Christine O'Donnell
We are entering the final leg of one of the craziest and most exhausting political seasons in history. This year the GOP has fielded the most extreme and unhinged candidates in recent memory. With her talk of refusing to pay for maternity care, Nevada senate candidate Sharon Angle, who beat out a woman who wanted people to barter chickens for healthcare, was the kookiest candidate on the block, but then along came Minnesota GOP senate candidate Christine O’Donnell, who dabbled in witchcraft, lied about her college education and also fudged her dad’s history as the official Bozo the Clown.
This would all be amusing, but there is something deadly serious about their message. It is clear from some of their statements that the GOP/Tea Bag candidates want a return to a form of government that seems to look at lot like feudalism. And by that, I mean they want a society where the landed gentry controls everything and the peasants eke out a living as dirt farmers.
More evidence of the GOP’s contempt for the poor can be seen in statements from Alaska GOP senate candidate Joe Miller, who recently called the minimum wage unconstitutional. Linda McMahon, a GOP senatorial candidate in Connecticut, has echoed Miller’s ideas. Miller is also against unemployment insurance, even though his wife used it after she quit her job,
Many of these current GOP candidates want to strip the government down to its most limited functions. They claim that federal and state workers control the government through their powerful unions. (God forbid that unions actually lobby for decent wages and benefits.) GOP candidates would do away with unions, worker rights and labor laws, allowing bosses (the landed gentry) to have all the power.
California GOP candidate Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, wants to do away with about 40,000 state jobs in a bid to streamline government and make it more businesslike. But here is the dirty little secret. That work still needs to be done. Someone needs to arrest criminals, process government paperwork, write tickets or do the other mundane government tasks we take for granted.
And this is where the second part of the GOP’s plan to restore feudalism comes into play. Whitman has said that she plans to make government more efficient by turning these government jobs over to private firms. So what will probably happen is that a firm will take over the government contract for a couple of million, and then farm out the work of 10 people to two contractors. If the contract is worth $20,000 the owner will probably keep half, and split the rest among the contractors, who also don’t get benefits and can be fired at will.
However these contracts will probably end up going to companies with ties to the Whitman campaign or even companies that she owns. She is supposed to be a smart business woman, so I doubt if she would spend $140 million of her own money and not expect some kind of return. This kind of situation has happened before, under the George W. Bush administration which mastered the art of crony capitalism. After the Iraq war. massive no-bid contracts were given out to Halliburton, which was formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton also has contracts to supply and feed troops, jobs that used to be performed by the military at a lower cost.
If the GOP wins, it won’ t just stop at state contracts. Republicans have their eyes on other government services such as Medicare and Social Security. They may claim they want to make these programs more efficient, but its all about money. The plan to privatize Social Security, which Sharon Angle said she was for then against, has been called the next big heist. Wall Street stole trillions of dollars from working Americans through the Great Mortgage Crash, and now it has social security in it sights.
It will be the same scenario if the GOP gains power, they’ll push through legislation authorizing the privatization of Social Security. People will be encouraged to open private accounts, that means trillions of money for Wall Street, and more potential victims.
Wall Street will play on Americans’ greed, just like they did with the Housing Bubble. Sign up for this complicated savings plan, which you don’t understand, and you might get 50 percent more in your retirement account. What they won’t tell you is that you also might lose your shirt, and your broker gets a commission for every customer he steers towards a certain investment fund. (This has happened before.) Also, your broker is going to charge you monthly fees for watching your money. This has been tried before, under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and workers found they ended up getting less money because of broker fees. According to a 1995 article in the New York Times by Larry Rohter: “Even many middle-class (Chilean) workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts - burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment - are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.”
If history repeats itself, Wall Street will create another bubble that will explode, and the federal government will be forced to bail out the banks -- again. This has happened at least twice before, with the Savings and Loans crisis (total cost $124.6 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office), and the recent Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout, which bailed out banks drowning in the mortgage crisis to a tune of up to $700 billion.
This form of crony capitalism will create a new generation of robber barons (feudal lords) whose wealth is based on their proximity to the government. If you want to see how this ends, look at Russia which is now controlled by a few oligarchs who became fabulously wealthy after the fall of Communism. During this time, a handful of men became overnight billionaires because they were able to cut shady deals with their political friends.
One of the most controversial oligarchs is Roman Abramovich, a 43-year-old, worth about $11 billion and the 50th richest person in the world. Abramovich made his fortune after he bought Russia’s oil and gas company on the cheap during the post-communist Yeltsin era and resold it for a huge fortune, during the rush to privatization. (There’s that word again.). In Russia he is a controversial figure because he is seen to have defrauded the people, but in Britain he is a somewhat popular figure because of he is the benefactor of Chelsea Football Club.
