..and that includes the corporate assets/shills aka coin operated politicians within Federal government and 2/3ds of the state legislators and governors whose campaign they financed.
Once privatized though; the bigger more expensive/profiteering and intrusive the government agency the better. The exponential growth of the MIC and private mercenary industry is a measure of that.
With huge wads of cash flooding into our electoral system, the obscenely wealthy "conservative" movement is heading towards the privatization/ownership of not just our infrastructure (which they refuse to fund until they taken ownership of and/or control the revenue stream), but also our government and the politicians they buy to fill the seats to further this agenda
They haven't changed their old "conservative" tricks much: Break it. Prove it doesn't work. Buy it up for pennies on the dollar. Then tax the people for using what was stolen from us.
Not unlike the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age or long before that..
The enclosure movement turned the shared common land over to "innovation" minded private estate owners. The process only intensified in the first decades of the 19th century.
..when people known as
'levelers' fought against the land theft by leveling the barriers erected by the nobility to cut off the people from the commons or public space
If I'm wrong, it should be the republicans vying to be elected for a government job to prove me wrong. The "small nonintrusive government" they tout is their lie, not mine. And Dems candidates should be asking for proof too - imo
Prove it GOP
There is this belief, carefully nurtured and accepted over the years that fiscal "conservatism" amounts to fiscal responsibility. A completely unearned mantle "conservatives;" have placed upon themselves. In fact it is not only unearned it's complete bullshit. Their "supply side" voo-doo economics has been proven false and documented by many economists over many years.
Conservatism does not mean shrinking government until it is the size that can be "drowned in a bathtub". It means taking possession of all levers of power over the population and our shared natural resources disguised behind a truer definition of today's GOP: obscurantism, masking a reactionary agenda at its core.
Two of the basic tenets of conservatism are a return to Corporatist authoritarianism and a status quo of privilege.
Just by questioning one of the foundational "principles" supporting this fantasy, invites an almost endless number of important questions. I won't be asking most of them. Just this. Why is it important for the shell corporation aka as the GOP to privatize government? Except for the non-lucrative parts - that is - Those parts are to be eliminated unless they benefit corporate America eg. corpo tax expenditures/subsidies
To be fair, before asking for proof myself, I should demonstrate with examples that complete and total domination of our political process- and that means ownership of it - is exactly what the so-called conservative movement is all about.
So I looked back over the years of my list of 'hotlisted' (or saved in a special folder) diaries. Every move made by the "conservative" movement over the past 50+ years (at least) is geared towards, not smaller government as is the claim, but bigger government held/owned, and controlled by private interests. And since government is 'of the people and by the people' in a democratic society, ownership of government means ownership of the people. We have a name for that too.
The GOP seeking to privatize our governmental structure all the way up to and including our Federal government to enable greater profit skimming sounds crazy right?
Almost as crazy as privatizing American roadways and highways does, so that we the people would be required to pay our overlords for access to our public roadways and bridges. Our basic American infrastructure: Owned and operated by the wealthy elite few to profit by our paying tolls/taxes into corporate coffers. Insane to think that could happen?
Not if the rwnj Cato institute had its way:
The Case For Privatizing The Highways - Cato
And abolishing the IRS so that corporations can evade taxes. And instead we all pay consumption taxes. consuming what corporations sell. So corporations essentially take over the taxing authority from government. Corporations become the taxing authority. Sort of their own private version of the 16th amendment just for corporations.
H.R. 25, would replace the current tax system with a 23 percent consumption tax on all new goods and services
[...]
...eliminating the corporate income tax would give companies an incentive to repatriate billions of dollars from overseas that would be subject to taxes under current law.
So there it is; billionaires admitting to off-shore tax shelters, now want to legally evade taxes by eliminating their tax obligation altogether
- Again, crazy right?
Some questions concerning republican "conservatives" as the party of "freedom" and "Liberty"
♦ According to "conservatism" as enforced by the GOP shell corporation, are we allowed unions to collectively bargain for our fair share of what we as a nation of people have built with our labor or even a living wage? No.
♦ Is the right to vote for our elected officials as governmental representation part of the deal? No.
♦ Does a woman have the right to own her own body and reproductive choices? No.
♦ Are we as a people (government) allowed to decide if we are allowed clean air to breath, water to drink, and unpolluted land to live on? No.
♦ Are we allowed the freedom to govern the safety of out food. No
♦ Is it our right to have a say in whether our financial infrastructure (banks, Wall Street etc.) are allowed to run a national Global usury operation gambling with what we produced with our labor? No.
♦ Are we allowed to marry who we love? No.
♦ Is it the people's right to enact "burdensome" safety regulations in order to stop the titans of industry from polluting (video of GOP shilling) our earth? No.
♦ Is religious freedom, including the liberty to choose a secular society free from religious fundamentalism our right - where the separation of church & state is inviolate? No.
