Michael Collins

We're six years into the Obama administration and nothing much has changed concerning the most fundamental challenges facing the citizens of the United States. Those challenges are:

• Reviving and reforming an economy that is rigged for only the very wealthiest interests;
• Ending the usurpation of individual rights by the national intelligence cabal; and
• Freeing the nation and the world from the endless insertion of U.S. intelligence and military operations throughout the world.

We have the same lousy economy with the same greedy interests in charge of the same too big to fail institutions making sure that they alone prosper. Tax incentives and government supports are for the very few in the top 0.001%. It is all about Wall Street at the expense of working people and Main Street.

Thanks to Snowden's revelations, we know that domestic spying capabilities and activities have expanded considerably since the Bush administration.

While the death count is lower, U.S. sponsored subversive activities and military interventions overseas are a constant. The destruction of Libya under the guise of humanitarian relief, the open source conspiracy to destroy Syria, and the fantasies about the Ukraine having anything to do with our national security are just three of many morally repugnant, profit-generating projections of power around the world conducted in our name. PNAC prevails.

Why and How Did this Happen?

There's an obvious answer to the why part of the question. Those very few individuals and interests in control are not willing to share any of their wealth.

Even if they were willing to share, their fear of retribution for their massive crimes against the people is so profound; the super elite seek safety through full spectrum surveillance and control. They see their clumsy efforts as somehow controlling the populace and offering protection from the imagined wrath of their victims.

Endless war in Asia and serious subterfuge everywhere else provides a level of public distraction that those in charge hope will substitute reactive hysteria for a critical examination of the grand scam that the power elite use as the basis for their wealth and power.

How the seamless transition of policies between Bush and Obama occurred is a bit subtler although fairly simple in principle. You change parties, creating the illusion of change. At the same time, keep key figures from the previous administration are retained to sustain old policies under the mantle of a new party.

Bush becomes Obama on a substantive level while social issues are used to make people think that there's a real difference between the parties. For example, the Obama administration is supportive of gay rights issues but both gay Americans and those who oppose gay rights all suffer the consequences of a locked down economy in which resources are funneled to the super wealthy, domestic spying, and foreign adventures.

The careful placement high-level Bush operatives and a Wall Street shill in charge of critical elements of the government assured the preservation of right wing, neoconservative economic and foreign policies. Nothing of substance changed in 2008 or 2012.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the liberal hope, as candidate Obama presented himself, indicated that he'd like Bush Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to remain in that position for the Obama administration. Gates said yes. It took five years to get out of Iraq, we're still in Afghanistan, and the policy of no defense system left behind is still in place bleeding billions from the Treasury every single day. Mission accomplished.

Just before the 2008 inauguration, president elect Obama announced his choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. Geithner was head of the powerful New York Federal Reserve Bank during the critical period leading up to the 2008 financial collapse. As one of Wall Street's chief regulators, he told the world, it's all good, no problems here. We know how that worked out. Dutifully, Geithner assumed the role of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and carried out the biggest bailout in the history of the world. Despite the efforts of honest bankers and others like Elizabeth Warren, the wholesale looting of the Treasury by Wall Street continued. Socialism for the extremely rich and survival of the fittest for the rest of us is the motto.

The expansion of domestic spying and continuation of secret operations around the world shows that a nominal Democrat can do just as much damage to the Constitution as a right wing Republican. A carryover from the Bush administration, John Brennan, made happen. Brennan latest work for Obama is Director of the CIA. As Robert Parry pointed out in a recent article, Brennan was at the center of 1984 like activities under Bush. Under Brennan, the CIA stands accused of cyber sabotage against congressional committees to block, of all things, an investigation into CIA prisoner abused by the Bush administration.

As the saying goes, people can have differing beliefs but not different facts. The roles and products of Obama, Brennan, Geithner, and Gates are indisputable facts.

There is no Democratic Party, no Republican Party. There's just The Money Party. It's the real power behind the theatrics referred to as a two party political system. The party has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests; preserved at any cost as long as the costs and suffering are borne by the people.

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Image: Tony Alter

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