Three Prongs of Satan’s Pitchfork: the How-To behind neoliberal destruction of the middle class

  1. Legislate and sanctify poverty for working people.
    • Promote  a “greed is good” and “do unto others” agenda through media, news, advertising and corrupt legislation.
    • Always cut marginal taxes for the rich and inheriting classes (2010 Tax Relief act).
    • Increase fees on working people, engendering government disloyalty, through regressive “sales”, “consumption” and “value added” taxes.
  2. Bankrupt the government safety net in favor of Wall Street.
    • Slash government services, unions and employment to shrink growth and borrowing, regardless of voter trends favoring public services and protections like the “public option” for healthcare.
    • Like the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing”, enact policies to keep government bond yields artificially low, forcing investors (pension funds, insurers and individuals) away from government and municipal debt into stocks and corporate bonds, where more investment increases under regulated corporate size and power.
    • When corporate bubbles and Ponzi schemes collapse, as they invariably do, see that taxpayers, not Wall Street, foots the bill (TARP bailout and Dodd-Frank reform act).
  3. Privatize the few remaining -- “public trust” – services voters demand from government.
    • Replace public schools with “charter” schools.
    • Provide “tuition tax credits” as subsidies incentivizing parents to abandon public education.
    • Deregulate power utilities and discharge or undermine public service commissions.
    • Legislatively enshrine private insurance over lower cost, not-for-profit, “single payer” alternatives like Medicare. (Affordability act – a k a Obama Care)
    • Provide deep financial incentives to enrich providers, insurers and investors under the mostly private, for-profit healthcare system.  (Medicare Part D)
    • Ultimately “reform” Medicare by replacing it with a private, for-profit system.
    • Enslave workers under “employer provided” healthcare based on “fee for service” provisions that render U.S. healthcare 2x the cost of any other OECD nation.

So there you have it -- the neoliberal game plan.  That’s how it was (and is today) done to we, the people, that work for a living.

Only today there’s a problem with the agenda.  Working people are fed up with it!  Since 20 Million people have become unemployed in the United States, many are ignoring neocon rhetoric from the likes of Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin in in favor of thinking for themselves.

So maybe it’s finally time to send a message to America’s glorious uber rich and the “leaders” they bankroll.  Maybe something like this:

OK, uber rich, we know you think we’re all stupid down here, at the bottom, where your family hasn’t been for generations!  We know you’d rather we keep assuming that Wall Street bankers, hedge fund traders, Koch brothers, et al turned water into wine and lead into gold to get all that money.  We know you want us to believe we had nothing to do with it; that it was all done in a vacuum.

But the fact is you’re mostly just exploiting flaws in OUR great, otherwise highly functioning, collective, capitalist, division-of-labor system;  Flaws we’ve ignored for too long;  Flaws that undermine democracy and rule of law;  Flaws that put this country at risk for collapse and chaos if we let them continue. 

We know the only thing that keeps the Koch's and Bush'es in money is OUR willing participation (stopping on red and going on green…) under an opportunistic, but presently too flawed and rigged system.

Like it or not, this is OUR America too!  And after three decades of your failed "vampire squid" capitalism, it's time for reasonable people everywhere to take capitalism and America back from your false, hoarding premise -- that the course of human existence must be dictated solely by "unmitigated self interest."

No one lives in a vacuum!  Not even the meta rich.  And it’s high time you are reminded!

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