As you know, I was for many years involved in the rightwing corporate reform made cement. As I realized that the real end game was not to “reform” public schools but to privatize them, I became a skeptic. Then as I saw that all of their strategies were failing, I jumped ship. I am often asked why I changed my mind, and I try to explain that I realized that the reform movement was a hoax, with no evidence to support its strategies.
It turns out that I was not alone.
Mike Lofgren was a top-level staffer for Republicans in Congress.
From Wikipedia: “From 1995 to 2004, he was budget analyst for national security on the majority staff of the House Budget Committee. From 2005 until his retirement in 2011, Lofgren was the chief analyst for military spending on the Senate Budget Committee.”
After his retirement, he wrote books and articles about the weakness and corruption of both parties when campaign contributors dangled big money.
“In September 2011, Lofgren published an essay entitled Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult on the website Truthout. In it he explains why he retired when he did, writing that he was “appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country’s future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them.” He charged that both major American political parties are “rotten captives to corporate loot,” but that while Democrats are merely weak and out of touch, the Republican Party is “becoming more like an apocalyptic cult.” He particularly described Republicans as caring exclusively about their rich donors; being psychologically predisposed toward war; and pandering to the anti-intellectual, science-hostile, religious fundamentalist fringe. Lofgren wrote that the Tea Party is “filled with lunatics” and that lawmakers used the “routine” vote to raise the debt limit—which Congress has done 87 times since the end of World War II—to create “an entirely artificial fiscal crisis.”[3] The essay received widespread media attention because of Lofgren’s status as a long-term, respected Republican civil servant. Truthout reported the piece received “over a million views.”[4][5][6][7][8]
Lofgren called the reaction to his essay “bewildering,” saying he wrote it not to settle scores, but because he felt he had a uniquely privileged view of the machinery of government which Americans deserved to know about. He added that he’d had “a good career” and no personal problems on Capitol Hill.[9]
In 2012, Lofgren published the book The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted, receiving a starred review from Booklist, which described the book as a “pungent, penetrating insider polemic.”[10] The Washington Post called it “forceful, hard-hitting and seductive.”[11] “I wrote the book,” he said in a 2012 bookstore appearance, “because I am a concerned citizen.”[12]”
Check his Wikipedia entries for links to his writings.
This is an article he wrote in 2012 called “The Revolt of the Rich.”
Here is a brief excerpt:
“Being in the country but not of it is what gives the contemporary American super-rich their quality of being abstracted and clueless. Perhaps that explains why Mitt Romney’s regular-guy anecdotes always seem a bit strained. I discussed this with a radio host who recounted a story about Robert Rubin, former secretary of the Treasury as well as an executive at Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup. Rubin was being chauffeured through Manhattan to reach some event whose attendees consisted of the Great and the Good such as himself. Along the way he encountered a traffic jam, and on arriving to his event—late—he complained to a city functionary with the power to look into it. “Where was the jam?” asked the functionary. Rubin, who had lived most of his life in Manhattan, a place of east-west numbered streets and north-south avenues, couldn’t tell him. The super-rich who determine our political arrangements apparently inhabit another, more refined dimension.
“To some degree the rich have always secluded themselves from the gaze of the common herd; their habit for centuries has been to send their offspring to private schools. But now this habit is exacerbated by the plutocracy’s palpable animosity towards public education and public educators, as Michael Bloomberg has demonstrated. To the extent public education “reform” is popular among billionaires and their tax-exempt foundations, one suspects it is as a lever to divert the more than $500 billion dollars in annual federal, state, and local education funding into private hands—meaning themselves and their friends. What Halliburton did for U.S. Army logistics, school privatizers will do for public education. A century ago, at least we got some attractive public libraries out of Andrew Carnegie. Noblesse oblige like Carnegie’s is presently lacking among our seceding plutocracy.
“In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an army pack. Now the military is for suckers from the laboring classes whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to get Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. The sentiment among the super-rich towards the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse….
“Since the first ziggurats rose in ancient Babylonia, the so-called forces of order, stability, and tradition have feared a revolt from below. Beginning with Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre after the French Revolution, a whole genre of political writings—some classical liberal, some conservative, some reactionary—has propounded this theme. The title of Ortega y Gasset’s most famous work, The Revolt of the Masses, tells us something about the mental atmosphere of this literature.
“But in globalized postmodern America, what if this whole vision about where order, stability, and a tolerable framework for governance come from, and who threatens those values, is inverted? What if Christopher Lasch came closer to the truth in The Revolt of the Elites, wherein he wrote, “In our time, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy, not the masses”? Lasch held that the elites—by which he meant not just the super-wealthy but also their managerial coat holders and professional apologists—were undermining the country’s promise as a constitutional republic with their prehensile greed, their asocial cultural values, and their absence of civic responsibility.
