U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner today announced his Plan for Bad Bank Assets, the Public-Private Investment Program. In a press conference with Geithner today, Obama accurately called Geithner’s plan a “public-private partnership.”

The notion of public-private partnership is a recurring theme in the Obama administration. See, for example, this “Summary of Health Care Session” from the report, issued March 20, of the Fiscal Responsibility Summit held on February 23, 2009.

Here is a passage from Ayn Rand’s essay, “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” originally published in 1965 and reprinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

The notion of a “partnership” between a private group and public officials, between business and government, between production and force, is a linguistic corruption (an “anti-concept”) typical of a fascist ideology—an ideology that regards force as the basic element and ultimate arbiter in all human relationships.

“Partnership” is an indecent euphemism for “government control.” There can be no partnership between armed bureaucrats and defenseless private citizens who have no choice but to obey. What chance would you have against a “partner” whose arbitrary word is law, who may give you a hearing (if your pressure group is big enough), but who will play favorites and bargain your interests away, who will always have the last word and the legal “right” to enforce it on you at the point of a gun, holding your property, your work, your future, your life in his power? Is that the meaning of “partnership”? [Ayn Rand, The Fascist New Frontier, New York: Nathaniel Branden Institute, 1963, p. 8.]

But there are men who may find such a prospect attractive; they exist among businessmen as among every other group or profession: the men who dread the competition of a free market and would welcome an armed “partner” to extort special advantages over their abler competitors; men who seek to rise, not by merit but by pull, men who are willing and eager to live not by right, but by favor. Among businessmen, this type of mentality was responsible for the passage of the antitrust laws and is still supporting them today.

—Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), p.216.

Take fascism and add racism—Obama is a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a long-time close associate of arch-racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and a supporter of affirmative action—and you essentially have the form of socialism known as Nazism.