Are you aware of the plans to bankrupt our nation?

A year ago, I wrote a long article about the goals of Karl Rove and his fellow authoritarian conspirators. The article reviewed Karl’s history, goals and underhanded planning expertise, and summarizes his plans for creating a single party state, weakening the federal government’s control over business and its assistance for disadvantaged Americans. To do this, Karl and others would bleed “the federal government of its money.” After the 2006 Bush tax cuts and years of borrowing for Bush’s occupation of Iraq, how’s the plan doing? Here’s an image to help.

Looks like Karl, Bush, et al., have been quite successful.

Compare their plan with the following quote, “So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” This statement was made in a video on October 30, 2004. The speaker in this video was Osama bin Laden.

What about plans to boost the price of oil?

Oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh reported back in May of this year that if Bush had not lied us into the invasion of Iraq, the cost of oil would be something less than $40.00. Instead, the price of oil in May was $135 a barrel. Think Progress summarized the oil price situation this way, “The Bush administration’s catastrophic decision to invade Iraq, sink the nation into debt to pay for that war, and consequently, weaken the dollar have all caused oil prices to soar astronomically.” (Do you suppose that the oil companies have more than made back their political contributions to both Bush campaigns?)

Back in 1998 a book by Jamal Abdul Latif Ismail was published. In a review of this book, Donna Abu-Nasr, of the Associated Press, provided this paraphrased segment from a 54 page interview documented in the book:

Bin Laden claimed the United States has carried out the “biggest theft in history” by buying oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. According to bin Laden, a barrel of oil today should cost $144.

The price of oil earlier this month reached $145. Bush and bin Laden are again on the same page of their respective plans. (Notice something? Bush has out done bin Ladin much as he has out done his father. Just what we need. Two global bullies trying to out do each other.)

What about where Bush and bin Ladin keep and protect their plans from public view?

On the one hand, we have bin Laden’s public plans. On the other, we have Cheney’s man-sized safe and “executive privilege.” Why do you suppose our leaders are hiding their plans? Do you suppose they realize they have something in common with our arch enemy and need to keep us from noticing?

Does it appear to you that bin Laden and our own authoritarian leaders are working toward the same end? Isn’t aiding the enemy treason? Isn’t treason a high crime? And Congress hasn’t yet initiated impeachment proceedings because …?

Karl Rove, the Authoritarian’s Architect, has already brought the authoritarian single-party state to Texas. He has also brought the national Republican Party and its authoritarian membership very close to the same goal. Then came the mismanagement of the Iraq conflict, the setback of the 2006 election and loss of absolute control of our Congress, and exposure of political manipulation of the Justice Department. All of which has temporarily sidetracked their efforts. As the sidetrack takes the authoritarian train to a long awaited total derailment, Karl and his fellow authoritarians/neocons have dug in and become ever more desperate to get the train back on track. But they are running out of time and are ready with a revised plan to make sure they still reach their irrational, oppressive, vengeful, punitive, narrow minded, mean-spirited, dogmatic, dishonest and zealous goal of permanent control over our country.

THE PLAN FOR PERMANENT CONTROL BY THE AUTHORITARIANS

Here’s a look back at The Authoritarian’s Architect – his history, his goals and his underhanded planning expertise.

In 2003, Publishers Weekly summarized Bush’s Brain in this way, “The complete subordination of public policy to political calculation is the theme of this hard-hitting biography of über-advisor Karl Rove. … It’s a colorful story, full of dirty tricks, misleading attack ads and sleazy whispering campaigns that drown out the issues. To the authors, Rove’s “co-presidency” marks “the apotheosis of the permanent campaign,” with everything from farm subsidies to steel tariffs to the saber-rattling against Iraq a part of his carefully considered mid-term election plans. The authors’ line on Rove is by now conventional wisdom, but they bring it to life with a wealth of detail, painting nuanced character studies of Rove, the driven intellectual with an abrasive edge and an iron will to win, and Bush, the callow anti-intellectual with a charming air and a need for discipline and a game plan. … ”

