Paul Thomas Richards SUPERCONGRESS–THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST,
CIRCA 21ST CENTURY:
“ACCIDENTAL DEMOCRAT” BAUCUS
RUNS THE PARTY AGROUND
AND BANKRUPTS THE COUNTRY
On June 7, 2001, as the Marine Corps Band played “Hail to the Chief,” President George W. Bush strutted into the White House East Room to sign the “Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001,” effectively robbing $1.35 trillion from governmental treasuries to hand out, reverse-Robin-Hood-style, to multimillionaires and billionaires.
The unelected president signed every letter in his name with a different pen, each given to key Congressional supporters as mementos. One of the first pens went to U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (Corporate D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate’s powerful Finance Committee, who betrayed his own party by carrying Republican tax cuts for the UltraRich through the Senate, then split 50-50. It was the proudest and most significant achievement in Baucus’ then-27-year Congressional career.
IF PHOTO DOES NOT APPEAR ON THIS PAGE, PLEASE: CLICK HERE.
President George W. Bush signing the “Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001” in the White House East Room, June 7, 2001.
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (Corporate Democrat-Mont.), smiling, is at far right.
(“Public domain” photo courtesy of “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States,” a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office)
“Every day it looks like a better and better decision,” Baucus said at the June 2001 White House ceremony, referring to the onslaught of class warfare that he, Bush, and Cheney had so successfully unleashed. “In many respects, I think, politically, I helped the party. We Democrats would have been in trouble in 2002 just saying ‘no’ to every one of the president’s proposals.”
Political observers cringed when Baucus, from a wealthy preeminent Republican family whose members heretofore had all run for state and federal offices as Republicans, claimed the Democratic Party as his own.
Never involved in the party before first attaining elected office, Baucus was an accidental Democrat at best, heeding advisors who bluntly told him he would not be elected to a state legislative seat in 1972 from Missoula, Montana’s most progressive city, unless he ran as a Democrat.
When the U.S. Supreme Court (zero percent jurisdiction over Florida’s state election laws) relied on John Ellis, George W. Bush’s cousin, paid by Fox (Faux) “News” to arbitrarily, but officially, “call” the election for Bush before votes had been counted; ordered the State of Florida (100 percent jurisdiction over Florida’s election law) to stop counting votes in the 2000 general election; forced the State of Florida to declare George W. Bush had somehow won in Florida, despite the wholesale absence of accurate vote tabulations; and then unConstitutionally appointed George W. Bush, the loser, as president, and Dick Cheney, the loser, as vice-president:
Most Americans hoped and prayed that, since Bush and Cheney were never elected, they would extend olive branches to Democrats, who held the evenly-divided Senate.
But, with Corporate Democrat Baucus–now the fourth most powerful person in Washington, D.C.–firmly in the Bush/Cheney camp, chopping Bush’s firewood, and carrying Bush’s tax subsidies for billionaires–those hopes were dashed.
“As President-elect (sic) Bush has made very clear, he ran on a particular platform that was very carefully developed,” said vice-president appointee Dick Cheney.
“It’s his program, it’s his agenda, and we have no intention at all of backing off of it. It’s why we got elected (sic). So, we’re going to aggressively pursue tax changes, tax reform, tax cuts, because it’s important to do so. The suggestion that somehow, because this was a close election, we should fundamentally change our beliefs; I just think is silly,” Cheney concluded.
As non-Baucus Democrats predicted, the Bush/Cheney/Baucus tax cuts eviscerated budget surpluses from the Clinton era, eliminated the entire $5.6 trillion surplus predicted for the next eight years, and burgeoned the federal deficit by 51 percent.
In early 2007, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found tax rates for middle-income Americans climbed upwards in 2004, the most recent year for which data were available, while tax rates for higher-income Americans declined under the Bush/Baucus tax cuts.
