The Republican Revolution delivers again

The greatest propaganda coup of the last century wasn't birthed at a stadium in Nuremberg or in the the dark recesses of the Kremlin, it was given life by an American president in an Oval Office meeting with his top advisers. That president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his propaganda victory was the acceptance of the idea that the role of government was to serve the people.

Prior to FDR, government served only those who deserved it: the corporations. Indeed, it was merely a few decades earlier that corporations were granted personhood and at least one senator, after proudly stating he represented Standard Oil, proposed that Senate representation should be given to corporations rather than the states.

But all that changed with FDR. He and his successors perverted government's purpose by forcing it to address things like the 40 hour work week, workplace safety regulation, state subsidies for the elderly and the sick, and eventually, even civil rights.

The election of Ronald Reagan signaled the beginning of the end of this tyranny of the public good. We've come a very long way in the last 28 years in restoring the important master/servant relationship between corporations and government. I think a recent incident involving Haliburton subsidiary KBR and the US State Department serves as a great example of just how far we've come.

A little over two years ago, a group of KBR employees drugged and gang raped Jamie Leigh Jones, a 20-year-old female American staffer. Jones responded by attempting to report the incident and management reacted by ordering their security division to lock her up in a shipping container.

A sympathetic guard eventually allowed her to use his cellphone and she called her father. He, in turn, called his congressman who contacted the State Department and asked them to dispatch embassy personnel to free her and take her to a medical facility for treatment.

Jones was examined by a doctor who determined that she had been vaginally and anally raped multiple times by the KBR contractors.

At this point, the State Department had a decision to make. Should they allow the rape kit to be sent to the FBI and the Justice Department or given to Jones for a potential lawsuit (contractors are shielded by law from being arrested for anything) and by doing so, side with the young woman against the contractor, or should they seize it and give it to KBR--the company that had imprisoned her to keep her from complaining--and thus honor the sacred covenant Our Leader made with the owners in his ownership society.

As one would expect from any agency run by a good Republican soldier like Condi Rice, State sided with the contractor and gave the rape kit to KBR security, who promptly lost it.

No rape kit; no problem; the Republican revolution delivers again.