The abominable administration says that a tax increase for wealthy individuals and corporations is not class warfare, but rather an attempt at an equitable solution to the deficit problem (“simple math”).

I agree that tax increases to the wealthy is not class warfare, but, obviously there is class warfare: the wealthy and the powerful and their minions are making war against the poor and the middle class.

Look no further for evidence of that war than Sutter Hospital in Lakeport, where the managers are trying to cut the benefits of nurses, while at the same time, raking in record profits. And, as I have written before, those of us on social security have seen our stipends frozen, even as our expenses increase.

Particularly galling is the fact that the financial sector, the most power full sector in the economy, caused the financial crisis in the first place, and did so with impunity.

This is not open for conjecture, as there are now many books available tracing the history of the debacle, including some insider confessions (See the book, for example, F.I.A.S.C.O., by Frank Partnoy).

However, the financial sector received, if you include help from the Federal Reserve Board (not open or answerable to public scrutiny), $13 trillion.

And yet, even as business feeds at the trough of government handouts, when the people ask for universal health care, that is “socialism.”

This leads to the larger question: How are we so blatantly manipulated by the power structure? Here is one example: Leading up to the invasion of Iraq, Dick Cheney said, one afternoon, “We must stop them over there, or we will have to fight them over here.”

That evening, Fox News was repeating the same mantra. And, the next day, my friends were repeating the same mantra. It sounded good, even though now, we now know that all of the reasons for the invasion were fabricated: no weapons of mass destruction, no sanctioned terrorist bases in Iraq, no “yellow cake uranium.”

Interestingly, the mantra, “we must stop them over there or we will have to fight them over here” is precisely the opposite of the truth: because we attacked them over there, they attacked us over here.

The power structure creates a version of reality by using the media to influence our perception of reality. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that it is human nature, even though we can see and know certain facts, to ignore them, for fear that we would have to take action.

For example, most of us accept that the planet faces imminent ecological disaster, and yet, very close to my home, people are attending the auto races near the fairground and launching their motorboats (at the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I launch my kayak and ride my bicycle to work): Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

We need to turn around the ship of state. I hunger for a new paradigm, but perhaps the old one would work if government was not a tool of corporate power.

Perhaps a beginning would be to replace Obama as the Democratic candidate with someone like Elizabeth Warren, who not only would defend our interests, but is better looking than Obama or Parry.

Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.