Burning down the Reichstag and the Trickle Down Disaster....

[Bill USA]

In the 1930's the Nazi's set fire to the Reichstag building and blamed it on the Communists. Hitler demanded unprecedented powers to 'protect' the state. The German Reichstag passed the Enabling act giving Hitler plenary powers - basically making Hitler a dictator. After passage of the Enabling Act Hitler promptly abolished trade unions declaring them illegal.

THe Republicans did to our economy what the Nazi's did to the Reichstag. By gradually putting a greater portion of the tax burden on the middle class they caused a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. When a large segment of the population experienced reduced buying power this began to threaten economic growth. The GOP employed recklessly expansionist monetary policies during the Cheney regime, to prop up the economy. This lead to the housing bubble with greater numbers of houses being sold based upon mortgages made with loosened lending standards. The GOP's anti-regulatory policy and religion that "the market will police itself" lead to incredibly reckless lending policies by banks. When fifty states attorney's general tried to rein in predatory lenders the Cheney administration went to court to stop them (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html">Predatory Lenders Partner in Crime). Banks thought that derivative financial instruments eliminated their risk of loss, exacerabating the situation and leading to what would have been, save the intervention by us (the Government), a crash of the entire financial sector.

Now, we are suffering through the Great Recession, this Republican Dystopia, and GOPer Governors in certain states are using the financial woes of their states (because of reduced revenues and increased expenses due to the Republican Dystopia) as an excuse to abolish unions (denying collective bargaining rights will kill unions). It's the same thing the Nazi's did, only instead burning down the Reichstag our conservatives destroyed the economy and now are blaming THEIR disaster on the collective bargaining rights which people fought hard for years to gain. Collective bargaining didn't create the housing bubble. Unions didn't make trading in Credit Default Swaps http://motherjones.com/special-reports/2008/07/economy">legal and unregulated. Collective bargaining didn't cause banks to gamble on mortgages of very questionable value emboldened by the belief that Credit Default Swaps eliminated all risk.

The right to collective bargaining is consistent with the fundamental principle of democracy that the governed should have a say in how they are governed. That's not something to be compromised or bargained away because the GOP burned down our economy.

[villager]

1. unrecc'd by the furtive pro-Reichstag types, who haunt this board

n/t

[soryang]

2. Well said!

Obama discusses how Social Security and Medicare "contribute to the deficit" with no mention of two wars and a defense budget that dwarfs everything by historical standards.

The key difference between the US and Germany before WWII is that the internationalists and the defense pyramid coexist by virtue of the quantative easing game whereby foreign creditors get paid with Weimar currency. But QE is not going to relieve the expropriation/ destruction of the middle class. In Nazi Germany the defense pyramid eliminated the internationalists in the competition for all currency reserves.

Most americans won't get it until thugs show up at the front door to steal your butter, eggs and chickens, along with the living room furniture. That is if you are fortunate enough to have a place to live.

[Populist_Prole]

3. Rec'd to counter the unrec. n/t

[nashville_brook]

4. nailed it.

k and r

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. Cheers!

K&R

[louis-t]

6. This is a great, short, intelligible explanation.

Bookmarked.

[BobbyBoring]

7. I'll go you one better

9/11 was OUR Reichstag fire and the "19 Arabs" that couldn't fly Cesnas take the place of the "Communists" in this case of history repeating itself.

Hitler also had the help of Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda minister. This guy knew how to convince people that everything they heard was bullshit unless they heard it from Faux Noise, I mean The National Socialist Party.

History does repeat itself

A bit of irony. It's said that a number of Nazis that escaped somehow ended in the US with help from some of their "Friends" like Prescott Bush.

[soryang]

8. Right, this is the key to the whole coup d'etat

But no one has noticed yet that you said the forbidden truth.

[txlibdem]

10. Absolutely

You nailed it. It's like a slow-motion coup and we'll be neck deep in it before we realize what's actually happening.

[Enthusiast]

9. Plus One! The Nazis were already

here -before, during and after the war. First they were anti-New Deal and anti-FDR. Then they were antiwar, of course. Then they worked to sabotage the war effort. After the war they established the extreme right wing anti-communist, anti-labor groups. There is no doubt in my mind that those behind this modern anti-labor movement are, in fact, ideologically fascist.

[plumbob]

11. Precisely correct. Having lived with "Russians will be bombing in five minutes"

for 50 years as a child and adult, it took me about 1 full minute to detect this as the replacement event for that worn out fear when they simply folded up.

The pure waste in resources, including human potential, over the last 70 years is staggering to think about.