In July 2006, Publishers Weekly summarized the Republican Plan for Dominance in this way, “… the authors note that political hegemony today has less to do with a party’s popularity than it does with pinpoint marketing, judiciary packing and artful gerrymandering. … Nevertheless, Rove has relied not upon Bush’s charisma, but rather pro-industry regulation to build Republican war chests, careful selection of congressional candidates, and grassroots campaigning of the sort that used to be the province of Democrats. From lobbying to single-issue marketing to co-opting traditional Democratic constituencies (Hispanics, African Americans, Jews, immigrants), the authors find that the Republican machine appears to have identified and commodified every potential vote in the nation. ”

In September 2006, Publishers Weekly summarized Karl Rove’s Master Plan in this way., “This bold follow-up to journalists Moore and Slater’s bestseller, Bush’s Brain, takes a provocative look at how Karl Rove used George Bush’s various campaigns and presidency to engineer nothing less than the assertion of a long-term Republican hegemony and the complete dismantling of the Democratic Party. To make their case, they draw on a wide range of materials, including interviews and reportage done by other journalists to demonstrate how Rove mobilized his party’s base, forging an unlikely alliance between religious and economic conservatives, while mounting targeted assaults on gays and lesbians, trial lawyers and labor unions. Yet in this narrative, his bid for a complete realignment of American politics begins to derail with the failure of Bush’s Social Security reform plan, the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, the failed nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and, most significantly, the implication of Rove in the leak of CIA employee Valerie Plame’s identity. In this damning but scattered account, Rove remains an elusive, almost inhuman figure, despite short digressions about his relationship with his gay stepfather and his weekly brunches with members of the White House and RNC teams during the reelection campaign.”

THEIR PLAN STARTS TO UNRAVEL

In August 2004, James C. Moore, co-author of Bush’s Brain, was a BUZZFLASH guest contributor. The following excerpts provide details on Karl’s plans.

Bush’s Brain will die happy the day he achieves his two greatest goals. The first of these is to turn the U.S. into what is fundamentally a one-party system. Secondly, he wants the federal government to have so little money that it can do nothing to get in the way of business interests; nor will it be able to sustain any kind of socially progressive assistance for disadvantaged Americans.

To create this single-party system without Democrats, The Authoritarian’s Architect’s plan is to eliminate the financial support from their three main sources – as they did in Texas:

… tort reform in Texas [or across our nation] was not about bringing more justice to the courtroom. It was a step in taking away the ability of trial lawyers to make contributions to Democrats.

Step two is to destroy unions. They, too, give greatly to Democrats.

… Jewish voters in America have contributed as much as 40 percent of the funds for the Democratic Party … Their money is critical to Democratic issues and Rove wants to get as much of it over to Republicans as possible. To do this, he has simply had the president step back from criticizing Israel [and bring in all the pro Israel neocons he can muster]. … When I asked why the switch he said simply, “He cares about Israel.” This man is now a Bush Pioneer and has raised $100,000 on three occasions for the president.

Based on recent campaign receipts for Democrat candidates, it appears this part of The Authoritarian’s Architect’s plan is failing. Karl and his neocon brethren must be even more stressed and concerned over their future and loss of power.

As for bankrupting our government, Mr. Moore explained:

When Rove has finally dried up the lifeblood of the Democratic Party, he will guide the president and congress in a direction that begins to bleed the federal government of its money.

Eventually, the Washington bureaucracy will be a vestigial organ, a government that cannot govern because it has no money. There will be no social programs to help the poor. Businesses will develop risky products without the risk of liability and the great institutions, which have nurtured the growth of our nation, will begin to falter and fail.

It appears that this part of The Authoritarian’s Architect’s plan is working. First there is the Iraq sink hole that is now ‘tankering’ $12,000,000,000.00 per month or $144,000,000,000.00 per year. (Do you remember who else wants to bankrupt this nation? Osama bin Ladin. Did someone say, “aiding and abetting…”) Add to this huge outflow the 2006 tax cut for the rich and the authoritarians are well on their way with this goal.

But then there is the buffoonery of Alberto Gonzales, the poll on Republican candidates that shows “none of the above” is winning, and the huge volume of contributions flowing to the Democrat candidates. They still have plenty to worry about. The Republican Party could be on its death bed.

SAVING THEIR PLAN FROM SELF DESTRUCTION

On July 16, 2007 Dr. Paul Craig Roberts discussed The Authoritarian’s Architect’s recovery plan in a CounterPunch editorial. This editorial concerns the possible abuse of Executive power through new the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive released on May 9, 2007.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of “executive orders” that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, “terrorist” events in the near future.

