What do you do if you want to move your country toward authoritarian socialism, but you were elected president with only 38% of the vote, and the opposition has a clear majority in the legislature? Well, if you're Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, and Hugo Chavez provides tens of millions of dollars a year in aid that you absolutely control, you set up what amounts to the beginnings of a parallel government — "neighborhood committees" called Citizens Power Councils — even though the National Assembly rejected the plan.
The CPCs are completely dominated by Sandinista Party members and control distribution of government food aid, small-business loans, farm aid, children's vaccinations, and more. Dafydd at Big Lizards has all the details and an important question (emphasis in original):
At what point does a private organization, run by the president's wife and funded by a foreign dictator, which seizes control of many functions traditionally associated with government, and which proclaims itself to be the real intermediary between the proletariat and the government, become the de facto new government of Nicaragua?
Dafydd also opined (emphasis in original):
Perhaps Democrats are hoping they can create some CPCs right here, ready to leap into the fray… just in case John S. McCain "steals the election" from the man who bought and paid for it.
That got me thinking. Maybe Dafydd's onto something, but he's not taking a long enough view. Remember Obama's July 2 speech about national service? That's the one with this disturbing bit (which wasn't in the text released to the media beforehand):
Obama wants to greatly expand AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, and create an Energy Corps, Classroom Corps, Health Corps, and Homeland Security Corps. And he apparently wants to spend half a trillion dollars on them and employ 2½ million people.
Is there any doubt that all these corps will be dominated and controlled by big-government leftists/socialists? Once they've become "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the Defense Dept., it will be almost impossible for some future administration to pry the bureaucrats who control them out of there, cut their funding, or reduce their power. They'll be America's CPCs, but with no need for checks from Chavez.