The word “Socialism” hangs over our nation like a perpetual storm cloud. The air that surrounds that cloud is rife with ill-defined and unnamed particles that tend to poison our minds as well as our rhetoric about issues and problems that affect our daily living. The emotional effects of that word “socialism” rain down upon us like fictional myths and illusory tenets that have too often obscured truth and reality.
If one were to ask random samples of people on the street and elsewhere: What is ‘socialism’? – one can only imagine the variety of answers one would receive, undoubtedly ranging all the way from social cooperation to communism.
That is perhaps the main problem we face in trying to explain, or to debate, socialism: there is no one definitive definition of ‘socialism’, just as there are multiple theories that go into defining the concept of ‘capitalism.’
The aims of today’s Blog are to:
1. attempt an understanding of some of the elements that are most common to various definitions of “socialism”
2. try to define what Trump is peddling as “socialism”
3. explore a concept that needs more adequate discussion: a “corporate socialism” (sometimes referred to as “crony capitalism”).
First, a variety of definitions of “socialism”:
“…various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism)
“Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management.” (Wikipedia)
“Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.“ (Wikipedia)
“a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” (Oxford dictionaries)
“(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism” (Oxford dictionaries)
It appears from this variety of definitions that some common elements of socialism include:
1. socialism seems to be a system of social organization (perhaps only in theory in some instances);
2. some variation of social or communal ownership is involved: (see Wikipedia’s second paragraph of definition above)
3. however, where ownership by the community is implemented (by a government, a commune, a cooperative), one of the most important elements in that ownership is that everything involved in production, distribution and exchange is controlled by that community owner
4. finally, there seems to be an element of controlled planning involved.
It is not clear exactly what Donald J. Trump means whenever he mentions “socialism,” because his intent is not to educate or illuminate. Whenever he trots out the “socialism” flag, Trump intends that the negative connotations voters already possess will be projected onto the Democratic Party; mainly its progressive wing. When he cites examples to describe what is happening in terms of progressives or democratic socialists turning our society into a socialist one, the best he can muster is a list of programs, like:
- Obamacare (since private insurance companies are still in control of health insurance and other aspects of medical care, this isn’t socialism)
- Medicare-for-all. (use of private physicians, clinics, therapists, etc. negate this as a socialist program)
- New Green Deal. (not socialist at all since private entrepreneurs will undoubtedly continue to control parts of this major evolution to 100% renewable energy sources)
- Social, entitlement, safety net, welfare programs. (since they tend to involve government as well as private providers, programs like Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, etc. also fail the socialism test)
In other words, Trump intends to spread the false impression that all social programs requiring involvement of government agencies in some manner (funding, providing services, formulating regulations, or simply making regular payments) are equivalent to rampant socialism.
BUT they are not, simply because: (1) a number of separate governmental social programs are not equivalent to a total system of social organization under government control, and (2) all three elements of production, distribution and exchange are not under complete government control in most “social insurance” programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps or Housing subsidies). Private ownership or administration of any one of those elements negates socialism.
Trump’s definition of "socialism" apparently includes anything that might restrict the capitalistic system that has benefited him and his family and other members of the top 1% who own 90+% of the entire wealth of this country. What he really opposes is not “socialism” but government oversight of capitalism. He does not want any interference with his insatiable hunger for profit.
As usual, Trump has not been entirely consistent. It appears that ‘socialism’ is just fine when it involves government control over certain areas of society and the economy. Let us count some ways this man contradicts himself by supporting certain forms of government-controlled programs:
1) a VA system that is controlled by the federal government in terms of every aspect of veteran care and support. It is federally funded; all services are administered and delivered by government employees; and all the recipients are also veterans of government employment.
2) a military system with federal employees in charge of operations, distribution, and payment for services, overseen by non-military federal employees
3) the federal Tax Code; the same Code that Trump has admitted he has used often to his advantage. The federal government organizes it, maintains it, and pays out the benefits; the private sector has no visible part in it except as recipients. This is “corporate socialism.”
