You are all wrong. You have all been had. And worse yet, you are doing exactly what they want you to do. The more you fight, the more you play right into their hands. Worse yet, you are being played liked a fiddle by the junior varsity team.
There are no grand conspiracies here, it is just about money. It is always about money. And what we have here is a corpus politico fascinated by all the bells and whistles while pick-pockets go threw the crowd and take you all for all you are worth.
You are fighting the wrong fight, and they could not be happier.
This all actually started in the 1980s. Back in a simpler time, when 2 Live Crew was the worse thing in America, there was a scandal. Most have forgotten this scandal, but it is very key to our understanding of today's game plan. I speak of the Savings and Loan scandals, and how so many walked scot free.
A quick refresher, though an old institution, dating to the 1800s, the S&Ls were limited to the type of loans and interest rates they could offer. This safeguarded their solvency, among other things. But the Reagan administration, which has a lot of the same jokers as today, decided to up the FDIC from $40k to $100k per account, allowing managers of S&Ls to make all kinds of crazy loans (Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982). They were also now allowed to own real estate, make commercial loans and even issue credit cards. But without the same regulations as banks.
So in a marathon race to the bottom, states dropped their regulations and S&Ls went hog wild in risky ventures. Now, here is the key, Reagan and Congress made it so that S&Ls wouldn't have to show insolvency, allowing for asshattery that would have shut down any bank, and sent most of the board to jail. This lead to what is called asset-liability mismatch, or, we're rich because we say we're rich.
And then came the looting, massive, massive looting. From Neil Bush, President George W. Bush's brother, who cost taxpayers $1.6 billion, to the famous Keating 5 fiasco, for which John McCain has never paid for, America was was ripped off.
Final tally:
From 1986 to 1989, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), the insurer of the thrift industry, closed or otherwise resolved 296 institutions with total assets of $125 billion.
An even more traumatic period followed, with the creation of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) in 1989 and that agency’s resolution by mid-1995 of an
additional 747 thrifts with total assets of $394 billion.
That's $519 billion in 1980's money, for which no one, not even Keating (who got the Libby treatment from Señor Bush), were held accountable for. Why, for the love that is all good and proper, why?
The Iran-Contra Affair.
The criminal element that was looting the country needed cover, and needed it fast. What better way than to sell weapons from the executive branch to Iran in order to pay for an illegal war in Nicaragua. All the country was outrages one way or another, either for or against the Reagan administration. The media, Democrats on the Hill, and investigative reporters went all in.
And oh how some things never change. As with Bush Jr., large volumes of documents relating to the scandal were either destroyed (like emails) or withheld (stonewalling). The there was the famous Tower Commission, and the great moment of Reagan, "I don't recall" which they still use today. Sadly, in retrospect, there is a good chance Reagan could not recall, but that's a tale for another day.
So the media and Congressional Democrats argues for years of the Bush/Reagan administration as to whether the Tower Commission was a joke, a political stunt or the real deal. And only three people held accountable, Oliver North, John Poindexter and Casper Weinberger were all taken off the hook by technicalities and/or pardons by Señor Bush.
Nothing happened to them. And better yet, with such a mind blowing scandal with all the trappings of Tom Clancey novel: Iranian mullahs, secret arms deals, latin american terrorists, drug running, CIA, Mossad, M15, I mean, really name it, the Iran-Contra Scandal pushed the Savings & Loan scandal into the realm of media obscurity.
They had successfully looted the country for over $500 billion dollars, and got away with it.
They also now had a plan. But they would have to wait till Bush II come into power.
So fast forward to 2000, June, and the Big Dog Clinton is still in the White House, being the player he was. He announced that the surplus for the year was at $211 billion dollars, and would increase to as much as $1 trillion dollars over the next year. Granted, if Gore won and kept their winning economic formula, which he did, but then got overturned by the Supreme Court, again, a tale for another day.
It was a time of peace and prosperity, America was getting fat, and just physically, but fiscally as well. The long trend of the rich getting richer, and poor getting poorer was corrected by the Clinton administration, and Right Was angered by wrong righted by the left. We were due for a transfer of wealth. As Bush likes to say, elections have consequences.
Truer words are rarely spoken by the current administration.
So, let the looting begin!
The best way to redistribute wealth in America is to call it a tax cut. Calling it "Welfare Checks for the Riches" does not play well in Iowa. So Bush pushed through his tax policy that moved the wealth from the poor and middle class back into the hands of the Riches, especially his work in dividend taxation. This, of course, lead to huge deficit, which is win/win for the Riches. A $5 trillion dollar win to the 1%ers.
See, the Rich are loaning money to the government ($2600 Billion of the total $8708 Billion) to continue giving them tax breaks. This works on both ends, as the Rich get interest off loans and bonds they supply, while still getting Bush's tax break! Instead of double taxation, it's double entitlement. It's quite a system.
Some would call it looting, a whole-scale transfer of the public treasury into the hands of the ultra-rich. Some people like Nobel laureate George A. Akerlof, and yours truly, though I don't have medals yet.
Not to mention pulling people's equity out of their homes, so that is exposed to looting by Riches, with sub-prime mortgages being the primary tool.
Or the private government contracts that are lining their pockets.
Or the outrageous government subsidizes buying them new yachts.
Or the blood money from war that is creating an aristocracy.
This list could go on and on. They needed a distraction, a big one.
Some might say that would be 9-11. They are wrong, they just happened because they were to busy preparing for the looting to notice a madman was about to pull one of the biggest PR stunts in history. But they accepted it, and turned into what they needed, a very shaky reason for war with Iraq. That was the plan all along.
See, to cover up the whole-scale looting of the nation, they needed you, me and everyone else so distracted that fiscal antics would so low on the list it doesn't get covered. This is not a conspiracy, they are doing it in front of God and everybody. Just like they did in the 80s.
Everything they do is meant to distract from the truth the Rich are looting our treasury.
The Cheney Energy Group.
The tobacco settlement.
The Senate Computer Theft.
The DOJ's handling of terrorism cases.
Homeland Security.
Wiretapping the United Nations.
Wiretapping the Homeland.
SWIFT surveillance of finance.
The Patriot Act.
Phone-jamming in New Hampshire.
Bogus "Video News Releases".
Pissing on Kyoto.
Clear Skies Initiatives.
No Child Left Behind.
Grassley Bankruptcy Scandal.
Terri Schiavo.
Medicare Part D.
Lack of standards at both EPA/FDA.
Signing statements.
Niger Forgeries.
The Wilson/Plame Fiasco.
Abu Ghraib.
Guantánamo Bay.
WMD, or lack there of.
The Anthrax attacks.
Katrina/Rita and FEMA.
Gonzo Gone Wild.
The AG Scandal.
Deleted emails.
Walter Reed.
Axis of Evil.
Afghanistan.
Iraq.
Never-ending War on Terror.
Rove, Rove, Rove and Leo Strauss.
And this is just a short list.
They demand you get outraged. They demand you get lost in the maze of scandals. it is the labyrinth of solitude, where citizens feel such fiasco fatigue, they feel alone. A collective howling at the wind, all lone wolves.
They need you to follow the outrages, they need you to follow ever new scandal.
Because if you were to stop for one second, and ask, why? Why would someone do something as wild as the list above?
Money.
It is always about money.
And as the Iran-Contra affair covered for the Savings&Loan Scandal in the 1980s, the Bush administration demands you follow their weekly, nay, daily fiascos so you cannot see the forest due to the trees.
The rich keep getting richer, by looting the national treasury, in plain day light.
And if you play their game of fiasco fatigue, you might as well help them carry the money bags right out of our nation's bank.
Suckers.