Robert Parry: America’s Government by Extortion

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



America’s Government by Extortion
October 3, 2013

Exclusive: By forcing a U.S. government shutdown – and threatening a first-ever credit default – Tea Party Republicans are creating a new constitutional system which lets a determined white minority impose its will on the diverse American majority by inflicting so much pain that the extortionists prevail, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


As the Republican-driven U.S. government shutdown careens forward, everyone who’s seen a movie about hostage-taking – “Air Force One,” for instance – knows what happens now. The terrorists press their demands by beginning to shoot hostages.

Arguably, the Tea Party Republicans have already begun to do that by forcing hundreds of thousands of government employees to be furloughed (including intelligence analysts responsible for detecting attacks by actual terrorists), by shutting down cancer-drug trials for children, and by disrupting hundreds of other important federal programs that protect the physical and financial safety of the American people.

By Oct. 17 – when the country’s debt ceiling is expected to be breached – the gun will be put to the head of the “full faith and credit of the United States,” possibly inducing a global financial panic that could reverse the hard-won economic gains of the past five years and throw millions of people out of their jobs and out of their homes.

Or as actor Gary Oldman (playing the lead terrorist in “Air Force One”) might put it: Eventually we’ll wreak so much havoc that you, Mr. President, will have to give us what we want, first the surrender of health-care reform, but once we know how to get our way, there will be no limit to what we can dismantle next. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2013/10/03/americas-government-by-extortion/