Go to your favorite search engine. Enter the terms (school funding cut) and review any of the hundreds of pages of articles that are the yield of such a search. Spot a trend? Operation "Shock and Awe" was all over the media when we began the pre-emptive military offensive in Iraq on our search for WMD. However the media has been silent about an operation conducted in America called "Numb'er and Dumb'er". And no, it has nothing to do with Cheney's heart and Bush's brain. And the attack in America began long before Mr. Bush took office.
A quality education is a very dangerous weapon in the hands of society. However do not take my word for it. I obtained the following document as part of the Freedom of Information Act. I have been unable to ascertain whether it was simply a page that was lost as part of Lewis Powell’s original memo to Eugene Sydnor, Jr, or perhaps a separate document altogether that was not even written by Lewis Powell. Nevertheless, the document passes the Stephen Colbert “Truthiness” test.
(Note -most of the
"ABC's of Corpocracy" series is available here)
Top Secret: Operation Numb and Dumb, Our Supplemental Plan to Takeover America (August 23, 1971)
Background
- America has significant wealth and natural resources that are not controlled by us.
- An educated and informed America that actively participates in the political process will never support and elect a corrupt group of fascists to Congress nor the Executive Branch.
- Without Congressional and Executive Branch control we will be unable to appoint and confirm our judges to U.S. District, Appellate or Supreme Court.
- A well educated public will raise concerns when what were once public commons become owned and operated by Halliburton, Exxon, Standard Oil and other private concerns. In a recent focus group study, nine out of ten people with at least a high school education objected to the new sign “Welcome to AT&T’s Grand Canyon Park” or “Now entering Exxon’s Zuma Beach. 10,000 barrels per day (population 17).
- Without our ability to control government, we cannot accelerate the transfer and consolidation of wealth and power, privatization of public wealth and erosion of public infrastructure.
Long Range Action Plan
Education K-12
We must diminish the infrastructure of education in America. We can do this by shifting our spending from education to military programs. This will have a self-perpetuating impact upon schools. By reducing funding for K-12, classrooms will become overcrowded. The quality and safety of schools will decrease. Affluent and middle-class parents will shift their children from public schools to private schools. This will accelerate the decline and erode the public education infrastructure. Impoverished youth forced to remain in public schools will lose enthusiasm for furthering their education. There is a secondary benefit here that can lead to an increase in military recruitment and to the growth of the future privatized prison industry.
Higher Education
We must reduce funding for colleges and universities. These institutions are a magnet for liberals. The thought of providing an education that will lead to more people questioning our policies and scrutinizing our actions is self-defeating. We must force community and state colleges to increase tuition and therefore reduce opportunity to all. We must begin this now as it will take many years to erode the institution of education in America, however once we have made sufficient progress it will provide the foundation for driving our initiatives and taking and retaining control of America and its resources.
Fear
Once we have eroded the education system it becomes much easier to use secondary methods to gain and retain control. Fear is a terrific weapon. I am concerned as due to the weakening of competitive communist regimes, we must find another enemy as the threat of communism spreading to potential superpowers such as Grenada may soon be obsolete even for undereducated, under-informed society. We have found that anything ending in an “ist” works well. The prefix should invoke fear or terror. For example, “Florist” is unlikely to achieve our fear-objective. So, if Frank or his people can think of anything that ends in “ist” that will evoke fear and.or terror, such an effort would be helpful toward the accomplishment of our mission. Also, we should find an entity we can use that is not defined by borders (as we did with Russia) as this may be self-limiting due to shifting political structures and alliances. A fearful society will allow us to assume greater control by giving up their own liberties and rights in order to feel safe and protected by …. us! (hahahahahaha –don’t you love irony!)
Desensitize
Don’t focus on one issue at a time. The media (even if under our control) will continue to dig its teeth (or tooth, when we are through consolidating and controlling them) into a story. Don’t allow them to focus. Once we gain control, we must assail on so many critical fronts that people simply do not know what to concentrate on. Think of a shell game, except instead of the traditional three shells, we will use hundreds. Invasions (of countries, of privacy –or preferably, both), incompetence, corruption, improprieties –a new story every other day would be ideal. Nothing could stick! People will get so sick of politics I’ll bet they won’t even want to vote. And let’s make sure we control the voting infrastructure, so when people do want to actually cast a vote we get our people “counting” the votes.
Divide and Conquer
Don’t allow people to think about the real issues at stake. Get them to think about emotional and divisive issues such as abortion versus right to life, gay marriage, Dodgers versus Giants, Lakers versus Celtics and saving the whales.
Successful implementation of this plan will allow us to rapidly transfer and consolidate wealth for us and our friends. We can accomplish this through reducing taxation of the wealthy, eliminating estate and capital gains taxes, eroding societal environmental and legal protections, minimizing civil rights and liberties (which challenge our power) and minimizing access to education and information.
Who’s with me?
L.P., August 23, 1971
Just a few thoughts from my over-caffeinated alphabetic mind.
About the Author: Mr. Polisner founded alonovo.com in March of 2005. He has been working in most aspects of Information Technology since 1981 and was an early commercial adopter of the UNIX operating system. Prior to founding alonovo.com, George was a Director at Oracle Corporation. He is a frequent contributor to newspapers regarding political and economic policy and often appears as a guest on radio programs. In fact, when it comes to alonovo.com, it's pretty difficult to get him to stop talking.