“TOO BIG TO FAIL:”
With SO MANY massive taxpayer-funded “Bailouts” and “Subsidies”—ALL Paramountly Antithetical to “Free Market Capitalism”—so generously provided by low and middle income taxpayers to SO MANY “Too Big to Fail” Wall Street firms; bankers; insurers; inside traders; hedge funders; debt-to-equity leveragers; short-sellers; sub-prime mortgagers; GSE (“Government-Sponsored Enterprises,” such as “Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac” ) housing “bubblers” (bubble blowers and bubble bursters; sometimes in tandem, sometimes at each other’s throats); tax dodgers; collateralized-debt-obligation con artists; ill-informed boosters; speculating swindlers; corrupt loophole-creating lawyers and loophole-exploiting lobbyists; worthless “credit derivatives” promoters; toxic “assets” peddlers; default bettors; Ponzi schemers; offshore “investment” banksters; money launderers; amazingly creative and immoral bookkeepers with “accounting” pliable enough to fit any intent or circumstance; insurance, banking, savings and loans, and auto industry CEOs, CFOs, COOs; and unethical officers and board members that collectively comprise “The Richest One Percent Club:” What follows could be questioned.
But, careful review of data shows the Bush/Cheney/Baucus tax subsidies for the UltraRich as perhaps the greatest transfer of wealth and power in the shortest amount of time, from low-to-middle income Americans to multimillionaires and billionaires, ever accomplished in America; possibly excluding the Congressional land grants (giveaways) in the second half of the 1800s of 200 million acres of public land to railroads, the then-largest corporate powers with the most clout in Congress.
THE RICHEST ONE PERCENT GET RICHER:
Those earning more than $1 million a year saw their taxes drop the most, with the largest subsidies going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, who reaped averages of $100,000 a year.
The rich clearly get richer, especially those lucky and so very elusive “Job Creators.” This carefully-chosen moniker is purposeful: Fundamentalists and Apocalyptic Christians now leading the Republican Party just LOVE iconic God-like imagery.
Far-right strategists understand that strong so-called “Christian values” messaging and consistent utilization of such “sanctified” language ultimately mean far less resistance from spineless Democrats.
WHILE 99 PERCENT GET POORER:
The fact that low and middle income taxpayers further subsidizing the richest one percent of Americans does NOT create ANY new jobs doesn’t matter a whit. What matters is public perception!
BUSH AND BAUCUS TANK THE NATION’S ECONOMY:
In 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service projected 10-year revenue losses from the Bush/Cheney/Baucus tax subsidies to One Percenters at $2.9 trillion, with an additional $606 billion in interest, for a combined total of $3.5 trillion.
The Congressional Budget Office in 2010 estimated extending the Bush/Baucus tax subsidies for the wealthy from 2011 to 2020 would add $3.3 trillion to the national debt, comprising of $2.65 trillion in foregone tax revenue plus another $660 billion for interest and debt service costs.
BAUCUS REAPS THE DIVIDENDS:
While the nation foundered under the enormous losses incurred by Bush’s, Cheney’s, and Baucus’ tax subsidies for multimillionaires and billionaires; Baucus’ gambit paid off handsomely for himself. The Senate isn’t called “The Millionaires’ Club” for nothing. Every Senator getting backdoor pay increases of $100,000 a year is peachy keen! That’s another hundred grand “spending around town” cash, about which taxpayers and other suckers will never know, into each Senator’s already-bulging wallet or purse.
Beyond personal enrichment, as the federal budget surplus began disappearing and the deficit steadily climbed, Baucus raked in more special-interest cash than any other senator, according to a 2006 Public Citizen report that reviewed the years 1999 to 2005.
“WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS”–BAUCUS SPENDS $34.46 PER VOTE!
For his 2008 reelection, Baucus extracted an astounding $12 million from K Street lobbyists for Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Finance, and other industries Baucus “regulates,” as chairman of the canonical U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Actual Montanans (remember them?) shelled out a full 5 percent of “their” U.S. Senate candidate’s funding. After all was said and done, Baucus had spent a mind-boggling $34.46 per vote!
Before the “batshit crazy” U.S. Supreme Court appointments of Bush and Cheney; Democrats represented people, while Republicans represented money. That all changed with Baucus, the raised-rich-and-Republican accidental Democrat holding the fourth most powerful position in Bush’s and Cheney’s Washington, D.C.
Baucus lowered the bar to where pro-corporate alleged “Democrats” now represent money just as obsessively and venally as Republicans. Forget Democracy. Now, it’s strictly “Pay to Play.” Should they protest, The People be damned! Let them eat cake…
CAN YOU SAY: COUP D’ÉTAT?
