December 28, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY


A CROOK BY ANY OTHER NAME


As George W. Bush finally leaves the world stage, leaving disaster in his wake, we can already see efforts to revise the history of the Bush administration. Revisionism is common in history. Many times the revisionists take a more critical look at historical figures, but sometimes they attempt to flip history on its head. There were attempts to make Richard Nixon look better. The right-wing revisionists have contorted themselves in discussions of Ronald Reagan. We can expect a full-fledged effort to make the filthy Bush administration look competent. This commentary by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:


As George W. Bush and Dick Cheney make their case for some positive legacy from the past eight years, two arguments are playing key roles: the notion that torturing terror suspects saved American lives and the belief that Bush’s Iraq troop "surge" transformed a disaster into something close to "victory."

Not only will these twin arguments be important in defining the public’s future impression of where Bush should rank on the presidential list, but they could constrain how far President Barack Obama can go in reversing these policies. In other words, the perception of the past can affect the future.

Though most current thinking holds that George W. Bush might want to trademark the slogan "Worst President Ever," America's powerful right-wing media (and its many allies in the mainstream press) will surely seek to rehabilitate Bush’s reputation as much as possible.

Even elevating Bush to the status of a presidential mediocrity might open the door for a revival of the Bush Dynasty with brother Jeb already eyeing one of Florida’s U.S. Senate seats and possibly harboring grander ambitions.

December 20, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


RIGHT WING CONTEMPT FOR WORKING PEOPLE

According to right-wingers, we of the working class aren't "achievers." We who do the drudge jobs, the dangerous jobs, the dirty and smelly jobs are just there to be squeezed for the last cent of profit while the "achievers" put their profits in the bank and complain about any concessions to workers. In California it has been increasingly difficult to even file for unemployment. When you call to file you get a phone tree message that they're just too darned busy to take your call and they hang up on you. I have a friend who was laid off and has tried for two weeks to get through. It's disgraceful. I'm hopeful, like Bob Herbert in this column, that the Obama administration will bring positive changes for working people. This column is at www.nytimes.com:

Ordinary workers have suffered. It took years to get a lousy little boost in the minimum wage for the working poor. Attempts to expand health insurance coverage were fought almost to a standstill. Guaranteed pensions vanished. And the maniacs who set fire to the economy with their incendiary financial instruments (yet another form of voodoo) were hot to privatize Social Security.

As Andy Stern, president of the huge Service Employees International Union, told me on Friday: “We’ve had a 25-year experience with market-worshipping, deregulating, privatizing, trickle-down policies, and it has ended us up with the greatest economy on earth staggering, and with the greatest amount of inequality since the Great Depression.”

The contempt for workers over this long period has hardly been hidden. Until Mr. Bush was forced by circumstances to tap the TARP program for the auto industry loans (small potatoes compared with the gargantuan Wall Street bailouts), the administration had gone out of its way to keep the program’s hundreds of billions of dollars reserved for the elites of the financial services industry and their associates.

December 14, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


BUSH DESTRUCTIVE TO THE END

George W. Bush is rushing through a series of so-called "midnight regulations" that will have severe negative impact on the environment and civil liberties. He can get away with this because of a loophole in the law that allows him to bypass Congress. It reminds me a little of a defeated military foe that burns the bridges and poisons the grain. Bush isn't satisfied with the damage he's already done to the United States and the world. This article by Paul Harris is at www.guardian.co.uk:

The Bush moves have outraged many watchdog groups. 'The regulations we have seen so far have been pretty bad,' said Matt Madia, a regulatory policy analyst at OMB Watch. 'The effects of all this are going to be severe.'

Bush can pass the rules because of a loophole in US law allowing him to put last-minute regulations into the Code of Federal Regulations, rules that have the same force as law. He can carry out many of his political aims without needing to force new laws through Congress. Outgoing presidents often use the loophole in their last weeks in office, but Bush has done this far more than Bill Clinton or his father, George Bush sr. He is on track to issue more 'midnight regulations' than any other previous president.

Many of these are radical and appear to pay off big business allies of the Republican party. One rule will make it easier for coal companies to dump debris from strip mining into valleys and streams. The process is part of an environmentally damaging technique known as 'mountain-top removal mining'. It involves literally removing the top of a mountain to excavate a coal seam and pouring the debris into a valley, which is then filled up with rock. The new rule will make that dumping easier.

Another midnight regulation will allow power companies to build coal-fired power stations nearer to national parks. Yet another regulation will allow coal-fired stations to increase their emissions without installing new anti-pollution equipment.

THE UGLY HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Let me be frank. I detest the Republican party. In its whole history, except for a very brief interlude with Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican party had tried to make serfs out of working men and women. They've tried to destroy unions, opposed any kind of fair wage compensation, used hatred of gays and minorities to win elections, created phony scares of Communism and terrorism, and consistently wrecked the economy. This commentary by J. Miller Rampant is at http://jamillerrampant.blogspot.com:

When the Republican Party handed itself heart and soul to Big Business in the 1890s, it was the start of an epic battle to defend power and privilege in the United States at all costs. Briefly, under Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican Party was captured by the progressive wing, and TR had little sympathy for the "malefactors of great wealth" as he called them. But by the 1920s the fanatically pro-business, anti-worker orientation of the Republican Party was set. I have wracked my brain and I cannot think of ANY time the Republicans EVER acted in the interests of ordinary working men and women. They and their allies fought savagely against unions, never hesitating to use violence and state power to destroy them. (There is a myth that violence in labor disputes is only union-generated; check out Henry Ford's war against the unions to see a powerful refutation of this, or the war of the coal mine owners against the unions in West Virginia and Kentucky.)

This pro-business, anti-worker faction of the Republican Party hated FDR as if he were Satan incarnate. It is this faction of the Republican Party that fought against child labor laws, the right of workers to organize, minimum wage laws, worker safety protections, and every other proposal that was designed to grant working men and women the rights and dignity they deserved. The modern descendants of these violently anti-worker conservatives control part of the Republican Party today. They are the ones who voted against financial aid to the Big Three automakers so they could kill off the United Auto Workers, their sworn enemies since the 1930s. We should not be surprised.

