We don't now---but there was a SHADOW GOVERNMENT under Cheney/Bush. Pay attention to the MSNBC or CNN news when it talks about the covert CIA group established by Rumsfeld, Wolfowicz, Cheney (and who knows if Bush was even informed...he was an idiot)---the one Cheney illegally ordered not to report to Congress. And under Bush/Cheney, there was also an attempted overthrow by cult-evangelist Michael Farris and his "culture warriors" that he refers to as "Generation Joshua" (Goldberg, 2006). This cult-evangelist movement is widespread (Bush had eight working for him in the White House and, according to Goldberg's investigation, twenty-two right-wing evangelist Congressmen have members of this group working for them on Capital Hill. These people are homeschooled from infancy through teens with a literal interpretation of scripture, and are taught that Democrats are "nonbelievers", that government is "the beast" or "evil" and that they are ordained by God to achieve "dominion" over all levels of government and over all nonbelievers in order to make their narrow version of "Christian" the law/religion of the land. Sounds farfetched, but the C Street secretive "Family" that has been in news with the hypocrits Senator Ensign,Governor Sanford, and others is part of this movement to take over the government from within.
Listen closely to President Obama's dream for America and your fears will subside somewhat. The lobbyists are out in DROVES for the banking industry, Wall Street, the insurance industry, hospitals, HMOs, credit card companies, mortgage lenders/brokers, pharmaceuticals, and so on---all trying to protect their billionaire bosses' unrestricted pigout fests at the money trough, so President Obama is showing tremendous political courage to stand up to these spoiled-brat industries on behalf of consumers. There has been a "new world order" effort from the Bush/Cheney years that is now interrupted, and it will STAY interrupted so long as right-wing extremists are not allowed to gain power.
I'm old enough to remember better times in this country, before Watergate and the spying on the Democratic party, or the campaign of "dirty tricks" used by Nixon. I saw our nation come back to life under Bill Clinton, too, who had to repair the Reagan/Bush and Bush/Quayle "supply-side" (voodoo) disaster that resulted in massive job losses, record numbers of homeless families and veterans, loss of our manufacturing base, and the collapse of the savings and loan industry (sound familiar?). When Bill Clinton left office, we had a $271 billion surplus, our deficit had been paid down by $362 billion, and 2.2 million jobs had been created (Flynt, 2004), using the reverse policy of "demand-side economics" (
[email protected]). We're on the right path now, if we can just keep the lobbyists from blocking legislation that the people want (like universal health care and insurance company reforms).