To ensure deification of plutocracy, the increasingly “activist” U.S. Supreme Court pushed Democracy off the precipice: UnConstitutionally interfering with a state’s election laws; stopping that state from counting its votes for president; and, then, unilaterally appointing the loser of the 2000 election as president was as blatant as a brass knuckled sucker-punching groin-kicking coup d’état can get.
A truer gentleman, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, wrote, in mourning: “What must underlie petitioners’ entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.”
BUSH THE UNELECTED’S PERMANENT STATE OF WAR:
With the nonelected “chickenhawks” Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, their erratic recycled “Cold Warrior” Secretary of Defense/War, promoting wars everywhere at all times against everybody, bills piled up big-time.
It costs a lot to train, install, and then continually bribe every dictator! Just ask our past carefully-recruited and extensively funded CIA “assets:” Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
As for American military forces occupying between 130 and 140 foreign countries; damn straight these countries have the oil and gas, pipelines, forests, water, minerals, and other amenities we need to pay for our eternally carrying the “White Man’s Burden”!
If you dared question the panicked Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Fox/Murdoch insanity/inanity of the day—If you dared represent Truth: The United States regularly recruits, hires, trains, funds, and arms the likes of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden worldwide; there were no WMDs, no al-Qaeda links, and no enriched uranium in Iraq; Osama bin Laden was not in Afghanistan; the planned invasions of Columbia and Iran were as overtly stupid and unwinnable as invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan; you were harshly and publicly judged an “enemy,” even a “terrorist,” to be attacked, censored, censured, kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered; all with no arraignment, counsel or trial.
BUSH THE UNELECTED REPEALS 900 YEARS OF CIVILIZED LAW:
Bush the Unelected revoked civilized law, when he repealed habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Magna Carta 900 years ago: “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the land.”
BUSH THE UNELECTED VIOLATES GENEVA CONVENTIONS.
BUSH THE UNELECTED PROMOTES WIDESPREAD TORTURE AND ABUSE OF WAR VICTIMS AND PRISONERS:
Bush the Uneleced desecrated nearly-unanimous worldwide sympathy extended to the United States after the tragedies of September 11, 2001; by authorizing routine torture and abuse of prisoners–most of them noncombatants–in direct violation of four Geneva Convention Treaties signed by the United States and of three other Geneva Protocols that govern treatment of war victims and prisoners.
BUSH THE UNELECTED REJECTS 235 YEARS OF PUBLIC DISCOURSE:
Bush the Unelected insulted every independent-thinking person in the World when, on September 20, 2001, he told a joint session of the U.S. Congress: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
Bush the Unelected shocked every man and woman in uniform by ordering the terrorists to “bring it on!”
NONELECTED “CHICKENHAWK” COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF INVITES ENEMIES TO ATTACK U.S. TROOPS!
U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) said he couldn’t believe Bush’s “irresponsible and inciteful” (inciting) language.
“I am shaking my head in disbelief,” Lautenberg said. “When I served in the Army in Europe during World War II, I never heard any military commander—let alone the Commander-in-Chief—invite enemies to attack U.S. Troops!”
As for the closest chain of command, how could brave soldiers NOT be stirred into battle by Chickenhawk Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld’s inspirational, lucid, and motivational eloquence? “There are known knowns,” Rumsfeld carefully explained on February 12, 2002. “There are things we know we know,” he continued. “We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know, but there are also unknown unknowns. The ones we don’t know, we don’t know.” 4
OBAMA AND DEMOCRATS EMBRACE BUSH’S AND CHENEY’S INFAMOUS “DARK SIDE”:
Aerial bombardments of anything; tortures and black ops everywhere; black budgets and black bases anywhere; targeted assassinations against whomever we don’t like at the moment; massive prisons out in the middle of nowhere holding thousands of people proven guilty of nothing; and other perversities conjured by Dick Cheney’s infamous “Dark Side” are now the norm.
The change in administrations from Bush/Cheney to Barack Obama/Joe Biden has meant nothing. Contrary to oft-declared and much-appreciated campaign promises; Guantanamo remains open, torture continues unabated worldwide, and wars, up a couple more in Africa, continue, with Afghanistan now the U.S.A.’s longest war, costing half a trillion dollars.5
President Obama’s Military/Industrial/Surveillance Complex now captures and stores two billion of Americans’ private e-mails and telephone calls a day, reports the New Yorker.
