"Obama's No Socialist. I should know" by Billy Wharton

Bill Wharton is the editor of Socialist magazine. Published by Washington Post,Outlook section on Sunday,March 15, 2009, page B1,B4

"During the campaign, the ever-desperate McCain, his hard-charging running mate Sarah Palin and even a plumber named Joe lined up to call Barrack Obama a "socialist." Last month Huckabee even exclaimed that, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead, but the Union of American Socialist Republics is being born." What a charge and what tactics to mislead the American public!

"We are all Socialists now," declared a Newsweek cover last month. Obama claimed impeccable free market credentials.

The funny thing is that socialist know that Barrack Obama is not one of us. Not only is he not a socialist, he may in fact not even be a liberal.

The clear indication that Obama is not, in fact, a socialist, is the way his administration is avoiding structural changes to the financial system. Nationalization is simply not in the playbook of Treasury Secreary Timothy Geithner and his team. They favor costly, temporary measures that can easily be dismantled should the economy stabilize." And we expect to have stabilization,sooner or later when we have faith,hope and charity. Moreover,US and China are G-2 as per the article from World Bank Group published by Washington Post,March 6, 2009 for the reference of G-20 to be held in London on April 2, 2009.

Issues of war and peace further weaken the commander in chief's socialist credentials. A socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops.

Huckabee still felt confident in proposing that "Lenin and Stalin would love" Obama's bank bailout plan.

In one of my previous blogs I used the Pin Yin "Xuexi xuexi zai xue xi" cited by Lenin as someone told me. But Confucius said:"Review the past lessons to discover the new." "Wen gu er zhi xin" The connotation would be in the same boat to the best of my knowledge. However,Confucian thoughts are not the same as Lenin or Stalin. Confucius is known as an educator and a moral philosopher,not a revolutionary per se.

Well,people quote and cite famous names without knowing their true rationale. It is easy for folks to use buzzwords to scare the general public for political reason or for their vested interests.

Economics is to be studied to serve the folks in any society. The expansion of the public sector at the present time (under the special circumtances such as global financial crisis) would be warranted but the private sector is still the good engine for stimulating economic growth. An ideal society needs both the private and the public sectors without the brand name of a so-called economic system.(sic) Thanks for reading my personal view with your kind indulgence. Needless to say,the official economic system would be used by leaders and to be found in textbooks for general reference only.

Francis Shieh a.k.a. Xie Shihao. Xie sounds like Shay or Shea to celebrate St. Patrick's Day on March 17th but I am not Irish by my face value or ethnicity but only to honor a missionary for searching knowledge and wisdom as an octogenarian student of economics. Perhaps the greening of America is eco-friendly for Irish Americans to kiss the Blarney Stone in the light vein with "youmu" i.e. humor. Sunday, March 15, 2009 at 2.06 p.m.