"And if McCain does not define him as what he is — hey, I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist," DeLay said.It would be important to prove such a thing to "Hammer" DeLay, he should know something about communism, he practiced it as a House member. "Wait," you say, "I thought he was a Republican?" Yes, he is. I know he's talking about Marxism, but in practice the way it worked was communism. There was this silly little theory this guy named Marx had about economics but in practice what happened was that the elite used the worker bees to subsidize their life styles and their failures. Whatever the theory had to say about workers' paradise, the hard reality was that the unrestrained elite privatized the profits and socialized the risks. Yes, DeLay calls it by other names, capitalism, Free Market, and evokes the dead hand of Adam Smith. Poke your fingers in your ears and look at the results stripped of all the rhetorical flourishes and you see the same thing.
There is no Free Market or free capitalism, in the US. Not now and never has been. The feud between Jefferson and Hamilton was about just exactly who it was that was going to benefit from the rigging of the system. Hamilton won. Our system was set up. The system has been continuously jury rigged over the centuries but it is where it now is and a great deal of the credit lays with DeLay and his ilk of name callers. The total tax burden on a factory line worker exceeds by several multiples that of the top 1% of earners. Wealth hides its wealth from the tax burden and you buy the idea they pay huge taxes. Major corporations suck at the federal tit without competition or any real oversight. When the big money loses, a way is found to make sure that the worker bee pays for it.
The DeLays of the world have made sure that most news you get is from the corporate world. They have almost single handed presided over the death of actual news gathering and distribution. There are still a few hold outs, McCaltchy has done some good work on the heels of buying Knight Ridder, but this is still marshmallow news. They have got to be able to sell you papers and to go to war for the average American would put them so far away from their competitors that people wouldn't buy their papers. It is really easy to smell really good standing next to a sewer a week out from your last bath.
Tom DeLay is a human cockroach masquerading as a politician. Some people still take his nonsense seriously because they pay no attention to the man behind the current. Behind the curtain is K Street, Abramoff, Republican messes of broken government, corruption on a scale unseen since the Civil War, and a degradation of those who do the work to make the system wealthy. With tongue firmly in cheek they talk about family values to voters whose families skirt disaster daily thanks to their version of economics. They will talk about socialized medicine as the policy holders bear the cost and pass investment bank money onto the insurers.
These battles they wage are not about the common American, they are about keeping the wealth flowing upward. Their concern about health care regards the top of the insurance corporations and the investment banks intake of huge amounts of their money. Do you honest to god think your appendectomy is their concern? It is of huge import to you because without it you'll die and done improperly you'll die and you think it matters to someone with dollar signs and decimal points driving all their thinking?
Well sure Tom DeLay says Obama is a Marxist, any concern whatever with the welfare of the worker bees is in his mind Marxist. No one worker bee amounts to the life or death of the system, but the general health of them drives the health of all. DeLay could care less. I'm well left of Obama and I'm a capitalist so that might tell you something about what DeLay is - beyond an indicted money launderer.
10 comments:
"but in practice what happened was that the elite used the worker bees to subsidize their life styles and their failures."
This whole post makes me happy. I love seeing you put the truth out like this, I've been saying stuff like this for over 10 years, and am amazed how many people still think these abject lies are truths -- like the ultra-right are fighting for the common man, and communism as it has been practiced in the world reflects Marxism in any way whatsoever.
Nice post, and not only because I agree with it, but because you string together apparently disparate ideas into a cohesive argument. I am refreshed by your capacity.
If you're ever in Portland, let me know -- we'll share a beer or a coffee or some other beverage, and I'm buying.
Bp
Chuck,
I agree with much of what you say.
However, it is a simplification to say that DeLay, et al, have "done this to" us. The reality is that we have sat back and let them do it. Where is the critical thinking in the American electorate? Where is the willingness to get outside their zone of comfort (both politically and physically) and challenge the status quo?
We -- every single one of us -- must take ownership of our individual destiny lest it continue to be taken from us by the DeLays of the world.
Politics in this country has long since ceased to be about the common weal. It is about two things which are sides of the same coin: power and money.