NO DEMOCRACY ABROAD EQUALS NO DEMOCRACY AT HOME:
Do Indigenous Peoples particularly enjoy being militarily occupied by ham-handed Americans determined to steal their resources?
If not, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Obama, and Baucus are right: To ensure resources for the One Percenters to maintain their coveted livestyle; low-to-middle income Americans must forever finance endless wars against infinite enemies abroad–Not only with their hard-earned money, but with their crimson blood; because military enlistment is the ONLY way most low-income and middle-income folks can get access to decent health care and post-high school educations.
As for the needy back in the “HomeLand”–Bush’s, Cheney’s, and Rumsfeld’s Nazi-esque jargon, so heartwarming for them, so heartrending for us—Obama, his henchmen Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina, Baucus, and other pro-Corporate weak-kneed “Democrats” apparently believe the public must quit “whining” (yes, that’s the word they use) and appreciate unAmerican Corporate personhood, ultimate Corporate dictatorships, and a domestic police state enforced by heavily-armed right-wing paramilitary “SWAT Teams” and clandestine “Drug Task Forces” controlling every American community.
EMPIRE AND DEMOCRACY ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.
So, now we have a “SuperCongress”6 of dubious Constitutionality, comprised of “SuperPeople,” (aka: Severely-compromised out of touch “Entitled Aristocrats,” like Baucus and Congress’ many other multimillionaires), that is meeting in secret behind closed doors, cutting deals, and setting things right.
Will the “SuperCongress:”
1. Defund the Military/Industrial/Surveillance Complex’s endless countless overseas wars against civilian populations and infrastructures; and restore all of these so-very-desperately-needed funds back to domestic U.S. priorities, such as: Education, nutrition, health care, clean air, pure water, and mass transit?
2. Most importantly: Restore civilian rule back to the United States of America, by reasserting Congress’ Constitutional powers to stop illegal presidential and bureaucratic war-making and to impeach Big Money’s disastrous “bought-and-paid-for” “activist” U.S. Supreme Court for halting a general election; unConstitutionally appointing a favored family friend, far too stupid to earn the position, as President; subverting our Constitution and slogging ever-deeper into dead-end Corporate fascism; a paramilitary police state FAR more invasive than anything previously imagined by even the most paranoid?
Will Washington D.C. politicians “Do the Right Thing,” just as DC comics’ heroes or even stars in Spike Lee films? Does former Nazi and Inquisition leader, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, now calling himself Pope Benedict XVI, shit in the woods?
FEDERAL BUDGET/SUPERCONGRESS SPOILER ALERT:
FORGET ALL BIBLICAL NONSENSE ABOUT “PLOWSHARES!” 7
THE SMART MONEY IS INTO “SWORDS!” 7
The United States of America spend more money on war than all other countries combined.
Don’t expect Baucus, Obama, or any “SuperCongress”6 to address the two-thirds (66 percent) of our federal budget devoted to killing people; occupying their countries with 1,000 military bases; and protecting Big Oil, the rich Corporatocracy, Big Media, and their wholly-owned subsidiaries— Congress, Supreme Court, President, and their farcical Tweedledum-Tweedledee Democrat-Republican duopoly.
It should be noted that, in their federal budget analyses, the fiercest Berserkers against government deficits and federal debt–Tea Partiers, Fox “News,” and other far right wingers–REFUSE to acknowledge paying off massive interest, continually accruing from expenditures on prior wars, killings, invasions, and occupations; as part of the federal budget.
So, their “heads-permanently-stuck-in-the-sand” figures run closer to 60 percent of the budget for present and future killings. The most dishonest, like Fox, cook the books even further, jimmying down the costs of so many wars-without-end, by tossing Social Security, an entirely separate budget, into the mix. (Adding unconceivable hypocrisy, the most Patriarchal right-wing Americans: War-demanding Apocalyptic Christians and war-loving Fundamentalist Christians consider themselves strongly “pro-life.”)
On the other hand, well-informed experts in the field peg war and military expenditures at about 70 percent of the total federal budget; when interest past due and “black operations” are factored.
