While Stephen Harper and his Canadian Conservatives have no unitary executive
authority though the current governor general seems to be legitimizing it in seeking to
bring a hidden agenda of disaster capitalism to Canada, Minnesota's governor and mouthpiece
for North Oaks, the main concentration of the state's super rich and defender of class war on their
behalf against the folks, does have some legal unitary executive authority acting as an official in
part of separate branch of government and elected separately unlike the Canadian chief
executive with that parliamentary system, and he's seeking to bring same disaster capitalism
to the state, exploiting the current economic crisis to carry out class warfare on behalf
of the super rich against the rest of the people. With the help of spineless Democrats
doing their impression of the Key Stone Kops, he can do just that and take the nice
out of Minnesota nice. By doing this the GOP governor and head neo con thug with
Democratic enablers in the legislature can impose what has been a secret far right/
loony right agenda on the state clobbering public education, public transportation,
and other essential services for the people while handing over tons of taxpayer
dollars to the super rich by turning public assets over to the private sector selling
off to same, meaning to the super rich and by tax breaks for same rich parasites
off the working people of Minnesota and meanwhile increasing taxes on public
education and public transportation, for taxes they are, but calling these "user
fees" with all the Orwellian language of slavery to the rich and super rich is
really freedom, and class war on behalf of the super rich is really peace, and
neo constipation of the system is really regularity is just plain BS.

If Canada can get disaster capitalism so aptly referred to and discussed so
well by Naomi Klein, then Minnesota is now getting ready for same courtesy
of not just the GOP governor, but you guessed it, those "wonderful" go along
to get along, follow the line of least resistance "Democrats" right here in the
Minnesota Legislature, at least the "leaders." We're talking about such
enablers as the House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelleher and House
Majority Leader Tony Sertich. No word is officially available yet from the
senate majority leader who may be thinking about actually acting like
a voice for the people of Minnesota, but don't hold your breath on that just
yet. The economic crisis it appears is bring together the "strange bedfellows
of politics," and just in time to get things back to the old trickle down/give
everything away to the rich and super rich after taking away everything
from the rest. Hey, it's class war by any other name, but that really is
what disaster capitalism wherever it plays out really is using crises to as Edward
Herman and Noam Chomsky would say to "manufacture consent." These "Democratic
leaders," if they would be real Democrats and leaders they must regain their backbone,
realizing and recognizing the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, when he said "greed
degrades." They must stop their triangulating, refusing to stand for anything but
the power and privilege of holding office, and start standing up in the spirit of
Paul Wellstone and Hubert Humphrey. This is an imperative. They need only
look at their party nationally in the 1990s to see how with the triangulation and
lack of standing for principles got them into minority party and almost minor
minority party status across this country except in presidential politics and
was bad public policy as well. Otherwise these Democrats will have not only
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for themselves, but handed this state
a disgraceful version of what Klein rightly refers to as disaster capitalism which
destroys, but doesn't build anything. With that being the case, they might soon
find they those who stand for nothing, soon have nowhere to stand. For this
dangerous dogma of disaster capitalism will yield a scorched earth for all
and with its smashing of the public sector to hand over rule or really misrule
to the rich and super rich. This isn't "government by the consent of the governed"
nor "government of by and for the people" in the least.

Crises, as Klein so astutely points out, are weapons of disaster capitalism.
So it is here in this once progressive state. But Democrats in the legislature
need not let this happen. They can learn from opposition parties to their
north in Canada, who now have decided to become true opposition parties
and hold those neo con thug Conservatives there accountable for their lack
of consideration of the real needs of the people. That's what opposition
parties are for, to make democracy work for the people. It's why such people
as Thomas Jefferson founded the Democrat Republicans, whom the Democrats
are descended from, to force accountability on politicians. They weren't afraid to
think outside the box of "bipartisan politics."

Meanwhile the mainstream US media, right here the local Star Gazer Tribune,
is big business, and as expected favors a class war for the rich and super
rich as any institutional analysis worthy of the name would predict, and its
coverage shows it. It's out there helping to "manufacture consent." "Help
is on the way," as the line from that Marx brothers movie and these media
types would say. Thus "how dare" we progressives oppose this? Why it's
"unpatriotic."

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both," as Louis Brandeis,
one time US Supreme Court justice once put it.

The problem is clearly the threat of neo constipation of the system. The solution
is for people to pour a huge quantity of the equivalent of Castor oil on the
system, thus clearing it out. A grass roots progressive movement offers the
vehicle for doing just that.

Democrats in the state legislature must decide which side they're on. If
they wish to side with those who as Martin Luther King Jr referred to in his
day as siding with the "landed gentry" in Latin America and elsewhere
in what was then a class war for the rich of the time, they can do that and get
on what Dr King called the wrong side of history and back a morally
bankrupt policy as well. On the other hand, they can choose to stand up to
be a voice for the voiceless, to stand up against this class war for the super
rich and against all the rest and back good policy and good politics as well.

Stuart Symington in the Army/McCarthy hearing would reply to Joseph McCarthy
after citing chapter and verse of his outrageous charges, "It seems some
people just want anarchy." This is just what's going on here

The partisans of this "shock and awe" of disaster capitalism live for
for crises-- the easier to scare the hell out of people to make sure the
"wonderful heroes" can ride to the rescue on their "white horses"
or some would say jack asses. Those "damn terrible liberals
and progressives" have no "respect" nor proper deference to the
proper authority of the "great trickle down" rip off tyranny and con
game of the neo cons.

The response to disaster capitalism with all its "shock and awe" dogma
shouldn't just be "aw shocks."