Comments on: Get on the phone. Now. http://grumpasaurus.com/2007/01/31/get-on-the-phone-now/ Bringing happiness and joy to the masses. Sunshine, anyone? Sat, 09 Oct 2010 05:05:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: chartoo http://grumpasaurus.com/2007/01/31/get-on-the-phone-now/comment-page-1/#comment-403 chartoo Thu, 01 Feb 2007 03:57:20 +0000 http://grumpasaurus.com/2007/01/31/get-on-the-phone-now/#comment-403 <a href="http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1896" rel="nofollow">Military-Economic Fascism: How Business Corrupts Government, and Vice Versa </a> <i>The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business―ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed. —Colonel James G. Burton Moreover, military-economic fascism, by empowering and enriching wealthy, intelligent, and influential members of the public, removes them from the ranks of potential opponents and resisters of the state and thereby helps to perpetuate the state’s existence and its intrinsic class exploitation of people outside the state. Thus, military-economic fascism simultaneously strengthens the state and weakens civil society, even as it creates the illusion of a vibrant private sector patriotically engaged in supplying goods and services to the heroic military establishment (the Boeing Company’s slickly produced television ads, among others, splendidly illustrate this propagandistically encouraged illusion) Can Anything Be Done? The short answer is “probably not.” The MICC* is deeply entrenched in the U.S. political economy, which itself has been moving steadily closer to complete economic fascism for more than a century (Higgs 1987, 2007). Decades of studies, investigations, blue ribbon commission reports, congressional hearings and staff studies, and news media exposés detailing its workings from A to Z have scarcely dented it (Higgs 2004). For the most part, the official scrutiny is just for show, whereas the unofficial scrutiny is easily dismissed as the work of outsiders who don’t know what they are talking about, not to mention that they are “America haters.” </i> * military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3799314405910661612" rel="nofollow">The Secret Government</a> . Military-Economic Fascism: How Business Corrupts Government, and Vice Versa
The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business―ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed.
—Colonel James G. Burton

Moreover, military-economic fascism, by empowering and enriching wealthy, intelligent, and influential members of the public, removes them from the ranks of potential opponents and resisters of the state and thereby helps to perpetuate the state’s existence and its intrinsic class exploitation of people outside the state. Thus, military-economic fascism simultaneously strengthens the state and weakens civil society, even as it creates the illusion of a vibrant private sector patriotically engaged in supplying goods and services to the heroic military establishment (the Boeing Company’s slickly produced television ads, among others, splendidly illustrate this propagandistically encouraged illusion)

Can Anything Be Done?

The short answer is “probably not.” The MICC* is deeply entrenched in the U.S. political economy, which itself has been moving steadily closer to complete economic fascism for more than a century (Higgs 1987, 2007). Decades of studies, investigations, blue ribbon commission reports, congressional hearings and staff studies, and news media exposés detailing its workings from A to Z have scarcely dented it (Higgs 2004). For the most part, the official scrutiny is just for show, whereas the unofficial scrutiny is easily dismissed as the work of outsiders who don’t know what they are talking about, not to mention that they are “America haters.”

* military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC)

The Secret Government
.

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