In truth, there is no definitive percentage, as Congress is not informed on black operations and black operations’ costs are never exposed. The public never knows where we are building dozens of top secret black ops bases. These black ops bases never appear on maps and their budgets are never subjected to Congressional approval.
In general, once a country is occupied with covert black ops bases, the chances are minimal those bases will ever close and maximal that overt warfare against that country’s and/or adjacent countries’ civilian populations and infrastructures will soon commence.
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES:
As for early-20th Century American labor organizers’ cries for “Bread and Roses,” both are most certainly “off the table,” to use the odious term with which “Big Pharma Baucus” Imperially and immediately dismissed public health care options preferred by most Americans.
Baucus’ years-long arrogance against the public; his so-extremely-painful-to-witness public fumbling and bungling of health care; his steadfast devotion to subsidizing billionaires and TOTAL public revulsion against Baucus’ last-second desperate attempts to force a 1,900-plus-page bill containing $1.27 trillion of pure adulterated “pork” (well, “lard,” actually) through the final days of the 2010 Democratic Congress were everything the Republicans needed to take over the U.S. House in 2011, capture the Democrats’ now- rudderless, meaningless, and dysfunctional U.S. Senate; and even the White House in the 2012 elections; with Baucus, the $12-million man himself, biting the dust in November 2014.
SO, GUNS GALORE “ARMAMENTS ‘R US” U.S.A. HAS NO BREAD AND NO ROSES.
Just bereaved pensioners; homeless vets; disabled and elderly Medicare and Medicaid patients; countless millions suffering from joblessness, depression and mental illness, poor education, no mass transit, no health care, minimal nutrition with 45 million Americans relying on Food Stamps (now called “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” or “SNAP”), and upon winter heating assistance for their very survival; desperately clawing and fighting amongst themselves for the crumbs from the One Percenters’ tables, as if their very lives depended upon it. For, they do.
EXPECT NO RELIEF FROM ACTIVIST U.S. SUPREME COURT:
Relief is nowhere in sight. The now alarmingly “activist” U.S. Supreme Court remains permanently stuck in “batshit crazy” mode, ruling that: Whoever has the most money has the most “ free speech;” Big Government owns and controls every female American’s womb; Big Government has the right to dictate IF fully-informed, consenting adult Americans can love, WHO we love, and HOW we love. Under the falangist Scalia Court, Big Government even proscribes if we marry and who we must choose as spouses!
According to today’s “activist” U.S. Supreme Court, the miracle of Life itself can now be patented, owned, and exploited by Big Corporations–taking both immorality and slavery to extremes not seen since 1857, when the Supreme Court ruled, seven-to-two, that Americans of discernible African descent were ineligible for citizenship in the United States of America, “the Land of the Free.”
To notorious One Percenters like Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts, that creepy brain-dead black guy, and their ilk: Americans of color are not people; but Corporations of any stripe ARE people!
Yes, these decadent off-shores-based transnational unAmerican Corporations sucking the life’s blood from our dying American Empire and our own polluted, corrupted nation; are somehow actual living, breathing “people,” with all inherent Constitutional privileges of “personhood;” BUT―quite conveniently―NO accompanying unsavory liabilities of us mere mortals, such as paying taxes or dying!
BIG NEWS—DEMOCRATS HAVE GIVEN UP REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE!
It is hardly news that inmates have taken over the asylum on the Potomac.
But, it is indeed news that Democrats, so perfectly bovine in blissful and wholesale denial of the inevitable butchering sure to ensue, have now given up representing the People; instead preferring corpulence, so generously proffered at copious corporate feedlots.
CRY, MY BELOVED COUNTRY:
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Francis Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have no clue who these corporate-shilling so-called “Democrat” Pretenders are; spending an obscene $34.46 for every single vote!
FDR, JFK, RFK, and MLK would never believe their beloved America, in the greatly-anticipated 21st Century, is now a country where poor people starve, can’t get homes or jobs, can’t receive good educations or medical care, and ultimately die; due to so many, many, many resources diverted to endless overseas invasions, wars, and military occupations; all loyally facilitated by cheerleading and obfuscation from Big Media–directly owned by defense contractors or fully controlled through interlocking boards and staffs from the Military/Industrial/Surveillance Complex’s perpetual war machine.
