Larry Beinhart: 2007 - Year of Madness

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The right wing business mentality sees the world as a thing to be strip-mined to achieve the greatest profits, in the quickest way, for whoever can get their hands on them. When they see something like the vast sums that pass through the social security system or imagine the oil wealth beneath the Alaskan wilderness they react like Ebenezer Scrooge looking at a pile of gold -- a big, big pile -- and they lunge forward, only to discover that there are chains on them, that keep all those riches just out of reach. They don't stop and reflect that those chains are there for good reasons. If someone tells them the reasons, they don't believe them and make up other ones that involve extremists plotting to destroy the American way of life and our moral fiber.

The Bush Administration's great innovation was to stop seeing government as the enemy of wealth, but to see it as a tool to transfer wealth from normal people to the very rich. They did this through tax policy, by running up debts, privatizing as many government functions as they could (the reconstruction of Iraq is the poster child for their successes), and by increasing the size of government so that there was more money to be handed out. They were willing to throw away the chains that Republican believed in -- fiscal restraint, balanced budgets, smaller government -- to get at the gold piles.

The Republican congress enthusiastically went along with those programs and that transfer of wealth and with it, they hoped, a permanent transfer in power.
Presumably, the new majority doesn't see government that way.
They will put forth their own initiatives and resist the administration's plans.
However, the administration won't go away. The Republican minority won't roll over and die. The right-wing propaganda and spin industry won't pack it in. The rich people, corporations and institutions who benefit from such policies aren't going to stop.

We are currently having something of a boom, at least in the financial markets.
Obviously, it has not been created by new industries, investment in infrastructure, or a widening of the middle class. Where, then, is the money coming from? It seems obvious to me that it has been created primarily by hollowing out our assets. Both public and private.
Where is the mainstream school of economists who should be explaining that? Warning of its dangers? Offering alternatives?
Where are the academic departments and think tanks to house them and to publicize their views? Where are the formulas, slogans, catch-phrases and sound bites to make them easily understood and memorable?

In 2006, we had the vote in which the realists defeated the true believers.
True believers don't lose their beliefs. Corporations don't lose the machinery by which they reach for power and influence. The greedy don't lose their greed. The corrupt don't attain purity.

2007 will be the year in which they fight back.