December 7, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH'S BLOODY HANDS


Right-wingers are busy little revisionists. They have to be because their policies create such disasters. After Ronald Reagan left the White House the busy little revisionists were telling us that the massive deficits created by Reagan's policies weren't really his fault. In fact, they say, there were more tax revenues coming in; it was just Congress spending too much money. Now the busy little revisionists are telling us that Bush "kept us safe" from terrorism. He "liberated" the Iraqis. He brought down the guy who killed over 300,000 of his "own people." Never mind that Bush has been responsible for more death and destruction than Saddam Hussein ever was This commentary by Barry Nolan is at www.commondreams.org:

After attending a cheery little GOP Christmas party, and in the charitable spirit of the season, Wall Street Journal columnist and Republican stalwart Peggy Noonan reflected on the Bush years Friday. (You can read the full column by clicking here.) She declares that when historians look back on Bush and try to sum it all up, they will most likely say something like: "At least he kept us safe." Merry Christmas President Bush. Ms. Noonan then advises the Democrats to pay proper attention to the warnings contained in national security studies. Darn good advice.

But strangely, her column avoids any mention at all of the rather strongly worded security warning that was contained in the Presidential Daily Briefing delivered to President Bush one month before the 9-11 attacks. Titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," the warning contained the rather prescient observation that: "FBI information...indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." Sadly, that warning to Bush gained little traction with Republicans and 2,973 people died on 9-11. There was no mention of those dead in the column.

Ms. Noonan also avoids any mention of the 4,209 US service men and women who have been killed in Iraq, where the terrorists could simply walk to work. No mention of the 30,000 wounded. No mention of the 445 US contractors killed in Iraq. No acknowledgment that many of these men and women were in the National Guard and were called away from their useful civilian jobs in America as firemen, policemen, doctors and lawyers, and sent to die in a reckless and needless war in Iraq.

PEARL HARBOR AND THE DARK RIGHT-WING PSYCHE

One common trait that runs through right-wing land is paranoia. Right-wingers see conspiracies everywhere. That's why Joseph McCarthy red-baiting was so effective with right-wingers back in the 1950's. That red-baiting propelled the career of Richard M. Nixon. Right-wingers have promulgated the myth that FDR wanted the United States to get into World War II and allowed Pearl Harbor to happen because Pearl Harbor provided the excuse to enter the war. The whole idea is ludicrous. This article by Sherwood Ross is at www.commondreams.org:

The idea that FDR, a former assistant secretary of the Navy in World War One, would have deliberately concealed knowledge of an imminent attack on a U.S. base, defies everything known about the character of the man, his lifelong love of ships, (see his childhood sketches on the wall at Hyde Park), and his visionary efforts to build shipyards to mass produce warships and to modernize the fleet upon taking office in 1933. In fact, FDR sparked the largest naval buildup in U.S. history from the time he took office, doubling naval personnel between 1939 and 1941 alone. Six months after Pearl Harbor at the battle of Midway, the Japanese navy suffered a terrible reverse largely at the hands of U.S. vessels built before the war under FDR or under prior presidents. If FDR had advanced knowledge of an imminent attack to precipitate a war with Japan he would at minimum have ordered the fleet into battle readiness and sent it steaming out into open water. That FDR knew the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and allowed it to happen is one conspiracy theory that should be sunk promptly.

December 2, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


THE NEEDS OF THE MANY

Republican philosophy is to benefit the few at the expense of the many. They try to con us into believing that the benefits to the rich will trickle down to the rest of us. History shows what a lie that is. The incoming Obama administration needs to put the needs of the many ahead of the needs of the few. This commentary by Bob Herbert is at www.nytimes.com:

President-elect Obama has talked of a “new dawn of American leadership.” Three-quarters of a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt promised a New Deal and said his biggest task was “to put people to work.”

That’s as appropriate a cue as any for the next president. I hope Mr. Obama’s “new dawn” portends more than just a few nibbles around the edges of change. We need change that brings about more shared sacrifice in wartime and tough times, and a more equitable distribution of the nation’s resources all the time.

I want to know who in the Obama administration will be listening to the young girl on the South Side of Chicago whose future is constrained by a lousy public school, and the factory worker in Toledo whose family’s future has been trampled by unrestrained corporate greed and unfair trade policies.

All the evidence is that the next administration will be competent and smart as hell. Now I’d like to know for whom they plan to deliver.

November 28, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

HOLD BUSH AND CHENEY ACCOUNTABLE

Early indications are that the incoming Obama administration will not pursue war crimes charges against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. As uncomfortable as it may be, Bush and Cheney should undergo a full investigation and trial. They have deliberately and wantonly committed crimes against "terrorist" detainees. They have circumvented or outright broken U. S. law. They are not above the law. This article by Liliana Segura is at www.alternet.org:

Common consensus is that the Bush administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. From its illegal invasion of Iraq to the corporate-assisted, warrantless wiretapping of its own constituents, the Bush White House seems never to have held a view of the law from below. And, since long before the election of Barack Obama, a number of groups and individuals have called for accountability, from a vocal network of people calling for impeachment for Bush's illegal and fraudulent invasion of Iraq, to, this summer, the bluntly labeled campaign, Send Karl Rove to Jail.

But if ever there was a stain on the fabric of American democracy that must be deserving of prosecution, it is the dark legacy of torture left by the Bush administration. From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo to the CIA's "secret sites," proof abounds that the U.S. government engaged in systematic torture that was approved by top government officials. Ironically, a central laboratory for this corrosion of the country's moral and legal code was the very office charged with defending the rule of law: the Department of Justice.

