I am about 2/3 of the way through Eric Alterman's Opus.
This is what we are up against: total hegemonic rule by the beltway establishment.
They have been working on this since 1967.
I suggest that you all read this piece, "Kabuki Democracy: Why a Progressive Presidency Is Impossible, for Now", if you have the heart. If you want to know what the reality is in beltway politics.
In his piece he shows us all why it is impossible in today's political reality to implement populist legislation:
Two hundred forty-three people have worked on the House banking committee staff since 2000, and 126 of them have left the committee. Of these, 62 have registered as lobbyists, largely in the financial industry, while others lobby at law firms and such without being required to fill out forms. Given that the 243 figure includes clerical and technological staff, this means that almost everyone with any expertise on the committee has gone off to sell it to the people whose work they are professing to regulate.
and
This is just the way it is. No stigma is attached. No eyebrows are raised when a staffer "moves downtown." Rather, it is "a very logical progression," according to retired committee lawyer Howard Menell. The implied transaction can be seen in the carefully coded discussions that take place at the endless stream of receptions, seminars (really, sponsored vacations) and happy hours offered by these same trade organizations, whose representatives are always happy to lend their expertise to the often harried staffer. In fact, lobbyists need not apologize for the role they play in shaping public policy for private gain in Washington according to its current cultural mores. They are celebrated for it. If you doubt this, check out the daily "Playbook," published every morning by Mike Allen of Politico, the new Bible of political self-promotion in the form of a tipsheet of what's on for the day. Reports of social gatherings, hirings, birthdays and weddings of lobbyists occupy the same space with the same importance as those of senators and editors in chief. Rather than being perceived as pimps or prostitutes, corporate lobbyists are beloved members of the new political establishment where everybody does everybody else's jobs and no hard and fast lines can be found anywhere—save those between winning and losing.
We are up against an "establishment" stronger, more ideologically aligned and more completely ruthless than ever before. This collective of capitalists/policy makes have absolutely NO loyalty to the United States of America except for how they can extract wealth from her population.
One of the most effective designers of this new strategy to destroy America's lifeblood and enslave her to foreign interests was developed by Irving Kristol, from the same article:
Indeed, the entire edifice of "supply-side economics" was constructed and promoted with this goal in mind. As Irving Kristol admitted in 1995, he "was not certain of its economic merits but quickly saw its political possibilities." What were these possibilities? To attack the "fundamental assumptions of contemporary liberalism that were my enemy…. Political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government."
And when the Reagan administration, administered by CIA chief George Bush Sr., took over, that is exactly what they did.
They deregulated the credit card industry, allowed cheap and easy credit to flow to people who were going to eventually default on their credit debts (even if it took 40 yeas) and made a killing, sometimes 10-20% gross profit on an annual basis for their loans.
at the same time the "supply siders" did their best to remove all regulation on industry and bankrupt the country with tax cuts for the wealthy, moving massive amounts of corporate funds into ultra-conservative think tanks
Neocon pundit Irving Kristol, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Robert Bartley and former Treasury Secretary William Simon made this cause a crusade through much of the 1970s and 1980s with impressive, often astonishing results. They helped channel hundreds of millions of dollars, later mushrooming into billions, into the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute and countless offshoots in Washington and elsewhere to train pundits and politicians to embrace the right-wing view of economic activity.
the end goal? the entire subjugation of the u.s. economy to international banking and corporate interests. It is trans-nationalism, there is no national loyalty for these corporations anymore. We are just "markets" and the purpose of "markets" is the extraction of wealth. The extraction of wealth to the maximum level of what the "market" can bear.
