The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don't Let Them!

[Crabtownboy]

Many on this BB support the plutocrats to their own detriment and the plutocrats love them for doing so!

In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.

Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation's capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.

What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for fifteen years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn't only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.

They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE's news divisions -- NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC, all made sure to look the other way. They wanted to give coal producers more freedom to pollute, open the Alaskan wilderness to drilling, empower the president to keep trade favors for corporations a secret while enabling many of those same corporations to run roughshod over local communities trying the protect the environment and their citizens' health.

It was a disgusting bipartisan spectacle. With words reminding us of Harry Truman's description of the GOP as "guardians of privilege," the Republican majority leader of the House dared to declare that "it wouldn't be commensurate with the American spirit" to provide unemployment and other benefits to laid-off airline workers. As for post 9/11 Democrats, their national committee used the crisis to call for widening the soft-money loophole in our election laws.

America had just endured a sneak attack that killed thousands of our citizens, was about to go to war against terror, and would soon send an invading army to the Middle East. If ever there was a moment for shared sacrifice, for putting patriotism over profits, this was it. But that fall, operating deep within the shadows of Washington's Beltway, American business and political mercenaries wrapped themselves in red, white and blue and went about ripping off a country in crisis.

H.L. Mencken got it right: "Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/the-plutocrats-are-winnin_b_8862470.html

 

[carpro]

Many on this BB support the plutocrats to their own detriment and the plutocrats love them for doing so!

Just more leftist vitriol and propaganda.

 

[just-want-peace]

Many on this board also support liberals and their philosophy, which is nothing more than doing the damage 9/11 did, but taking years instead of minutes!
IOW, the same effect, but rather than instantaneous, it's death by a thousand cuts!

So what is your point?????

 

[poncho]

 

[Alcott]

We have manned missions to Pluto? Not much to explore there but solid methane.

 

[poncho]

Methane on Pluto? It must be man made. Let's tax it!

 

[poncho]

How the Aristocracy Revs Up Its Suckers

A standard technique by the aristocracy and its agents is to pretend that the existing government is too progressive, that it’s pandering to the masses, not doing the ‘right’ thing, which the ‘superior’ people know that it ought to be doing — and which, coincidentally, will boost the wealth of the rich (and this wealth will then trickle down to everybody, as aristocrats routinely promise will happen). Here’s an example of it:

On December 10th, the far-right Rosemary Righter (“Righter” is her actual name, not merely her ideology), of Rupert Murdoch’s London Times, presented an opinion-piece in America’s Politico (which itself derives from Republican Joe Albritton’s now-defunct Washington DC conservative newspaper the Star), titled, “NATO’s ‘Obama problem’: The alliance is hamstrung by the least Atlanticist president since World War II.”

Her point in it is that the current U.S. President, who calls himself a Democrat (and so is unacceptable to Republicans no matter how right-wing he might actually be), lacks the requisite passion for war against the ‘threat’ from Russia.

She says: “Obama, the least Atlanticist president in America’s postwar history, viewed NATO as a Cold War relic and radically shrank the U.S. military presence in Europe.” But, that, “Then, in March 2014, Russia invaded Crimea, annexing it within 30 days on the pretext of a referendum held under conditions of armed occupation. Having openly carved off one slice of Ukraine, Putin then set about fomenting and arming a separatist rebellion in the country’s Donbas region, brazenly denying the involvement of Russian troops.”


That’s a string of lies; so, here are the facts, to show, from this example, how brazenly the agents of the aristocracy lie (and click onto the link here for anything about which you have any doubt regarding the given allegation’s veracity):

Continue . . . http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/aristocracy-revs-suckers.html#more-52792