Creating the Royal Dynasty in the Neo-Con Paradise

Will this be the last decade of the economic miracle which was America?

Miracle?

Yes, the United States gained a reputation eagerly offered by the down trodden of the world when its promise was first unfurled.  Here was a land where even the most modest of men could work hard, be clever, solicit only a smattering of good fortune from the gods in play and, although previously unthinkable in the old world, prosper.

Now, the Eighteenth Century was hardly the first appearance of the remarkable middle class in the long history of the world's economies.  The ancient Greeks admired the vivacity of a trading class of freed men in old Athens.  Even before them, we must assume that Babylon was also fairly endowed with the ancient Sumerian equivalent of used car salesmen, tort lawyers and other brave opportunists who managed to court comfort, security and wealth in roughly the usual, albeit somewhat alien, success stories of the day.

However, these previous successes had been exceptional.  For every well heeled middle class exception there had been hordes of slaves doomed to toil to their early deaths and even rarer pockets of unimaginable, dynastic wealth for the noble families who were friends of the Pharaoh, Emperor, Sheik or recently victorious invader.

Not so in the United States.  Here, the exceptions flourished like flies at a messy picnic.  Further, however unlike the previous models, a fortress nobility, ensconced in unassailable inheritances of birth to death money was crowded out of the economies of the masses.  Instead, innovation, invention and efficiency were the constant origins of such a wide spread "new wealth."

There is an educational note to be attached to those old Crassus and Hapsburgs, unfathomably rich elitists who were not always so rich.  For example, the Crown of the Austrian Hungarian Empire began as a family of highway robbers, slowly amassing wealth at first by outright crimes, then later as "toll collectors" on the main arteries of Medieval commerce.

However, only decades later, the Hapsburg wealth had grown so great as to legitimize these old Dark Ages crooks into a royal family, all aglitter and equipped with a formidable army.  Once the crucial pivot point -- a sort of critical mass of wealth -- had been crossed, all became valid, royal, pure, and convincingly derived from the Divine Rights of Kings.

Ooops. It seems there are those among us who dream of this plutocratic obscenity repeating itself once again even in this distant, future century.

What is their socially recidivist plan to accomplish this retreat to medieval economic brutality?

It turns out to be discouragingly similar to the mechanism employed so successfully by the Hapsburgs.  These economic reactionaries believe that they can follow the pattern of their brutally checkered forebears with a scheme to accomplish the same goals.

The outline is simple enough.  Do business for a time, not with the goal of necessarily being competitive and successful, but rather with the sole intention of accumulating enough money to finally obscure the free market discipline by artfully purchasing sufficient influence in the government to establish an unassailable monopoly.

Exagerrating again?

Hardly.  The examples are compelling and undeniable.  We have seen the story unfold in some highly visible encounters already, and there are undoubtedly many more still in the carefully crafted and sustained shadows.

Example One - The Health Care Nobility

We have observed the health insurance monoliths and their wholly owned Senators gut what might have otherwise been a fairly rational health care reform proposal.  This would not have been possible if the Pharma and HMO benefactors had not previously fortified themselves with vast discretionary monies to lubricate the process.

Now, having established the initial base of the new health care economic autocracy where there will be no unpleasant alternatives, they quickly employed the fraudulent media pundits, their special Senators and their immense corporate image handlers to deflect the attention of the hill billies and bigots with incessantly repeated, supercilious psuedo-ideology.

The health insurance giants are already well established plutocrats.  Now they are "waiting in the wings" for an inauguration to the corporate equivalent of the Divine Right. MeanMesa has already posted a number of essays concerning health care, links to a few of them appear below.  There are more in our archives...

Who Killed Single Payer?

Free Market Health Care?

Health Care - Legislative Firepower

Ooooh! Health Care and the Senate

Example Two - The Royal Petroleum Families

Now, considering that America is packed full of almost more cars than people, one might think that producing petroleum products would be essentially a "no brainer" when it comes to generating a robust profit -- something akin to "selling whores in a lumber camp."  Even the most modest effort at corporate practices should, theoretically, find a vast market filled with willing buyers.

Teddy Roosevelt "downsized" a few petroleum fascists along with an equally rancid collection of steel makers and rail road tycoons, but this species seems to have "1,000 lives," always re-emerging as a hybrid Phoenix a few decades later.  Worse, these new little birds are born hungry, squealing and squawking for a nice meal of Federal subsidies ($16 Billion a year to Exxon), rapacious speculation ($4 per gallon gasoline) and, of course, ever deepening, constant de-regulation (the current Gulf disaster).

When the Texas dynasties of "good old boys" finally accumulated enough dough to start shopping for Senators the government was finally "renovated" to a state where the public interest was no more than a cynical, road weary campaign slogan to be trotted out at election time.

