The Deprived
Tom Perkins has come out with a couple of doozies the last week or so: wouldn’t it be great if his statements could be dismissed as the rantings of an overly rich fringe freak? His whine that the rich were being treated as the Jews were treated at Kristallnacht seems quite removed from reality in an era where the wealthiest of the Bush Bundlers were handed tax breaks over the long term to ensure that the invisible hand would have no meddling role in impeding their continuing accumulations of wealth, and where the “competent” authorities don’t seem to be able to muster the spine and resources to chase the trillions of dollars hiding in offshore accounts (according to certain sources). Alternet had the following:
In essence. what Perkins says is just the codifying of much of what has gone on in the process of de-democratizing what was at one time a fairly people-oriented society, as in about 1968, the date once cited as the high-water mark of democracy in North America (prosperity overall is said to have peaked in 1973, just prior to the Yom Kippur War and the resulting OPEC crisis). Various pundits of the privileged expounded in the lead-up to that point that we had a crisis in that society was becoming all to democratic and that steps would have to be taken to reverse that trend. In retrospect, a lot of it makes sense, and we may be in the end game even as I write with Stephen Harper pursuing the same kind of voter exclusion campaign waged by Harris in Florida in 2000 and Blackwell in Ohio in 2004. Another ploy is the OTAA gambit (Other Than As Advertised), a kind of bait and switch where the campaign rhetoric morphs, once the election is won, into practice that looks a lot like more of the same. Jean Chrétien’s Red Book was a sterling example wherein he would revoke NAFTA, axe the helicopter contract and reverse the GST. Of those, he managed to delay the helps, and, via the good offices of his Finance Minister and successor, Paul Martin, managed to “slay the deficit” along with the well-being of thousands of his constituents as the Feds cut services and transfer payments, often leaving junior levels of government to pass along the pain. We still have the GST and not only do we have NAFTA still hollowing out the economy and blocking any jurisdictional corrective measures, we are staring down the barrel of the next generation of “Trade” treaty, the TPP, which will extend the corporate hold over all economic processes and hence, the machinery of government. The other outstanding example of OTAA would have to be Barack Obama. whose pronouncements during the 2008 campaign spoke of redress for the ills of the Bush years, of a revelling and recalibration of the business of society, but whose actions have shown a continuation and even accentuation and acceleration of the same ponzi scheme perpetrated by GWB as well as his predecessors. LBJ comes out better on this scale than anyone in that office since, and largely because the general public at the time was in a mood that could best be described as truculent. Selfishness found its voice in his successor and discontent never has recovered the unity of purpose that moved the antiwar, human rights, and environmental movements to a position of prominence.
Recent decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States have unleashed the flood of money into political campaigns, in effect bringing forth a system much along the lines of what Perkins proposes, but we don’t call it vote rigging, we call it free speech, another of those perversions of language that hide the drive to return citizens to the status of serfs. The ongoing assault by the Harper Government on public institutions and on the commons in general fits right into this pattern, and another term in office will likely see out Dear Leader taking off the veil and instituting “reforms” based on his radial right-wing and religious fanatic beliefs, things that he hasn’t as yet felt emboldened enough to attempt. The militarization of law enforcement and the overreach of the surveillance apparatus are steps to enable to forcing of unpopular legislation that will have been enabled by his thirty percent “majority”. Don’t like the prospect? Do something. Start talking now to your neighbours. Turn off the distractions like the Five-Ring Circus and spend some time working through steps to rebuild community. Either join a political party or start one, or scare the bejaysus out of all of them. But do something.