Post-American Presidency Read Online Free PDF

corporate social responsibility of all firms.” 28
    Thus American financial institutions, instruments, and markets would be subjected to international regulation and oversight, including regulation on salaries and the “corporate social responsibility” of “all” firms. Not just some of them, but all of them. “Just when Obama is accused of socialism,” Morris said, “he’s essentially creating world economic governments.” This was no exaggeration: the FSB would have authority over regulations on salaries for executives and other issues that the U.S. Federal Reserve Board could apply to major Americancompanies. American economic life would be institutionally made subject to international supervision and control.
    The G-20 leaders, according to Morris, slipped this in “under the radar, which is absolutely creating an international economic union.” He noted that Obama, oddly enough, “was the one pressing for less regulation and more spending, and he had to convince the Europeans.” But this wasn’t done out of conviction, in Morris’s opinion: “Obama himself is a socialist, I believe, and he had no problem really with this. This truly created a global economic system. From now on don’t look to Washington for the rule making, look to Brussels.… European socialists are going to be making the regulatory rules concerning compensation for all, all, systematically important US firms. All.”
    A global economic system: just the thing fondly envisioned by many Marxist theorists Obama studied with and learned from.
    And now he was the one poised to bring their dreams to fruition.
    THE LISBON TREATY

    Those same European socialists, meanwhile, had already been moving to consolidate their own power. The Lisbon Treaty significantly strengthened the power of the Brussels bureaucracy that oversees the European Union. Ireland held out against this treaty for a long while, rejecting it in June 2008 but finally voting to approve it in a second vote in early October 2009. Shortly after that, Polish president Lech Kacynski ratified the treaty, remarking: “The fact that the Irish people changed their minds meant the revival of the treaty, and there are no longer any obstacles to its ratification.” The Czech Republic remained the lone holdout. 29
    Obama applauded the Lisbon Treaty, saying: “I believe that a strengthened and renewed EU will be an even better transatlantic partner with the United States.” 30 Not surprisingly, the treaty he waspraising was one that provided for centralization, increased government control, and the weakening of democracy in Europe. The post-American president was happy to see an internationalist, socialist partner on the global horizon.
    In fact, the EU could never have brought the treaty back to a vote so soon after Ireland had voted it down had it not been for the weak, globalist U.S. president.
    The treaty creates the position of President of the European Union and removes member nations’ right to veto EU legislation. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, warned Dubliners about it just before the 2008 Irish vote: “The only people you elect have a very limited role and I think this treaty will further enhance the power of institutions in Brussels without extending democratic authority to people.” He added that the treaty could also undercut NATO. 31
    This strengthened Brussels bureaucracy, on the verge of being given the power to override the will of majorities in EU member states, could now also gain oversight of the American economy—courtesy of Barack Hussein Obama, with the creation of the Financial Stability Board.
    Internationalism and socialism run as consistent strains through Barack Obama’s associations and policies.
    But Americans can’t say they hadn’t been warned. They should have noticed that the charismatic young Democratic presidential candidate had numerous socialist associations, going back to a childhood spent among