Example Three - Gangsters and Banksters, All Too Big To Fail

As the autocrat and his corporatist minions in the Senate patiently dismantled the regulations imposed at the end of the Republican Great Depression in the 1930's, the brokerage houses opened their bottomless "McDuck Money Bins" to unleash their own latest wave of "pseudo-ideological piracy."  No matter how fervently the population of American voters wanted regulation, their "wholly owned" GOP Senators began -- at once -- to feverishly pull the teeth from the new born legislation which might prevent future bubbles and future calamities.

The "free market" disciplines were left in the dust bin in favor of new investments in election campaigns, all designed to protect their burgeoning royal, Wall Street dynasties.  By the way, disabuse yourselves of any lingering hope that this plan didn't work.  These pimply little monkeys can now claim ownership of 60% of the total value of the nation, not to mention the $60 Trillion dollars worth of casino derivatives and other financial "doo-dads" they've embedded into a staggering world economy.

The monetary "fortress" of the financial nobility is defended by a continuing threat to wreck the entire economy should any demands of their fatwahs and fiats be resisted.

The Final Insult

We Will Destroy Any Politician Who Won't Play Along

... resistance is futile ...

Perhaps the most egregious outrage of the autocracy was the insertion of a majority gang of rabid neo-con ideologues to our Supreme Court.  The sketchily publicized decision of a few weeks ago empowers absolutely any of these well funded, reactionary plutocrats to contribute without limit to political campaigns which will destroy any candidate who might oppose their scheme.

For more reading, sample the following archived MeanMesa posts on the subject.

Finally - Quotes From the Decision

Raising the Corporate Toddler

Monday Morning With The Chief Justice

The Supreme Court Addresses THE WRONG PROBLEM!

The message is simple enough.  If you, MeanMesa visitor intend to live here,

RESIST!

Photo courtesy of http://britishreactionstotherevolution.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/tale_of_two_cities-16.jpg

Killing Time ‘Till the November Election

Does Our Democracy Call for More Than Knitting Socks? 30

None of us has missed the endless complaints of the political hack on the losing side of an election. For months after the fact, the same refrain seems to “seep up” from the voices of the defeated, hypothetical grumbling along the lines of “If old Harry had won that election, none of this would be happening.” No matter who “Harry” might be or exactly what “this” is, such comments seem to be unavoidable perpetual political noise.

So, what’s the problem?

Simply put, suspicious election results can no longer be dismissed as either inevitable or in any way acceptable. We have all been told about the Supreme Court’s delivery of the Bush White House in 2000. We have all heard snippets about the outrageous elections in Ohio and Florida in 2004. We have heard all the interviews warning us about voting machines, you know, the ones without “paper trails” making recounts possible. Believable recounts, that is.

We may have heard about the astounding election crimes which placed the Governor of Louisiana in a Federal Prison, the court ruling prohibiting him from speaking publicly about his case and the criminal road blocks set before his appeal. He found relief only after the House Judicial Committee, once freed of the Republican strangle hold, began to “look in” on his plight. And even that only occurred after the state Attorneys General of something like 48 states, from both parties, signed a letter proposing that his case be reviewed.

Is all this “stink” limited to Republicans? Lately, while they have held all the power in the government, the answer is “yes.” However, looking back, there was a widely accepted rumor that large numbers of the names on Lyndon Johnson’s voters’ list were residents of a cemetery in Houston. He still became a Senator, and the “story” was dismissed comfortably after he began to repay his debts to his campaign supporters.

In this system, power seems to inevitably lead to innocence.

There are apparently two essential forms of election corruption, election fraud and voter suppression. In a magnificent attempt to add another “bumper sticker” to phrases such a “Fight them over there,” “They hate our freedom” and “Stay the course,” one of our most embarrassing “throw-back” states has sponsored a successful Supreme Court ruling requiring additional identification to vote. It is a law without a criminal. There are no more than a handful of cases of actual election fraud in the entire country. It is yet another blatant design to suppress voting, especially among the poor, the wrong colored and the elderly. You know, Democrats.

It has, however, provided public cover (distraction) for the greater crime of voter suppression. In the case of this crime, the criminals are surfacing everywhere. As is usually the case with such matters, no new law is required. It is the checkered application and enforcement of the existing law that has created such a festering problem.

The Supreme Court “Prize Lottery” of 2000 represents the most compelling case of outright criminal activity. That vote count had to be terminated “before it inflicted irreparable damage to George W. Bush” according to the Supreme Court ruling. Such outrageous partisan hubris could only be reasonably undertaken with the certainty that it would deliver power sufficient to protect the guilty. It worked.

