BB and the Rosetta Stone
Bill Bennett, the former secretary of Education, current conservative tetse fly, and pompous nuisance always, stuck his foot in it recently. Talk radio is not that nuanced a medium, so it probably wasn't a good place to claim, as he did, that aborting all black babies would reduce the crime rate. Oddly enough, most people weren't mollified by his adding that it would be wrong to do so. A lot of people are beating Bill up on this, and I certainly don't want to claim he doesn't deserve it, but I personally owe him a small debt. He gave me the Rosetta stone which allows me to decode what the heck the Republicans really think they are doing.
From Reed Hundt at the TPM Cafe.
Once you understand paradigm embodied here, a lot of things start to make sense. Reagan's Secretary of Education saw his mission as destroying public education. Similarly, Bush set his Social Security adminsitration chiefs to destroying Social Security, his Energy department works tirelessly to make Energy more expensive and unavailable, and, of course, his FEMA and Homeland Security Department are programmed to fail, so that Americans will hate the government. This principle is applied to the IRS also, which concentrates on auditing ordinary people without much money, both to make it easier for the rich to steal but more importantly, to make Americans hate their government. Spending the country into bankruptcy? Another triumph for those who would "starve the beast."
Now we know why the ex-CIA chief got the Medal of Freedom for screwing up the intelligence on Iraq. Every government failure is a triump for those like Grover Nordquist whose announced ambition is destroying the United States government. No doubt he hopes to make a lot of money in the process.
Like Bill Bennett, Bush and his minions see their mission as undermining the law instead of upholding it, destroying the Constitution instead of protecting it. Still, it surprises even me that conservatives decided to apply the same principle to the military. Maybe the behavior has just become so ingrained they can't help themselves.
I just hope that the American people will wake up before they succeed. Remember who it is that really hates America.
From Reed Hundt at the TPM Cafe.
When I was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), I asked Bill Bennett to visit my office so that I could ask him for help in seeking legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country. ... At any rate, since Mr. Bennett had been Secretary of Education I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers,charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education.
Once you understand paradigm embodied here, a lot of things start to make sense. Reagan's Secretary of Education saw his mission as destroying public education. Similarly, Bush set his Social Security adminsitration chiefs to destroying Social Security, his Energy department works tirelessly to make Energy more expensive and unavailable, and, of course, his FEMA and Homeland Security Department are programmed to fail, so that Americans will hate the government. This principle is applied to the IRS also, which concentrates on auditing ordinary people without much money, both to make it easier for the rich to steal but more importantly, to make Americans hate their government. Spending the country into bankruptcy? Another triumph for those who would "starve the beast."
Now we know why the ex-CIA chief got the Medal of Freedom for screwing up the intelligence on Iraq. Every government failure is a triump for those like Grover Nordquist whose announced ambition is destroying the United States government. No doubt he hopes to make a lot of money in the process.
Like Bill Bennett, Bush and his minions see their mission as undermining the law instead of upholding it, destroying the Constitution instead of protecting it. Still, it surprises even me that conservatives decided to apply the same principle to the military. Maybe the behavior has just become so ingrained they can't help themselves.
I just hope that the American people will wake up before they succeed. Remember who it is that really hates America.
CIP - Your theory also explains many features of Bush's "No Child Left Behind" bill. NCLB contains time bombs which virtually assure that all public schools will eventually fail.
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