The key to this “corporate socialism” lies in the dirty little secret that it’s continuing operations are under the controlling influences of wealthy individuals and corporations. Back-room, back-channel and back-water agreements, conspiracies, and consultations with government are the lifeblood of the system. Lobbying efforts alone are gigantic, and deals are made between the parties (government and recipients) on a regular basis to make sure this form of “corporate socialism” continues virtually forever.
Here are just some of the ways in which our taxes end-up supporting the welfare of the rich (thanks to Huffington Post for the outline and some details):
1. State and local subsidies to corporations: it has been calculated that state and local governments provide at least $80 billion in subsidies to corporations with 48 big corporations receiving over $100 million each. GM was the biggest, at a total of $1.7 billion extracted from 16 different states, but Shell, Ford and Chrysler all received over $1 billion each. Amazon, Microsoft, Prudential, Boeing and some casino companies received well over $200 million each.
2. Direct federal subsidies to corporations: The Cato Institute estimates that federal subsidies to corporations cost taxpayers almost $100 billion every year.
3. Federal tax breaks for corporations: The tax code gives corporations special tax breaks that have reduced what is supposed to be a 35-percent tax rate to an actual tax rate of 13 percent, saving these corporations an additional $200 billion annually, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
4. Federal tax breaks for wealthy hedge fund managers allow them to pay only a 15-percent rate while the people they earned the money from usually pay a 35-percent rate. The National Priorities Project estimates this costs taxpayers $83 billion annually.
5. Subsidies to the fast food industry: Research by the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley documents that taxpayers pay over $240 billion each year in indirect subsidies to the fast food industry because they pay wages so low that taxpayers must put up those billions to pay for public benefits for their workers.
6. There are hundreds of smaller special breaks for corporations and businesses out there. There is a special subsidy for corporate jets, which costs taxpayers $3 billion a year. The tax deduction for second homes costs $8 billion a year. Fifty billionaires received taxpayer-funded farm subsidies in the past 20 years.
7. “One major example of corporate socialism in the past few decades has been the use of tax havens abroad by multinational companies to avoid corporate income tax. A 2015 study conducted by the Citizens for Tax Justice and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that the largest 500 companies in the U.S. keep more than $2.1 trillion in tax havens.” (The Hill.com)
The Huffington Post article concludes: “If you want to look at the welfare for the rich and corporations, start with the federal Internal Revenue Code…the King James Bible of welfare for the rich and corporations. Special breaks in the tax code are the reason that there are thousands of lobbyists in the halls of Congress, hundreds of lobbyists around each state legislature and tens of thousands of tax lawyers all over the country.”
Written and maintained over many decades by both political parties, the Tax Code is a trough from which the wealthy feed off our government, and off the other 99% of taxpayers, without much fear of accountability. Whatever happened to those old phrases that elicit the fervor of capitalists everywhere: “laissez-faire” or “the free market” or “free trade”?
Isn’t the provision of free governmental (taxpayer) money to individuals what these capitalists decry? Isn’t that the kind of “socialism” they rail against? If memory serves, this is exactly what those same capitalists claim creates a dependent society of idlers, of takers, of irresponsible citizens. And yet, the government largesse they receive does not, in their warped view, deserve any criticism or oversight…?
In other words, YOU ARE BEING BAMBOOZLED if you think the threat to this country is from social welfare payments through special government programs for those individuals who need a helping hand. That simplistic analysis is what most people seem to accept without question or investigation. And that is where the fear of “socialism” originates.
