudon points to DSA member speakers include AFL-CIO president John Sweeney , Cornel West, Barbara Ehrenreich and David Bonior, plus Steel Workers Union President Leo Gerard.  Leo, of course, recruited our friend Ron Bloom to the USW.  What a tangled web!

It’s not surprising that the DSA states, “We are dedicated to building truly international social movements—of unionists, environmentalists, feminists and people of color—which together can elevate global justice of brutalizing global competition.” And by now, it shouldn’t be surprising that the Obama Administration’s face at the table of manufacturing and industry moves, if not in then certainly at the periphery of, socialistic circles.  Ron’s got company.  Hilda Solis, Obama’s Secretary of Labor, has DSA connections, too.

How much more evidence needs to come to light to persuade doubters that Obama only appoints those are zealously committed to changing the economic and social fabric of the United States using his socialist playbook?  And how much more is going on behind the scenes, left uncovered?  Can anyone truly doubt what “hope and change” is really all about here?  Anyone?

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