Month after month, year after year, we've watched with fascinated horror as George W. Bush revives the ancient tools of tyranny. Aggressive war, torture, secret prisons, arbitrary detention, death squads, mass surveillance, contempt for law, elitist corruption, deification of the leader, co-option of religion to serve state power, rule by executive fiat: It's like watching a ghastly pantomime of imperial Rome or some feudal state, rigged up in modern dress.
Thus it was no surprise when Bush trotted out another weapon from the oppressor's hoard last month: tax-farming, the practice of turning over government revenue collection to private profiteers. Yes, that scourge of honest yeomen from time immemorial will soon be stalking the streets of 21st-century America, shaking down the populace for personal gain.
Bush has largely excused the rich and powerful from the onerous burden of lightening their wads a tiny bit for the public weal -- with a resulting plunge in Treasury receipts. Yet he still needs mucho boodle to pay for his wars, and for the corporate welfare he doles out by the barge-load to his friends and family. Not to mention the billions in public funds he's passing to his favorite religious sects -- including the sex-crazed, anti-American cultist Sun Myung Moon, whose front groups have been set loose in the nation's schools to teach "sexual abstinence," Salon.com reports.
And so the porcine pantomime plays on, gorging the rich while -- as always -- the weakest go to the wall. With tax-farming making a comeback, what's next for the retro-mad Regime? Debtor's prisons? Slavery? Crucifixion? Why not? For surely history has shown that nothing is beyond the pale for this blood-soaked crew in their grunting, grasping lunge for domination.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/01/14/120.html
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