Language as Thought Control
“In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
Shock and Awe – This was the Don Rumsfeld marketing phrase for the initial stage of the Iraq Invasion. The U.S. military launched 1,700 air attacks, including 504 cruise missiles on March 21, 2003. The U.S. military insisted that the strikes were surgical and we did everything to avoid civilian casualties. Reports of casualties ranged from 3,000 to 6,000. We inflicted devastation on par with 9/11 on innocent Muslim citizens. This was U.S. terrorism disguised as self defense. The U.S. military refers to this as collateral damage.
USA Patriot Act - Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. It is beyond comprehension that people in our government spend their time creating acronyms that disguise the fact that they are taking away civil liberties. These people must work in the Ministry of Truth, the masters of propaganda. The definition of Patriot according to Webster’s is, one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests. By naming it the Patriot Act, anyone that voiced dissent, didn’t love their country and was cast as a traitor. This act was rammed through Congress on October 26, 2001, only forty-five days after the 9/11 attack. Senators and Congressmen did not even read the law before passing it. The Party now has legal authority without a court order to wiretap your phone, read your emails, listen to cell phone conversations, search your mail, search your financial records, search your medical records, detain anyone who they suspect may commit terrorism, and indefinitely detain you based on secret evidence.
Community Reinvestment Act – This should be named the U.S. Taxpayer Gets Screwed Act. This law forced banks to make mortgage loans to poor people who should have been renting. This is another Democratic Party welfare state boondoggle. Bob McTeer, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank from 1991 to 2004, described the pressure on banks:
“There was a lot of pressure from Congress and generally everywhere to make homeownership affordable for poor and low-income people. Some mortgages were made that would not have ordinarily been made. When a bank made a decision to purchase mortgaged-backed securities, they would somehow determine if some of them were in zip codes covered by the CRA, and therefore they could get CRA credit.”
The result was subprime losses in the billions being foisted onto the backs of American taxpayers who made their mortgage payments. People who received these loans don’t pay taxes.
Death Tax – A deliberate and carefully crafted word designed by the Republican Party in order to gain support for repealing the estate tax. Repealing the estate tax had no support among the American public. Manipulating the name of the tax generated support for repeal.
Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 – This brilliant piece of legislation signed in July 2008 was designed to instill confidence in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and keep subprime borrowers in their homes. It didn’t help housing or the economy recover. It just poured more money down a rat hole. Fannie & Freddie collapsed under the weight of their incompetence and billions of losses in September 2008. They continue to make bad loans to undeserving borrowers, but now the losses flow directly to you and I, the American taxpayer.
Government Accountability – If this isn’t the biggest oxymoron in history, I don’t know what is. The Party has a tremendous interest in making sure that no one knows where our tax dollars are spent and whether they were spent wisely. A company has a bottom line and can calculate a return on the investments they make. No one can calculate a return on anything Government does. If every government project was listed on-line and citizens could see what was spent and for what purpose, the bureaucracy would come crashing down. Therefore, The Party will never allow light to be shone upon their deeds.
Department of Homeland Security - Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism. This department most resembles Orwell’s Ministry of Love, the agency responsible for the identification, monitoring, arrest and torture of dissidents, real or imagined. We aren’t too far off from being monitored by telescreens. This department was created after 9/11. Its biggest claim to fame is the response to Hurricane Katrina, when 1,836 Americans died. Mismanagement, incompetence, lack of preparation, and slow response were the traits best exhibited by this agency that spends $50 billion per year and employs 208,000 bureaucrats. The department was blamed for up to $2 billion of waste and fraud after audits by the GAO revealed widespread misuse of government credit cards by DHS employees, with purchases including beer brewing kits, $70,000 of plastic dog booties that were later deemed unusable, boats purchased at double the retail price (many of which later could not be found), and iPods ostensibly for use in "data storage". It is pure luck that we have not experienced another terrorist attack. It is not due to the actions of this agency.
Troubled Asset Relief Program – This is also known as TARP or the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. It’s lucky they put a date at the end, so we can have another in 2009 and another in 2010. A better name would be WARP - Worthless Asset Reprieve Program. This catchy little acronym described assets as if they had a bad day at the office. I’m troubled by the bullshit that keeps being rammed down my throat by politicians and bankers. Assets aren’t troubled. The “assets” on the books of the biggest banks in the world are worthless. They are fictitious pieces of paper backed by nothing. This $700 billion bad banker bailout was supposed to buy these assets from the banks and allow the banks to lend. Henry Paulson lied to Congress and used the first $350 billion to buy preferred stock in the banks. It has been a miserable failure. The second $350 billion will be thrown at these same banks and nothing will happen. No one knows how the money is being spent and Bank of America and Citicorp are on the brink again. The U.S. banking system is insolvent and is being propped up by the American taxpayer.
Stable Prices – It seems the politicians running The Party these days like to pick and choose what they want from John Maynard Keynes. They prefer the goodies of increased government spending and ignore the other advice:
“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
One of the key mandates of the Federal Reserve is price stability. This is a lie. The facts are that the Federal Reserve purposefully generates unending inflation which slowly lowers the standard of living of every American. The US dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power since 1913 when the Federal Reserve was created by a Congress in the back pockets of bankers.
Foreclosure Mitigation – Barney Frank is demanding that the 2nd $350 billion of TARP funds be used for this purpose. It is a noble goal to reduce foreclosures. I’m sure Mr. Frank is a noble man. What this really means is that he would like to take your tax dollars and give them to people who bought houses with mortgages they could not afford. Rather than being properly kicked out of the house, you will make their mortgage payment for them, along with your own monthly mortgage payment. That is what mitigation means.
Quantitative Easing – This is a luminous term that 98% of Americans don’t understand. It sounds so soothing. When Ben Bernanke uses the term in his speeches you can imagine blue birds singing on his shoulder. What it means is that the Federal Reserve will print as many dollars as it takes to generate inflation so that the country’s enormous debt burden can be inflated away. Instead of one helicopter, picture thousands of B-52s dropping dollars over NYC. Japan tried the same thing in the 1990s with absolutely no success. Ben’s motto is, when you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.
Economic Recovery Program – This is Barrack Obama’s first contribution to Newspeak. His shrewd economic team didn’t like the sound of stimulus program. It sounded too much like Bush’s rebate checks, which didn’t work. Of course, one of the key elements of this plan is a $500 rebate per person. The term investment is used quite often in this plan. Investment in infrastructure, education, green initiatives, and energy are the backbone of the plan. Ask yourself why we have 156,000 structurally deficient bridges, crumbling water pipes, antiquated power grid, urban decay, and dangerous schools. It is because we have relied on the Government to be responsible for these things with taxes we have already paid. Now we are supposed to support a program with future tax dollars to do what Government should have done in the first place. When you are stuck in a traffic jam next year and see six union construction workers standing on the side of the road all making $50 an hour watching one guy with a jack hammer working, know that your tax dollars have been spent wisely.
Originally Posted by Ilaekae
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