Social Security is the main topic of this (not all that new rant) diary, since it’s clear the GOP has its end in their crosshairs, despite the “assurances” otherwise — all social programs — that is
The “conservative” movement had to convince America that their agenda was the opposite of everything that it actually was and obtains today.
They needed a blueprint to dominate democracy. They sought to end the New Deal and curtail Civil Rights and to bestow upon corporate charters those rights meant for actual persons.
They wanted Big business “interests” in charge of government policy, and that 'not everybody should vote’ — Paul Weyrich - founder of the GOP’s prominent “think tanks” and one stop legislation mills
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The 1971 Lewis Powell propaganda manifesto (pdf) has been written about many times, including here @ Daily Kos, but I’d yet to see a complete word for word debunking of it which so thoroughly exposes it for the propaganda it really is.
Word for word, point by falsified point, here, the Powell memorandum sent out to corporate CEO’s and titans of industry is re-framed into a more truthful version exposing the “conservative” movements blueprint to disguise its attack on democracy as one of defense of American “values”
Bill Moyer has been teaching on this topic for years. Thom Hartmann has also devoted time, energy, research, and come up with a lot of good advice.
This one recently gets to the heart of it:
Thom Hartmann: The America I Knew Has Almost Disappeared
HUMAN RIGHTS
What’s left of our democratic institutions are under siege.
some excerpts starting with President Jimmy Carter:
Citizen’s United decision:
“[V]iolates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”
It took years, but that “political bribery” President Carter warned of was a crucial element to the “conservative" movement mentioned over and over in the Powell memorandum, but in “pro-America” language to hide the agenda.
In 1976, in the Buckley case, Powell began the final destruction of American democracy by declaring that when rich people or corporations own politicians, all that money that got transferred to the politicians wasn’t bribery but, instead, was Constitutionally-protected First Amendment-defined “Free Speech.”
The GOP is now comprised of characters/politicians that haven’t the ability to craft legislation. They don’t have to. They’re shills. Corporate “interests” / “Think Tanks” and lobbyists have taken over that duty — ALEC eg.
This:
Most recently, Jane Mayer has laid out in painful detail how the Koch Network and a few other political-minded billionaires have essentially taken over the entire Republican Party in her book Dark Money as has Nancy MacLean with her new book Democracy in Chains. The extent of the problems within our political and economic structures are laid bare with startling and sometimes frightening clarity.
As a result, Princeton scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page famously found that the odds of average Americans’ political desires being translated into policy are about the same as random noise, whereas what they referred to as “economic elites” frequently get everything they want from the political class.
They wrote that we still have the “features” of democracy like elections, but ended their paper with this cautionary note:
“[W]e believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.”
It seems that America has arrived at the point [Oswald] Spengler, [an Aristocrat (In his book The Decline of the West, first published in German in 1918 and then in English in 1926)] saw in early 20th century Europe, and, indeed, there are some concerning parallels, particularly with the late 1920s and early 1930s. Italy, Germany, and Spain all lost their democracies and moved to fascism, while many of Spengler’s acolytes cheered.
And, indeed, it was one of FDR’s biggest challenges in the early 1930s – steering America through a “middle course” between communism (which was then growingly popular) and fascism (also growingly popular). He pulled it off with small (compared to Europe) nods to democratic socialism, instituting programs like Social Security, the minimum wage, and establishing the right to unionize (among other things).
Even the rwnj Tucker Carlson, in his attempt at fluffing up republican House speaker Paul Ryan, ended up in exposing the GOP’s latest TaxScam for the heist that it is; a massive transfer of even more wealth to international corporations and the ultra-rich donors.
