-- John Stuart Mill
The truth is that there is a very small body of extremely wealthy people and radically conservative intelligentsia – the only real elites in our society – who have been eminently successful in implementing their plan to gut what they call the problem of “big government” through a “bait and switch” program they call “starving the beast.” In the words of Nobel Prize winning economics Paul Krugman:
"Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government's fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit."[1]
What they carefully hid from the public eye is that they cut their own tax rates from maximum 70% prior to Reagan's tax cuts to a mere 35% today -- in half! The tax give-back "they bought themselves" nearly bankrupted the federal budget and gave them the money to continue and expand their purchase of our government,the media, college professorships, a host of ultra-conservative think tanks and more. They sold the rest of us on these cuts through bare tokens amounting to a few hundred or thousand dollars in tax savings per year; their cuts amounted to amounted to tens of millions of dollars each. Their tax cuts on the very top incomes robbed upwards of $2 trillion per year from government revenues. That’s the truth. Does that make you angry?
In order to sell a program from which they are the only meaningful beneficiaries, they have used outright deceit and propaganda to create mistrust, fear and hatred of government itself supposedly run by or catering to communists, socialists, elitists, monarchists, terrorists, homosexuals, minorities or immigrants, labor unions, liberals, progressives, reformists, the creators of restricting regulations that strangle business… [all of which have been applied to President Obama and the Democrats]. The tactic is name calling and it is used by those who cannot make a rational argument against the policies they oppose. Name calling is designed to control people through their ignorance, beliefs and fears that divide them from the very people whose efforts benefit them directly.
Recently, Glen Beck, one of their most highly successful propagandists, lead a panel discussion denouncing all “progressives” and even the word "progress" itself declaring such programs to be un-Christian, unconstitutional and evil. They stated boldly that reform itself, any attempt to make the world better, is somehow bad. They made claim after claim all without any attempt to explain how things like the progressive tax are in fact unconstitutional. Why? Because they can't. Their arguments won't stand up to the test of fact. It is scary to think how many people actually believe them, but they do. If we are going to change things, we have to confront their tactics clearly and boldly.
They have convinced many that only unfettered profit and the free market can create a thriving economy to the benefit of us all. That all taxes and regulation are bad, restrict creativity and small business and depress economic growth. They are wrong. These are all “beliefs” unsupported by the fact. Contrary to the way they espouse them, it is their beliefs which are un-American, fascist, elitist, undemocratic, monarchical, often unconstitutional, undemocratic and tyrannical-- that is they are all the things that they claim all who disagree with them are.
At this point, they have succeeded in driving our government into deficits that threaten our ability to sustain our government at all – from Social Security and Medicare to any and every other function of government – highways, schools, police and fire protection,… It’s true: As things are the way they created it, "We don't have free speech. We can’t afford it." That's the truth.
They are now in the horns of a dilemma: Again in Krugman’s words,
"Since they're adamantly opposed to reducing the deficit with tax increases, they would have to explain what spending they want to cut. And guess what? After three decades of preparing the ground for this moment, they're still not willing to do that."
Under the circumstances they have created they have no viable plan to solve our nation’s problems. With no real solutions to our country's problems, their current strategy is to be “obstructionist,” to block every action, bill and appointment so as to cause the Democrats to fail and then to blame them for the failure. They are counting on public frustration with the gridlock that they themselves have caused to sweep them back into power in coming elections. That's their only goal: To regain the direct control of our government. Buying favorable results is not enough for them. They want to own the entire process. Does that make you angry?
Our economic and political problems today are not accidents but the result of very conscious and intentional actions to re-establish the unfettered right of the economic elite to dominate our country through the power of their wealth as they did before the reforms of the past century which have limited that power in favor of the public interest. To a very large degree they have been highly successful and that is the major reason the world is in an economic crisis.
That’s what we are up against – a cabal of intensely self-interested people who have usurped the reigns of our democracy. What they have done is the evil Mill makes reference to above. Tinkering here and there won’t solve it. If we are to regain power for the citizens of our country as are supposed to be protected by our Constitution, it is necessary to eliminate every avenue for them to purchase our government, our economy, our media [free press].
We further need to confront their distorted beliefs by which they justify their actions directly. Progressives often wonder why the extreme right wing people on the lower economic scale often cannot be reached by logic or debating the objective facts of the matter. It is because the beliefs they have been systematically taught by the many right wing front organizations organize how they see the world. Any fact that does not fit into a narrow belief system is automatically and unconsciously rejected. As long as people believe as they have been taught that all reform and government and taxes are bad, there can be no solution.
The reforms necessary to accomplish the goal of unseating this conservative cabal are not new, not unconstitutional or un-American. The necessary actions represent the highest of the American ideals and were the basis of the reforms leading to the last century of economic and social progress. They have a proven history. They substantially broke the power of the ultra-rich to control everything and allowed our democracy to prosper. If we want to unseat their power, we need to re-institute and rewrite the economic and regulatory reforms of the past century -- updating them as necessary to take into account of innovations which have affected how we communicate and make decisions. The most elemental of these reforms must focus on the process of how decisions are made and to eliminate the ability of the ultra-conservatives to control the process through the power of their money. All other reforms, all progress on the crying needs of our broken world depend on this fundamental effort.
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Annotated Table of Contents:
Next: Imagine -- Beginning the fix. Imagine people coming together in “one voice” to change how the world works. Creating a shared vision.
[1] Paul Krugman: New York Times Published: Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page
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