Beware the Shock Doctrine

The bail out plan offered by the Bush administration has the distinct odor of the Shock Doctrine: using a crisis to scare the country into precipitous action that will increase executive department power and benefit wealthy Republican supporters.

Its brevity alone is a red flag. Its insistence on its acts being "non-reviewable" is outrageous but fully in tune with the fascist tendencies of the Bush presidency.

Here's the full text, and I note that I'm not the only one who thought of N. Klein's Shock Doctrine. Paul Krugman in the NY Times and Sebastian Mallaby in the W. Post have already written columns against it.

But Republicans in Congress are trying to pressure Democrats to give the Bushites all they want. This is classic Shock Doctrine stuff. Democrats need to resist this attempt to panic them and make sure this plan has real oversight, doesn't further benefit the rich and penalize everyone else, and incidentally, that it will actually work.