It looks obvious

Guess who can we add to the list of hypocrite busy bodies? That’s right:

Senator Obama sends his own two daughters to the private “Lab School” founded by John Dewey in 1896, which charged $20,000 in tuition at the middle school level last year. Though he says “we” should not be “throwing up our hands and walking away” from public schools, he has done precisely that.

That is his right, and, as a wealthy man, it is his prerogative under the current system of American education, which allows only the wealthy to easily choose between private and government schools. But instead of offering to extend that same choice to all families, Senator Obama wants the poor to wait for the public school system to be “fixed.”

Unfortunately he joined a, not so, respectful list including Al Gore, F.D.R and even the wannabe senator from Minnesota. These stories aren’t pettiness, they are demonstration of the true nature of those who are busy telling other people how should they live, and what sacrifices should they make for the “common good”. They were and remain as described in Orwell’s story:

For once Benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. There was nothing there now except a single Commandment. It ran:

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL

BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to John Bull, TitBits, and the Daily Mirror. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth-no, not even when the pigs took Mr. Jones’s clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on, Napoleon himself appearing in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favourite sow appeared in the watered silk dress which Mrs. Jones had been used to wear on Sundays.

I was worried about the increasing collectivist tone coming from the Obama campaign. The resemblances other are finding to FDR making Obama even less attractive candidate.

The general feeling of looming disaster makes Obama more likely to become a President, mostly after the shameful results of the “conservative”. With a cooperative legislature body he might be able to achieve big portion of his agenda which will make our recovery from possible depression even worse than the last round. unfortunately I can not argue that McCain is less dangerous.

When Tzvika, an Israeli fellow blogger, came to visit in NY he had one request - that I’ll take him to the FDR Library. I still wonder if he enjoyed the library as much as he enjoyed seeing me suffering and ranting about how evil FDR, and his like, was. This link is dedicated to Tzvika, who went as far as buying memorabilia in the “New Deal gift shop”:

For instance, Roosevelt repeatedly urged Congress to end the tax-free treatment of interest on state and municipal bonds. The special treatment accorded to those financial instruments, he told Congress in April 1938, “has created a vast reservoir of tax-exempt securities in the hands of the very persons who equitably should not be relieved of taxes on their income.” Congress should act to end the injustice, he declared.

Yet just a month before, FDR had filed a tax return indicating that he owned some $17,000 in tax-free bonds. Defenders of the president might insist that he was doing nothing wrong; after all, the tax-free status of those bonds was a deliberate and long-standing element of the tax law. But Roosevelt himself dismissed those legalistic arguments:

Methods of escape or intended escape from tax liability are many. Some are instances of avoidance which appear to have the color of legality; others are on the borderline of legality; others are plainly contrary even to the letter of the law.

All are alike in that they are definitely contrary to the spirit of the law. All are alike in that they represent a determined effort on the part of those who use them to dodge the payment of taxes which Congress based on ability to pay. All are alike in that failure to pay results in shifting the tax load to the shoulders of others less able to pay, and in mulcting the Treasury of the Government’s just due.

[...]

FDR repeatedly claimed that he was exempt from the high tax rates on personal income that Congress had enacted — and Roosevelt had approved — in the revenue acts of 1934 and 1935.

In a series of letters to internal revenue officials, Roosevelt insisted that he could not be taxed at the heavy rates imposed on rich taxpayers during the mid-1930s. Article II, section 1 of the Constitution forbids any reduction in the president’s compensation during his term in office, Roosevelt pointed out. Since the new rates enacted in 1934 and 1935 effectively reduced that compensation, they could not be applied to the president’s salary.

But we already know that All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others…

Whenever I think that nothing will surprise me someone like Mike Gravel shows up and prove me wrong. The former Democrat Senator from Alaska and former candidate seeking the democratic nomination joined the Libertarian party. One of the reasons he gave for seeking the LP nomination is:

The fact is, the Democratic Party today is no longer the party of FDR.

Obviously, the "natural" choice from someone who seek the support of the Libertarian party is to claim the legacy of the President who has the “New Deal” and WWII tightly attached to his memory. This will guaranty a very short campaign….

But what can you expect from someone who is moving to the LP because he is tired of:

By and large, I have been repeatedly marginalized in both national debates and in media exposure by the Democratic leadership, which works in tandem with the corporate interests that control what we read and hear in the media.