The myriad of “lesser crimes” which delivered Ohio in 2004, although lacking the preposterous glamor of the Supreme Court case, still engineered the delivery of a similar, massive felony. It was the product of “caging,” inadequate numbers of voting machines in Democratic neighborhoods, misinformation campaigns and material miscounts by election officials. The result, although more “low rent” in its execution, was just as damaging.

The “expert” (intelligent design?) for these insults was Mr. Carl Rove. You know, the one who has refused to testify under a Congressional subpoena. The President quickly selected an Attorney General who publicly stated that he would never enforce such a subpoena (the legal equivalent of “treason” under the shared powers act). After the elimination of a few “troublesome” Federal Prosecutors, there was no one else left brave enough to pursue Constitutional Law. The immense cowardice of the House of Representatives’ “Gang of Fourteen,” aside from demonstrating typical Congressional willingness to do absolutely anything necessary to get reelected, cemented the deal during his nomination “hearing.”

Don’t forget your nose plug.

Here in New Mexico we can’t really lay claim to the same caliber of outrage. Our election meddling is more of the “trailer park” variety, but still smelly enough to place us squarely on the “second tier” of states with troubled election results. Being a predominantly Catholic culture, our voters subscribe to the essential “original sin” concept of politicians.

Our allegiance to the tradition of the old Spanish “patron” leads voters here to measure elected officials not by inspired leadership so much as by the size and frequency of “gifts” brought home by their alleged altruism and populist spirits. Republican prostitutes such as Heather Wilson are lauded for continually designing schemes which allow Congressional treasures to flow from positions of exalted power to the submissive, but loyal plebeians below who are willing to accept such behavior as “enough.”

Here, as is the prevailing case across the nation, election manipulations lack the brazen qualities of Ohio or the Supreme Court. In the high desert of New Mexico, vote management takes the form of complicated, yet petty, conspiracies to influence district and regional results imperceptibly, but still effectively, to deliver the desired product.

None of these stinky little affairs seems to amount to much compared to the huge, blatant gerrymandering of our neighboring state, Texas, under the careful husbandry of a Tom DeLay, a true Bush hero who managed to create five new Republican votes in Congress. He was no more than a failing bug exterminator before Carl Rove provided him the “training” to become Speaker of the House, but Rove (and DeLay) had the wisdom of the “fish wife.” They proved, through their complicity in such RNC projects, that great political power can be stolen a tiny bit at a time. Once stolen, it is just as tangible as something won honorably so long as all those ostensibly responsible to oversee such things are adequately paid off or threatened.

So, what’s the “hobby” idea?

It is roughly five months before we go to use those “entirely trustworthy” voting machines again. Beyond that, we can add that it is roughly five months before we once again place our adolescent, unquestioning confidence in the “entirely trustworthy” processes we count on for honest elections. But, hold on. We are ankle deep (or worse) in evidence that these “trustworthy” mechanisms have been subverted! Will we be “lemmings,” willingly marching right back into the same crooked elections like Pollyannas who still try to believe that everything is actually right on track?

If we do that, we will finally get what we deserve. “Fool me once, uh, fool me again?” So far, if we try really hard and we hold our tongue just right and it’s Tuesday, we can still claim that we didn’t deserve what we got last time. Perhaps such a position was marginally reasonable given the subterfuge of the recent past, but it grows a bit road weary as an excuse for our irresponsibility.

Are we satisfied simply with indulging ourselves to continue to complain? Are we really blessed with some sort of stoic acceptance of “That’s just the way things are.” “Get used to it.” “What did you expect?”

So, if we were to adopt this hobby, what could we do to change this mess to something better?

Plenty. Even if you are convinced that your state has none of these pesky little problems, you can campaign for greatly improved election law. It is a state matter which can reach right to Washington, D.C. Your state Secretary of State is “on the hook” to convince you that your elections will be fair, that is, that your state’s election laws and processes will be transparent and honest. That is the job of each state’s Secretary of State. The most important job.

Have you been settling for less?

The election laws in your state are created by your state legislature. This is why such ugly anomalies such as Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Ohio are possible. When the only law enforcement threatening these brassy neo-con election schemes is an unlikely “prosecution” at the hands of other brassy neo-cons in election commissions and courts, we shouldn’t expect much justice. We haven’t had much.

So, communicate. Tell your legislators that you want nice, fresh elections laws that will absolutely end these abuses. Make some noise. You can actually scare the hell out of them with this one.

Let them know that you are not going to tolerate any more hushed rumors of anecdotal election manipulation. Let them know that you are not going to be hypnotized by the results of elections at the cost of forgetting about serious questions about their execution.

