Enough of Bush and Co.'s babble about prosperity
Let's look at our economy by the numbers
Also in this issue
- The Big Buy: Tom Delay's Stolen Congress
- ALITO STRIKES
- CORPORATIZING THE BORDER
- ATTACK BY THE CORPORATE FOXES
- HOW STRANGE IS RICK SANTORUM?
- NEW GUY, SAME BAD POLICY
- BUSH LAWYERS
- THE GOP'S XENOPHOBIC GOOFINESS
- POSTER: Are you better off yet?
- SOURCES for July 2006 issue
Here they come--America's Drill Team! Out front are the two high-strutting leaders, John McCain and George W, thrusting their drum-major batons and chanting "Drill! Drill! Drill!" Right behind them are the famous Marching Lobbyists of Big Oil, and--look!--prancing alongside are House minority leader John Boehner and the Merry Pranksters of the Republican caucus, doing a precision routine of call and response

ATTACK BY THE CORPORATE FOXES
While George W, the Congress, and the media have us all looking south to what they call the "invasion" of America by impoverished illegal immigrants, or looking east to what they call an "endless threat" to America from hordes of fanatical Islamic terrorists, there's another very real but very quiet siege taking place on our people's government... from within.
Far from being a movement of desperate poor people, this assault on democracy is being mounted by extremely wealthy and powerful guys in pinstripe suits. Theirs is a corporate assault on our public resources, public institutions, public functions -- and the very idea of the common good. Their goal is to replace our public sector with corporate governance.
In an important book titled The Fox In the Hen House, Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich document the startling extent to which this takeover has already happened with presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton willingly turning over public purposes, assets, and control to these antidemocratic, profitseeking interests.
This privatization (which is nothing but a euphemism for corporatization) hit the mother lode with the BushCheney regime. With their extremist, antigovernment ideology, the Bushites are gleefully selling out the public good by selling off whole chunks of our government. We know about their push to privatize Social Security and schools -- but few are aware of the massive turnover of power to corporations in such areas as the military, our parks, prisons, and social programs.
Kahn and Minnich's website is www.thefoxinthehenhouse.com.