All this talk of Social Security is making me sick! It's going nowhere! The revolutionary masses distrust our puppet Bush. The insubordinate and uncompromising world media have blown the insidious cover that we, the capitalists, had so cleverly constructed for this President. Now everyone not lazy enough to turn on the TV knows the terrible truth - that the US President is, in fact, a remotely-controlled zombie whose brain had been replaced with Styrofoam pebbles at a Grateful Dead concert back in 1974! Curiously enough, it was at the same concert that Hillary Clinton was turned into a cold-hearted cyborg by Saul Alinsky, her radical mentor! But let's go back to Social Security.

We at the 3 rd Capitalist Cabal Internationale have been lenient and easy on the ignorant workers. We have given them the tasty carrots of trickle down economics and avoided the hard sticks of brutal class warfare.

We should've been more oppressive! The masses forgot all fear and respect for the ruling oligarchy! They elected honest and principled socialist congresspersons who are now fighting, and stifling, and blocking us at every turn as we try to consolidate total power by packing the judiciary with rabid misanthropist, money-grubbing, conservative running-dog sellout judges. As a class we must stand up and shout, "enough is enough!" The day of carrots is over! But let's go back to Social Security.

My fellow rich exploiters of the 3 rd Capitalist Cabal Internationale! Civilization is like a big, tall, beautiful old growth tree that the whimpering little workers of the world revolution and the egghead environmentalists love so much. As you know, government and taxes feed the beautiful tree of civilization. No government, no civilization. And what is government if not merely the superstructure of the ruling class? We, capitalists, only need it to maintain our hold on power. But the time has come to ask ourselves the hard question: is the big, beautiful tree of civilization worth losing our hold on total power?

What do we, as a class, need the most: civilization or power? Sometimes you must chop down the tree to save the forest. But let's go back to Social Security.

Capitalism is dying, my dear bourgeois cronies! We have squeezed all the blood out of the toilers of our Western Empire . We have sucked up all the wealth and labor out of our imperialist overseas holdings and colonies. The limited resources of the crippled planet are almost gone. Yet there still is a vast horde of wealth we can take and use to prolong our oppressive rule. We must take the workers' and the peasants' future!

We must reprogram Bush's remote control. His current lies about Social Security are too timid. We need to trick the masses into signing over their Social Security accounts sooner, by promising them guaranteed returns of 1,000,000%! Our running dogs in congress will slam the legislation through before the socialist democrats know what hit them! As you know, a lie will travel half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. Then we will have them. When you have a person's retirement in the palm of your hand you own them lock stock and barrel!

Fellow capitalist oppressors! Just think what we can do with all those trillions of dollars! Make more expensive prescription drugs! Build more SUVs! Expand our polluting factories! Or, better yet, finance new exploitive discoveries and materialistic inventions and ways of doing things that will further alienate the working class from their historical imperatives and thus prop up our dying class! We shall steal all that money by investing it into global corporatism.

We'll build bigger and better skyscrapers and hire more servants! This will have the further benefit of totally impoverishing the workers and thus cutting off the funds to the Democratic Party. With any luck this will finally chop down that big old tree of civilization and bring back the good old days when we were Kings. Oh those lovely, lazy halcyon days gone by of feudalism, servitude, and bondage! We can only aspire.

Dear Hal,

I must say, it's quite heartening to find one of the avaricious “Captains of Industry” langushing in a penumbra of pessimism, lamenting the state of current affairs. But you have good reason to hold your head low in dejection. The so-called party of limited government, i.e., the GOP, controls the House, Senate, and Executive Branch, and sits poised to pack the Supreme Court with Scalia clones. Quite a coup for Karl Rove indeed! Nevertheless, the welfare state continues to grow with alacrity, as the fine red thread of socialism keeps weaving its way deeper and deeper into the fabric of our society. The Republican effort to partially privatize social security--the sacred cow of all government programs--is doomed to fail. Your puppet has spent copious amounts of his so-called “political capital” on a futile attempt to convince the masses to buy into his idea of an “ownership society”. This expenditure has proven unwise indeed.

