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eality intrudes on the neatly wrapped economic theories of Croney Capitalism. No matter what the Milton Friedmanites tell us about how great Uncle Milty's theories are, the actual results out here in the real world are, in a word, disastrous. It is disastrous that so many Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure by a predatory banking system. It is disastrous that Wall Street is having its greatest season of profit at the expense of so many working Americans. After all, it was Main Street who bailed out Wall Street, not the other way around. All economic roads since Reagan have led to what we see now--- a depressed American landscape. Even back in Adam Smith's day, he noted in The Wealth of Nations, that the Free Market system would not work unless the environment in which it found itself, was based on perfect equality and perfect freedom. We have only to see that George Bush and Dick Cheney are still strolling the boulevards and neither is on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, not to mention numerous treasonous assaults on the US Constitution, as you and I would be, (on trial, that is, if not already incarcerated) if we so much as smoked a joint. Both Bush and Cheney were liars, cheats, and frauds. So we can dispense with the idea of equality under the law and the idea of perfect freedom, applies only to the monied elite.
But if that doesn't do it for you, let's take this. Let us say that the Free Market is, in reality, an imaginary carrot dangling before the eyes of the more-than-ready-for-the-glue-factory-horse of greed and profit. There is no such thing as a free market and there cannot be. Take Liz Claiborne clothes for example. Made in Indonesia with a labor cost of 74¢ per hour, product costs as much as $4 to produce then is shipped to the states and sold for about $150 per item. Since product does not truly reflect value, one asks why corporations must be subsidized on a regular basis by the Federal government.
By now we have seen the real strategy of the giant corporations and banks is to privatize profits and socialize losses. In case that phrase did not make a sufficient impression and passed right over your head, let me say it again:
The real strategy of Giant corporations and banks is to Privatize Profits and Socialize Losses.
So. What the elite and the Republican Party, and all who agree with them really want, is Socialism for only the rich.
It is not for nothing that corporations and banks are commonly characterized as pigs at the trough. They want their socialism but none for you. You are that stupid little consumer whose only function, according to the corporations and the banks, is to go shopping and buy tons of crap that you would be better off without.
And finally, here is the big secret that the government doesn't want you to be thinking about. The Whitehouse and the Congress of the United States of America belongs to , and is ruled by, the corporations and the banks. So if Obama isn't quite living up to your expectations don't blame him. He is dancing as fast as he can to hide the fact that he is the puppet of the banks and corporations. So the Federal government doesn't want you thinking about the fact that they have this nasty little secret and if Wikileaks tries to publish the appropriate documents which will expose the real state of affairs here in Amerika, Julian Assange will end up a dead man. So you will only hear that secret from someone like me and this blog, and a few other truth tellers like Alternet, Common Cause, Democracy, Now. So the secret is safe.
The big problem with this arrangement is that is spells the "F" word. As in fascism. As Mussolini said "Fascism is better called Corporatism." And who would know better than the man who invented it?
Fascism is the form of government under which we, in the USA, now exist.
That grotesque and growing segment of the American population known loosely as T-Baggers, who typically accuse Obama of socialism, and of fascism, actually are so ignorant in every sense of the word it beggars the imagination. Obama is very far from a socialist. Given his behavior during the BP fouling of the Gulf waters, he may be closer to a fascist. His heart seems to bleed for the poor dear giant corporations, whose headquarters are not even in America.
The T-Baggers choose to ignore the long and not so bright history of Corporate Welfare.
The videos here, present a version of economics that is fundamentally closer to what is actually happening in the world than anything you may have encountered thus far.
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bama's reaction, at least his public reaction, to the Wikileaks situation is not enviable. He seems perfectly content to let CIA torturers slide on by with nary a tap on the wrists; and has been firm on the "no impeachment" for George W. Bush who is a bona fide war criminal and if this were a nation which lived with the rule of law, he would have been tried in a court of law, and been serving a life sentence. If not a firing squad. Not only did Bush lie about the Iraqi governments possession, or rather, lack of possession, of weapons of mass destruction, and suppress the recommendations of the best CIA analytical intelligence in order to coax Congress to approve his invasion of Iraq. But now there are whole segments of conservatives who deny he ever did anything out of the way.