♦ Are the rights and protections guaranteed to all human persons valued as the superior of corporate charters and corporate personhood? No.
♦ Do we the people have a voice in whether we go to war or how much of our tax dollars are wasted on a staggeringly expensive military industrial complex when its primary function is to protect privately owned global corporate interests abroad? No.
And these are a tiny number of questions that "conservatives" can not and will not answer with the truth. Corporations are and will always be the authority governing the "conservative" GOP they've purchased and own the rights to
So, if I'm wrong; that the GOP "conservatives" do not strive to privatize all government including (think White House) the Federal government.
Prove me wrong.
Show me one "conservative" politician that has voted to increase the peoples voice, expand the public space while decreasing corporate stranglehold on government in the last decade that didn't end up as part of a larger blueprint for corporations to dominate democracy.
Show where a "conservative" including those of the supreme court have voted or decided against corporate rule or privatization of a government function. Citizen's United as an example
Show where "conservatives" have protected democracy by rejecting the money = free speech and its corrosive corporate influence over elections. Just one time when the GOP as policy, limited corporate lobbyists access or refused their bribes.
Show us all
♦ why privatizing our prison system for profit isn't a guarantee to foul our criminal justice system, where filling prison beds and denying voting rights to political rivals is the goal;
♦ why (instead of a single payers system), the GOP demands that insurance companies must be in charge of privatizing the medical funding (with for-profit insurance companies taking their cut) of health care creating a negative incentive that doesn't all but guarantee denial of care and considerably higher costs
♦ where privatizing for profiteering of war making industries doesn't lead to policies with the incentive baked in and designed to promote more war
♦ or where privatizing our public educational system isn't a motive for profiteering that doesn't deny more students of the education they seek.
And a question for all the republicans that tout libertarian roots, freedom, liberty, rugged individualism and all the rest of the words whose meanings have been reverse engineered by the corporate shell corporation aka the GOP:
Does shrinking ones own voice at the ballot box by supporting the GOP voter suppression and the agenda of purging voters from the roles (if we still have elections in the future - that is) provide for a net gain of "freedom & liberty"?
..or is caving in and voting for a republican just easier with the notion that just the right amount of liberty should be decided by the magnanimity of ones personal right wing Ted Nugent type heroes to dole out as they see fit, if they see fit.
Then again, maybe you republicans vote for a "conservative" because they spew the same racist dogma you like to hear so much and are of the belief that any of these rich fucks would have a beer with you.
Considering any of these issues dear GOP voter, doesn't Reagan's "trust but verify" still mean something and require the GOP elite to prove their word? or are you teabags going to roll over and continue to get played for suckers by the 1%ers?
Because with the $ billions wasted on this pageant we call elections as the evidence this carpenter is looking at happening, we are headed towards the privatization of our central government bought and paid for by a tiny minority of those whose wealth now determines what the rules are and who can afford to run for office in the first place. This is the result of an ever widening wealth gap. The firewall between the haves & the have not's being re-built. The divide in this hierarchy we call democracy. 1%er vs 99%
So that is my suggestion, that Dem politicians could ask of their political rivals:
Prove it GOP
Prove that small nonintrusive government as a "conservative" principle is not a big fat reactionary lie
So far I've heard a lot of wild claims coming from the GOP. Most of them, the same boilerplate crap we've heard for years. "we care about the worker. Given a chance, wealth will "trickle down" to the middle class and lower income constituents. So far these claims have all proven to be nothing but lies, many times over
Lies that have created a wealth gap so unbelievable huge that most people don't believe it. It has been studied. In fact most people are unaware how much has been stolen from them over the years. And the GOP has used their positions in government to do the thieving
The MSM rarely calls the "conservatives" on it. We progressive Dems have always been virtually alone in calling for truth. We should strongly encourage all of our Dem representatives to hold the GOP accountable for the harm their lies have and continue to cause as they systematically ruin what they have been unable to privatize for profit.
We've heard all the BS rhetoric. Republicans repeating progressive policies as if they too stand for everyday Americans. They pretend to run on the progressive Dems platform because the GOP has nothing, not even their base would accept. It's time the GOP are cornered into proving that their next ambition is not as the Powell Memo spelled out in detail - Prove it
Because where this country is heading, if the GOP is not forced to prove that they are lying on every single issue, there will be zero difference between a corporate lobbyist and an "elected" congressperson nor our US Senate and the board room of any major corporation. At least no difference that this carpenter will understand
What a path to real freedom & liberty in a democracy looks like can be found here within Presidential candidate Senator Sanders platform
note: this idea has been running through my thoughts when this mornings excellent Diary by RETIII: Why do Republicans really oppose infrastructure spending? spurred me to rant about it.
It's gotten late - time to turn in - Thanks for stopping by ♫♪♫