While millions of voters continue to bask in such gross miscalculation and ignorance, the wealthiest in this country are robbing us blind with the cooperation of certain officials in our government. Instead of learning the truth about corporate socialism, we still fail to see what they are doing to the VAST MAJORITY. (For more detail, see my postings of 3/3 and 3/10/2016)
- It is not by accident that social welfare for the rich far outweighs welfare for the poor and otherwise challenged populations; (by about 2 to 1 according to several web sites)
- It is not by accident that the vast number of citizens being robbed of their tax dollars are kept in the dark about the real social welfare fraud (‘corporate socialism’) of having their tax dollars stolen by the rich to spend on self-aggrandizement.
- It is not by accident that those who work for a living and pay their taxes with fewer and fewer allowable deductions are being fed a line that is wholly untrue – that government programs for those who are poor and/or challenged equate to a socialism that controls every aspect of life and work. That is pure nonsense.
- IT IS A CALCULATED STRATEGY of mainly conservative capitalists -- who benefit enormously from the current Tax Code and Tax Rate Schedule -- that the more voters they can scare with the unexplained ‘flag’ word “SOCIALISM,” the greater their chances of acquiring even more lucrative benefits from the tax payments of lower bracket tax payers.
- WORSE: THEIR CALCULATED STRATEGY IS WORKING!
Let’s get down to the bottom line on this: we are being taken to the cleaners by a group of people and corporations professing to be “free-market” capitalists who oppose something called “socialism,” which they define as “government interference with a free market,” or “government handouts” to people who don’t deserve the largesse of government because they are, by and large, not earning their own way. They characterize these people as “parasites” drawing down the hard-earned dollars that the rest of us pay as taxes.
“Socialism” for them comes down to government over-regulation of their profit-making and putting their tax money in the wrong pockets! They want it all, and they are out to get it! And the way they get it is to control how government functions!
So, let us call them out for who they are: these are “national socialists” masquerading as capitalists. They believe in authoritarian government, ethnic (white) nationalism and economic cooperation between the state and capital enterprise. They believe that government is one more entity to control; one more tool for supporting easy profits, and one more source of revenue to confiscate. These are capitalists who hide their motives; these are corporate socialists who control people and governments and organizations with money that dictates who can do what to whom. They don’t hire lawyers and lobbyists and fixers for show; they hire them to do all the work necessary to get rid of government regulation -- like directing the flow of tax money into their accounts; fixing whatever elections or official appointments they can, monetarily supporting (‘bribing’) officials and office-holders who can help them the most; keeping them safe from “the Law”.
Control of government is what they seek, and all the free market rhetoric and capitalist jargon is inside language for keeping their real intentions under wraps. Donald J. Trump is the epitome of such fabrication, and the fact that he sometimes parades it in public dismays these national socialists who don’t want their strategies and lies to be in full view of everyone lest too many citizen consumers catch on to their conspiracy and their form of socialism. This type of national socialism existed in many European countries in the 1930s and '40s, notably in Germany and Italy, and is re-emerging both there and here in this century.
By electing (and using) Donald Trump, these national socialists have already captured control of the U.S. Senate and are closing in on the Judiciary. They already control our elections and are intent on winning back the House in 2020, while maintaining the Senate and the White House. They are already filling the Republican campaign coffers through their PACs and are continuing to back Trump with their wealth.
DON’T BE BAMBOOZLED! Social programs and policies that insure help for the basic needs of families in our society (attention to the “General Welfare” as prescribed in our Constitution’s Preamble) administered by government and distributed by private vendors and agencies are NOT the source of societal dysfunction or disruption, and do not fit the full definition of “socialism.”
Rather, it is the national corporate socialists who are seeking to bring government and society under their conspiratorial control. They are the ones pulling the strings of government and they are the ones who keep workers and unions and women and wage-earners and society itself in check the better to control their own destiny and future profit-margins.
Targeting the right perpetrator is often half the battle. Instead of wasting money and dubious effort to cut Food subsidies, subsidized housing, Head Start, WIC and every “social service insurance” program, we need to shift focus to concentrate on what certain candidates for high office are attempting to tell us.
