The piece in the NYT Times today “Democrat in Chief” http://www.nytimes.com/... got the core problem right, right up front. When Democrats repeat Reagan’s patented “Washington is broken” mantra they play right into the yuckky hands of tea-baggers, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and all the other nutters and naysayers on what used to be, and surely oughta still be, the fringe. But it’s just that passive voice “Washington is broken” crap that lets the culprits escape the blame.
Let’s be clear about this. The Reagan Revolution was about breaking the equipment, then demanding that the all the broken stuff get tossed out into the trash.
In Grover Norquist’s phrase, once having reduced the size of the government by this break it and junk it tactic, drown what’s left in the bathtub. (Except, of course, for the military, the police, the jails and the anti-drug and anti-porn squads. Oh, and of course now that we need it, the emergency government-paid-for oil capping experts and collecting and cleaning crews.)
What really burns about Obama and other Democrats who repeat this “Washington is broken” bullshit is they reinforce the Republicans and the far right. Who the hell wants to pay more taxes to people who specialize in making sure their money is wasted? High profile failure just reinforces the constant mantra that government can’t do anything right. And that just makes the poor deluded “what’s the matter with Kansas” crowd buy the Washington is broken bullshit even more.
When you deliberately set out to make sure the machinery of government works only to enrich your cronies, “break and borrow” and “privatize and paralyze” become the policy tools of choice. Let’s get this straight. Reagan started and Bush jr. perfected the practice of putting folks in charge who wanted government to fail. They developed the policy of hiring and firing in the civil service to make sure that anti-government zealots became “burrowed into” the apparatus on a sacred mission to make sure a particular government agency did not fulfill its set purpose. You think the Mineral Management Service failed accidentally? Reagan-Bush-Cheney Republicans set out deliberately to mismanage and under-fund government so that it must fail. With clear mal-intent the Republicans in Congress made sure no committee did its job of oversight while they were in charge.
They did not root out waste, fraud and abuse in government. Hell no. That became THE POLICY.
Cheney met in the Whitehouse in a secret meeting with oilmen that set US energy policy. And we still don’t know what was agreed. We do know they gutted the regulations on oil drilling in 2005 when the Whitehouse, the House and Senate all lay in Republican hands. The BP mess belongs lock, stock and barrel to the Republican de-regulators and their political henchmen.
We know Clinton, despite being a damned corporate Democrat to the marrow of his bones, was helped mightily by a true patriot Al Gore to restore government after the Reagan Revolution did all it could to damage it. The duo who at least believed government ought to work left the government smaller and more efficient than when they took office, unlike either Reagan or Bush jr. The Reagan attempt to borrow and bust the government had been turned back when Poppy Bush and the Democrats did the right thing and raised taxes on those who could well afford to pay. Well, the Evil Business Empire struck back in 1994 aided and abetted by Gingrich's Contract on America. Clinton stuck to his guns in the teeth of Newt’s push to close government down completely. But Bush jr. reversed his dad’s act of sanity and political sacrifice in spades. He went all out to make sure government would never work again (along with making sure a lot of other folks would never work again either). Now Obama is playing right into the hands of those fools who want to gut medicare and social security in the name of fiscal responsibility. He’s accepted the Republican’s definition of fiscal responsibility as business getting everything it needs anytime it wants it, and damn the unemployed to sleeping on the street, gnawing on food from the trash with broken teeth.
After all, Washington is broken. You wouldn’t want those people in charge of your retirement would you? Government doesn’t create jobs, Business does. This is the same tactic that worked against the public option. Democrats, Mr Obama, Mr Axelrod, stop buying and especially stop pushing this Big Lie.
Washington is not broken. It’s bought and we’ve been sold down the river.
The Lewis Powell memo drafted after Watergate to make sure government could never stop Republicans and Big Business from having their way set out a plan on how to enlist big business into funding a takeover of the Republican party so together they could seize power and bust up the machinery of government. Together, it promised, they could raid the holds of the Ship of State right down to the nails in the hull.
