By Cappy Rudyard

Members of the conservative junta are so intent on making sure that the tattered shreds of our economy hold together until the election is over that they will stop at nothing. Today’s news shows that not only are they willing to co-opt Obama’s “change” meme, but have completely plagiarized Debs’ “public ownership” message. But they get it completely wrong.

With 80% public ownership of American International Group (AIG), the McCain/Bush junta has made explicit their plan to “privatize profit, and nationalize debt.” This is, of course, not Debs’ Socialism, but the naked use of government to give the most beknighted of our hereditary financial class a “do-over.” Roll back individual bankruptcy protection, while making corporate bankruptcy protection available for the asking. Regressive taxation in two senses: taking from the poor to give to the rich, and taking from the careful to give to the gamblers.

This may sound like Socialism on a superficial level, but here is Eugene V. Debs to remind us what real Socialism sounds like:

Less than 2 percent of our people privately own our natural resources and our industrial machinery. In virtue of which they have the power to rule the nation and rob the people…
As long as the industrial machinery that feeds and clothes and shelters the people is the private property of the 2 percent minority of exploiting capitalists, the people will be poor, life will be wretched struggle for existence, the divine in human nature will never be realized, and this world will still be nearer to the jungles than to any real civilization.
The Socialist Party says put an end to private ownership of social necessities. The end of private ownership means the end of exploitation, and the end of exploitation means the end of war and the beginning of worldwide peace.

- Debs: The Wall Street Explosion [Sept. 25, 1920]

Zombie Eugene Debs.
Right for America, alive.
Right for America, dead.