“Lasch wrote that in 1995. Now, almost two decades later, the super-rich have achieved escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the very society they rule over. They have seceded from America.
“Mike Lofgren served 16 years on the Republican staff of the House and Senate Budget Committees. He has just published The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.”
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
This ReBlogged post from Diane Ratvich is recommended reading if you are not a billionaire.
Diane What an incisive article. It makes me wonder why they are allowed to keep their citizenship in the first place. If they ever pledged allegiance “to the flag of the United States of America, . . . and to the Republic for which it stands,” they’ve certainly bilked on that promise and continue to do so.
WONDERFUL language use: “…the super-rich have achieved escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the very society they rule over.”
Also worth reading by Mike Lofgren: The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government,
By the way Ed if I remember he does not classify it as ominously as the title sounds.
http://www.mikelofgren.net/yes-there-is-a-deep-state-but-not-the-right-wings-caricature/
True, and for a brief introduction to the structure of the American deep state, Lofgrens “Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State” which appeared on Bill Moyers site, among others, is well worth the read. If you like to read horror stories before bed, try “How Democracies Die”. Many of his articles can be found on Truthout’s site. All are worth reading. Lofgren is the kind of conservative this nation needs far more of, and I’d vote for a man like him over a corporate dumbocrat in a heartbeat.
“What Halliburton did for U.S. Army logistics, school privatizers will do for public education.” … and campgrounds, NASA, government publications like Forest Service maps, etc, etc. But it’s not Halliburton. Halliburton is a front for Bechtel. If you want to find the source of much of the current anti-democratic, pro-war policy, you’d best look at Bechtel. (In the Middle East military ops and reconstruction, Bechtel was the prime contractor. Halliburton worked for them.
Neither one is better than the other. The primary difference between them is that Bechtel is still privately-owned, whereas Halliburton has been publically-listed since the 1920’s. Essentially, that makes Bechtel a better place to work. I worked for them in the ’70’s (first in power generation in the midwest, then in their NYC chem div) until the chem div had to pull up stakes in NYC & move to SW due to changes in the oil industry.
Bechtel was (probably still is) a paternalistic co as Kodak, HP, & IBM were in days of yore, & I had multiple transfer options, but chose to remain in NYC & go w/a a longtime competitor that was their better in engrg (tho their lesser in constr). My new employer– a prestigious engrg co for many decades– had just undergone ownership by Halliburton. In a mere 5 yrs, Halliburton bought them, stripped them of all their assets (primarily Wall-St-area office bldgs) & sold them to a SW energy corp. Typical of the rapacious leveraged buy-outs of the ’70’s.
That is admittedly anecdotal, 40-y.o. info. But it makes me question your ranking of the 2 corps. Bechtel, unlike Halliburton, always recognized that their personnel was their best asset, & judging from alumni contacts, still treats them well.
bethree5
It is certainly out there, trying to compare today’s corporate atmosphere to anything that existed 40 years ago . 40 years ago employees were considered a stakeholder in many corporations. One worth investing in. Investing in training, healthcare, pensions and wages . Today they are a liability against the bottom line with all the above being cut.
Your alumni contacts are probably non typical of the total work force as that their longevity probably places them in senior positions.
What gives me a perspective on the intervening forty yrs is my husband’s career. He was an engr in that long-ago corp [where we met]– the one. that was bought/stripped/sold by Halliburton in the ’70’s. Another co that valued its personnel as the only asset it had to compete w/, & so treated its employees right. That company– that group of engrs– has been bought & sold again three times since the ’80’s. Most of these iterations have involved melding engrg cos which once were competitors, so you have some reshuffling, some corp cultural changes, but the emphasis on personnel assets remains.
It has only been w/the most recent buyout [2 yrs ago] by a global engrg co w/some 50k employees– that we have seen a difference. Engrg personnel are still treated well. But we see a difference in the impportance given to the work they bring in. Whereas once, when you brought in regular paying work from local clientele, you were given bonuses, today we have a parent co which is enamoed of big bucks global deals, and pays scant attention to bread and butter American work…
I worked on a Bechtel project – never saw poorer management, or more corruption. My next job was with the national parks on Alcatraz – an inmate crew came to the Island to work on restoration – one of the inmates had been my overpaid, incompetent boss at that project – he and his friends were all caught taking bribes. But this is not about what a nice corporation Bechtel is to work for – this is about who is pulling the strings in places like the Middle East, or here. THAT is Bechtel – read McCartney, Friends in High Places or the more recent book by Sally Denton, The Profiteers (http://bouldercityreview.com/community/denton-wins-award-expos-bechtel#sthash.rA47cS9k.dpbs) One telling anecdote about Bechtel is the name they chose for the group that built Hoover Dam – The Six Companies. There were more than six; but Bechtel’s model was the Six Companies of Chinatown – the gangs. He was letting the world know how he intended to work. (See Cadillac Desert.)
