Re: [A-List] Re: COUP d' ETAT IN WASHINGTON

[Hudsonmi@xxxxxxx]

The only explanation I can come up with for the indeed remarkable passivity of Congress in the face of what is rightly called a coup d'etat is the almost complete control of the public media (TV and the press, along with the Pulpit in the Bible Belt which voted for Mr. Bush) in shaping votes.
       American Congressmen no longer play to voters, but to their financial campaign backers, who provide the money to buy media time. the right wing has taken over the media, and this explains last month's FCC vote to permit a single station to control 45% of the media in any given city (up from 35%).
       A majority of Americans believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam was working with Osima ben Laden, if not identical with him. they believe that Iraq was behind the anthrax scare, despite the FBI's tracing it to the US.
       Just as important, the average American worker expects to become a millionaire, and is quite happy with lowering the estate tax so that he won't have to pay any (when he gets to the $6 million threshold).
       The American voters also believe that Bush has cut taxes, although his tax cuts for the rich on their federal taxes have thrown the states and cities into such a crisis that they have had to RAISE taxes for (1) property, (2) sales taxes, (3) education, (4) transportation, (5) their own income taxes, (6) water, (7) other city services, (8) cutbacks in labor to squeeze out more "productivity," (9) cutbacks in city services from garbage collection to police and welfare (next month some 2,000 social workers are being let go in New York City alone, just from Project Liberty).
       The American public is so uninformed as to be unaware of anything Congressmen do that is positive, while the financial campaign contributors are well aware of anyone who gets "out of line."
       Besides that, a great swath of the electorate in the Bible Belt seems to care only about abortion and bringing on the Day of Judgment as soon as possible by inaugurating a war in the Middle East so that Jesus will soon appear and convert all the Jews and Mohammedans to Christianity (Southern Baptist style), worshiping the rich. Their particular bible, of course, has excised all the economic content, all the anti-rich rhetoric, the legacy of debt cancellation and so forth. Jesus will make them rich.
       This is hard to explain to someone European, where the Churches are on the left, not on the ultra right, and where there is still a modicum of class consciousness.
       Given its absence in America, you have the average opportunistic politician looking to his "constituency" of contributors and trying to get appointed to a Congressional committee that involves as many special interests as possible.
       Michael Hudson