Tonight I read a very good article in The New York Times about how a myriad of Koch brothers-funded front groups and think tanks have been planning on forcing a so-called budget crisis for months: "A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning."
I was a little surprised to see such an in-depth article exposing the behind-the-scenes machinations of the people trying to take down the government. Of course, since The New York Times is part of the corporate media conglomerate, they're not going to really get it right. First of all, this manufactured crisis has not been planned for months, but for years. Secondly, the situation we finds ourselves in is not only the result of meddling by (what I consider to be) fascist billionaires and their sycophants, but more insidiously, by the Democratic party establishment (i.e., corporatist Democrats) and the betrayal by the liberal elite.
But let's address the fascist billionaires first... If you boil it down to its essence, what The New York Times is reporting, basically describes a massive propaganda machine in support of what is essentially a putsch by the corporate state.
The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.
The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam.
The reason I've been anticipating the current situation, for many years now, is because I saw the system for what it was: a government highly compromised by influence-peddling corruption which has turned the system into corporate state oligarchy protected by an increasingly draconian total information awareness surveillance police state.
Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.
-- Chris Hedges / "Rise Up or Die" / truthdig
If that is the nature of the system, then it was only a matter of time before there was an attempt to put the final nail on the coffin of democracy and constitutional order, by the oligarchs.
Make no mistake, what the Koch brothers are attempting to do is take down the entire government with their army of useful idiots in the Tea Party.
But given this dire threat to whatever is left of our democracy, unfortunately any potential counterbalance to it in the form of a progressive social justice movement, has been systematically repressed, not only by corporatist and right wing forces, but by the Democratic party establishment and it's liberal elite, who have co-opted and defanged it.
The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.
-- Chris Hedges / "The Treason of the Intellectuals"
The emphasis is mine
Now, I admit that perhaps the corporatist Democrats have been acting in good faith all along, mistakenly believing that the Wall Street criminal cartel could be tamed, or believing that capitalism in its current (rapacious) form was a workable system, or believing that extremists of the right wing and their billionaire funders could be thought of a reasonable actors, but whatever the reason(s), I'm afraid we are about to find out they were tragically off-base, by a long shot.
This is the Koch brothers' moment; what they've been working towards during the last several years: the take down of the democratic form of government in this country.
If the lunatics of the GOP proceed with their threat to default on the national debt, the consequences will be catastrophic, as reported by BloombergBusinessweek.
U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman’s Fall
Failure by the world’s largest borrower to pay its debt -- unprecedented in modern history -- will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.
The emphasis is mine
Now, the reason I think it is very likely the fascist billionaires and their minions are going to force the default is because after the dust is settled, what you'll end up with is a massive transfer of wealth (and power) from the population to the ruling elite, which would then consolidate that power in order to entrench the corporate state.
Democratic institutions would have been weakened to the point of irrelevance, in favor of an fast-ascendant corporate police state. Pension funds would have been looted. All kinds of human and constitutional rights would have been curtailed.
And even though some people refuse to consider this scenario, wouldn't all the surveillance tools and the increasingly draconian justice system, and militarized police state, thrive in this type of chaotic environment?
I and many, many other people have been trying to sound the alarm about the entrenchment of the surveillance police state by making a simple observation: once a government builds this type surveillance police state is because it will eventually use it against its own people.
And here we are... A situation that came about because of what is essentially a fascist faction hat has taken over some parts of government on the one hand, and a corrupt and unprincipled Democratic party establishment and liberal elite on the other.
Some have argued that the reason president Obama did not go after the Wall Street criminal racketeering cartel or the war criminals of the Bush administration is because we were on the brink of a Great Depression and he needed to put all his efforts on getting the economy back on track. They argue that we (he) needed to look forward, and not backwards, for the good of the country.
Perhaps that will turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes in this country's history. The minute the rule of law was ignored, that's when the situation we find ourselves today became inevitable.
Imagine what kind of world we would be living in today if Obama's Justice Deparment and AGs of multiple states had criminally prosecuted thousands of Wall Street criminals (instead of appointing them to government positions), starting with top executives? Imagine if these banking monstrosities would have been broken up? Imaging if war criminals and profiteers of the Bush administration were properly investigated and prosecuted?
But those were decisions that weren't taken, and here we are...
We don't know what's going to end up happening, but with each day that goes by without a resolution we'll get closer to the brink of catastrophe. Perhaps now would be a good time for people to start thinking about organizing. I'll leave you with the wise advice of Chris Hedges below...
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