Is anyone more than a little curious about where the so-called "populist revolt" against the Obama administration's health care proposals is coming from and who is paying for it? You know, the revolt where people scream and disrupt town hall meetings, brandish guns outside in the street, and label a public option that would help some of the 47 million without health insurance get treatment as "socialist"?

My question is where were these brave patriots hiding when the Bush administration launched massive undeclared wars against Iraq and Afghanistan? Where were they when the military/CIA torture and rendition scandals erupted? Where were they when the Bush and later the Obama administrations gave away several trillion dollars in government bailouts, guarantees, and commitments to the financiers who engineered the biggest heist of the people's money in history?

The health care revolt stinks of hypocrisy, manipulation, and behind-the-scenes collusion between right-wing political groups and their financial backers. I haven't yet figured out the paper trail, but I bet the financial sources are the same as, or very close to, the financial oligarchs who just finished ripping off our republic on such an unprecedented scale.

I think that many, if not most, of these protesters are cowards who only step forth when someone big, important, and powerful is signaling it's okay and paying for it.

In fact I think the health care revolt is a staged distraction to divert attention away from the fact that the recession isn't really ending, that jobs continue to disappear even as the stock market firms up, that worker purchasing power continues to drop, and that the plight of the poor, elderly, disenfranchised, and out of work gets worse every day.

Wanna bet?

© 2009 by Richard C. Cook.

Richard C. Cook is author of We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform. His website is at http://www.richardccook.com. He will be speaking at the annual conference of the American Monetary Institute in Chicago September 24-27, 2009. Register for the conference athttp://www.monetary.org/2009conference.html.