You don’t shift income from 10 percent of all annual income to the top one percent in 1980 to 23 percent of all income to the top one percent in 2008 without breaking the hearts, health and homes of the little people. And that’s right, the root of all this evil was, and is, the love of money.
Well, it’s goddam time we drove these hypocrites and money-changers from the public temple.
Nothing makes a Republican scream louder and scheme more devilishly than a threat to his money. That threat, not fond memories or frequent fantasies of Hitler, make Glen Beck scream and cry. That is why Republicans are in a no-holds-barred fight to the death. If they don’t seize Congress back in 2010 the tax windfall to the rich will expire. That is the prize and they have their eyes fixed firmly on it. What Beck and Hitler and all too damn many Republicans do have in common is money as the objective. Hitler's Nazi's had a will to power, all right, but not for the sake of mass marches and torch parades, and living space for the masses. They mesmerized the masses so they could pick their pockets. The Jews weren't a threat to Hitler's purity; they had money and he wanted it. Once he had looted Jews of everything down to their gold teeth and even hair, it was time to turn on others and take what was theirs.
In our time Republicans scream it’s the immigrants and the Democrats who are coming to take what’s yours, unless, of course, you buy our “Washington is broken” routine and elect us to make sure government won’t do what you really want it, and need it, to do.
Yeah, excuse me while I bust the Overton window wide open. But truth is a rock and all this “Washington is broken” crap is a bunch of brittle bullshit that needs a good shattering by some hard truths. Hitler was a ruthless Robber Baron at heart, perfectly happy to have millions die for his continued comfort and power. It’s no accident we’re back in our own Robber Baron era because the corporate Railroad Republicans and Standard Oil owned politicians of that day have come back for a second round. A modern Republican is like Hitler because they are like each other in boundless rapacity and ruthless determination to look out for number one at all costs. Hitler's storm troopers and brown shirt thugs remind us of Limbaugh and Beck's mindless militia teabaggers not because they are ideological brothers; it's because they are methodological brothers. The method of political intimidation of democrats conservative and progressive by threats of violence and deliberate moves to make government look helpless works. Viz Weimar Germany.
Beck and the like hope to intimidate their way to power and thus to wealth. They don't love their country. They love their damn money, and they're willing to kill to keep it or get it. Who gives a shit if the Gulf dies and all the little people lose everything. They can always fly to Monte Carlo until the mess is cleaned up and the heat dies down.
Hell, they don’t even have to pay for it. They’ll take it out in taxes and price hikes. You think Exxon paid to clean up Alaska? Fool.
WWII was a resource war, just like Iraq 2003 was a resource war. Hitler took what he wanted by force and fraud; Cheney and Bush Republicans mounted up and did the same. Obama has not continued the war against terrorism, he bought into the Big Lie that the war was about terrorism in the first place. It was about us robbing the Saudi people of their oil by backing the Sheiks and putting troops on the ground muslims consider sacred. The Big Lie worked then and works now. Osama bin Laden launched his war, if you look at his 1998 declaration of war on America, because Americans were propping up the corrupt Saudis solely to obtain their oil at what he considered giveaway prices. Texas oilman Bush was willing to kiss the Saudi king on the lips for oil, to wreck the UN and international law and America's reputation and military for it. Bin Laden knew once the oil was gone muslims would have nothing but sand. In the Gulf, we won't even have the sand left. For Bush and Beck and BP and the Nazis, money is the end and lies and force are the means to it.
Oil money, insurance money, bank money is what this is about. Not democracy. Not the public. Not the deficit. Not the future. Not the planet. Money uber alles.
So what to do? Cut the passive voice Washington is broken crap, Axelrod and Plouffe. Put the blame right where it belongs, the Banksters, the Fraudsters, the Republicans, and any and every Corporate butt-kissing so-called Democrat like Blanche Lincoln who never saw a Big Business Lobbyist she didn’t like. We need a Teddy Roosevelt willing to Bust the Trusts in order to build trust in government again. Start with BP just like he started with Standard Oil. Call the “Washington is broken” crap what it is, a plot to overthrow the Republic by destroying belief that government of the people, by the people, and for the people would ever work.
Washington isn’t broken. It’s been sold out.