BAUCUS DILIGENTLY MAINTAINS THE STATUS QUO:
But, hey, inside the Beltway, the rich are just fine, thank you very much.
U.S. Sen. Baucus (Corporate D-Mont.) is now ranked by GQ Magazine as the fourth most powerful person in Washington, D.C.
“He may represent a state populated by only 967,000 people,” writes GQ, “but as chairman of the committee that controls the money and as the recipient of very large amounts of lobbying dollars per citizen represented, Baucus controls the fate of every bill to affect all 300 million Americans.
“Health care? Cap and trade? Light rail? All roads lead through Baucus. Although he has a reputation for not playing nice with fellow senators, when the White House hires staff partly because of their close ties to him, he has all the friends he needs,” concluded GQ, referring to Jim Messina, who GQ ranked as 25th most powerful; served as Baucus’ Chief of Staff, President Barack Obama’s Deputy Chief of Staff, and, ominously, is now campaign manager for Obama’s 2012 reelection bid.
In an “only-inside-the-Beltway” absurdity comparable to Obama’s hiring Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner to straighten out economic chaos they created; corporate Democrat Baucus, still doling out $3.3 trillion to $3.5 trillion of taxpayer-provided subsidies to America’s multimillionaires and billionaires, is now the key player in the 12-member “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction,” or “SuperCongress,”6 charged with cutting at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY?
To date, Baucus has expressed no regrets or apologies for his pivotal role in defunding local, state, and federal governments; limitless funding for the One Percenters, with all their “Too Big to Fail” scams; and other lobbyists-concocted schemes that bankrupted the country and caused economic tailspins worldwide.
PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY?
As for public accountability for what Bush, Cheney, and Baucus did in 2001: Forget it. Experienced reporters with the prerequisite skills to handle this story were fired, laid off, or bought out years ago.
With extremely few exceptions; Corporate media, purposefully preoccupied with cheap, tawdry, mind-numbing “McNews,” “LifeStyles,” unbridled celebrity gossip, ad nauseam; have left this whole sordid story of the enormous costs of subsidizing the Wealthy and enforcing their Corporate Imperialism and dictatorships across the globe uncovered.
Why stir a hornet’s nest? It will just upset their Big Media/Big Military/Big Everything bosses; considerably enriched by and quite grateful for the grandiose “cover” provided by Bush’s, Cheney’s, and Baucus’ trillions in tax subsidies and resultant “Class Wars,” for which Corporate Media happily blame America’s 99 Percenters; hapless victims all.
BIG MEDIA ARE THE ONE PERCENTERS!
There is no more “news” in Big Corporate Media; just as there are no more “beats,” with no more well-informed “reporters” covering them.
Instead, “talking points” are established by Big Media, big advertisers, and the anti-democratic “military-industrial complex” so accurately described by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his phenomenally prescient “Farewell Address,” delivered January 17, 1961, during his final days as President.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” warned President Eisenhower, the only military general elected president during the 20th Century.
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
“We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together,” concluded Eisenhower in his final statement as president. 8
GENERAL ELECTRIC’S NEWS DIVISION:
For example, do you really think General Electric’s Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, or any other interchangeable GE Talking Head (GE’s first prominent Talking Head was a washed-up 1930s broadcaster and 1940s B movie actor named Ronald Reagan, who morphed into GE’s highly-paid bunkum huckster from 1954 to 1962), is going to tell you that GE, a principle “defense” contractor, nuclear weapons builder, and arms exporter that receives billions from our government, paid NO taxes in 2010 on $5 billion in U.S. profits and $14.2 billion in worldwide profits?
How about GE/NBC flacks Brokaw or Williams disclosing that, even though it paid no taxes, GE milked $4.7 billion in tax subsidies in 2008, 2009, and 2010; from actual U.S. taxpayers. Attention 99 Percenters: That’s US!
Or, can we count on GE’s “news” sycophants letting us know that five top GE executives paid themselves annual salaries totaling $75.9 million in 2010? Or, will GE’s “news” division even let us know how much it pays Williams to spin the news (approximated at $10 million annually)?
