(10:00AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
We are told again and again that economic solutions dictated by simple common sense are politically impossible:
1. Shifting hundreds of billions of dollars of government expenditure from weapons procurement and warfare to civilian construction is impossible.
2. Creating an efficient single-payer national health care system is impossible.
3. Putting the unemployed to work rebuilding our infrastructure is impossible.
4. Reconstructing America’s intercity rail network is impossible.
5. Investigation and prosecution of rogue corporations is impossible.
Why are all of these things impossible? Because, ever since Ronald Reagan and his allied ideological vandals commenced an all-out assault on government, the American people have been barraged with plutocratic propaganda persuading them that the government that built the atomic bomb, landed men on the moon, established the Internet, and ended racial discrimination is worthless and incompetent.
The dominant political meme in Washington is still “everybody knows that the government can’t run anything properly.” This pernicious myth will drag us down into economic misery so deep that we will eventually be forced to discard it. No combination of individuals or corporations has the power and resources to get us out of the ditch we are in. Only the Federal government can pull us out. But as long as it remains reviled and discredited, we will lie in the ditch.
This is why things will get much worse in America before they get better. It took a huge amount of effort to poison the minds of the citizenry against their own government, and only a massive amount of suffering will bring the political realignment necessary to cleanse this poison. Until our people renew their trust in government, a widespread economic recovery will be an impossible mission.
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Sobriety sucks
Bonus karma for “plutocratic propaganda”
When we want a real jobs program the republicans gie us business tax cuts and the democrats give out interest free loans.
Either way, what is overlooked is that we public do not own the end result – the infrastructure like high speed rail and solar panels – no T. Boone “swiftboat” pickens gets to own the infrastructure like wind towers.
And he gets to profit off of them and put that money to use to build more oil technology and more money to pay into his republican PACs.
The democrats are willing to shoot themselves in the foot to pay this guy off and make steps toward preventing global warming.
But when it comes to telecoms and providing rural broadband ATT gets to build it and they get to own it and they get to keep the profits.
This faith in free enterprise and free markets has to stop because it is bleeding us dry.
We could have affordable energy pay for itself and have money left over to lower the cost and have money to build more alternative energy.
But after all of that we are told “No! The market is more efficient.”
Efficient at lining the Vampire’s pockets.
No, it’s not “government can’t run anything properly.” The same people who are saying that are the ones spending trillions on “defense.”
No, it’s not the faith in “free enterprise,” or “markets.” Government economic intervention increases each and every year.
What it is, ANKOSS, is it’s an economy plagued by a surplus of capital. Harry Shutt nailed it in 1998 and nothing has changed. Capital’s demand for profits is simply not going to be satisfied by the economy’s real potential for profit, and so those fractions of capital which have colonized government (i.e. “defense,” banking) get to bleed the economy dry while the rest of the oligarchy invests in them. Impoverishing the rest of us is the capitalist system’s final frontier.
there isn’t enough money at the top yet to trickle down to pay for them.
# 5 is impossible because it would wreck any chance for #’s 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Only treasury giving more taxpayer money to Wall Street will solve all of it, but more and better wars would be a BIG help.
You didn’t know? :-/