So I’m glad you had a good time – mine was miserable. But, again, this is about their evil influence on the world, not job satisfaction.
ragerdon– IDK, you may be right. My info is decades old– but even back then, I understood that tho Bechtel was billed as an engrg/constr co, the emphasis was on construction. Which meant that union hrs/ holidays/ benefits bestowed on us NYC office-workers were hard-earned by laborers contending w/ mafia influences…
Nevertheless: when I started w/them, in a midwestern satellite of their SF home office, they promoted me (a girl — a secretary– in an all-male biz) to a technical position w/n 6 mos, purely on merit, & w/n another 6 mos pd for my transfer to another division just cuz I wanted to move there– where I got another promotion. They were the least gender-biased, most meritorial-based corp I ever worked for.
When that office closed, I moved to a more engrg-oriented [less construction-oriented] competitor that no doubt would pass muster w/your strict & politically-correct stds, if considered in its narrow sphere of influence. But once upon a time, they were part of the robber-baron days, as the SE engrg arm of GE when it held a vertical monopoly…
Surely you must recognize that all these corps reflect overall natl govtl trade & political trends/ policies. It does not do to single out/ demonize individual corporations. Look to the laws that govern them, if you wish to effect change.
The super rich have achieved escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the very society they rule over”
Not so fast.
“No Escape for the Billionaires”
They might believe
They have escaped
But gravity will win
They can’t achieve
A separate fate
Cuz blackest hole they’re in
Just wanted to make sure you and your readers knew that Chris Hedges articulated your views in his May 26, 2017 speech in Portland Oregon.
Meyers interviewed him in 2012 in a wonderful, chilling, prescient conversation. What is to become of us, really? What if the sky really is falling?
I started my adult life studying geology because I liked the time scale of its truth and understanding how unimportant and tiny our blips are. I feel I have strayed and it’s time to go back. I don’t know where else comfort lies….
Wow!
I have posted him here with links many times. One of the most on target political analysts out there . He predicted Trump in his first book . My favorite lines
“The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class – without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.
What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style “centrist” Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]
While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations’ bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let’s build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it’s evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.
How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field.”
The solution is simple, Lofgren for president. Cambridge Analytica and their peers/competitors would go apoplectic.
The Republicans out flank Democrats all the time. Democrats rarely present a united front. The Republicans seem to be masterful manipulators of common folk that they convince to vote against their own self interests.
Only because they feel left out. Yesterday I had a discussion with a NYC electrician who makes too much money for the Cuomo, much touted free tuition plan . Simply if you can own a house in NYC or the suburbs you will not qualify for free tuition.Your income has to be too high unless you inherited it. That does not make you wealthy. You are probably struggling to get by. Same with the ACA.
If SS and Medicare had been means tested they would long ago have died. Americans do not mind paying into programs if they receive the benefits. They attack the poor when they are left out.
retired teacher Yes–they revel in Trump like they did when Beavis and Butthead first came out. I couldn’t believe why anyone watched that either. Trump is the real embodiment of those idiots in that fantasy world.
I don’t know if I agree, retired teacher. Now that Republicans — w/house, senate, & presidency– have responsibility for making things better for ordinary citizens, their flaws are on parade, & theyseem poised on breaking down into factions, some of which can count on core backing for ideoligical posturing which promotes legislation that hurts their constituents, but others whose constituents are starting to hold their feet to the fire.
Meanwhile we Democrats need to be finding candidates who promote the welfare ofthe ordinary citizen.
Best part of your post: “But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations’ bottom line”
If I could underline:
“The mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters…”
This is the biggest hurdle to overcome. “Low-information voters” would better be described as poor & undereducated people. People who are alert enough to the world around them to have opinions & vote, but who are vulnerable & full of fear, credibly buying into conspiracy theories, & only registering headlines/ TV media memes that play into those theories. I hear them daily on the CSPAN call-in show “Washington Journal”. They are not a majority, but I would estimate them as about 1/5 [20%] of callers-in.
Granted, the great majority of callers are older, retired people.so we are probably talking about 20% of the over-65 cohort. But that may be the very cohort that pushed Trump over the line to presidency.