Our enemy is not the public insurance programs (like Medicaid and Medicare) funded and distributed by government through mainly private entities. The real culprits are those corporations who pay little or no taxes; who control elections and legislation with their wealth; who dictate terms of Trade deals with other countries; who seek to establish private ownership of schools and colleges so that their ‘kind’ never again need to support public schools, but can spread their agenda at private institutions of learning.
If we don’t focus our sights on the right target, we shall follow the lead of Donald Trump into the black hole of a national socialism that favors dictatorial power, subjugation of the poor; control of the middle class and restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, religion, etc. Meanwhile, the already wealthy will continue to confiscate all the profit they can from a cooperative government and a consuming public controlled by an elitist aristocracy accumulating benefits from a Tax Code that escapes any meaningful oversight by anyone.
If we don’t get it straight in 2020, we may never have another chance. The walls of national socialism are closing in, and wannabe Fuhrer Donald Trump is in league with the builders of those walls.
That’s why he has spent his time in office:
- capturing the Congress and Judiciary and the Republican Party
- de-constructing government departments by appointing loyal heads that do only his bidding
- grabbing onto other authoritarian countries and leaders who are eager to answer his call to interfere in our elections and our institutions
- leading many to believe that he knows everything that is needed to make America Great Again
- putting himself in the center of every issue and every controversy and creating diversions as needed
- making himself the source and imperial leader of this national socialist movement that seeks eventual control of every aspect of our government
Our first line of defense is to impeach Trump and/or to reject him and his co-conspirators in the U.S. Congress (especially the Senate) at the polls. Then we can turn our full attention to dismantling the web of deceit and abuse, the power and control of those corporate socialists who rob the rest of us every day of every year by manipulation of our federal Treasury.
Corporate socialism is the scary culprit we must target, not the social insurance programs that under gird the general welfare of our people.
REJECT TRUMP and HIS LIES!
VOTE AGAINST CORPORATE SOCIALISM!
If one were to ask random samples of people on the street and elsewhere: What is ‘socialism’? – one can only imagine the variety of answers one would receive, undoubtedly ranging all the way from social cooperation to communism.
That is perhaps the main problem we face in trying to explain, or to debate, socialism: there is no one definitive definition of ‘socialism’, just as there are multiple theories that go into defining the concept of ‘capitalism.’
The aims of today’s Blog are to:
1. attempt an understanding of some of the elements that are most common to various definitions of “socialism”
2. try to define what Trump is peddling as “socialism”
3. explore a concept that needs more adequate discussion: a “corporate socialism” (sometimes referred to as “crony capitalism”).
First, a variety of definitions of “socialism”:
“…various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism)
“Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management.” (Wikipedia)
“Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership. There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them, with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.“ (Wikipedia)
“a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.” (Oxford dictionaries)
“(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism” (Oxford dictionaries)
It appears from this variety of definitions that some common elements of socialism include:
1. socialism seems to be a system of social organization (perhaps only in theory in some instances);
2. some variation of social or communal ownership is involved: (see Wikipedia’s second paragraph of definition above)
3. however, where ownership by the community is implemented (by a government, a commune, a cooperative), one of the most important elements in that ownership is that everything involved in production, distribution and exchange is controlled by that community owner
4. finally, there seems to be an element of controlled planning involved.
