Remember: Today is Friday and all the important stuff happens between 4:30 pm Friday and 7 pm Sunday. Read at least two foreign news sources this weekend. You might be surprised at what you discover. Al Jazeera, BBC News, and the Guardian are good starting places.
Here is the first draft of the Foreword from my upcoming book: Going Backstage with the HIdden Persuaders and Their Schemes
Soon my book will be available on Lulu publications in paperback and in the form of digital download (for a nominal fee of $5)
Happy weekend.
iflizwerequeen
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Foreword
We are at a crossroads in our history as a nation. If the majority of ordinary citizens like you and me from Main Street don’t take a stand, turn our backs on the millionaire plutocrat leadership in Washington D.C. and take the reigns of our Democracy, not only will the middle class be wiped out, but much of the working class as well. Many of us will be reduced literally to the status of beggars.
In place of public education, our children will be put to work for pennies. If you don’t believe this then you haven’t heard of the school voucher scheme that Betsy DeVos and the other billionaire families (Koch, Mellon-Scaife, Olin, etc.) are pushing in Republican legislatures all over the USA. These plutocrats want to replace our public education with school vouchers for tuition to private schools. If you think that these vouchers would cover the cost of a child’s education in a private school, you are wrong. If you think that the majority of American parents can afford to make up the difference between what the voucher covers and the cost of a private education, you are wrong.
So what will happen to our children? They will be put to work. Republican governors like Paul LePage of Maine are pushing for legislation to dismantle child labor laws. If Governor LePage gets his way, children in Maine as young as 11 years of age will be able to work. Of course, in keeping with the Republican dogma that labor should be free, these children would be paid $5.00 an hour instead of the minimum wage rate.
In a piece that he wrote on March 29, 2002, titled THE SMOKE MACHINE, Paul Krugman warned that the “vast right-wing conspiracy” is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality and that is works like a special-interest lobby:
” . . . It’s a shame that so much of David Brock’s ‘Blinded by the Right: The conscience of an ex-conservative’ is about the private lives of our self-appointed moral guardians. These tales will sell books, but they may obscure the important message: That the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality, and that it works a lot like a special-interest lobby. . . The scandal machine that employed Mr. Brock was, in effect, a special-interest group financed by a handful of wealthy families–men like the Rev. Sun Myung Moon whose cult like Unification Church owns ‘The Washington Times’; and Richard Mellon Scaife who bankrolled the scandal-mongering ‘American Spectator’ and many other right-wing enterprises. It was effective because the typical news consumer didn’t realize what was going on.
The group’s efforts managed to turn Whitewater–a $200,000 money-losing investment into a byword for scandal, even thought an eight year, $73 million investigation never did find any evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. . .
Clearly scandalmongering works. . . all too readily [people] assume that where there’s smoke there must be fire–when in reality it’s just some angry rich guys who have bought themselves a smoke machine. . . .”
SOURCE:
The Great Unraveling, Losing Our Way in the New Century; Paul Krugman; The Smoke Machine – March 29, 2002; pages 269-271; W.W. Norton & Company; IBSN 0-393-32605-5 pbk.
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I agree with Krugman. There is a conspiracy against the majority of us who live on Main Street and it is largely led by right-wing ideologues. However, if you think that liberal millionaires and billionaires are all that different, then you number among those who are hoodwinked. A plutocrat is a plutocrat. It is true that right-wing conservatives want the entire cake, but it is just as true that the Democratic wealthy are only willing to throw crumbs to the rest of us. Neither party is willing to invite those of us from Main Street to sit down at the banquet table with them and dine.
This book tells the stories of how the plutocrats maintain control and what we can do to take it back and create a democracy that works for all of the people—not merely the upper 2%.
Now is the time to organize for 2012. Now is the time to wary of the “grass roots” movement such as the “Tea Party” that was funded by billionaire David Koch. They will be working harder than ever in the coming months selling us their propaganda and lies.
Turn away from them. Run for office yourself. Support your neighbor whom you know and trust.
We outnumber them and that scares them senseless—as it should. We are the ones with the power and they know it. Too bad that most of us on Main Street don’t realize it because that is the ONLY reason that the upper 1% remain in control of us–because we allow them to. We even invite them to. We must wake up before it is too late–not only for us, but for our children as well.
