Is someone paying to establish an oligarchy in America?

56 years ago, right-wing Senator Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination for the presidency then went on to get soundly trounced in the general election of 1964, winning in only 6 states. His loss energized the conservative movement within the Republican party, though. The money men who had pushed for his candidacy—seeing that his policies would vastly benefit those who were already wealthy—decided they would use some of their money to reprogram the American meme.

They set up a network of right-wing think tanks that now covers all 50 states. They set up PR firms. The think tanks were staffed with right-wing PhDs whose job was to invent policy initiatives that would favor the rich over the poor and middle class, then figure out how to sell such policies by duping enough Americans into believing that such action was good for the entire populace, or was the only “fair” thing to do. The PR firms were tasked with coining the bumper-sticker slogans and ad campaigns that would sell these policy ideas.

To help, they set out to divide Americans against one another using religion, guns, gays, abortion and any divisive issue they could find to do so. They built a right-wing media network in print, AM radio and finally News Corp. and its Tax News outlet.

The effort has met with great success. America moved from a center left society in the late 60s to a center right one by the 1980s. Right-wing sentiment swept Ronald Reagan into office in the 1980 election, and he set about instituting “trickle down” economics; promising Americans that a rising tide would lift all boats. He cut the top tax rate for the 1% from 70% to 28%.

The rising tide didn’t lift all boats, Yachts did very well. The smaller rowboats got swamped.. Real, inflation-adjusted income for the 99% stayed nearly flat for the last 3 decades. Income for the bottom 80% has actually declined over the past 10 years. But the income of the top 1% shot up over 350% in the same 3-decade period. In 1980, the top 1% held 33% of the nation’s financial wealth. Today, the top 1% hold 42% and are gaining. The bottom 99% lost 9% in their share of the wealth.

So, who funded all this? Who stood to gain by these changes, and is still pushing for more of the nation’s wealth to flow to the top since there is still 58% of the nation’s financial wealth in the hands of just 99% of our people? Who could be so greedy as to play man behind the political/lobbying curtain? Isn’t it time we start naming names?