In his seminal book, Friendly Fascism, published in 1980, political scientist Bertram Gross predicts that a future America would be one where power elites continually dominate America’s government, specifically through corporatocracy and a light fascism. He writes:
“[R]eform measures provide a means of siphoning up political power. Where they involve new benefactions or new regulations, this can happen whenever their provision involves the setting up of a new or stronger bureaucracy. Any concrete benefits for people at the middle or lower levels of the social pyramid are balanced off with additional power or prestige at the top. This is why many reforms that may indeed be great victories for people at the middle and lower levels of society… turn out also to be a form of payola.”
We’ve already discussed how the president’s proposed job bill has less to do with creating jobs and more to do with delaying the double dip past the next election cycle, but there’s more to it. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the government’s primary purpose is not to represent the people, but to bring in campaign dollars using public money for corporate welfare. The question is not, “will the job bill centralize power in the corporatocracy?” Off course it will. The question was always about how. Now we know.
The program is advertised as a job creating measure that will simultaneously make improvements and updates to infrastructure. What they don’t tell you is that the method they use to do so will allow public bridges, roads, waterways, railroads and tolls to be privatized. According to Reuters:
“The essence of the American Infrastructure Financing Authority is to use the full faith and credit of the U.S. government to loan funds at below-market rates to public-private partnerships — in other words, to privatize the cash flows from public assets.”
But the program isn’t even necessary. Reuter’s reports that there are other already established methods for funding public infrastructure that haven’t been fully utilized yet.
“Currently almost all American infrastructure is funded either through municipal bonds or federal funding. Even as federal funding has been constrained, municipal bond issuance has been very low this year, running at about half of last year’s rate. There is plenty of capacity to fund infrastructure with municipal bonds. From a funding standpoint it’s not clear why we need an infrastructure bank, especially a paygo infrastructure bank.”
How likely is it for the infrastructure bank to be implemented? Well just look at the supporters:
“Although McClatchy is reporting that Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is unenthusiastic about plans for an infrastructure bank, it’s likely that the Senator Kerry’s legislation will be adopted since it has support from the administration, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
That settles that. I hope you like tolls.
