Conspiracy Theories, Anyone?

I'm not normally willing to take the first answer given, instead, I want to know what's "underneath." You know . . . what's the reason for the answer, or what's behind the action taken. Maybe it's my profession that makes me want to see the cause and effect, to look for the motive, to understand the "why." I am a lawyer, after all, and have done my share of courtroom work. I also tend to look for connections; because nothing stands alone. Perhaps that's why I enjoy conspiracy theories; even though I'm usually very skeptical about them. (Maybe I enjoy a good conspiracy-theory because I grew up on the post-Kennedy assignation fascination with just who was really on the grassy knoll.) Anyway, in recent days I've wondered just what, or who, was behind the "economic crisis" and speculated whether the "crisis" was real, or manufactured and manipulated to implode just before the Presidential election.

So it was with real interest that I read an article by Jim Simpson posted on American Thinker, titled Barrack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. I strongly suggest you go read the entire article. It's lengthy, but it will make you think. I'm not certain I agree with Mr. Simpson's entire premise, I am a skeptic, after all; but he's done a lot of work and has documented his sources.

According to Mr. Simpson's theory, the "financial crisis" is just another manufactured crisis designed to lead this Nation into a form of Marxist-Socialism. Mr. Simpson posits that the current crisis is just another successful effort made by the far-left liberal fringe, guided by the Cloward-Privin Strategy first proposed by two radical socialist professors at Colombia in 1966. This strategy "seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse." (From Discover the Networks.org, a right-wing site.) According to Mr. Simpson, the strategy has three main features:

1. The offensive organizes previously unorganized groups eligible for government benefits but not currently receiving all they can.
2. The offensive seeks to identify new beneficiaries and/or create new benefits.
3. The overarching aim is always to impose new stresses on target systems, with the ultimate goal of forcing their collapse.

In order to overload government bureaucracies, the strategy relies on a cadre of community organizers who, in the guise of working for the poor and afflicted, try to use our laws, policies, and practices against us. These community organizers have been successful in expanding the welfare rolls, and according to Rudy Giuliani, were behind the dramatic increase in New York City's welfare caseloads. In 1960, NYC had 150,000 welfare cases. In 1970, welfare cases had risen to 1.5 million. According to Mr. Giuliani, the strategy was also behind the shift from viewing welfare as a temporary solution to help those with no where else to go, to a life-time entitlement.

According to Mr. Simpson, community organizers (such as ACORN, the organization Senator Obama worked for) are also an integral part of the radical-left's implementation of the Cloward-Privin strategy. ACORN is active in voting registration drives that seek to sign up voters who will support leftist policies, are active in voting fraud, and advocate giving felons and illegal immigrants the right to vote. ACORN is also extremely active in pushing banks and lending companies to provide sub-prime mortgages to those who would otherwise not be able to qualify for a mortgage. It was these sub-prime mortgages which created the housing bubble that, when it burst, was the prime cause behind the current financial crisis.

According to Mr. Simpson, the Democrat Party in general and Senator Obama in particular, are heavily involved with ACORN. For example, he says that according to Senator Lindsay Graham, the Democrats want 20% of the bailout money appropriate by Congress to "solve" this "financial crisis" to go to ACORN. In Mr. Simpson's view,

This entire fiasco represents perhaps the pinnacle of ACORN's efforts to advance the Cloward-Piven Strategy and is a stark demonstration of the power they wield in Washington.

Mr. Simpson goes on to detail Senator Obama's associations with the radical-left, and his record of working on extreme liberal causes. He concludes that

Barrack Obama, the Cloward-Piven candidate, no matter how he describes himself, has been a radical activist for most of his political career. That activism has been in support of organizations and initiatives that at their heart seek to tear the pillars of this nation asunder in order to replace them with their demented socialist vision. Their influence has spread so far and so wide that despite their blatant culpability in the current financial crisis, they are able to manipulate Capital Hill politicians to cut them into $140 billion of the bailout pie!

Although I wonder at a lot of conspiracy theories (more tend to be fiction rather than fact) Mr. Simpson's theory of a conspiracy to threaten our way of life is more interesting than most. I hope it's not true. I hope that our politicians are not that manipulative. I hope that there's honor still existing in those who go into public service. Nevertheless, it does make you think. . .

UPDATE
It looks like the ACORN provisions have been removed from the final draft bailout plan. That's a good thing. Now I hope we get some details about the rest of the plan.