Selling outrage and seducing the citizen.

The rich are angry according to Paul Krugman in his New York Times column Monday. The rich are outraged that the tax cuts they were given in the beginning of this century are expiring at the end of this year.
The rich want everyone else in the country to be outraged too and are willing to put their money where their priorities are. The primary method is the creation and funding of nonprofit advocacy groups like Americans for Job Security. Then there is Citizens for the Republic run by men known as Regan's money men for two decades. This organization is yet another almost solely funded by the Koch brothers. These two men, who inherited the huge corporation Koch Industries, are the money behind the money pushing the Tea Party's "grass roots" influence.

"…among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it's their money, and they have the right to keep it."

Largest home in Kentucky owned by Papa John's founder.

The nonprofit advocacy groups raise money and avoid taxation by calling huge donations dues. These groups have no purpose other than to cover various money trails all over the country, funding advertising, websites, blogs, YouTube videos, online chatter and enthusiastic talking heads who are inflating outrage at the logic of paying taxes to support the country.

I mention these groups because they are examples of hundred more that exist to get our votes behind their agenda. They believe when we see their incessant warm and fuzzy shots of the majesty of our national parks and the flag flying briskly in a small town parade, we will once again believe the words well crafted to seduce and follow that thinking all the way to the voting booth.

You see 95% of the country is not extremely wealthy. Fourteen point three percent of the country [one in 7] people in America are poor. The poor do not vote in numbers anywhere close to their part of the population. Fifty to 60% of the citizens vote. These nonprofit advocacy groups know this. They have set their eye on the up to 80% who are not poor and not very wealthy.

To succeed in the self-serving agenda of the rich all they have to do is poke us into their outrage.

Three quarters of the annual budget of the country is spent on the military, Social Security and Medicare. I would analyze this for you but I know your eyes will just glaze over!

Suffice it to say the working population has paid into Social Security and Medicare. Yet when you hear candidates supported by these advocacy groups one of the things they want to do is cut these two safety net programs. Another idea they have is to privatize Social Security so that there is fresh money for the stock market which leads to fresh commissions and income for the banks and brokerage firms which we the people bailed out when they ran the financial industry into the ground.

Remember that? Sure you do.

Back in 1994 when the Contract for America was launched taxes were at the point they would be again when the tax cuts expire at the end of December. When we survived the predicted Y2K doom of the new century, the federal budget had a surplus. Learned economists were predicting major financial problems if the surplus continued! This tells you just how accurate learned economists can predict the economy in the future.

Now we have had seven years of wild abandon in spending and two wars. We have had three years of continuing war and an almost total financial collapse. You can blame this on many things. There are nonprofit advocacy groups who will write you a long list of who to blame. But when you spend more money than you bring in you are not going to be solvent. Closing our eyes and doing what was done before will not work.

That is the definition of crazy.