November 19, 2008



IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

ON LIBERTARIANS

In my view the word "mandatory"is one of the ugliest and oppressive in the English language. When someone tells me something is "mandatory" it immediately raises my hackles. So I probably have a little libertarian in me. And yet, overall, I think the ideas libertarians advocate are utopian at best, destructive at worst. I agree with libertarians on social issues. I want government to butt out when it comes to what I watch, read, think, listen to, what religion I practice or don't practice, and other personal issues. But I also like things like clean and safe drinking water, safe over the counter drugs, safe food, a decent infrastructure, public libraries, a functioning air traffic control system, a system to make television and radio frequencies work, and so on. This article by Ernest Partridge is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Libertarians routinely trot out horror stories about government waste, fraud, and abuse, and measure these troublesome anecdotes alongside an unrealizable ideal of a "perfectly functioning market." However, this argument commits the fallacy of disparate comparison by comparing what the perfect market would do in theory with what imperfect governmental agencies, at their worst, have done in fact. No thoughtful liberal defender of public regulation of the environment in liberal democracies will pretend that this approach is perfect. In fact, as everyone knows, regulatory agencies are under constant assault and their public service is constantly compromised, usually by the very free market forces and private interests that are celebrated by the libertarians. But if the libertarians have a better alternative, then it must be shown to be preferable in practice, rather than in ideal theory. However, history shows that the unconstrained free market, privatization and the absence of "government interference" has given us opium in cough medicine, spoiled meat, child labor, mine disasters, black lung disease, air and water pollution, depletion of natural resources, and now the collapse of the financial markets.

"The free market," that cornerstone of libertarian theory, cannot survive without a governmental referee, for the unconstrained and unregulated "free market" contains the seeds of its own destruction. Though free market theorists are reluctant to admit it, capitalists are not fond of free markets, since open and fair competition forces them to invest in product development while they cut their prices. Monopoly and the elimination of competition is the ideal condition for the entrepreneur, and he will strive to achieve it unless restrained not by conscience but by an outside agency enforcing "anti-trust" laws. That agency, necessary for the maintenance of the free market is, of course, the "government," so despised by the libertarians. Evidence? Look to history. Then it was John D. Rockefeller, now it is Bill Gates.

November 17, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


GOOD RIDDANCE


After he resigned the presidency in disgrace Richard M. Nixon began a process of remaking himself into an elder statesman. I'm not sure Nixon ever succeeded. He was a vile, crooked man, and all the spin in the world couldn't change that. But we can probably expect a similar effort to rehabilitate the reputation of George W. Bush. Compared to Bush, Richard Nixon was a saint. Bush has taken arrogance and corruption and bloodlust to a whole new level. This article by Paul Waldman is at www.truthout.org:

This presidency is finally over. We can say goodbye to an administration whose misdeeds have piled so high that the size of the mountain no longer shocks us. In our lifetimes, we will see administrations of varying degrees of competence and integrity, some we'll agree with and some we won't. But we will probably never see another quite like the one now finally reaching its end, so mind-boggling a parade of incompetence and malice, dishonesty, and immorality. So at last - at long, long last - we can say goodbye.

And good riddance.

November 12, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


HISTORY OF TAX CUTS ISN'T PRETTY


Every election season right-wing politicians, the gasbags on talk radio, and right-wingers everywhere proclaim the virtues of tax cuts, especially for the rich. According to them, tax cuts for the rich lead to investment, jobs, and prosperity for all. In fact, the opposite is true. The rich do very well. The rest of us face financial upheaval. This article by Larry Beinhart is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Even now, in the midst of the Bush disaster, I constantly see and hear tax cuts, particularly at the top, described as "pro-growth." So I went and looked at the numbers -- tax rates, tax cuts and tax hikes -- and placed them alongside job growth, the Dow Jones, growth in the GDP and median income.


The brute facts say the opposite of the myth.


The belief in tax cuts is a subset of the belief in Free Markets, with a capital F & M, which is a theological belief.


How do we distinguish a theological idea from a scientific (or rational) one?
According to Karl Popper, the great thinkers in the philosophy of science, a scientific idea has to be capable of being refuted. There has to be some theoretical test that could come out the wrong way, which would then say the theory is wrong.


On that basis, Popper rejected Marxism and Freudianism, along with religious theology, because no matter how many times they didn't work, there was always some explanation that said that the theory was right and if you just looked at the facts in some other way; you could make up some story that said your theory was still right.

November 08, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY


RANDOM THOUGHTS


I briefly perused the letters page of The Fresno Bee. One letter writer was worried about "socialism" from Barack Obama. It shows how effective propaganda really is. The fact is that some socialism is really pretty good for most of us. I think it's good that we have things like unemployment insurance and Social Security. I hope that national health insurance will come to pass during Obama's administration.


Another letter writer tried to find a link between Obama talking about the needs of "main street" and a fall in the stock market the next day. I would point out that the stock market has consistently fallen in the past few weeks before Barack Obama was elected president. Another stock market fall was probably due to a report of the highest unemployment figures in fourteen years. The toxic effects of the Bush administration will be with us for some time. I think Barack Obama will make a huge and positive difference, but he can't fix so much damage instantly.

November 05, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY

TOWARD A NEW POLITICS

I was cautiously optimistic as I saw Barack Obama take a lead in the major polls. There was always that nagging feeling that the Republicans would find a way to steal yet another election in the same way they stole the 2000 and 2004 elections. But Obama had too much of a lead. Too many of us were watching this time. The Internet has added a whole new dimension to politics. Some of it, such as the hateful smearing emails you get, are reprehensible. For the most part, though, the Internet is our way to participate in a national and international forum. Barack Obama represents not only the election of the first African-American president, but the beginning of a new era. We desperately need a 21st version of the New Deal. Working class people need to be represented again. This column by Mark Weisbrot is at www.commondreams.org:

For now, though, the domestic economy will occupy center stage as the new government faces the worst recession in decades, and one that is just beginning -- the housing bubble that caused this recession is only about 60 percent deflated. The people have voted for change, including expanded health care coverage and -- as they did in 2006 -- an end to the Iraq war. How much change we will actually see will depend more than anything on how much pressure there is from below.