Questions about invisible little rodents out in something or other county. Questions about when recounts are possible, necessary, reasonable. Questions about stinky little tricks that wind up disqualifying thousands of votes at just the right moment or at just the place to “reelect” some good ole’ boy who should be going to prison instead of the State House.

There is time to get this cleaned up pretty well before the next election in November. The folks running the country right now are convinced that we are stupid enough to elect Bob Dole President (Uh, no wait. It’s that other old guy.) and accept it as legal. We can’t count on the media to help us here. They own the media. We can’t count on the Supreme Court to help us here. They own the Supreme Court. We can’t count on the Congress to do anything honorable. We know better because we’ve seen them in action. (“Off the table. It doesn’t matter how bad it is, it’s off the table. Off the table. OFF THE TABLE, so shut up. We’re busy!”)

Are we too busy?

NO More Constitutional Ammendments! Okay?

Unthinkable Solutions
The Supreme Court. A National Toothache? 17

Difficult problems, although they seem to have a comfortable, rent-free existence in our thoughts, sometimes go beyond even that. They present themselves as insoluble dilemmas. “Just unpleasant products of fate,” “just the way things are” or “just something we have to live with.”

The unhappy fact is, that as dynamic and adaptive humans, we cease to consider these “tooth ache” challenges and move on to problems with more present solutions. We vote for the lesser of two evils long enough to finally select the very worst. We steel ourselves to resident powers, although we created them, as perpetual things we cannot “un-create.”

We become quite comfortably willing to accept the unacceptable so long as it can groom itself into an image of inevitability. Worse, the ability to perfect this inevitability in our acceptability becomes more material than the essential nature of whatever it was we were trying to solve in the first place. Whatever the desired function was at the outset of these creations of ours becomes somehow secondary to a constant new effort to remain inevitable.

After presenting such a Rumsfeld style introduction (“You can’t know what you don’t know because you don’t know what it is yet.”), perhaps an example would be helpful. What specific “tooth ache” are we currently accepting as unchangeable? What “unthinkable” thought have we gradually eliminated from our human reserve of ideas?

How about the Supreme Court? It has been gradually filled with sub-judicial embarrassments lately thanks to the petty ambitions of the “head crook” and the inspired work of the gang of fourteen. We, as we fulfill our duties under the democracy, have gradually walked away from the scandal. In fact, most of the gang of fourteen will even be reelected!

But that still leaves the problem of the court. Of course there is nothing we can do about it. Of course we just have to live with it. Sure, we can impeach the Chief Justice for conflict of interest. Right. Can anyone remember the campaign to impeach Earl Warren, also a Chief Justice, during the civil rights times? A legion of southern bigots bought roadside billboards and pumped out incendiary speeches, but the busing continued. Chief Justice Warren outlasted them without breaking a sweat.

Now, we have the new, improved Bush version of the Supreme Court. The young, healthy ones are his corporate monkeys, energetically pursuing their dreams of voter suppression, religion in schools and faith-based charities (tax payer extortion) made necessary by disabling parts of the government with corruption. The old, shaky ones seem to still be able to think straight, but their days remaining on the Court are numbered.

Impeaching any of these new justices would take forever. Much sooner than Congress could even consider such a move, the whole Court could well be inhabited by the same types of troubling cultural and judicial throwbacks. So, there is no possibility for us other than to simply “live with it.” Right?

Not exactly. The “no possibility” ideas only exist in thoughts where other “unthinkable” possibilities have been discarded. Perhaps we should consider the entire affair again, this time allowing these old “impossibilities” another chance.

As citizens, under our Constitution, we can dump the whole Supreme Court.

“Oh my God!” Do you mean amending the Constitution? We have been taught that such a thing is nearly impossible! What we have forgotten is that we were taught this by exactly the same folks who stood to lose the most if we ever thought otherwise. Even if we tried, it would take forever! It would take years, possibly even decades, to trot such a thing around to all the States.

Wait a minute. How long do you think we will have to endure the likes of Chief Justice Roberts? Decades after the other insults of George Bush have been disinfected, Chief Justice Roberts and his cronies on the court will still be injecting the same kind of toxic neo-con poison into our society. Anyone who thinks that is too harsh a criticism can review the accomplishments of the so-called Justices in only a year or two.

We can design and create a new Court with a Constitutional amendment. It might require actual judicial expertise in its appointments. It might become quite removed from the endless production of rulings which represent no more than the battle between its conservatives and its liberals.

The highest court in the country is supposed to think about the laws in its judgments, not cheap ideology. Is it impossible to form sound judicial opinions not embedded in the structure of ideology? Have we become mired in the details of personality so deeply that we have forsaken the possibilities of anything more constructive, more judicial?

Bill boards didn’t do it, but a program to promote a Constitutional amendment just might.