Mussolini defines fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power"

How does the current climate compare to past fascist regimes?

Or maybe what we have is a plutacracy.

Definition of Plutacracy

Jefferson was very concerned about this.

“Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves TO THE RUIN OF OUR COUNTRY and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands, and by other means not always honorable to the character of our countrymen.” ? Thomas Jefferson, Ford 7:170 (1797)

Problem is...if we know this we might decide to resist this arrangement. We can be an awful pain. There are just so damned many of us.

So we must be deceived. One of the ways to accomplish this is the shell game. A pea and three walnut shells is all we need for this game. The object is to keep our eyes on the right hand waving the shells around while the left hand scoops up the pea.

In this case the right hand and shells are issues that they don't really care about. But if they can find some that split us somewhere near the middle and we can be very emotional about, then they have a good right hand issue. You know the ones they found.

Another good right hand distraction is fear. Be afraid. Be very afraid. But they will protect us if you just don't watch that left hand.

Now throw in some anger. Look at those guys! It is all their fault. Now they have us insulting each other with so much venom we don't care what they do with that left hand.

Another good trick is the expert witness. Nothing better than an economist because nobody really understands economy. Not even the experts. But they can talk smack with so many six bit words that we can't work a dictionary fast enough. Besides that they sprinkle in a bunch of euphemisms and if you do get all the words straight you find out many are ambiguous. 

Geenspan is a master. Now throw in a great salesman with "child that's grown old" charm like Reagan and we are putty. They tell us that if we give tax cuts to the rich we will have more money. What we look like, fools? Oh no, they will hire us. Give us jobs to make stuff that no one has the money to buy. Oh, well, of course. How silly of us to doubt you.

They don't care if you see yourself as liberal or conservative, whether or not you hate gays or love guns, nor what religion you are or whether you believe in God. If you are passionate about it and hate the other side, that will do. It is all green. Just don't watch the left hand.

I know you can't resist trying to figure out which shell that pea is under, just keep your hand on your wallet.

Jose

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Found a nice NY Times article finding this quote. By a conservative who still remembers what conservative means.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html

Mr Buffett did an office survey and found that he pays less tax as a percentage of income than anyone else in his office. And he does not employ fancy accounting or special cuts.

There has been a concerted attack on the middle class since Reagan was elected. Greenspan has overseen the war until recently.

Some conservative thought sees it as justified by the unrest of the sixties. See what happens when the rabble have too much time on their hands? Everyone could afford college even working minimum wage jobs. Of course the minimum wage was about 8$ in todays dollars. The corporate rate was 52% and some paid up to 91% on income over about $3,000,000.

Terrible times, right? The average annual GDP growth rates was 4.4%. Terrible? Not so much. In fact it was wonderful fun. We applied great pressure on government and society.

We found out that our dear Uncle Sam would lie to us and because our parents still trusted the government that they lied to us, too. We discovered that our teachers and our textbooks lied to us. Skepticism and critical thinking ran rampant. Who could we trust?

So thinking for ourselves we saw what was not right. Very disconcerting to our parents. And our teachers and our government and a conservative named William Buckley who figured that if we were busy scratching out a living we would be less troublesome. He was right. It took him a long time to convince enough people and get some of them in power. Then came Reagan.

First thing Reagan did as governor of California was do away with free higher education. Then as President he told us tax cuts for the rich would increase productivity (more jobs) and everyone would be better off. How was he going to pay for it? No prob. The increased productivity would more than make up for it with additional tax revenue. A year later we were up to our ears in debt. Oops, what do we do now?

Get Greenspan, he can fix it. And he did. He spun a story about a snake eating a chicken or something and pointed to us trouble makers and said we were the chicken and social security was going bankrupt all because of us. Well, he was a good salesman and so was Reagan. We bought it. Although the system was designed to break even every year with the current workers paying for the current retired, we, those vile boomers were going to pay not only for all the retirees throughout our working lives but for our own as well.

The increased Social security rates were brutal. The lowest paid workers paid the same rate as the middle class. But not the rich. And if you wanted to start a lemonade stand you had to pay double. This is regressive taxation at it's finest. Right there with sales tax on food.

The good news is all that fresh green disguised the failure of  supply side economics. Of course when they took the money they promised they would save it for our retirement, but letting politicians hold your money is unwise.

Next, the facts of minimum wages, unemployment, supply and demand, tax cuts for the rich, and the shell game to keep us from noticing that the hand in our back pocket does not belong to a sweet young thing.

Jose