By Tom Kando
Today I saw another bumper sticker saying, “Get the government off my back”!
There has been an amazing change in public opinion since Obama’s election - for the worse. I attribute this to the brainwashing of a gullible population by the enormously rich private interests. Consider the following facts:
1. Prior to 2009, the federal government was already running massive deficits. Under Bush, the annual deficit was approaching half a trillion dollars. The last time the government was in the black was during Clinton.
2. The first massive rescue package - the $700 billion bailout of investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mack, etc. - was the 2008 Bush-Paulson TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).
3. The economic debacle which the Obama administration has been fighting valiantly is the legacy of the Bush administration. It was not caused by excessive government spending or government meddling, but by precisely the opposite, namely excessive deregulation - the Alan Greenspan-Milton Friedman ideology - and excessive corporate tax cuts. The world crisis was caused by Wall Street, not by Uncle Sam, i.e. by private capitalism, not by socialist government.
4. So far, Obama has at least stanched the bleeding. Thanks to his 2009 stimulus program - the $787 billion ARRA (American Recovery and Investment Act), America and the world have moved back from the abyss.
Yet, the noisiest clamor we hear these days is that our problems are caused by excessive government, and that the government is the greatest threat to our future well-being. This is the noise you hear the most in California, where the State is broke, and nationwide, in the health care “debate.” I believe that these people are the useful idiots who have been brainwashed by the likes of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and that the brainwashing campaign is funded by our society’s immensely powerful plutocracy.
Just think:
1. As long as the federal deficit served to feed the military-industrial complex and our wars in the Middle East, few people blanched at deficits approaching half a trillion dollars a year. But now that the money goes more to social services, suddenly everyone has become a deficit hawk!
2. When the government allocated $700 billion to bail out investment banks and other Wall Street entities, there was no outcry. But now that a similar amount is devoted to public works, to unemployment benefits and hopefully to health coverage, suddenly, “We can’t afford it.”
3. Until Obama took over the presidency, Joe Blow either didn’t know anything about the deficit, or he didn’t give a damn. Now suddenly Joe Blow has turned into an economist. He worries about the deficit, inflation, the devaluation of the dollar.
Of course, the rapidly rising deficit is a problem. It’ll have to be dealt with. Taxes will have to become more progressive, military adventures will have to be curtailed, both the government and the people will have to live within their means.
But what I find so striking at this moment is the obscene upside-down values expressed by some of the protesters. Isn’t is a warped value system, which approves of deficits to wage war, but not to provide people with jobs, with unemployment compensation and with health insurance? A value system which approves of spending $700 billion to save the likes of AIG executives who then continue to pay themselves dozens of millions of dollars in bonuses, but disapproves of spending a similar amount of stimulus money on public works and other programs which benefit the people?
This is the upside-down Republican world. A world in which all government programs except the military are evil, and Wall Street is the savior. When Lenin coined the expression "useful idiots," he had in mind bourgeois fellow-travelers and parlor communists. Today, the term seems to apply more to the millions of working-class people who for some unfathomable reason swallow the Republican lie, hook, line and sinker.leave comment here
Today I saw another bumper sticker saying, “Get the government off my back”!
There has been an amazing change in public opinion since Obama’s election - for the worse. I attribute this to the brainwashing of a gullible population by the enormously rich private interests. Consider the following facts:
1. Prior to 2009, the federal government was already running massive deficits. Under Bush, the annual deficit was approaching half a trillion dollars. The last time the government was in the black was during Clinton.
2. The first massive rescue package - the $700 billion bailout of investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mack, etc. - was the 2008 Bush-Paulson TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).
3. The economic debacle which the Obama administration has been fighting valiantly is the legacy of the Bush administration. It was not caused by excessive government spending or government meddling, but by precisely the opposite, namely excessive deregulation - the Alan Greenspan-Milton Friedman ideology - and excessive corporate tax cuts. The world crisis was caused by Wall Street, not by Uncle Sam, i.e. by private capitalism, not by socialist government.
4. So far, Obama has at least stanched the bleeding. Thanks to his 2009 stimulus program - the $787 billion ARRA (American Recovery and Investment Act), America and the world have moved back from the abyss.
Yet, the noisiest clamor we hear these days is that our problems are caused by excessive government, and that the government is the greatest threat to our future well-being. This is the noise you hear the most in California, where the State is broke, and nationwide, in the health care “debate.” I believe that these people are the useful idiots who have been brainwashed by the likes of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and that the brainwashing campaign is funded by our society’s immensely powerful plutocracy.
Just think:
1. As long as the federal deficit served to feed the military-industrial complex and our wars in the Middle East, few people blanched at deficits approaching half a trillion dollars a year. But now that the money goes more to social services, suddenly everyone has become a deficit hawk!
2. When the government allocated $700 billion to bail out investment banks and other Wall Street entities, there was no outcry. But now that a similar amount is devoted to public works, to unemployment benefits and hopefully to health coverage, suddenly, “We can’t afford it.”
3. Until Obama took over the presidency, Joe Blow either didn’t know anything about the deficit, or he didn’t give a damn. Now suddenly Joe Blow has turned into an economist. He worries about the deficit, inflation, the devaluation of the dollar.
Of course, the rapidly rising deficit is a problem. It’ll have to be dealt with. Taxes will have to become more progressive, military adventures will have to be curtailed, both the government and the people will have to live within their means.
But what I find so striking at this moment is the obscene upside-down values expressed by some of the protesters. Isn’t is a warped value system, which approves of deficits to wage war, but not to provide people with jobs, with unemployment compensation and with health insurance? A value system which approves of spending $700 billion to save the likes of AIG executives who then continue to pay themselves dozens of millions of dollars in bonuses, but disapproves of spending a similar amount of stimulus money on public works and other programs which benefit the people?
This is the upside-down Republican world. A world in which all government programs except the military are evil, and Wall Street is the savior. When Lenin coined the expression "useful idiots," he had in mind bourgeois fellow-travelers and parlor communists. Today, the term seems to apply more to the millions of working-class people who for some unfathomable reason swallow the Republican lie, hook, line and sinker.leave comment here