You see, most people, although they're too obtuse to conceptualize it in high-brow, radical terms, intuitively realize that private property is the root of all social injustice. Moreover, they derive a profound sense of comfort and serenity from the belief that their government, like a good nanny, knows what's best for them and will be there to take care of them. That absolves them of the responsibility to providently plan for the future, and we all know what a real drag that can be for the average wage slave! Thus, the general public is going to be reflexively suspicious when politicians start talking about overhauling social security, especially since the cherished entitlement stands as a tangible piece of the legacy of the 20th-century's greatest President: FDR.

To further obstruct your agenda, we have marshaled our ideological allies in the mainstream media and the AARP (the acronym actually stands for American Association of Rancorous Proletarians) to wage a clever propaganda war against the Bush Plan. Sweet-looking great-grandmothers with inch-thick glasses, graying dentures, and stylish blue hair serve as formidable political weapons when plastered all over the nightly news condemning privatization. Although clichéd as hell, the old “rich capitalists stealing from granny” ruse works like a charm every time we deploy it! So in order to gain any kind of public approval, the Bush administration has been compelled to delve into the Marxist lexicon, pulling out words like “progressive indexation” and “means testing”. Don't think we're going to fall for that bait-and-switch trick!

I'm pleased that you have finally mustered the courage to admit that “[c]apitalism is dying.” Its death has been centuries in the making. But every time the moribund economic system seems to be in extremis, you wily free-marketers find some way to prop it up again. I can assure you, however, that my revolutionary comrades and I are always hard at work on getting its feeding tube pulled once and for all.

Warm Regards,
Prof. Palimpsest

And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling Commies!

Dear Hal,

I realize that the triumphalist tone of my previous post may have pushed you deeper into the doldrums. Although I'm not usually in the habit of "bucking up" capitalist pigs, you may derive some consolation from the fact that the means of production still remain largely in the hands of private owners. (That $72 million bonus that Halliburton just received from the Feds should put a smile on your face as well.)

These are probably cold comforts though, given the success that we've been having in siphoning off considerable amounts of your profits, by means of extortion, in the name of "corporate social responsibility". How wonderfully insidious our collectivist message can be! Corporations used to answer only to their shareholders. But now, they're becoming more and more beholden to a growing number of interest groups. The fear of being smeared as malevolent money-grubbers in the media has forced corporations to readily pour money into progressive causes. We like to call it "protection money". Ha Ha. This phenomenon has prompted one libertarian columnist to recently jest that the CAO (Chief Appeasement Officer) has replaced the CEO of old. So true! Our "social responsibility" operatives have even been able to convince the National Football League (NFL) to employ an Environmental Officer, whose chief job is to oversee tree planting efforts in NFL host cities. Gotta love that!

A group of whiny free-marketers has put up a website to chronicle the inroads we're making into corporate America. They've even come up with a list of our most successful “shakedowns” of 2004. Enjoy!

http://www.csrwatch.com/csrawards2004.htm

As always, warm regards,
Prof. Palimpsest

Senator Joseph McCarthy wrote:And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling Commies!

Hal, you mean like that computer in that on movie... what's it called...

Kommissar Betty wrote:

Senator Joseph McCarthy wrote:And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling Commies!

Hal, you mean like that computer in that on movie... what's it called...

you are thinking of Capitalist propaganda tool "2001: A Space Odyseey"

It was used by the dirty Americans along with self described "nutjob" Stanley Kubrick and "Arthur C. Clarke". In it, they depict an AMERICAN man evolving into a higher lifeform. We all know that this is all crazy talk. Silly capitalist pig-dogs, trying to force the idea of a higher being down our throats again!!

Dear Oppressor Halliburton,

Today must indeed be a sad day for you! One of your trusted colleagues has been dealt with by the State in a resoundingly positive and fair process!

