New Civil War erupts, led by super rich, GOP
Commentary: ‘Shock Doctrine,’ Reaganomics trigger explosive class war
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, “there’s class warfare, all right,” warns Warren Buffett. “But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” Yes, the rich are making war against us. And yes, they are winning. Why? Because so many are fighting this new American Civil War between the rich and the rest.
Not just the 16 new GOP governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida, and across America fighting for new powers. Others include: Chamber of Commerce billionaires, Koch brothers, Forbes 400, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform — which now has 97% of House Republicans and 85% of the GOP Senators signed on his “no new taxes” pledge — the Tea Party and Reaganomics ideologues.
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Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake.
All this was predicted back in September 2008 by Naomi Klein, author of “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Yes, we were warned that the GOP’s Reaganomics ideology would stage a rapid comeback … warned before the market collapsed … before Wall Street was virtually bankrupt. … before Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson conned Congress into $787 billion in bailouts … warned before Obama’s 2008 election
Free-market Reaganomics roaring back, more powerful than before
Yes, back in the heat of battle, in September 2008, Klein warned America: “Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of ‘free market’ ideology.” Then the meltdown went nuclear.
Klein warned: “Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests. During boom times, it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate.”
But “when those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue.” Remember: A week later Paulson was on his knee, begging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for that $787 billion bailout, to save our incompetent Wall Street banks that caused the meltdown from certain bankruptcy.
“But rest assured,” continued Klein in September 2008, Reaganomics “ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize.”
And yes, America, this war strategy is happening thanks to General Buffett, the new GOP Congress and 16 aggressive anti-democracy GOP governors.
Escalation of new Civil War: GOP dictators killing democracy
After the 2010 election of these new GOP governors, the new Civil War escalated with a new phase of self-destructive “disaster capitalism,” thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision. Their strategy was first revealed in the Wisconsin dictator Scott Walker’s war against the unions. Then last week the GOP assault went nuclear.
Michigan’s GOP Gov. Rick Snyder signed the “much despised emergency financial manager legislation into law,” said local ABC news, labeling the law “draconic” for giving the governor new dictatorial powers to appoint “emergency financial managers … to run struggling cities and schools, including the ability to terminate union contracts.”
We learned of Snyder’s democracy-killing coup a week earlier when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow interviewed Naomi Klein. Maddow also exposed another particularly harsh tactic: Snyder’s $1.7 billion tax hikes against seniors and the poor. He was “not using it to close the budget gap. He is giving it away in the form of $1.8 billion in corporate tax cuts.”
Get it, folks? In the GOP governors new strategy escalating this Civil War, the GOP is robbing the poor to give to the rich.
Maddow exposed the truth behind the GOP’s economic strategy: “It’s not about the budget in Michigan … not about the budget in Wisconsin … not about the budget in Florida … not about the budget in Ohio … what Michiganders have been trying to get the rest of the country to pay attention to is that what these Republicans are doing in the states is not just not about the budget. It’s about something far worse.” Wake up America.
GOP using ‘shock doctrine’ to gain new anti-democracy powers
The GOP is anti-democracy: With the GOP, “this whole democracy thing” is “very inefficient,” warned Klein. Republican governors are using “a fiscal crisis as a pretext to do stuff they otherwise want to do … Republicans in Michigan want to be able to unilaterally abolish your town. And how do you know when you’re in a financial emergency? Because the governor tells you … or a company he hires.”
Yes the GOP, the party of big business and billionaires, secretly hates democracy, it’s too inefficient for the rich class.
In the interview, Klein reiterated: The GOP governors’ strategy is a clear example of “disaster capitalism,” the Reaganomics war strategy that has dominated, obsessed and driven the GOP for a generation. Klein warns, “these guys have been at this for 30 years,” it is “an ideological movement … they believe in a whole bunch of stuff that’s not very popular,” like “privatizing the local water system, busting unions, privatizing entire towns. If they said all this in an election they’d lose.”
And that’s why crises are so crucial to the GOP war strategies to take over America: Crises “are very, very handy, because you can say we have no choice. … the sky is falling in.” Then the GOP governors “can consolidate power. We remember this from the Bush administration. They did this at the federal level. After 9/11, they said, we have a crisis, and we have to essentially rule by fiat.”
But the truth, warns Klein, is that the GOP “really doesn’t believe in the governments that they are running … this is a really old story.” The greed of their billionaire backers is insatiable. They do not like democracy. And the actions of the new GOP governors is proof that what they really want are dictatorial powers to privatize government and get personally richer.
GOP megalomania: Create crises, change the course of history
Money, power, greed: That’s why the GOP is “so desperate to tie the hands of unions. Why 16 states are facing similar battles” says Klein, because “unions are the final line of defense against privatization of the public sector. Unions are the ones who fight privatization of the school system, of the water system, of the power system.”
And that’s why, in this new American Civil War the GOP keeps its “eye on the prize, because there’s a lot of money to be made in the kinds of crony deals that could be rammed through when you have all of that power consolidated in the governor’s office.” Get it?
Remember when Wisconsin dictator Scott Walker thought he was talking to billionaire GOP backer David Koch: The vision of the GOP became very clear. Walker said: “This is our moment to change the course of history.” This same egomaniacal mind-set has obsessed the GOP since Reaganomics emerged a generation ago. Crises are opportunities for the GOP, whether real or fake (as we saw in Wisconsin and Iraq), every crisis is an excuse for the GOP’s dictators to activate every possible weapon in their “disaster capitalism” arsenal.
Yes, each crisis triggers a grandiose button in the GOP psyche, an obsession to “change the course of history,” to act like Ronald Reagan in the “moment that ended communism,” as Walker said. That’s also why GOP governors like Walker are comparing the unions to communism, drawing clear battle lines in this new American “Civil War.”
‘Disaster capitalism’ is the GOP strategy in this new Civil War
In my review of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” a few years ago I called it “the most important book on economics in the 21st century.” That’s truer today. Events the past four years make this a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the Second American Civil War being fought by Buffett’s rich class, Wall Street CEOs and the GOP dictators batting to dominate America.
Reaganomics, “Shock Doctrine” and disaster capitalism all define the same ideology that’s been driving the GOP for over a generation, an ideology gaining even more power now as they accelerate their battle plans, increasing efforts to gain total power over our government, economy and culture, a strategy that will ultimately destroy everything.
Klein’s recent interview with Maddow exposed the GOP’s charade: Now we know with certainty that the budget crises in the 50 states were “created on Wall Street then moved to Main Street, deepened by the policy decisions to bail out banks instead of bailing out homeowners, instead of bailing out workers. And that means your tax base collapses.”
We know Wall Street greed was the fuel igniting America’s current economic problems. And now, unfortunately, average Americans have “to pay for the crisis again. First, with a bailout. And now, people are paying with it again, with budget cuts.”
And underneath all is the GOP’s free-market Reaganomics ideology. Wake up America, you’re losing the new Civil War to a rich class that’s lost its moral compass.
Bottom line, Klein warns: “What this fight is really about is not unions versus taxpayers … It’s a fight about who’s going to pay for the crisis that was created by the wealthiest elite in this country.”
Actually, it’s even worse. Because while we averted total collapse, it was only delayed, destined to return soon and finally overwhelm America. Remember Uncle Warren’s battle cry: “The rich class is winning.”
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