… The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is “praying for a terrorist strike” to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the “unitary executive” at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush’s declaration of “national emergency” ….

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that “between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s (sic) going to have a very different view of this war.”

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging “terrorist” attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?

(Do the authoritarians have another goal in common with Osama bin Laden — Another attack on the US?)

ONE STEP CLOSER FOR US

The next step in their plan, announced today: revising FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978). This law was passed after attempts by the Nixon Administration to bypass the checks and balances of the Congress.

A LITTLE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Speaking of terrorist attacks, here’s a little historical perspective from Democratic Underground.com:

Germany – February 27, 1933: It started when the government… received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings… When an aide brought him [Hitler] word that the nation’s most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference. “You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history,” he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. “This fire,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, “is the beginning.” He used the occasion – “a sign from God,” he called it – to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion. – Thom Hartmann, March 16, 2003.

The above depiction by Thom Hartmann of the beginning of Nazi Germany’s “War on Terror” took place less than a month after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.

Almost 75 years later, as we in the United States are faced with a president and vice president who increasingly make it clear that for the duration of their self-proclaimed “War on Terror”, they are to be held accountable neither to the rule of law nor to the Constitution that they swore to defend and protect, Americans (and especially their representatives in Congress) would do well to recall a similar period in German history.

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO BUSH

With Hitler’s quotes in mind, here is a speech penned by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, during a very informative Thom Hartmann interview on Air America about his CounterPunch editorial cited earlier. In this speech, Dr. Roberts anticipates what G Dubya will tell us after a so called “terrorist attack.”

My administration knew that there would be more attacks from these terrorists who hate us and our way of life and are determined to destroy every one of us. If only more of you had believed me and supported my war on terror these new attacks would not have happened. Our security efforts were impaired by the Democrats determined attempts to surrender to the terrorists by forcing our withdrawal from Iraq and by civil libertarian assaults on our necessary security measures. If only more Americans had trusted their government, this would not have happened.

Let’s start with this quote from John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience, “But Karl Rove has all the credentials of a right-wing authoritarian, and if he has a conscience, it has hardly been in evidence …. He is conspicuously submissive to authority, exceedingly aggressive in pursuing and defending the policies and practices he embraces … and he is highly conventional. As a political strategist, Rove appreciates the values of fear, so it is not surprising that he proclaimed that the 2006 midterm elections would be won or lost based on how frightened Americans are about terrorism.”

Now for a summary of Karl’s authoritarian experience at building “bad barrels.” The first examples are excerpted from Right Web’s profile of Karl:

In 1970, Rove stole 1,000 sheets of letterhead from the office of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon, who was running for state treasurer. Rove printed the message “Free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing” on the sheets and distributed them as a supposed invitation to a Dixon rally. Though the rally was disrupted, Dixon won the election. Rove owned up to the stunt many years later, saying: “It was a youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it” (Washington Post, July 23, 1999).

Rove went to work for the College Republicans National Committee and became involved in the Nixon campaign, which brought him to the attention of then-CIA director George H.W. Bush. In a 2003 article on Rove, Robert Reich reported: “It’s no accident that Karl Rove was one of Richard Nixon’s moles. Using techniques developed by his first mentor, dirty-tricks strategist Donald Segretti, Rove infiltrated Democratic organizations on behalf of Nixon’s infamous 1972 campaign.

Karl Rove and Another Law Breaker –
at the 4 min mark

In 1986, Rove, in Texas and working on a campaign for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Clements, declared that Democrats had bugged his office. The accusation, which spurred an FBI investigation, never panned out, leading critics to charge that Rove had bugged his own office.

In late 1999, there was wise speculation that Rove was behind the whisper campaign alleging that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), then a leading contender for the Republican nomination for president, was in danger of cracking from stress of having been a POW in Vietnam (Nation, March 5, 2001).

In 2002, the BBC reported: “The White House has acknowledged that Rove took part in meetings that helped shape the Bush government’s energy policy, while he still held Enron shares and stock in other energy companies—though the administration denies that the meetings were specific enough to raise conflict-of-interest.”

Widely believed to be involved with the leak that revealed CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity [2003], Rove is being sued by Plame and her husband; also named as defendants in the suit are Vice President Dick Cheney and I. Lewis Libby, as well as Richard Armitage, who admitted in September 2006 to being the actual source of the leak (Washington Post, September 13, 2006).