But there is plenty to celebrate in addition to the election of our first African-American president. Forty years is a long time for a country to be on the wrong track, and even worse for one that has so much influence on the rest of the world. We now have an opportunity to resume the economic and social progress that was considered almost inevitable a few decades ago, and to address some of the most urgent environmental problems -- most importantly climate change -- which have only recently become widely recognized. Who knows, we might even stop invading other countries and move towards becoming a law-abiding member of the international community. Progress is now at least possible, although it will still be an uphill fight. As Obama himself said in his acceptance speech, "This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change."

October 31, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


RIGHT-WING AUTHORITARIANS


If conservatives could run things they really wanted, we'd be living in a coast-to-coast prison because conservatives are authoritarians to the core. They talk a good deal about "freedom," but it's only freedom for business. Conservatives want to tell us what we can read, what we can watch, what our sexual orientation will be, that women have no reproductive rights whatever, what drugs we can take to change our consciousness, and even that we can't have physician-assisted suicide if we're in agony and have a terminal illness. This commentary by John Dean is at www.commondreams.org:

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however -- and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

October 29, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


CONSERVATIVES KNOW HOW TO WHINE

If you listened to right-wingers you'd think the most important issues we deal with are: flag burning, school prayer, gay marriage, abortion, and taxes. Lord, help us, they whine about taxes. Since John McCain and Sarah Palin began their rant about "socialism" the right-wingers have been flooding The Fresno Bee with whiny letters about they will have to pay more taxes with an Obama presidency or how they have no "incentive" to work because of higher taxes. Obama is merely proposing to reinstate taxes to the level they were during the Clinton years. The sky didn't fall. And rich people never pay the highest tax rates. They have far more loopholes than we working class types. And I have a bulletin for these whiny right-wingers. Unless there are taxes to pay for the things that make society work their tax savings aren't going to do them much good. If everything collapses around them, what do they propose to do with their money then?

October 28, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


THE "REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH" CANARD

See McCain and Palin spin. Spin, spin, spin. They've tried almost everything out of the Republican playbook. First, there's the "war on terrorism." McCain was a POW in Vietnam, so of course he knows how to run the military and win the "war on terror." No? Palin lives in Alaska, which is near Russia, so of course she knows foreign policy. No? McCain is a "maverick," although he has voted with Bush 90% of the time. Palin is a "maverick" too, although her administration has all kinds of sordid deals leaking out. Now we hear the oldie but goodie spin about "redistribution of wealth." It's not much of a factor for most of us when you think about it because we don't have any wealth. But McCain and Palin would have you believe that Barack Obama will be reaching right into your wallet, swiping your money, and doling it out hither and yon. The real "redistribution of wealth" has been from the working class and the poor to the very rich and to corporations. This commentary by Bill Hare is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

John McCain has taken to once more demagoging the economic issue as the Republican right has traditionally done beginning in the modern era with the tactical and markedly unsuccessful propaganda front directed at Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Roosevelt’s first reelection campaign in 1936 was fresh on the heels of congressional passage and the president’s signature on the landmark 1935 Social Security Act. There was much anger as well resulting from such sweeping legislation as the National Recovery Administration and the creation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 with disciplinary powers applicable to Wall Street.

Laissez faire was what the members of the American Liberty League, the vigilant opposition group to Roosevelt’s economic policies, favored. His comprehensive changes in U.S. economic policy during a critical Depression period prompted them to hurl charges of “socialism” while others went beyond that and asserted that FDR was a dictator of a Communist or Fascist model.

October 27, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY


A SYSTEM RIGGED FOR THE RICH

Anyone who paid attention knows that the "trickle down" economics preached by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and their devotees hasn't trickled down to the majority of us. It was never intended to benefit the working class or the middle class. It was designed all along to enrich the already rich. Tax cuts for the very wealthiest among us are only the most obvious example. Military spending is a cash cow for the rich and high long-term interest rates are another bonanza. This article by Robert Freeman is at www.commondreams.org:

John McCain’s drowning campaign has grasped at the straw of “socialism” to try to smear Barack Obama’s economic proposals. The dirty little secret is that socialism is much more characteristic of McCain’s policies than Obama’s. But it’s socialism for the rich.

It has been an explicit tenet of Republican economic policy since at least Ronald Reagan that the rich need more money and that it is the essential job of government to make sure they get it.

This is what David Stockman, Reagan’s first Budget Director, meant when he let slip that supply side economics was really a “Trojan Horse” intended to pass the nation’s wealth upward. Reagan pursued that goal with evangelical fury.

He enacted a dizzying array of tax and spending policies, all designed to benefit the wealthy. He cut the marginal tax rate for the highest income earners from 75% to 38%. A huge bonanza in its own right, this was only the beginning of the ladling.

Reagan’s massive budget deficits drove up long term interest rates, another boon to the rich. The rich are lenders and lenders prefer higher interest rates. Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush, delivered in spades, turning the U.S. treasury into a printing press for the rich. The data speak for themselves.

Jimmy Carter's last deficit was $77 billion. By the end of the Bush I era, deficits had reached $300 billion a year and the national debt had quadrupled, from $1 trillion when Reagan took over, to $4 trillion. Interest payments on that debt had soared from $70 billion a year under Carter to over $300 billion a year.

THE INSECURE RICH

I believe the rich in this country like to tell themselves they're more deserving than the rest of us. They're more hard-working, more innovative, thriftier, more virtuous, favored by God, whatever. Never mind all the rich who inherited their wealth the way kings of old inherited their crowns. Never mind the component of luck. As this author says, most of us are born with two strikes already against us. It's a struggle in this society to survive, much less get rich. We have to scratch for things that should be ours: food, housing, education, and health care to name a few. This article by Maryscott O'Connor is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

A level playing field, indeed. Imagine an America in which everyone begins life on home base, with no balls and no strikes. Or, to use a clearer analogy -- on a level field, rather than some on a mountaintop and some in a ditch. Simple, really: Healthcare for all, food and shelter, education and basic employment -- all basic necessities guaranteed for all. For every other element one might wish, one would simply have to... work hard. To compete in a truly free market, unemcumbered by hunger, by the disabilities of race, family circumstances, "who you know." One's merits would truly be the yardstick by which accomplishments, achievements and advancements would be measured. THAT... is socialism.