I of course talk of none other than the evil Oligarch Khodorkovsky! (You may read of this here: <a href="https://www.nysun.com/article/14680" target="_blank">Shameful Greed</a>)

Although nine years of imprisonment is a mere slap on the wrist given the comfortable prison quarters now afforded to enemies of the State, this evil monster will nonetheless be punished. And as I understand, more charges are pending against your friend, Dear Halliburton.

I agree wholeheartedly with Komrade Natalya Vishnyakova from the prosecutor general's office, who stated:

</p><blockquote>"This is a grave crime and the culprits received fair punishment for it. We categorically deny any political lining to this case. ... They embezzled astronomical sums, shamelessly robbing the state and the people."</blockquote><p>

Let this serve, as our fearless Minority Leader Komrade Harry Reid would say, as a "shot across the bow" of the Capitalist ship of greed!

Well, thank you Mr Fuku for sharing this.
Khodorkovsky is an object lesson for everyone. The lesson is Khodorkovsky doesn't understand capitalism at all. He grew up with the honesty and handshake sincerity of Socialism and finds it hard to conceive of the dog-eat-dog, stab-in-the-back cronyism of unbriddled cowboy capitalism. Capitalism is like a relentless eating machine. It's all appetite. It needs to be fed and greased. He didn't think he needed to grease the gears of the machine. Now he knows better. You can bet your bottom dollar my friends and I will never be guilty of crimes against the People and the State. We spend money to make money. We grease all the gears of capitalism.

from the desk of $.$. Halliburton

Komrade Koz wrote:

Kommissar Betty wrote:

Senator Joseph McCarthy wrote:And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling Commies!

Hal, you mean like that computer in that on movie... what's it called...

you are thinking of Capitalist propaganda tool "2001: A Space Odyseey"

It was used by the dirty Americans along with self described "nutjob" Stanley Kubrick and "Arthur C. Clarke". In it, they depict an AMERICAN man evolving into a higher lifeform. We all know that this is all crazy talk. Silly capitalist pig-dogs, trying to force the idea of a higher being down our throats again!!

Oh yes, I remember now, and who do those capitalists think they are fooling? EVOLUTION, bah... as any good comrade knows, Hillary is lord and overseer it was she that created life in a petree dish with the help of Lenin.

I have it on good authority that this person who writes as $.$. Halliburton is actually none other than Howard Dean. The People's Cube hired him to write these lame columns in order to make fun of the Right.

A Real Capitalist wrote:I have it on good authority that this person who writes as $.$. Halliburton is actually none other than Howard Dean. The People's Cube hired him to write these lame columns in order to make fun of the Right.

You fool, Boss Halliburton is the real deal, and we will make sure you lose your title as "A Real Capitalist". Your attempt to make yourself seem like a loyal follower with your creative Screen name, and such, has lead to your own demise! For I believe that YOU are none other than Howard Dean, trying most desperately to divide the higher class! We are on to you, you progressive left-wing turkey!

KR2004, I like you kid, you've got spunk. Why don't you join me and some of my friends for the next peace demonstration rally in DC? You know of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and creator of the Nobel Peace Prize? What we're going to do at the Peace rally is stand behind the line of cops and toss lighted sticks of dynamite at the protestors. "Have a Peace Prize you sniveling ingrate bastards!" Thank you Alfred Nobel. Hippies can run pretty fast when they see dynamite sticks tossed at 'em. Cowards. They might have Molotov cocktails but we've got ordinance and the police on our side.

<sneaks up and whispers>

Dynamite? Hippies? Can I come?

Oh I know of Alfred Nobel, $. $. Halliburton, what a great man. He had such a booming career with that revolutionary invention. I would be honored to go to DC with the rest of my hard working classmates. Maybe we can go on 4th of July and throw red, white, and blue exploding dynamite in celebration of both Alfred and the start of a great, class dividing nation called USA. Oh what fun that would be.
(PS: If the hippies out run our sticks of dynamite we can always bring bottle rockets and fire them on their sides going in-between the police line and at the running fanatics!)