It is not clear exactly what Donald J. Trump means whenever he mentions “socialism,” because his intent is not to educate or illuminate. Whenever he trots out the “socialism” flag, Trump intends that the negative connotations voters already possess will be projected onto the Democratic Party; mainly its progressive wing. When he cites examples to describe what is happening in terms of progressives or democratic socialists turning our society into a socialist one, the best he can muster is a list of programs, like:
It is not clear exactly what Donald J. Trump means whenever he mentions “socialism,” because his intent is not to educate or illuminate. Whenever he trots out the “socialism” flag, Trump intends that the negative connotations voters already possess will be projected onto the Democratic Party; mainly its progressive wing. When he cites examples to describe what is happening in terms of progressives or democratic socialists turning our society into a socialist one, the best he can muster is a list of programs, like:
- Obamacare (since private insurance companies are still in control of health insurance and other aspects of medical care, this isn’t socialism)
- Medicare-for-all. (use of private physicians, clinics, therapists, etc. negate this as a socialist program)
- New Green Deal. (not socialist at all since private entrepreneurs will undoubtedly continue to control parts of this major evolution to 100% renewable energy sources)
- Social, entitlement, safety net, welfare programs. (since they tend to involve government as well as private providers, programs like Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, etc. also fail the socialism test)
In other words, Trump intends to spread the false impression that all social programs requiring involvement of government agencies in some manner (funding, providing services, formulating regulations, or simply making regular payments) are equivalent to rampant socialism.
BUT they are not, simply because: (1) a number of separate governmental social programs are not equivalent to a total system of social organization under government control, and (2) all three elements of production, distribution and exchange are not under complete government control in most “social insurance” programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps or Housing subsidies). Private ownership or administration of any one of those elements negates socialism.
Trump’s definition of "socialism" apparently includes anything that might restrict the capitalistic system that has benefited him and his family and other members of the top 1% who own 90+% of the entire wealth of this country. What he really opposes is not “socialism” but government oversight of capitalism. He does not want any interference with his insatiable hunger for profit.
As usual, Trump has not been entirely consistent. It appears that ‘socialism’ is just fine when it involves government control over certain areas of society and the economy. Let us count some ways this man contradicts himself by supporting certain forms of government-controlled programs:
1) a VA system that is controlled by the federal government in terms of every aspect of veteran care and support. It is federally funded; all services are administered and delivered by government employees; and all the recipients are also veterans of government employment.
2) a military system with federal employees in charge of operations, distribution, and payment for services, overseen by non-military federal employees
3) the federal Tax Code; the same Code that Trump has admitted he has used often to his advantage. The federal government organizes it, maintains it, and pays out the benefits; the private sector has no visible part in it except as recipients. This is “corporate socialism.”
The key to this “corporate socialism” lies in the dirty little secret that it’s continuing operations are under the controlling influences of wealthy individuals and corporations. Back-room, back-channel and back-water agreements, conspiracies, and consultations with government are the lifeblood of the system. Lobbying efforts alone are gigantic, and deals are made between the parties (government and recipients) on a regular basis to make sure this form of “corporate socialism” continues virtually forever.
Here are just some of the ways in which our taxes end-up supporting the welfare of the rich (thanks to Huffington Post for the outline and some details):
1. State and local subsidies to corporations: it has been calculated that state and local governments provide at least $80 billion in subsidies to corporations with 48 big corporations receiving over $100 million each. GM was the biggest, at a total of $1.7 billion extracted from 16 different states, but Shell, Ford and Chrysler all received over $1 billion each. Amazon, Microsoft, Prudential, Boeing and some casino companies received well over $200 million each.
2. Direct federal subsidies to corporations: The Cato Institute estimates that federal subsidies to corporations cost taxpayers almost $100 billion every year.
3. Federal tax breaks for corporations: The tax code gives corporations special tax breaks that have reduced what is supposed to be a 35-percent tax rate to an actual tax rate of 13 percent, saving these corporations an additional $200 billion annually, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
4. Federal tax breaks for wealthy hedge fund managers allow them to pay only a 15-percent rate while the people they earned the money from usually pay a 35-percent rate. The National Priorities Project estimates this costs taxpayers $83 billion annually.
5. Subsidies to the fast food industry: Research by the University of Illinois and UC Berkeley documents that taxpayers pay over $240 billion each year in indirect subsidies to the fast food industry because they pay wages so low that taxpayers must put up those billions to pay for public benefits for their workers.