My take for the Democratic platform: shore up Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, & tweak Obamacare to ensure all those folks have relatively stress-free retirement.
“The Core-go Cult” (after Cargo Cult, of course)
The Core-go Cult
Is Common Core
It’s taken hold
With Coleman lore
The Core-go Cult
Is test and VAM
And public sold
A charter sham
The Core-go Cult
Is VAMboo tower
It’s teachers rolled
By naked power
The Core-go Cult
Is teachers jailed
And public told
That schools have failed
The Core-go Cult
Is edu-tech
It’s hedge fund gold
And edu-wreck
The Core-go Cult
Ain’t knowledge based
But born of dolt
And truth erased
Can we imagine a Sanders/Lofgren ticket? The oligarchs and plutocrats would brown their britches, the deep state as its presently constituted would be shaken to the core should a ticket like that prevail.
On a more serious note for those who understand the nature and components of the deep state, it’s constituent factions and the competition for power between them, the Dump presidency as seen in his cabinet choices, other coat tail riders and their array of policy agendas can be understood to represent a civil war within the deep state, one where right wing, anti-government factions within both the Wall St. and Silicon Valley centers of power are seeking to greatly weaken the Washington DC center of power in order to not be bothered by the long history of legislative protections for ordinary people (what they call regulations) that they view as obstructing their lust for ever greater power and wealth, as if what they have is in any way insufficient. As Lofgren points out, they believe themselves entitled to everything they can devour. The deep state oligarchs ignore the historical reality that those resented, insulting protections were all a direct result of their many and varied transgressions against the rights and health of the American people. Their heartfelt desire is to continue the conversion of America into their own, massive company store, to reduce the constitutional rights of the American citizen to the point where they truly are nothing more than either commodities to be exploited or liabilities to be externalized or eliminated. D. Dump is the ideal figurehead and distraction under which this agenda can be advanced. The neoliberal Dumbocrats are operating in their usual ineffective way in the face of this, though they were somewhat effective at advancing their own agenda when they held they reins of power. Dumps most usefull attribute to the factions of the deep state that allowed him to be elected seems to be his continued assault on the media and upon truth itself. On the details of policy matters, Dump is all but completely incompetant. But that’s not his actual job.
The article is amazingly prescient and perhaps especially worthy of attention for being published in the American Conservative, a publication of the American Ideas Institute. The Board of Trustees of this sponsoring organization is noteworthy for a very deep bench of people whose brief and interesting biographies can be found on the website. I was curious about the two trustees for whom there were no biographies, only their names.
One Trustte is Howard Ahmanson, Jr.. He is described as “a philanthropist living in Orange County, California.” According to Wikipedia, “Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson Jr. (born February 3, 1950) is an heir of the Home Savings bank fortune built by his father Howard F. Ahmanson Sr.”….” Ahmanson Jr. is a multi-millionaire and financier of many Christian conservative cultural, religious, and political causes,” including the “Discovery Institute, whose Center for Science and Culture opposes the theory of evolution and promotes intelligent design. He has Tourette syndrome. His wife usually communicates with the media and others on his behalf.” A long-standing participant in Republican causes, and California politics, he declared himself a Democrat in 2008. Here is a fascinating article about him and “rich kid” sterotypes as well as the work of the Ahmanson Foundation http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/topic/excellence_in_philanthropy/rich_kid_at_work
The entry for George O’Neill, Jr. says that he is an artist living in Lake Wales, Florida. Nothing more. In fact George O’Neill, Jr. is John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s great-great-grandson. O’Neill has been ugly enough to have a long article about him in Vanity Fair. But he is also a recent contributor to the American Conservative where he advances ideas that one can see in full bloom in Trump’s distain for the media and conciliatory approach to Russia. In the article, George O’Neill Jr. also reveals his power (via inherited wealth) to “convene” VIPs in DC for conversation. He also has an interest in having his ideas linked to a wider conservative movement to be conciliatory toward Russia. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-do-we-want-a-cooperative-relationship-with-russia/
These side notes are not intended to diminish the importance of the article Diane posted. I am not a regular reader of this publication. It has a curious mix of experienced journalists and a couple of backers who are in and out of the shadows of conservative causes.
One of the more remarkable factoids is this: Jon Basil Utley, publisher of The American Conservative, has an impressive record of international experience in business and journalism. He was born in Moscow. According to the website, “His father, a Russian trade official, was sent to the gulag and executed at the Brick Quarry in Vorkuta for being one of three leaders of a hunger strike. His mother, Freda Utley, became a prominent anticommunist author and activist.”