If GOP politicians get elected they will enact polices that will create hundreds of Abramovichs. You have been warned.
This would all be amusing, but there is something deadly serious about their message. It is clear from some of their statements that the GOP/Tea Bag candidates want a return to a form of government that seems to look at lot like feudalism. And by that, I mean they want a society where the landed gentry controls everything and the peasants eke out a living as dirt farmers.
More evidence of the GOP’s contempt for the poor can be seen in statements from Alaska GOP senate candidate Joe Miller, who recently called the minimum wage unconstitutional. Linda McMahon, a GOP senatorial candidate in Connecticut, has echoed Miller’s ideas. Miller is also against unemployment insurance, even though his wife used it after she quit her job,
Many of these current GOP candidates want to strip the government down to its most limited functions. They claim that federal and state workers control the government through their powerful unions. (God forbid that unions actually lobby for decent wages and benefits.) GOP candidates would do away with unions, worker rights and labor laws, allowing bosses (the landed gentry) to have all the power.
California GOP candidate Meg Whitman, former CEO of Ebay, wants to do away with about 40,000 state jobs in a bid to streamline government and make it more businesslike. But here is the dirty little secret. That work still needs to be done. Someone needs to arrest criminals, process government paperwork, write tickets or do the other mundane government tasks we take for granted.
And this is where the second part of the GOP’s plan to restore feudalism comes into play. Whitman has said that she plans to make government more efficient by turning these government jobs over to private firms. So what will probably happen is that a firm will take over the government contract for a couple of million, and then farm out the work of 10 people to two contractors. If the contract is worth $20,000 the owner will probably keep half, and split the rest among the contractors, who also don’t get benefits and can be fired at will.
However these contracts will probably end up going to companies with ties to the Whitman campaign or even companies that she owns. She is supposed to be a smart business woman, so I doubt if she would spend $140 million of her own money and not expect some kind of return. This kind of situation has happened before, under the George W. Bush administration which mastered the art of crony capitalism. After the Iraq war. massive no-bid contracts were given out to Halliburton, which was formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton also has contracts to supply and feed troops, jobs that used to be performed by the military at a lower cost.
If the GOP wins, it won’ t just stop at state contracts. Republicans have their eyes on other government services such as Medicare and Social Security. They may claim they want to make these programs more efficient, but its all about money. The plan to privatize Social Security, which Sharon Angle said she was for then against, has been called the next big heist. Wall Street stole trillions of dollars from working Americans through the Great Mortgage Crash, and now it has social security in it sights.
It will be the same scenario if the GOP gains power, they’ll push through legislation authorizing the privatization of Social Security. People will be encouraged to open private accounts, that means trillions of money for Wall Street, and more potential victims.
Wall Street will play on Americans’ greed, just like they did with the Housing Bubble. Sign up for this complicated savings plan, which you don’t understand, and you might get 50 percent more in your retirement account. What they won’t tell you is that you also might lose your shirt, and your broker gets a commission for every customer he steers towards a certain investment fund. (This has happened before.) Also, your broker is going to charge you monthly fees for watching your money. This has been tried before, under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and workers found they ended up getting less money because of broker fees. According to a 1995 article in the New York Times by Larry Rohter: “Even many middle-class (Chilean) workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts - burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment - are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.”
If history repeats itself, Wall Street will create another bubble that will explode, and the federal government will be forced to bail out the banks -- again. This has happened at least twice before, with the Savings and Loans crisis (total cost $124.6 billion according to the Congressional Budget Office), and the recent Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout, which bailed out banks drowning in the mortgage crisis to a tune of up to $700 billion.
This form of crony capitalism will create a new generation of robber barons (feudal lords) whose wealth is based on their proximity to the government. If you want to see how this ends, look at Russia which is now controlled by a few oligarchs who became fabulously wealthy after the fall of Communism. During this time, a handful of men became overnight billionaires because they were able to cut shady deals with their political friends.
One of the most controversial oligarchs is Roman Abramovich, a 43-year-old, worth about $11 billion and the 50th richest person in the world. Abramovich made his fortune after he bought Russia’s oil and gas company on the cheap during the post-communist Yeltsin era and resold it for a huge fortune, during the rush to privatization. (There’s that word again.). In Russia he is a controversial figure because he is seen to have defrauded the people, but in Britain he is a somewhat popular figure because of he is the benefactor of Chelsea Football Club.
If GOP politicians get elected they will enact polices that will create hundreds of Abramovichs. You have been warned.
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