Rove is also believed by many to be behind another, perhaps more vicious whisper campaign against McCain during the race for the presidential nomination (Democracy Now, September 3, 2004). “Anonymous opponents used ‘push polling’ to suggest that McCain’s [adopted] Bangladeshi-born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. …”

During Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign, Rove was accused of being connected to the so-called Swift Boat veterans whose efforts to denigrate John Kerry’s Vietnam record seemed cribbed directly from the “Rovian” playbook.

From Rove, Still In the Mix, by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, “Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove participated in a hastily called meeting at the White House two months ago. The subject: The firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The purpose: to coach a top Justice Department official heading to Capitol Hill to testify on the prosecutorial purge on what he should say.”

In addition to helping the Justice Department with Congressional testimony, Karl’s assistant, Timothy Griffin, has been promoted by President Bush as the US Attorney for the Eastern district of Arkansas. According to Greg Palast, BBC television reported that Mr. Griffin , “was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.”

Another assistant to Karl, Susan Ralston, had to resign last year when a congressional report said she had passed inside White House information to Abramoff while she was also accepting his tickets to as many as nine sports and entertainment events. Ms. Ralston was also a former assistant to Jack Abramoff and reported to him while working for Karl, “I now have an RNC blackberry which you can use to e-mail me at any time. No security issues like my WH email.” There is also suspicion that Ms. Ralston may have some direct knowledge of how the results of the 2004 presidential election may have been manipulated. More recently, Ms. Ralston, pleaded the 5th before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

For a more complete history of Karl, refer to Frontline’s chronology. He had a major part in putting the Republicans in control in Texas. Here are some excerpts:

… At age 9, Rove is a vocal supporter of Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign — so vocal, in fact, that an older girl, a would-be Kennedy voter, beats him up.

… Often seen at school carrying a briefcase and wearing a coat and tie, he hones his skills in debate tournaments. He is good at intimidating his opponents — sometimes bluffing by bringing boxes of index cards that are actually blank. …

… During his first year of college his parents divorce and not long after, he learns that Louis Rove, the man he thought was his father, is not. He does not meet his biological father until he is in his 40s.

… Politics has become his passion. But because of this, Rove never gets his college degree.

Shortly after his move to Texas, Rove marries a Houston socialite, Valerie Wainwright, who is friendly with the Bush family. But Rove’s busy schedule keeps him away from home much of the time. She files for divorce in 1979. Two years later, Rove’s mother commits suicide.

Rove … drafts a memo that foreshadows future Rove campaigns. He quotes Napoleon, advising candidates to put forth “a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, [sic] followed by rapid and audacious attack.” In a later memo, he tells his candidates to focus on suburban voters, emphasizing education, traditional values and lower taxes and to take pains to appear “compassionate.”

… Rove allegedly arranges for the printing of anonymous fliers viciously attacking Harold See, his own candidate for a state Supreme Court seat. The ploy makes See’s opponent look bad, and See wins the race. [Sound familiar? Refer to Right Web entry above for 1970.]

… As he did with Bush’s gubernatorial campaign, he brings in teams of experts to tutor the candidate. He also ensures that reporters see Bush talking with luminaries from across the country ….

In June [2002], a PowerPoint presentation written by Rove — and describing the war on terror as a crucial campaign issue — is mysteriously found in Lafayette Park, across from the White House.

In his [2004] acceptance speech, Bush thanks Rove, calling him simply “the architect.”

“Everyone in the room knew what that meant,” says Washington Post reporter Mike Allen. “He was the architect of the public policies that got them there, he was the architect of the campaign platform, he was the architect of the fundraising strategy, he was the architect of the state-by-state strategy, he was the architect of the travel itinerary. His hand was in all of it.”

With Bush re-elected, Rove is thinking long-term. He intends to use both politics and policy to create a permanent Republican majority. He designs a legislative agenda that he hopes will lead to future Republican gains. High on the list: an overhaul and partial privatization of Social Security, and the appointment of “strict constructionist” judges who will reverse what many Republicans see as judicial activism. “I think what they are trying to do is bigger than the Great Society, and approaches the New Deal,” says Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall. “They aren’t kidding around.”

View the complete Frontline program online.