Now, WHO could feel threatened by THAT?

I'll tell you who: The TRUE elitists in this VERY unlevel playing field on which we all stumble and on which we've been playing, blindfolded, listening to propaganda over their corporate-funded loudspeakers for generations. Propaganda that's told us that "Socialism equals Communism equals Russia equals Stalin equals BAD!

October 23, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY


BUSH'S VERY BAD KARMA

For many years the rich and privileged in the United States have reveled in their sense of superiority. They "deserve" tax cuts because they already allegedly pay more taxes than their fair share. They're the "achievers" who drive the economy. The rest of us are just slugs, you see, who should be grateful for the largess of these wonderful folks who are the doers and shakers. I have a funny feeling that the privileged wouldn't do very well without all the people who provide all the hard work, goods, and services that keep things going. Now the privileged are getting their comeuppance as the system they've created and supported is collapsing around them. This article by Chris Rowthorn is at www.smirkingchimp.com:

The must ungodly, screaming, naked irony of this whole mess is that no one blames Bush for any of this. Oh no, the collapse of the entire American economy was caused by a few wanna-be homeowners who took loans they couldn't afford and a few "predatory lenders" who took advantage of them. Neither the media nor the public seem to notice that the "subprime borrowers" are merely the weakest link in the economic chain, the canaries in the coalmine of the American economy. No one mentions that Bush almost doubled the national debt. No one mentions the catastrophic rise in oil prices caused by the invasion of Iraq and the threat of war with Iran, or how it slowed the economy at the worst possible time. No one mentions how Bush wasted US$1 trillion on a war of choice (money which could pay for both the bailout plan and the stimulus plan combined). No one mentions that Bush showed no leadership whatsoever as the crisis deepened. In short, no one mentions how Bush took the American economy and drove it off a cliff. Let me be frank: trying blame the meltdown entirely on subprime borrowers and lenders is like trying to blame the entire Abu Ghraib torture scandal on Pfc. Lynndie England. If you believe that Bush bears no responsibility for present economic crisis, then I've got some mortgage-backed securities you might be interested in.

October 22, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY


OUR VERSION OF THE GLASS CEILING

Since the Reagan administration there has been a dramatic increase in the gap between the rich and the poor. The rich have made out handsomely, but working class people have seen their incomes stagnate or decline. In the meantime, everything else is more expensive: food, gas, health care, education, and housing. It isn't just an issue of declining living standards. It's also an issue of social mobility, or the lack of social mobility. One of the great myths in the United States is that by working hard and playing by the rules you can climb the social mobility ladder. The fact is if you're born poor you're likely to remain poor. This article by Jim Lobe is at www.commondreams.org:

That gap has grown particularly large in the U.S. since 2000 -- that is, under the administration of President George W. Bush -- according to the report, which found that the gap between the U.S. middle class and the wealthiest 10 percent has also increased.

The growth in the divide has major implications for social mobility, according to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria, who said the report's data had demonstrated that the notion that inequality encourages the poor to do better is false.

"Social mobility is low in countries with high inequality like Italy, the UK (United Kingdom), and the United States. And it is much higher in the Nordic countries, where income is distributed more evenly," he told reporters.

"This means that, in most high-inequality countries, dishwashers' sons are more likely to be dishwashers and millionaires' kids can assume that they too will be rich," he said, adding that governments could do much to promote mobility, particularly through progressive tax policies, greater social spending, job creation, and increasing investment in education.

October 21, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


WORLD'S SECOND LOWEST BUSINESS TAXES

Pity the rich and business in this country. If you listened to the right-wing's tales of woe, you would think they just get hit with massive taxation that pays "welfare" for all us deadbeats. The fact is that most of us in the working class pay a higher effective rate, the rate that really counts, than corporations and the rich. This commentary by David Sirota is at www.ourfuture.org:

This concept of effective tax rates (ie. the tax rate actually paid and enforced) is key to understanding the most telling part of this Fox News discussion - the part at the end where former Bush-Cheney spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck parrots McCain campaign talking points about America supposedly having a very high corporate tax rate in relation to the rest of the world. This, says Dyck and fellow Republicans, is driving businesses to move offshore.

It sounds like a credible storyline, especially considering that officially, our corporate tax rate is somewhere between 35 and 39 percent. But, as always, the devil is in the details.

To know how high - or low - the effective tax rate is, you have to go beneath the top-line rate and account for all the loopholes, subsidies and write-offs - and the way to do that is by looking at corporate tax revenues as a percentage of a country's GDP. That way, you know how much corporations are actually paying as a share of your overall economy - in other words, you know the real corporate tax rate, not the fake one advertised by top-line numbers. And when you look at America's tax structure through this lens, you see that even the Bush Treasury Department admits we have the second lowest effective corporate tax rate in the industrialized world (see page 42 of this report).

Indeed, this explains the dissonance between Republican claims of "highest corporate income tax rate in the world" and the recent Government Accountability report showing that most corporations pay no corporate income taxes at all. The latter is the truth - most corporations don't pay any taxes because of loopholes, writeoffs and subsidies that allow them to effectively reduce that 35 percent corporate tax rate to zero. In fact, many profitable corporations actually collect tax rebates. But as I told Fox News, we don't hear criticism of that kind of "corporate welfare" from the Republican mouthpieces deriding Obama's middle-class tax cuts as welfare.

