2011-04-28 20:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineCapital must protect itself in every possible way, both by combination and legislation. Debts must be collected, mortgages foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When, through process of law, the common people lose their homes, they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of the government applied by a central power of wealth under leading financiers.
These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world. By dividing the voter through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance. It is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.
Bundling social conservatism (so-called "family values" and "Christian values" and the whole passel of "we are going to legislate what you can do with your own body and that of someone who consents to do it with you") with wealth-protecting fiscal conservatism (trickle-down economics is a failed experiment; give it the fuck up) was the greatest boondoggle the GOP ever managed. They evoke the "good old days" of post-WWII, pre-Vietnam suburbia, neglecting (or perhaps secretly celebrating) the rampant racism and Communist witch-hunts this country went through, and are utterly ignorant of the tax structure (the highest marginal tax rate was something like 82% under some bleeding-heart liberal named Dwight Eisenhower).
I got some flack this morning for not wanting to extend anything more than a middle finger to the folks on the far end of the political spectrum. There are plenty of folks who have tried to take the moderate tack, and look where it's gotten us: today, Ronald fucking Reagan would be considered left of center, because he actually raised taxes a dozen times during his time in office. Fuck that.
I'm veering hard left, and if I can drag the country that direction with me, so much the better. It's starting to happen here in America's Wang, because Tea Party short bus driver Rick Scott is finding out that the red tide that washed him into the Governor's mansion has left him high and dry in a state where Republicans control both houses by overwhelming, filibuster-proof majorities, and the more sensible folks with an R- next to their names realize that going for the full-court press when it comes to slashing and burning social services is a bad fucking idea.
I am as supportive of a balanced budget, preferably one with a surplus, as the next guy (and probably more so), but there's a really easy way to make ends meet when you've already pared your expenses to the bone, and folks have been kind of slipping when it comes to coughing up the money they ought to have been paying you. Vito and Carmine need to be called up to do some tax collecting, because you can't buy groceries when all you have is a fistful of IOUs.
These truths are well known among our principal men, who are now engaged in forming an imperialism to govern the world. By dividing the voter through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance. It is thus, by discrete action, we can secure for ourselves that which has been so well planned and so successfully accomplished.
- Montagu Norman, Governor of The Bank Of England, addressing the United States Bankers' Association, New York, 1924.Attention, people whose net worth contains fewer than seven digits to the left of the decimal: Mr. Norman, and his modern-day counterparts in boardrooms and trading floors across the country is talking about you. To them, we are not people; we are a resource to be plundered and exploited. They have already fleeced wide swaths of the ignorant into believing that they, too, can somehow partake of this largesse by somehow climbing out of the lower-middle-class, while cleverly omitting the part that they're not going to be allowed too much chance of doing so.
Bundling social conservatism (so-called "family values" and "Christian values" and the whole passel of "we are going to legislate what you can do with your own body and that of someone who consents to do it with you") with wealth-protecting fiscal conservatism (trickle-down economics is a failed experiment; give it the fuck up) was the greatest boondoggle the GOP ever managed. They evoke the "good old days" of post-WWII, pre-Vietnam suburbia, neglecting (or perhaps secretly celebrating) the rampant racism and Communist witch-hunts this country went through, and are utterly ignorant of the tax structure (the highest marginal tax rate was something like 82% under some bleeding-heart liberal named Dwight Eisenhower).
I got some flack this morning for not wanting to extend anything more than a middle finger to the folks on the far end of the political spectrum. There are plenty of folks who have tried to take the moderate tack, and look where it's gotten us: today, Ronald fucking Reagan would be considered left of center, because he actually raised taxes a dozen times during his time in office. Fuck that.
I'm veering hard left, and if I can drag the country that direction with me, so much the better. It's starting to happen here in America's Wang, because Tea Party short bus driver Rick Scott is finding out that the red tide that washed him into the Governor's mansion has left him high and dry in a state where Republicans control both houses by overwhelming, filibuster-proof majorities, and the more sensible folks with an R- next to their names realize that going for the full-court press when it comes to slashing and burning social services is a bad fucking idea.
I am as supportive of a balanced budget, preferably one with a surplus, as the next guy (and probably more so), but there's a really easy way to make ends meet when you've already pared your expenses to the bone, and folks have been kind of slipping when it comes to coughing up the money they ought to have been paying you. Vito and Carmine need to be called up to do some tax collecting, because you can't buy groceries when all you have is a fistful of IOUs.