6. There are hundreds of smaller special breaks for corporations and businesses out there. There is a special subsidy for corporate jets, which costs taxpayers $3 billion a year. The tax deduction for second homes costs $8 billion a year. Fifty billionaires received taxpayer-funded farm subsidies in the past 20 years.
7. “One major example of corporate socialism in the past few decades has been the use of tax havens abroad by multinational companies to avoid corporate income tax. A 2015 study conducted by the Citizens for Tax Justice and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that the largest 500 companies in the U.S. keep more than $2.1 trillion in tax havens.” (The Hill.com)
The Huffington Post article concludes: “If you want to look at the welfare for the rich and corporations, start with the federal Internal Revenue Code…the King James Bible of welfare for the rich and corporations. Special breaks in the tax code are the reason that there are thousands of lobbyists in the halls of Congress, hundreds of lobbyists around each state legislature and tens of thousands of tax lawyers all over the country.”
Written and maintained over many decades by both political parties, the Tax Code is a trough from which the wealthy feed off our government, and off the other 99% of taxpayers, without much fear of accountability. Whatever happened to those old phrases that elicit the fervor of capitalists everywhere: “laissez-faire” or “the free market” or “free trade”?
Isn’t the provision of free governmental (taxpayer) money to individuals what these capitalists decry? Isn’t that the kind of “socialism” they rail against? If memory serves, this is exactly what those same capitalists claim creates a dependent society of idlers, of takers, of irresponsible citizens. And yet, the government largesse they receive does not, in their warped view, deserve any criticism or oversight…?
In other words, YOU ARE BEING BAMBOOZLED if you think the threat to this country is from social welfare payments through special government programs for those individuals who need a helping hand. That simplistic analysis is what most people seem to accept without question or investigation. And that is where the fear of “socialism” originates.
While millions of voters continue to bask in such gross miscalculation and ignorance, the wealthiest in this country are robbing us blind with the cooperation of certain officials in our government. Instead of learning the truth about corporate socialism, we still fail to see what they are doing to the VAST MAJORITY. (For more detail, see my postings of 3/3 and 3/10/2016)
- It is not by accident that social welfare for the rich far outweighs welfare for the poor and otherwise challenged populations; (by about 2 to 1 according to several web sites)
- It is not by accident that the vast number of citizens being robbed of their tax dollars are kept in the dark about the real social welfare fraud (‘corporate socialism’) of having their tax dollars stolen by the rich to spend on self-aggrandizement.
- It is not by accident that those who work for a living and pay their taxes with fewer and fewer allowable deductions are being fed a line that is wholly untrue – that government programs for those who are poor and/or challenged equate to a socialism that controls every aspect of life and work. That is pure nonsense.
- IT IS A CALCULATED STRATEGY of mainly conservative capitalists -- who benefit enormously from the current Tax Code and Tax Rate Schedule -- that the more voters they can scare with the unexplained ‘flag’ word “SOCIALISM,” the greater their chances of acquiring even more lucrative benefits from the tax payments of lower bracket tax payers.
- WORSE: THEIR CALCULATED STRATEGY IS WORKING!
Let’s get down to the bottom line on this: we are being taken to the cleaners by a group of people and corporations professing to be “free-market” capitalists who oppose something called “socialism,” which they define as “government interference with a free market,” or “government handouts” to people who don’t deserve the largesse of government because they are, by and large, not earning their own way. They characterize these people as “parasites” drawing down the hard-earned dollars that the rest of us pay as taxes.
“Socialism” for them comes down to government over-regulation of their profit-making and putting their tax money in the wrong pockets! They want it all, and they are out to get it! And the way they get it is to control how government functions!
