[crashryan]

I wonder if the late Dr Dodgson would have appreciated the supreme irony of this bit of nonsense. In an article excerpted over at DCM (https://digitalcomicmuseum.com/forum/index.php/topic,14730.msg81982.html#msg81982) Ken Quattro points out that the book was just a new wrinkle in a propaganda campaign stretching back to the 1930s, when the National Association of Manufacturers bankrolled the "Industrial Press Services" to promote its agenda of busting unions and promoting corporate tax cuts. The irony, of course, is that the NAM had little interest in cutting the very real "fraud, waste, and abuse" they document.

Why should they? It's their members, not the Evil Government's treasury, that profited from $200 hammers and bridges to nowhere. The Government was involved to the extent that congressmen and senators (many undoubtedly fellow NAM members) set up the grift on behalf of private entities in return for a slice of the pie. The real message seeps in around page 14. Cut taxes--they say "your" taxes but they mean "our" taxes--so as much money as possible pours into NAM pockets. Then everything will be fine!

It's an old trick: wrap a potentially unpopular idea (shifting the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle and lower classes, eliminating workers' rights) inside an emotionally-charged issue having little to do with it (government waste, immigration). And if that doesn't work, cry "communism!"

Another NAM production is "Watch Out for Big Talk," also on this site. It warns against "The carnival pitchman...'big plan' malarkey...the old confidence game" using the same emotional appeal, false equivalents, fact-bending, and moon-promising that it decries, all purportedly on behalf of the Little Guy.

The fact that this old scam still works was demonstrated during the Trump administration, which looted the treasury and redirected more public money into wealthy private pockets than any administration since the Gillded Age yet is still believed by many to have been a triumph for the Little Guy.

Link to the book: Alice in Blunderland - Industrial_Services