A moment of clarity
Hugo Hillary states in so many words that she “wants to take” oil company profits. She has a plan for those profits, you see. So it does not matter that they are not hers to take. She does not have the right to take private property, not as a senator, nor as President of the United States, should that misfortune come to pass.
Posted on February 12th, 2007 by pwyll
Filed under: politics
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In the first two words of this post, you seem to want your reader to associate the policies of Hugo Chavez with those of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The text of Ms. Clinton’s speech featured in the YouTube clip clearly, as you know, is presentation of a policy position that could only take effect if passed by the U.S. Congress. If Chavez were to say the functional equivalent about Venezuelan oil profits, he would mean something entirely more dictatorial, and you know it.
The US Congress does not have the right to “take profits”. A politician as experienced as Senator Clinton ought to choose her words more carefully.
Perhaps these words will ring a bell with you: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
Justice O’Connor wrote in her dissent in Kelo vs City of New London that the effect of the court’s ruling was to “effectively delete the words “”for public use”" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Hillary was just exercising her new found government power over personal property, as she slides further down the socialist slope.
And why not? Everything the government is involved in they do better than the private sector. Right? There’s all those examples of government (i) recognizing a legitimate problem; (ii) providing a effective, cost efficient solution to solve the problem; (iii) without creating other problems, and then (iv) dissolving the government agency that was set up to solve the problem. I just can’t think of any example right this minute. Perhaps you big-government-loving-bloggers can help me out. There must be thousands of examples. Otherwise we wouldn’t allow the government to control 40% of our gross domestic product. Would we?
Regarding the original post, I still maintain that comparing Senator Clinton to Hugo Chavez is just silly. Neither comment 2 nor comment 3 address this point.
I will give you this: if Candidate Clinton is playing populist politics with the abhorrently large profits oil companies make then she does deserve a slap on the wrist from the right. As comment 2 puts it, she should “choose here words more carefully.”
But gentlemen, the presidential election derby has begun. We all are going to be listening to a lot of political rhetoric designed to do two things: get votes and raise money. Nobody is going to get into the White House while neglecting this fundamental truth about our representative democracy.
Right now, the fact that it takes $100,000,000 plus to be a serious candidate for president is a much bigger problem that populist rhetoric out of candidates.
What you call “populist politics” I call “socialist demagoguery”.
Presumably the senator is just pandering to that part of the electorate who think nationalizing the oil industry would be a good thing. And the rest of us should give her a pass on her expressed desire to do what Chavez has done, because the senator is just lying to appease her base.
To the contrary, no one should give Senator Clinton a pass on this one. But comparing Candidate Clinton to wanna-be President for Life Chavez is simply inaccurate.
Regarding the oil company profits proposal at issue in your post, let me quote the following from her campaign website:
Assuming this idea ever gets through Congress, it’s constitutionality will surely be tested and resolved by the Supreme Court. That is a far cry from the ditatorial behavior of Hugo Chavez in nationalizing private sector industries, threatening to close down dissenting media outlets, and using a rubber stamp legislature to do it.
Personally, I see no slippery socialist slope in Senator Clinton’s proposal. Maybe the private sector is a better place for development of alternatives to fossil fuels, but Senator Clinton’s proposal is a far cry from nationalizing the oil industry — an industry that, as I write, is in bed with the very dangerous demagogue Hugo Chavez (specifically, Exxon-Mobil and Texaco are currently working with the Chavez goverment on oil extraction ventures in Venezuela).
Finally, any presidential candidate who might hold far right or left wing positions would be committing political suicide to talk about them. The American electorate is so evenly divided right now that “running to the center” is the only way to win in 2008. Senator Clinton may be a lot of things, but she’s not stupid.
As they say in the beer commercial; Brilliant!
I can see the new Clinton campaign motto now:
“Hillary, Not Nearly as Socialist as Hugo!”
I’m sure that will play very well in Des Moines.
Yo, CCL,
I don’t know if cynical sarcasm plays well at libertarian pep rallies, but it certainly takes away from the strength of your often very insightful observations. Why not, just for fun, take a vacation to the land of wit, irony, and heartfelt anecdote — these are for more powerful rhetorical tools.
You do things your way. I’ll do them mine. Thank you.
Fair enough, pard.
I just have a lot of trouble refraining from cynical sarcasm when faced with a truly corrupt, hypocritical, power hungry, unprincipled politician, such as Senator Clinton. There are many examples, on both sides of the aisle, but her star star is truly one of the brightest in this spectrum. And comment #7 was, at least to some of us, witty and heartfelt, if not ironic.
Point taken regarding the wit, irony, and sincerity in comment 7. My bad, I missed it.