So, let us call them out for who they are: these are “national socialists” masquerading as capitalists. They believe in authoritarian government, ethnic (white) nationalism and economic cooperation between the state and capital enterprise. They believe that government is one more entity to control; one more tool for supporting easy profits, and one more source of revenue to confiscate. These are capitalists who hide their motives; these are corporate socialists who control people and governments and organizations with money that dictates who can do what to whom. They don’t hire lawyers and lobbyists and fixers for show; they hire them to do all the work necessary to get rid of government regulation -- like directing the flow of tax money into their accounts; fixing whatever elections or official appointments they can, monetarily supporting (‘bribing’) officials and office-holders who can help them the most; keeping them safe from “the Law”.
Control of government is what they seek, and all the free market rhetoric and capitalist jargon is inside language for keeping their real intentions under wraps. Donald J. Trump is the epitome of such fabrication, and the fact that he sometimes parades it in public dismays these national socialists who don’t want their strategies and lies to be in full view of everyone lest too many citizen consumers catch on to their conspiracy and their form of socialism. This type of national socialism existed in many European countries in the 1930s and '40s, notably in Germany and Italy, and is re-emerging both there and here in this century.
By electing (and using) Donald Trump, these national socialists have already captured control of the U.S. Senate and are closing in on the Judiciary. They already control our elections and are intent on winning back the House in 2020, while maintaining the Senate and the White House. They are already filling the Republican campaign coffers through their PACs and are continuing to back Trump with their wealth.
DON’T BE BAMBOOZLED! Social programs and policies that insure help for the basic needs of families in our society (attention to the “General Welfare” as prescribed in our Constitution’s Preamble) administered by government and distributed by private vendors and agencies are NOT the source of societal dysfunction or disruption, and do not fit the full definition of “socialism.”
Rather, it is the national corporate socialists who are seeking to bring government and society under their conspiratorial control. They are the ones pulling the strings of government and they are the ones who keep workers and unions and women and wage-earners and society itself in check the better to control their own destiny and future profit-margins.
Targeting the right perpetrator is often half the battle. Instead of wasting money and dubious effort to cut Food subsidies, subsidized housing, Head Start, WIC and every “social service insurance” program, we need to shift focus to concentrate on what certain candidates for high office are attempting to tell us.
Our enemy is not the public insurance programs (like Medicaid and Medicare) funded and distributed by government through mainly private entities. The real culprits are those corporations who pay little or no taxes; who control elections and legislation with their wealth; who dictate terms of Trade deals with other countries; who seek to establish private ownership of schools and colleges so that their ‘kind’ never again need to support public schools, but can spread their agenda at private institutions of learning.
If we don’t focus our sights on the right target, we shall follow the lead of Donald Trump into the black hole of a national socialism that favors dictatorial power, subjugation of the poor; control of the middle class and restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, religion, etc. Meanwhile, the already wealthy will continue to confiscate all the profit they can from a cooperative government and a consuming public controlled by an elitist aristocracy accumulating benefits from a Tax Code that escapes any meaningful oversight by anyone.
If we don’t get it straight in 2020, we may never have another chance. The walls of national socialism are closing in, and wannabe Fuhrer Donald Trump is in league with the builders of those walls.
That’s why he has spent his time in office:
- capturing the Congress and Judiciary and the Republican Party
- de-constructing government departments by appointing loyal heads that do only his bidding
- grabbing onto other authoritarian countries and leaders who are eager to answer his call to interfere in our elections and our institutions
- leading many to believe that he knows everything that is needed to make America Great Again
- putting himself in the center of every issue and every controversy and creating diversions as needed
- making himself the source and imperial leader of this national socialist movement that seeks eventual control of every aspect of our government
Our first line of defense is to impeach Trump and/or to reject him and his co-conspirators in the U.S. Congress (especially the Senate) at the polls. Then we can turn our full attention to dismantling the web of deceit and abuse, the power and control of those corporate socialists who rob the rest of us every day of every year by manipulation of our federal Treasury.
Corporate socialism is the scary culprit we must target, not the social insurance programs that under gird the general welfare of our people.
REJECT TRUMP and HIS LIES!