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I have no doubts that we as a people will Resist. What is less clear is whether the so-called “conservative” movement will have “locked-in" our degraded democracy permanently enough so that we as real people will be able halt and reverse the permanent damage in time — this Massive Social engineering masquerading as “tax reform" that degrades people’s lives | losing the most successful program this country has ever known — the guarantee of Social Security
— so maybe if there are any republican voters out there, still not yet convinced that their vote doesn’t help end their own retirement; that giving permanent $trillion dollar tax breaks to the elite 1%ers paid for by a temporary and miniscule tax break for themselves (it they’re lucky enough to get a tax break at all - that is) — just keep in mind that before there was social security 1 out of 2 people lived in poverty in their golden years
remember this for a future to think about
“By 2027, people making $40,000 to $50,000 would pay a combined $5.3 billion more in taxes, while the group earning $1 million of more would get a $5.8 billion cut, according to the Joint Committee an Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)”
An excerpt from Oswald Spengler writing that Thom Hartmann included:
Culture would become a parody of itself, average people’s expectations would decline while their wants would grow, and a new peasantry would emerge, which would cause the culture to stabilize in a “classic form” that, while Spengler doesn’t use the term, seems very much like feudalism—the medieval system in which the lord owned the land and everyone else was a vassal (a tenant who owed loyalty to the landlord).
Or its more modern incarnation: fascism.
Spengler, considering himself an aristocrat, didn’t see this as a bad thing. In 1926 he prophesied that once the boom of the Roaring Twenties was over, a great bust would wash over the Western world. While this bust had the potential to create chaos, its most likely outcome would be a return to the classic, stable form of social organization, what Spengler calls “high culture” and I call neofeudalism and/or fascism.
He wrote:
In all high Cultures, therefore, there is a peasantry, which is breed stock, in the broad sense (and thus to a certain extent nature herself), and a society which is assertively and emphatically “in form.” It is a set of classes or Estates, and no doubt artificial and transitory.
But the history of these classes and estates is world history at highest potential.
— emphasis added
— Every word out of a republican politician’s mouth recently in their glee over the TaxScam echoes damn near exactly what this aristocrat said a century ago:
“the high culture” : “But the history of these classes and estates is world history at highest potential”
This is precisely what the GOP is selling, while pretending that their agenda will “lift all boats”
It is a lie. The GOP does not want to lift all boats. Not even close. They want a loose labor market (high unemployment) and the low wages it guarantees
And these days, flushed with the success of voter suppression, gerrymandering and other anti-democracy actions, they've almost lost the ability to disguise their hubris enough to not openly crow about it
Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): Republicans must make additional cuts to Social Security and Medicare, both federal programs for those over age 65 as well as people with disabilities and parentless children (such as Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan as a youth). video @ link — minute 21:45 mark
“We have to do two things. We have to generate economic growth, which generates revenue, while reducing spending. That will mean instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future,” Rubio told Politic.com before the vote.
The “supply side” / tinkle down” agenda touted by republican politicians is no different than as described by aristocrat Oswald Spengler. Give more wealth to international corporations, titans of industry, Big Oil Magnates, and wealthiest elite donor class and the country will obtain its “highest potential” — the farce behind “dynamic scoring” — “taxes pay for themselves” — lies that go back generations
— that we “little people” should be grateful to our “betters” — the GOP ideology in a nutshell — if parasite like greed can be called an ideology — that is
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The truth that generations of “conservative" propaganda has undone in the minds of too many:
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights
— the GOP has spent years selling the opposite con job
So nothing like breaking news, just something I remembered recently and haven’t thought about in many years. Thom Hartmann’s title: The America I knew Has Almost Disappeared - brought back memories.
I once met my great grandfather. I don't remember his name, but I remember that he had one hand cut off at the wrist. He lived in my grandmothers house in Spokane Washington in a tiny room just off of the front porch.
Great grandfather never came out of his room and mingled with us, perhaps because he was very old back then. But I was curious about how he’d lost his hand. My father told me he had lost it in some kind of machine factory accident.
He had no Social Security, and no Union in those days, but he still had a room in his daughters house — my grand mothers house. I only saw my great grandfather that one time, but was too young to talk with him. It may have been around the time just before I started kindergarten school.