LEARNING FROM HISTORY

The economic disaster we've suffered under the administration of George W. Bush is just the latest example of rotten Republican economic policies. Republican policies are always tilted toward the rich. To Republicans and their constituency inflation is the horror. A full employment economy with decent paying jobs means more inflation. So Republicans tailor their policies toward tax cuts for the rich and for business and toward higher unemployment to reduce inflation. This analysis by Larry M. Bartels is at www.csmonitor.com:

Lower unemployment under Democratic presidents has contributed substantially to the real incomes of middle-class and working poor families. Job losses hurt everyone – not just those without work. In fact, every percentage point of unemployment has the effect of reducing middle-class income growth by about $300 per family per year. And the effects are long term, unlike the temporary boost in income from a stimulus check. Compounded over an eight-year period, a persistent one-point difference in unemployment is worth about $10,000 to a middle-class family. The dollar values are smaller for working poor families, but in relative terms their incomes are even more sensitive to unemployment. In contrast, income growth for affluent people is much more sensitive to inflation, which has been a perennial target of Republican economic policies.

Although McCain portrays Senator Obama as a "job killing" tax-and-spend liberal, the new $60 billion plan Obama unveiled last week also has a tax break as its centerpiece – a tax break specifically tailored to create jobs by offering employers a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire over the next two years. Obama's proposal would also extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks for those who remain jobless, as well as match McCain's in suspending taxes on unemployment benefits.

October 20, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY



MCCAIN'S PHONY CONCERN FOR PLUMBERS


John McCain evidently believes that the road to the presidency is paved with smears, innuendo, lies, and stunts like Joe the Plumber. McCain mentioned "Joe" in the third debate with Barack Obama, claiming that poor Joe would be severely hurt by Obama's tax plan. There were lots of problems with "Joe's" credibility, it turns out. But an examination of the real issue, the tax plan, shows that most plumbers and most working class people in general benefit far more from Obama's plan than would benefit under McCain's trickle down economics. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.nytimes.com:

But what’s really happening to the plumbers of Ohio, and to working Americans in general?

First of all, they aren’t making a lot of money. You may recall that in one of the early Democratic debates Charles Gibson of ABC suggested that $200,000 a year was a middle-class income. Tell that to Ohio plumbers: according to the May 2007 occupational earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual income of “plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters” in Ohio was $47,930.

Second, their real incomes have stagnated or fallen, even in supposedly good years. The Bush administration assured us that the economy was booming in 2007 — but the average Ohio plumber’s income in that 2007 report was only 15.5 percent higher than in the 2000 report, not enough to keep up with the 17.7 percent rise in consumer prices in the Midwest. As Ohio plumbers went, so went the nation: median household income, adjusted for inflation, was lower in 2007 than it had been in 2000.

October 17, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


NO QUESTION OBAMA IS BETTER FOR MOST OF US

You can get fixated on the biggest problems confronting the United States. The big black cloud of the economy is off in one direction and the swirling winds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are off in the other direction. But there are other issues that will affect our day-to-day lives where it becomes imperative for an Obama victory in November. One of the biggest issues is the Supreme Court. We need an end to right-wing ideologues getting lifetime appointments to the Court. This article is at www.alternet.org:

When the polls open in 18 days, voters will be faced with a stark choice in presidential candidates -- a choice that ultimately comes down to one question: What do you want the next four to eight years of your life to look like? Because the next president will shape the issues that affect the way we live our day-to-day lives.

The future of Social Security, health care, education, income, employment, civil rights and democracy itself all hang in the balance. And the two candidates are worlds apart in their visions for the country.

From the fate of the Supreme Court to the future of Internet access, here are the 10 most important differences between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain.

October 14, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

SHAMEFUL DISCRIMINATION IN FRESNO

The San Joaquin Valley is where tolerance and compassion come to die. This is a place inhabited by a horde of mouth-foaming right-wing reactionaries and it even extends into the Catholic Church. The right-wing is in a major tizzy over a California Supreme Court decision allowing gay people to marry. It will "destroy traditional marriage," we're told. A Catholic priest named Geoffrey Farrow spoke out. He admitted that he is gay and is voting against the hateful Proposition 8 favored by the right-wingers. So Farrow has now been cast out without a salary or benefits. How Christ-like is that? This article by Duke Helfand and Catherine Saillant is at www.latimes.com:

A week ago, Father Geoffrey Farrow stood before his Roman Catholic parishioners in Fresno and delivered a sermon that placed him squarely at odds with his church over gay marriage.With Proposition 8 on the November ballot, and his own bishop urging Central Valley priests to support its definition of traditional marriage, Farrow told congregants he felt obligated to break "a numbing silence" about church prejudice against homosexuals.

"How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives?" he asked parishioners of the St. Paul Newman Center. "I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8."Then Farrow -- who had revealed that he was gay during a television interview immediately before Mass -- added a coda to his sermon."I know these words of truth will cost me dearly," he said. "But to withhold them . . . I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well."

On Thursday, Fresno Bishop John T. Steinbock removed Farrow, 50, as pastor of the St. Paul Newman Center, which primarily serves students and faculty at Cal State Fresno.

RIGHT-WING SMOKESCREEN ON HOUSING CRISIS

In a desperate attempt to blame someone else for the housing crisis right-wing bloviators have tried to blame Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Supposedly, Democrats in Congress resisted tougher regulation of Freddie and Fannie. Freddie and Fannie then allegedly made unwise subprime loans to "those" people who couldn't pay them back. Voila! Housing crisis. As usual, the facts don't support the right-wing claims. This article by David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hallis at www.truthout.org:

Conservative critics claim that the Clinton administration pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make home ownership more available to riskier borrowers with little concern for their ability to pay the mortgages.

"I don't remember a clarion call that said Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster," said Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

Fannie, the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else, however. They purchase loans from the private lenders who actually underwrite the loans.

It's a process called securitization, and by passing on the loans, banks have more capital on hand so they can lend even more.

This much is true. In an effort to promote affordable home ownership for minorities and rural whites, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set targets for Fannie and Freddie in 1992 to purchase low-income loans for sale into the secondary market that eventually reached this number: 52 percent of loans given to low-to moderate-income families.

