Grover Norquist in his own bathtub

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

~Grover Norquist

Terrific post from the Rev, and I mean a really terrific post, "Swiftboating Obama", up at both The Woodshed and The Galloping Beaver :

"Norquist and his masters believe that government is simply an often unavoidable impediment to them making money....They have appointed incompetents to vital positions to ensure that the government departments involved fail when called upon ("Heckuva job Brownie"). This helps undermine people's faith in government and provides ammunition to show that the work of government should be privatized. Think about the arguments for school vouchers, or look at the "shock doctrine" privatization of things like water systems, power grids and transportation systems around the world, and it becomes clear the motives are to make a profit for corporations and their wealthy shareholders and to ensure that none of that profit is ever handed back to help those who are not wealthy."

Why isn't this commonly referred to as 'looting'?

Back in May '06, the Rev left me the following comment : "If only someone would drown Grover Norquist in his own metaphorical bathtub."

There ya go, Rev.

Bonus : 900 Foot Jesus : SPP and the death of public service or

why having fans of Norquist running the Canadian government is not working out for the rest of us.

SPP and "The Shock Doctrine"

Chet Scoville of Vanity Press, blogging at Shakesville :
"...the SPP is an especially dangerous example of the privatization of government that neoconservatism has been demanding and putting into place for a quarter of a century: the sort of thing Naomi Klein outlines in The Shock Doctrine. It's especially dangerous because, being multinational and happening as it is below the radar, it will be extremely difficult to undo once it's done."

Stephen Lendman in an excellent review of Klein's book at Mostly Water :
"The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" explodes the myth of "free market" democracy.

On Milton Friedman's Chicago School revolution of rapid-fire economic transformation he called "shock treatment" : " It's central tenets are structurally adjusted mass-privatizations, government deregulation, unrestricted free market access for foreign corporations, and deep cuts in social spending with repressive laws."

On "the whirling revolving door between government and business taken to a new level" :
"That's the whole idea in a get rich quick environment - get an impressive government title, stay in office long enough in a department handing out big contracts, collect insider information with market value, then quit and cash in. Klein calls public service now "little more than a reconnaissance mission for future work in the disaster capitalism complex."

"Fighting "terrorism" is big business. September 11 unlocked the potential, a huge new growth market was created, and protection from terror became more important than big brother watching.

Klein calls it "an unprecedented convergence of unchecked police powers and unchecked capitalism, a merger of the shopping mall and the secret prison."

The Security and Prosperity Partnership : a North American merger of the shopping mall and the secret prison.

War... What is it good for?...Absolutely boatloads of money

The Globe and Mail has a four page excerpt from Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine :

"In December, 2006, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group fronted by James Baker issued its long-awaited report. It called for the U.S. to “assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise” and to “encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies.”

The Bush administration immediately pushed ahead by helping to draft a radical new oil law for Iraq, which would allow companies like Shell and BP to sign 30-year contracts in which they could keep a large share of Iraq's oil profits, amounting to tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars – unheard of in countries with as much easily accessible oil as Iraq, and a sentence to perpetual poverty in a country where 95 per cent of government revenues come from oil."

"Explaining why it was justified for such a large percentage of the profits to leave Iraq, the oil companies cited the security risks. In other words, it was the disaster that made the radical proposed law possible."

Naomi Klein's husband, Avi Lewis, interviewed James Baker for his CBC show On The Map. Only one in twenty Iraq MPs saw that oil law before it was passed. And then there are the profits to be made from the privatization of war. Klein :

"Associated Press put the number of contractors in Iraq at 120,000, almost equivalent to the number of U.S. troops. In scale, this kind of privatized warfare has already overshadowed the United Nations. The UN's budget for peacekeeping in 2006-2007 was $5.25-billion – that's less than a quarter of the $20-billion Halliburton got in Iraq contracts, and the latest estimates are that the mercenary industry alone is worth $4-billion."

In a book interview on CBC's TheCurrent this week, Klein remains obstinately hopeful. Canadians have been fighting "disaster capitalism" for decades, she says, with their continued support for public infrastructure and medicare. The best insurance against being "shocked" into accepting any colonialist corporate agenda is to be ready for it by being informed. Go, Naomi.

Immediately following Klein's CBC interview, Greg Palast and Aurel Braun from Trinity College heatedly discuss the book. Aurel Braun gets the phrase 'conspiracy theory' out a couple of times before Palast puts the ideological boots to him. It must really bite Brown's ass that Palast, who actually studied under Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys, can so easily one-up a Friedman apologist like Braun, who didn't.

Go on - treat yourself.

.

"The Shock Doctrine" on YouTube

"Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around."—Milton Friedman

The Shock Doctrine is the secret history of the "free market" and how it came to dominate the world.

"Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise fiercely protect."

~ Naomi Klein

Naomi has a short 6 minute vid up on YouTube entitled The Shock Doctrine

YouTube courtesy of Skdadl at POGGE via Bread and Roses.