Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Ruling-Class Wins, Americans Lose

Ruling-Class Wins, Americans Lose
by Mark Luedtke

Government is like the Wizard of Oz, creating illusions enjoyed by the people. But when the curtain collapses as it inevitably must, the illusion along with the lives of people it affected is shattered. The Wizard is shown to be a petty self-promoter. All that’s left is the land stripped of its wealth to create the illusion. Unfortunately Americans can’t click their heels and repeat, “There’s no place like home” to escape. The consequences of a century of looting are becoming clear. But in the meantime, the two factions of the ruling-class battle to see which one gets to stomp its boot on our necks, and we continue to mistake the spectacle of selecting the tyrants in charge with freedom.

Democrats can make a strong case that 2010 was a great year for them. Democrats passed Obamacare to insure the destruction of private insurance in America so they can usher in full-blown socialized medicine this decade. They passed a 2,000 page bill that loots the American people on a grand scale under the guise of financial regulation and consumer protection. Democrats bought the votes of unemployed people by paying them to not work for a third year. And they pretend to wonder why unemployment remains high. Democrats enjoy the war profiteering from controlling our perpetual wars. Democrats aren’t against war. They’re just against Republicans cutting them out of the looting.

Democrats went on a looting orgy the likes of which America hasn’t suffered since WWII. And best of all for Democrats, because they had such large majorities in both House and Senate, they were able to shut the Republicans out of a share of the looting. This could provide a long-term advantage in vote-buying over the competing ruling-class faction. That’s why even after voters dealt Democrats their most crushing defeat since WWII, Nancy Pelosi threw a celebration party.

So Democrats have a lot to celebrate. Like a roller coaster without any safeties, racing down that first big hill was a blast. But the crash in the turn ruined it all. Most commentators claim the Democrats misread their mandate from 2006 and 2008. They’re either naive or liars. Democrats saw their opportunity to gain a dramatic looting advantage over Republicans, and they seized it. Their pretense of caring about people is a scam. An illusion. In a moment of accidental honesty, Rahm Emanuel enthused that aristocrats never allow a crisis go to waste.

But voters took the first stage of their revenge in November, handing power to the Republicans. Since all spending bills originate in the House, voters gave Republicans control of the government’s purse strings. None of the Democrats’ new vote-buying programs will be funded until Republicans get to share in the looting. Republicans are no more anti-big-government than Democrats are anti-war. They’re just against Democrats cutting them out of the looting. Now that Republicans control the purse strings, both ruling-class factions will compromise so they can share in the looting.

Even better for Republicans, they get to pretend they support small government. It’s easy for voters to punish Obama, Pelosi and Reid because they ravage our livelihoods like three Godzillas, trampling and burning our health care industry, our financial industry and every other sector of our economy they target.

But Republicans are like snakes in the grass. The hypocrites who voted for every big Republican spending program in their careers pretend they support small government like Bush pretended to support free markets. Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan are the most dangerous hypocrites, pretending voters have shown them the light. According to these hypocrites, the American people want tiny, token spending cuts and minor tinkering with the government’s looting systems. They’ll propose irrelevant reductions in the rate of increase of spending, not actual spending cuts, and gain reputations as statesmen who are willing to make the hard choices. They can count on Obama to veto any real cuts and make them look like they actually care about the people they steal from. It’s a scam. An illusion. They’re saying what the people want to hear so they can fully regain power in 2012 then seize control of government’s looting systems to buy votes for themselves while cutting Democrats out of the process. That’s why Republicans are the big winners.

While the American people are distracted by politics, the biggest looter of all, Ben Bernanke, is invisibly looting us by counterfeiting an unprecedented amount of money at the Fed. He stole $3.3 trillion from us in 2008 and gave it the big banks, Wall Street and government’s corporate agents. Goldman-Sachs and others used Bernanke’s funny-money to pay off their TARP loans, pretending TARP was a success, taxpayers made a profit and they had no financial problems. It’s a scam. An illusion. They’re rolling in dough stolen from us by Bernanke. And Bernanke plans to steal another $600 billion from us next year.

No matter which ruling-class faction wins, the American people lose. When the curtain collapses, we’ll discover that decades of seeming wealth generation was an illusion and the US is a third world country.

No comments:

Post a Comment