October 12, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


RIGHT-WING NONSENSE ON THE HOUSING CRISIS


Right-wingers are really reaching in their efforts to blame the current economic crisis on Democrats. It's not due to the free market predatory capitalism they love, they say, but goes back to the Community Reinvestment Act passed in 1977. The CRA was intended to make loans more available to people in poor and minority neighborhoods. Banks practiced something called "redlining." They were literally drawing red lines on maps of certain areas mostly comprised of minorities and refusing to lend there. The CRA was meant to address that. This editorial is from The Boston Globe at www.boston.com:


And yet the Community Reinvestment Act has nothing whatsoever to do with the subprime mess.


The law applies specifically to commercial banks, which in recent months have been the least volatile part of the financial-services industry. The measure was passed in 1977 to combat redlining, the practice of banks refusing to write mortgages in poor neighborhoods - even when they were taking deposits from residents of those neighborhoods.


To meet Community Reinvestment Act requirements, banks do make loans to low-income homebuyers - often in concert with community groups that provide financial advice and other crucial training. While banks at first had to be "dragged into participating," said Tom Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, loans made under the auspices of the reinvestment law have performed remarkably well. One key initiative of this sort, the state's SoftSecond mortgage program, has a delinquency rate of 1.8 percent - compared with about 5 percent for all mortgages in Massachusetts.

October 11, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


RIGHT-WINGERS ARE WRONG ON EVERYTHING


Right-wing political philosophy in the United States is a little like Dorian Gray mixed with Fantasyland. At first glance, it's like Dorian Gray, very appealing in its concept that you can be "free" of the government and that you, too, can get rich. That's when Fantasyland kicks in. You believe that huge tax cuts for the rich will miraculously transform the economy into a giant money machine that will shower wealth down on everyone. You can simultaneously spend massive amounts on the military and make the United States the toughest kid on the block, cut taxes for the rich, and actually get a budget surplus. You can put prayer back in the schools, discriminate against gay people and other minorities, and take us back to the "good old days." This commentary by Bob Herbert is at www.nytimes.com:


Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.
Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.

It’s not just the economy. While the United States has been fighting a useless and irresponsible war in Iraq, Afghanistan — the home base of the terrorists who struck us on 9/11 — has been allowed to fall into a state of chaos. Osama bin Laden is still at large. New Orleans is still on its knees. And so on.

Voting has consequences.

October 08, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


HISTORY PROVES GOP'S LOUSY ECONOMIC POLICIES

As I've said before, Republican administrations are an almost certain guarantee of a lousy economy. If you like recessions, high unemployment, more poverty, and more despair, just vote Republican. The economy has always performed better under Democratic administrations. Our policies work and theirs don't. This article by Arthur Blaustein is at www.truthdig.com:


What is downright frightening is that Bush and John McCain seem to still believe an unregulated free market will solve America’s economic problems. Barack Obama, on the other hand, maintains that government has the responsibility to keep our economy on the right track. Obama says he will work toward reducing the debt and deficit. He pledges to help the middle class and the working poor by maintaining benefit levels and eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit. He will hold the line on our tax progressivity and fairness by rolling back the Bush tax giveaways to taxpayers earning over $250,000 annually. And Obama wants to target health care, education, affordable housing, alternative energy and the environment with critical investments.


McCain wants to privatize Social Security and probably Medicare, although he gets dangerously vague about this at election time. To finance government spending in the wake of his tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush has borrowed heavily from the Social Security Trust Fund. At the same time, the United States owes huge amounts to foreign investors. McCain and George W. are mired in the failed economic policies of Republican predecessors. In 1980, Bush I called supply-side policies “voodoo economics.” But he embraced these “trickle-down” policies in order to become vice president and then president. Reagan and both Bushes’ royalist economic policies of the 1980s and the past seven years were failures—a fool’s paradise built on the sands of borrowed time and borrowed money. The consequences were staggering debt, industrial decline, shrinking wages, four painful recessions, increased poverty and structural unemployment. The reckless Reagan-Bush-Bush spending and borrowing has brought us to the brink of social catastrophe and economic depression.

October 05, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

PALIN LIED IN THE DEBATE ABOUT SUDAN

In the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden the question of genocide in Sudan came up. Sarah Palin said that her administration had advocated divestment of money Alaska had invested in the Sudan as a way of protesting the atrocities there. The record shows that's not true. She kept talking about cleaning up the corruption in Washington and Wall Street and connecting with "hockey moms." If she can't do the right thing on an issue as important as this, why should we trust her to be vice president or possibly president? This item comes from www.abcnews.go.com:


In Thursday's debate, Palin said she had advocated the state divest from Sudan. "When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars," Palin said.

But a search of news clips and transcripts from the first three months of this year did not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.

"The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.
Gara says the lack of support from Palin's administration helped kill the measure.

October 04, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


RIGHT WINGERS BLAME THE POOR FOR LOUSY ECONOMY

The letters page of The Fresno Bee is a good barometer of right-wing talking points. In the past few days a couple of letters about the current economic crisis caught my attention. The letters made the astounding claim that George W. Bush wanted to regulate Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae back about 2003, that Congressional Democrats resisted, and that the problems at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae brought on our housing crisis and the rotten economy.
So, here we have right-wingers, who normally foam at the mouth about government regulations, suddenly embracing regulations.

But this goes even further. It claims that the problems at Freddie and Fannie are the main reason for the housing crisis, which isn't valid. It also puts the blame on poor and minority people getting affordable loans. The right-wingers claim that these loans were essentially forced on the banks and the loans went bad. So, there you have it: Bush's policies and the right-wingers free market ideas aren't responsible at all. It's just coincidence that we have rotten economies every time Republicans are in power. It's just coincidence that the GOP's fat cat friends always do well and that taxpayers, including those reprobate poor and minority people, wind up bailing them out. This commentary by Sara Robinson is at www.alternet.org:

Conservative pundits and politicians have piled onto the excuse like shipwreck victims clinging to a passing log: The real blame for the current economic crisis, conservatives would have you believe, lies not with anything they did, but rather with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act -- a successful Carter-era program designed to get banks to stop covert discrimination, and encourage them to invest their money in low-income neighborhoods.