Some news outlets (not GE’s NBC, of course) did point out that, more than 40 years ago, GE was alerted by its own in-house engineers about severe dangers posed by the six nuclear power plants GE designed for the coastline of Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. As experts so accurately predicted, in March 2011, the Fukushima nuclear reactors exploded and experienced core meltdowns, in the world’s greatest nuclear power disaster since the spring 1986 fires, explosions, and reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl, Ukraine.
To summarize: Can you say the word: “Meltdown”? Brokaw and Williams can’t. Or, won’t. You get the idea.
TALKING HEADS’ TALKING POINTS:
President Eisenhower’s stern warnings notwithstanding, Big Media’s “talking point” edicts are sent down the food chain to poorly-paid and badly-treated minions, with strict orders to stay “on message.” Those that don’t or who occasionally lapse into vestigial ethics are summarily fired.
As a result, the young and preciously naïve MBAs now running corporate newsrooms actually consider nuclear power safe. They are one in believing, as the delusional Cheney (refer to above quotes), that Bush and Cheney were actually elected or that Afghanistan can actually be conquered.
VELVEETA NEWS:
These purposefully ill-informed publishers and editors quaintly refer to their totally-demoralized and highly-transient reporters-converted-into-stenographers as: “content providers.”
Instead of working what-used-to-be-their “beats,” Big Media’s absurdly few surviving “content providers” haunt increasingly smaller and ever-more-cloistered newsrooms; cynically keeping each other “on message;” eternally copying, cutting, pasting, and “processing” their corporate “product,” “content,” “filler,” or whatever other trash is so generously tossed their way by extravagantly-compensated corporate flacks; back-stabbing pundits; other Beltway insiders and lobbyists; Big Media’s soothsayers; Big Military’s current and retired Top Brass; “embedded” (in-bedded) so-called “journalists;” unAmerican Corporations with whom Big Media and Big Military incestuously merge; celebrities’ public relations personnel; and politicians’ myriad spin doctors.
DEMOCRATS FRAUDULENTLY BLAME “TEA PARTY” FOR ECONOMIC DISASTER―NOT BAUCUS!
Democrats now fraudulently blame the nascent Big Oil-f unded “Tea Party,” which didn’t even exist when Baucus carried Bush’s tax subsidies for billionaires through the U.S. Senate, for the country’s financial meltdown and resultant downgrading of the U.S.A.’s credit rating!
In a September 26, 2011, fund-raising letter that fails entirely to mention the radical economic shifts and exponential rippling that Bush and Baucus are bringing down upon us all with their 2001 tax breaks for billionaires, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), reproves: “The recent ‘Tea Party downgrade’ of our credit rating is the last straw!”
“No matter what they say, the Republican plan is just George W. Bush all over again,” claims Reid, as he asks for even more money from loyal but ever-so-ignorant Democrats to stop “the GOP’s radical agenda. More wasteful tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, more special giveaways to special interests, and still no help for working families.”
BIG MEDIA’S ECHO CHAMBER:
Media stenographers, sans Fox of course, dutifully report Democrats’ false allegations that everything is the “Tea Party’s” fault, with no reference to corporate Democrat Baucus’ seminal persona.
After work, Corporate Media’s ever-diminishing staffers, clinging by their very fingernails to miserable always-on-the-chopping-block corporate jobs, partake in enough alcohol or THC to temporarily anesthetize their complicities.
If it were only 20 years earlier, they could tune into The Tonight Show on NBC and watch Johnny Carson’s late night comedic character “Carnac the Magnificent,” who answered questions before even seeing or hearing them, utilize his amazing psychic abilities to predict the following, come late-November:
LOOT AND BOUNTY APLENTY SPELL MUNIFICENT THANKSGIVINGS FOR BILLIONAIRES AND, OF COURSE, CONGRESS;
LUMPS OF COAL FOR THE LUCKIEST YOUNG, JOBLESS, POOR, SICK, HOMELESS, ELDERLY, AND DISABLED AMERICANS;
NADA FOR THE REST; AND
EVERMORE BLANK CHECKS FOR WARS, BOMBS, INVASIONS, OCCUPATIONS, AND KILLINGS.
Baucus’ “SuperCongress”6 must report to both House and Senate by November 23, 2011, with both houses constrained to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” and no filibusters or amendments allowed.
