Washblog

And now I'm going to immediately modify that statement to say, it isn't just Iraq. "Iraq" is becoming an almost generic term to refer to a series of conflicts that right now includes Iraq and Afghanistan, and will likely soon include Iran. It isn't an isolated thing. It is one part of a larger strategy by the NeoCons. Here's how it progresses:

• Control the mainstream media, then marginalize or buy out the alternative media. Try to de-fund public access media.

• Engage us in a series of conflicts where there is no actual plan for anything other than maintaining the conflicts. We still have 19,000 troops in Afghanistan. (Remember Afghanistan? It's the country just to the east of Iran. Iraq is just to the west of Iran. How convenient.)

  You can read their plan in detail on the Website of the Project For The New American Century. The report is called " Rebuilding America's Defenses."

• Wave the flag and keep repeating that we are at war, and that means sacrifices. Use that excuse to shred the Constitution, reduce civil liberties and suppress dissent.

• Pour hundreds of billions of dollars into "war" efforts that enrich companies like KBR (Halliburton subsidiary) and other defense contractors.

• Keep the Middle East unstable, which will increase crude oil prices, enriching the oil companies. Saudi Arabia has the world's largest proven reserves of petroleum. The Saudi government is already in the pocket of the Bush family. Iran has the 2rd largest proven reserves. Iraq has the 3rd largest proven reserves.

  By the way, when you hear the NeoCons ranting about Venezuela being a sponsor of terrorism and how we must remove Hugo Chavez from power, keep in mind that Venezuela has the 6th largest proven reserves in the world. The U.S. is number 10 on the list.

• Simultaneously shift the tax burden completely off the very wealthy by excluding capital gains and inheritance from any taxation (over 74% of all capital gains are reported by people with income over $250,000). Eliminate corporate taxation. Put the tax burden completely onto the lower and middle classes.

• Increase the cost of medical care to individuals, particularly us Baby Boomers. We are a huge demographic bulge and possess a great deal of political power unless our resources are diverted or otherwise compromised.

  Medicare Plan D is a good example of a targeted program to deplete the resources of the elderly. Under this plan, Medicare is not allowed to negotiate discounted prices from the drug manufacturers. The insurance companies do not cover all drugs in all plans, so you have to guess which drugs you will need in the future, in addition to which drugs you currently take.

  Another approach is for companies to no longer offer health-care benefits to their employees. Right now 45 million Americans have no health care coverage. This shifts the entire cost of health care to those individuals who typically get paid the least.

• Limit the ability of individuals to get out of debt through bankruptcy (50% of all personal bankruptcies have medical expenses as a primary contributing factor).

• Allow corporations to escape responsibility for cleaning up environmental and health messes by making it easier for them to hide assets and declare bankruptcy of the (now-worthless) subsidiary. This is what Manville Corp. did to hide from asbestos claims.

• Allow corporations to escape their pension obligations by shifting the burden to the Federal government. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is a Federal corporation that acts as an insurance company for 44 million employees. It currently is funded by the premiums charged to participating companies, but like any insurance company, it operates on the assumption that premiums will exceed claims. If that doesn't happen, either the Federal government will have to step in to cover the cost (which means tax revenues will cover it) or else pension plans will simply fail.

• Reduce the ability of the lower and middle classes to have any political clout by reducing their economic strength through increased taxes, education costs, medical costs, anti-unionization, etc. Use the WTO to push the wages of working-class people towards third-world levels and prevent unionization in developing nations.

  Did you know that under WTO rules, a country that passes environmental laws, labor laws or any other laws that might reduce corporate profits, can be required to pay that amount to the affected companies? As an international treaty, it constitutes the supreme law of the land under Article VI. of the U.S. Constitution.

  Remember how NAFTA (mini-WTO) was going to produce all those high-paying jobs in Mexico so the Mexicans wouldn't need to sneak into the U.S. to improve their economic condition? I wonder what ever happened to that? Seems like we have more immigration now (both legal and illegal) than ever.

• Drive the deficits to the point where the country is in economic crisis and use that as an excuse to eliminate every Federal program that provides real benefit to the public. Eliminate all funding for public education, enforcement of environmental regulations, enforcement of OSHA, FDA, health regulations, etc. Privatize Social Security, Medicare and education.

• Shift the burden of supporting any of these programs to the states, where the political and economic power of the very rich can be focused to prevent any effective, coordinated response.

• Pack all the courts (not just the Supreme Court) with right-wing judges who will rule against the people and for the corporations and the wealthy.

End result: the elimination of all the Great Society programs that the right wing have despised, and the establishment of a permanent "over-class" of extremely wealthy people who pay no taxes and exercise complete control over the government, the economy and the people.

Welcome to the Spin Cycle.

Only this isn't "spin" as in political misinformation, it is "spin" like the spin cycle in your washing machine, and it is designed to squeeze the last drop of economic strength and civil freedom out of the general public.

You might think I'm being alarmist, but I am merely looking at the patterns of what is going on and comparing them to the statements that the extreme right wing have made over the years. You might not want to admit that this is the pattern, because of what that implies. But that does not make the pattern incorrect.

So it is the whole scheme that must be stopped. But I think the linchpin is the series of conflicts, because they do so much to (a) shift the economy and (b) provide cover for the suppression of democracy. Next to that, ANWR is nothing.