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January 18, 2008 at 14:33:52
How the CIA Created a Ruling, Corporate Overclass in America by Len Hart Page 1 of 5 page(s) |
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--Steve Kangas, The Origins of the Overclass
The result is a form of corporate serfdom if not slavery. The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.
The Bush administration will be forever associated with a "ruling overclass" --oligarchs who were the sole beneficiaries of Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982 and, later, several equally inequitable tax cuts during the Bush regime. It is no coincidence that the oligarchs likewise benefited in various ways from Bush's military adventures in the Middle East. GOP tax cuts are typically called "trickle down" theory. Reagan's Budget Director David Stockman called the theory that justifies them a "trojan horse".
Since Ronald Reagan's infamous tax cut of 1982, "conservatives" myopically cite a mythical "Reagan Recovery" as proof of "Reaganomics", otherwise called supply-side economics. The right wing argument is simplistic and fallacious. It must be pointed out that following the tax cut, the nation plunged into recession, the worst since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression of 1929. Nevertheless, conservatives will persist in citing a three percent growth rate following two years of severe recession as proof that "wealth trickles down". This assertion fails to address key questions.
Who benefited from the recovery?
The following essay by the late Steve Kangas should be required reading. He makes the bullet proof case that the enrichment of the "overclass" is the work of radical "conservatives" who knew at the time that "trickle down" hardly describes the effect of inequitable tax cuts. Kangas' is supported by Ronald Reagan's own Budget Director, David Stockman, who later called "Reaganomics" a "trojan horse" insisted upon by radicals, a "noisy faction of Republicans"! Kangas' work is a classic. Kangas himself was found shot to death just outside the office of the infamous Richard Mellon Scaife --the man who bankrolled the dubious attempt to buy witnesses against Bill Clinton! It is more than a mere footnote to history, that not even Scaife's millions succeeded in "buying" a single witness against Clinton. But I digress. The story that Kangas might well have paid for with his life is nothing less than the role played by the CIA in the creation of a permanent ruling "overclass" in America.
Stockman was right. Supply-side, otherwise called "trickle down" theory, was indeed a trojan-horse, about which it was known that it would create and support a class of oppressive oligarchs. Following is Kangas' essay in its entirety.
The Origins of the Overclass
By Steve Kangas
The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.
The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface - and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.
During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America's wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent - the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.How did this alliance start? The CIA has always recruited the nation's elite: millionaire businessmen, Wall Street brokers, members of the national news media, and Ivy League scholars. During World War II, General "Wild Bill" Donovan became chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA. Donovan recruited so exclusively from the nation's rich and powerful that members eventually came to joke that "OSS" stood for "Oh, so social!"
Another early elite was Allen Dulles, who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Dulles was a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other mammoth trusts, corporations and cartels. He was also a board member of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, with offices in Wall Street, London, Zurich and Hamburg. His financial interests across the world would become a conflict of interest when he became head of the CIA. Like Donavan, he would recruit exclusively from society's elite.By the 1950s, the CIA had riddled the nation's businesses, media and universities with tens of thousands of part-time, on-call operatives. Their employment with the agency took a variety of forms, which included:
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Left Out
I'd like this expose more if it went into the levels of power that control both the Presidency and the CIA. If it went into how the Secret Service has other functions and allegiences other than just "protecting" the president. No alledged esoteric "insightful" "truth" can be complete without discussing the Global Banking Monopoly. This also does not admit that the USA, albeit an important cog, is not the seat of empire but only a tool in the matrix of Empire. I'll be interested when finally someone demonstrates how the famous Cold War was a contrived competition instigated by the true seat of Empire to keep both the USA and USSR in a kind of check. So far, I'm the only one that has discerned this simple truth. But then once you finally figure out the True Seat of Empire, the Banking monopoly and their simple agenda everything else finally makes sense. Poverty and fear are the actual weapons of Global domination. Though far too many get to feel the domination at the end of a gun, most of us just get to live in a contrived reality of Media generated lies. This essay, though accurate in so much, is just another diversion with untold lies of omission and misplaced emphasis. However Mr. hart, I think you for posting it. I like the part about Nixon. He was a Liberal. It was also not lost on me that the whole message of Watergate was to show that the President was NOT above the Law. What this really means though is different than what Americans suspect. What it means is no President is above the Power of Empire. Bill Clinton is the ultimate CIA and Empire insider and he has the OXFORD pedigree to prove it. What ever kind of diversion or stall his Impeachment was I'm not sure, I'm just sure it wasn't about his Lies or his sex life. by "Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 at 2:31:37 PM  (0+)
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Reply: Homeland Security
And were just beginning to see the Empire's tentacles extend out of this abomination. by "Hoss" David P. (51 articles, 5 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 338 comments [4 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 at 2:34:28 PM (0+)
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Reply: Time, space and death
I appreciate your comments...but this is, after all, an essay ---not a book. Volumes could be written. I have limited time...and Steve Kangas is dead, murdered under suspicious circumstances in Richard Mellon Scaife's office building. by Len Hart (134 articles, 175 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 555 comments) on Saturday, Jan 19, 2008 at 4:49:31 PM (0+)
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