©2011, Paul Thomas Richards
EDITOR’S NOTES:
1. Please stay tuned for future installments of “The Best and the Brightest, Circa 21st Century” and Dispatches from the Wildlands™, when we begin exploring Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ favorite “pork.” Having undergone 11 surgeries in recent years, I need financial help to conduct this needed research. I welcome any and all support from inquisitive fans and readers, editors, agents, and publishers committed to accountability for public officials and government. Please contact me at: Paul@PRMediaConsultants.com .
2. RE: “The Best and the Brightest.” In 2001, Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter David Halberstam (1934 – 2007) said he named his 1972 classic about the United States’ wars against Southeast Asia, “The Best and the Brightest,” to refer to military, industry, and political insiders who, instead of diplomacy, insisted on “brilliant policies that defied common sense.” (These policies included: Massacres; “carpet bombings;” killing entire forests, forest inhabitants, and watersheds throughout Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos with deadly toxins; destroying most agricultural, civilian and religious infrastructures, including vital dikes and waterways thousands of years in the making; draining and mining rice paddies and other agricultural lands; slaughtering water buffaloes (the Vietnamese “tractors”); forcing farmers and other rural Vietnamese into concentration camps (or, in CIA-speak: “strategic hamlets”); drug running; tortures; assassinations; and other terrorism against civilian populations).
3. A significantly shorter version of this piece appeared in the monthly news magazine, In These Times.
4. Slate has compiled a collection of what Slate calls Rumsfeld’s “Poems,” containing Rumsfeld’s exact quotes, every bit as lucid as the above, from official transcripts. Political masochists CLICK HERE for more of Rumsfeld’s imaginative wisdom.
5. For up-to-the-minute costs of American wars since 2001, go to: http://costofwar.com/en/.
6. Since no amendments will be allowed and all other publicly-elected senators and congressional representatives are excluded from all decision-making; this possibly unConstitutional, or, at the very least, extraConstitutional “SuperCongress,” or “Super Congress” is far more powerful than any type of Congressional “committee,” “SuperCommittee,” or “Super Committee” —All terms preferred by Big Corporate Media, since their use of “Committee” conveys false impressions of public participation and accountability.
7. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah II: Verse IV).
8. Not only were Gen. Eisenhower’s January 17, 1961, “Farewell Address” forewarnings about the Military/Industrial Complex prescient, they were extremely significant historically.
Almost 166 years earlier, America’s first great military leader, General George Washington, named President by unanimous consent from both the Constitutional Convention and Electoral College, had also warned Congress against “Pretended Patriotism,” Foreign Wars, and “Mischiefs of Foreign Intrigue.”
Gen. Washington, the American Colonies’ most prominent leader in their successful Revolution against the monopolistic and dictatorial “British East India Company,” then one of the world’s largest “mega-corporations,” knew, from a lifetime of first-hand experiences, the extreme dangers of war.
So, on September 19, 1796, as the new United States of America’s first retiring President, Gen. Washington, in his own seminal “Farewell Address” also cautioned Congress about ill-advised foreign wars:
“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican Government.
“But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it.
“Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.
“Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favourite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
“Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world;—so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it;—for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements.
“I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.—I repeat it therefore let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense.—But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
“In offering to you, my Countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression, I could wish,—that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our Nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of Nations.
“But if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit; some occasional good, that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism, this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.”
9. A journalist with more than 44 years’ experience, Paul Thomas Richards has covered politics and resource issues in the American West since 1968, serving as editor or co-editor of three newspapers, newsman and editor for The Associated Press, and elections manager for The AP, UPI, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC. Richards founded and produced a successful radio news network; founded and hosted a political television interview program; founded and managed a news service for weekly newspapers; and authored a syndicated political column.
Richards owns a leading consulting firm for nonprofit organizations and Indigenous Peoples, PR Media Consultants®, Public Interest Media Since 1968™, near the community of Boulder, Mont.; works as a professional writer and editor; and contributes Dispatches from the Wildlands™, located on-line at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/ to AlterNet.
More Dispatches from the Wildlands™ at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/
Biographical information at: http://www.PRMediaConsultants.com
More biographical information at: http://www.Richards2006.us
COMING SOON! Watch for: http://www.DispatchesfromtheWildlands.info
“In Wildness is the Preservation of the World.”
Henry David Thoreau
April 23, 1851; Concord, Massachusetts