I will stipulate that Barack Obama is a decent man with a genuine desire to bring reform to the system (in fact I do not know this, but, for the sake of argument, I'll say that it is so). As such, he is destined to FAIL. The forces that are arrayed against him are many and strong. In the end he will either be unsuccessful or co-opted.
I have said the following before in other fora: we have bought into the political parties' game by accepting "electability" as a valid criterion by which to select the candidates for whom we vote. This results in least-common-denominator candidates who represent -- or represent no threat to -- the status quo.
The electorate should say to hell with the fallacy of electability. We should articulate OUR key issues (not the political parties' or the press'), demand detailed and specific responses, and look at those responses hypercritically.
And we should vote for the candidate whom we believe.
The other thing that I have said before is that many of the "issues" the political parties bring to the fore are red herrings. The key issues today include things like the our foreign policy (the war and the policies that underly it), health care, the economy, energy policy and the sustainability of our society.
Gun control, abortion, gay marriage, and on and on are a smokescreen.
And, transcending all of the issues is the continued erosion of our rights and liberties. If we do not stand up for these NOW, we will not be in a position to have discussions like this one in a few years without fear of arrest.
I do not know for whom I will vote in November. It will not be McCain, but it may not be Obama, either (nor would it have been Hillary Clinton, Joh Edwards, or ...) by default. If I do not believe that he has the same appreciation of the issues as I do, and real, credible plans to address them, he does not have my vote by default.
To accept that we must vote for the candidate of party x in order to get party y out of power perpetuates the death spiral of our political system.
I ask everyone who reads this to make their vote an actof conviction, and have the courage to color outside the red and blue lines that have been drawn for us.
Make the parties accountable to us. If we fail to do so, it is not our leaders' fault that our system decays, it is ours.
Stu
The voters are responsible for whom they elect, this is absolutely the case. I also brought up the re-herrings used to coopt voters.
Do I acknowledge that Obama is a flawed candidate? I certainly do, in the context that they all are. I happen to believe he is considerably less flawed than McCain and that his failures would be better than McCain's successes.
I am a very active part of trying to improve the political scene. I have thrown myself at that wall repeatedly with heavy personaly expense and succeeded in making some slight dents. I'll take slight dents versus, "oh well, I quit."
Everything in your comment leads me to believe you'll make a reasoned vote, that's what it is about.
I'm sure I could have expanded the post to cover your points, I also have to respect my reader's patience. You will find your point made repeatedly in previous posts.
Thanks for stopping by.
bp
It would be a pleasure to sit down for drinks and political chat and etc. I'm a cheap date since I don't use alcohol, I'm a coffee addict.
You call Tom Delay a "a human cockroach," and I have to stop you right there.
What have cockroaches EVER done to merit such a low and insulting comparison?
Look: One is a disgusting, verminous life form that revels in filth, infests human habitations, spreads disease and pestilence and frightens women an children -- rightly. And the other is a cockroach.
.
Damn, Chuck. Nobody says it like you do.
No, wait, let me rephrase that. Nobody says it as well as you do.
I couldn't agree more if I tried.
Tom Delay is much much worse than you write, Chuck. Tom Delay is an out and out proponent of slavery. I'm not kidding. Look at his record in protecting the rackets of ruling party in the U.S. controlled Marianas--a system that brought over poor women from Asia who were "paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed" to ever pay back the cost of their plane tickets and "fees" for getting jobs. The products they made got to marked with the "Made in USA" label. Tom Delay personally thwarted even the mild attempts at reform other members of Congress and referred to the islands as the "perfect petri dish of capitalism." The man belongs in jail for violating the 13th Amendment.
This 2005 piece by Mark Shields has the details better than I can tell them: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/09/real.delay/
I can't think of a description of Delay low enough that it fits. Even Senator Murkowski--MURKOWSKI!--denounced Delay with the following statement: "The last time we heard a justification that economic advances would be jeopardized if workers were treated properly was shortly before Appomattox." You cannot get any lower than that.
Amen.
Great writing! Tom Delay, as all comments have observed, is a person who is evil through out.
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