It's always easy to tell when the cons are completely lost at sea. The lies get more absurdly preposterous -- and also more transparently self-serving. But when they go so far as to openly and unapologetically latch onto race and class as an excuse for their woes (which this is, at its heart), you know they're taking on water fast -- and scared of going under entirely.

You can hear the conservative commentators burbling this CRA fable from the Wall Street Journal to the National Review; from Rush to YouTube. Neil Cavuto put the essence of the argument right out there on Fox News: "Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster." See! It's all the liberals' fault for insisting on social justice!

October 01, 2008


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IMPEACH CHENEY


THE END OF THE REAGAN ERA


The absolute disaster we've seen unfold in the financial markets proves conclusively that the free market economics advocated by right-wingers don't work. It's a system that enriches the few and impoverishes the rest of us. It remains stable only as long as the beneficiaries of the system keep their greed in check. But they never do. This article by Harold Meyerson is at www.washingtonpost.com:

We are, just now, stuck between eras. The old order -- the Reagan-age institutions built on the premise that the market can do no wrong and the government no right -- is dying. A new order, in which Wall Street plays a diminished role and Washington a larger one, is aborning, but the process is painful and protracted.

It shuddered to a halt on Monday, when House Republicans, by 2 to 1, declined to support the administration's bailout plan. To lay the blame on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's speech (in which she even noted the work of House GOP leaders in crafting the compromise) is to miss the larger picture: The proposal asked Republicans to acknowledge the failure of the market and the capacity of government to set things right. It asked them to repudiate their worldview, to go against the beliefs that impelled many of them to enter politics in the first place.

September 28, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY


THE GOP'S RAW DEAL


The problems created by extreme right-wing ideology have been growing exponentially like a snowball rolling downhill. Most of the crises we now see can trace their roots back to the right-wing ideology that has prevailed since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. Our prisons are bulging because of drug laws that are out of touch with reality. We are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science because right-wingers are looking for the Rapture and because they disdain science. We are seeing an increasing climate crisis because right-wingers won't acknowledge the obvious man-made causes of global climate change. We are stuck in a morally reprehensible war because right-wingers wanted to assert American power regardless of the consequences. The U. S. economy is in a mess thanks to the trickle down nonsense that started with Reagan and got ramped up under George W. Bush. This commentary by Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Eric Schlosser calls for a second New Deal. The article is at www.commondreams.org:


Advocates of the free market must confront the fact that both the Great Depression and the current financial chaos were preceded by years of laissez-faire economic policies. Strictly enforced regulations not only protect consumers, they protect companies that behave ethically from those that don't. The sale of tainted baby food in China demonstrates, once again, that when industries are allowed to police themselves, there's absolutely no limit on what they'll do for money.

Third, we need reconstruction, not only of America's physical infrastructure, but also of its society. Today close to 50 million Americans lack health insurance. About 40% of the nation's adult population is facing medical debts, or having difficulty paying medical bills. A universal health-care system would help American families, while cutting the nation's long-term health-care costs. And a large-scale federal investment in renewable energy and public-works projects would build the foundation for a strong 21st century economy.
Contrary to the myth of the free market, direct government intervention has played a central role throughout American economic history, subsidizing the growth of the railroad, automobile, aerospace and computer industries, among others. It will take well-planned government investment to break our dependence on foreign oil and create millions of new Green jobs.


The events of the past month have proven, beyond any doubt, that the federal government must actively address America's great social and economic problems. That necessity was recognized by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the 1930s -- and by his cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, a generation earlier.


BUSH'S SORRY RECORD


When you look back to the days prior to Hurricane Katrina ravaging the Gulf Coast you have to wonder why George W. Bush rode so high in the popularity polls for so long. His record from the very beginning has been stained with corruption. He got into the White House despite losing the popular vote because of his friends on the Supreme Court. His vice president, Dick Cheney, led an energy task force that conducted its meetings in secret, even though the need for energy dictates much about our lives. He was completely absent stopping the terrorist attacks on 9/11, but used that attack to bolster his popularity and to ram through tax breaks for his rich friends and to attack civil liberties. Hurricane Katrina revealed Bush for what he really was all along. Evidence that this war was justified on lies and now the economic crisis are just more proof of Bush's miserable record. This editorial is from The Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com:


As the Bush administration attempts to stabilize the nation's economy, we are witness to the final chapter of a period of perverse and dishonest leadership that has used its own crises to justify the expansion of its own power. This was a president who came to office on promises of modesty -- who championed a "humble nation," scorned nation building and promised a more limited role for government in the lives of its citizens. Then he presided over a six-year attempt to tear down and rebuild the nations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now has embarked on the most profound expansion of the federal government's role in the private economy since the Depression.


In both cases, the pattern is the same. Ineptitude led to crisis; crisis then became the argument for the radical expansion of executive power. The administration insisted that it exercise its new authority with a minimum of scrutiny by Congress, the courts or the public.

In the so-called war on terror, that has meant the abdication of our most basic American principles. We have forfeited privacy and honor -- the administration has monitored phones and e-mails without warrants and has secreted prisoners in foreign lands, arguing that they deserved none of our protections even while in our custody. As a nation, we have stooped to torture (while debating the meaning of the word) and refused to recognize one of our most basic Anglo-American notions, the principle of habeas corpus (thankfully, the Supreme Court, seven of whose members are Republicans, drew the line at that abomination). We have held prisoners in detention without trial, without charge, without end. In so doing, we have antagonized the world and debased America's moral authority to lead.

September 25, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

WALL STREET COUNTS, BUT WE DON'T


We've heard conservatives talk about "personal responsibility" for years. In their ideal system government will never lift a finger to help people like you and me. It's all up to the "market." The "market" decides if you can have a decent job, decent wages, a place to live, food to eat, a chance for an education, and health care. But when Wall Street gets into trouble thanks to its own greed and corruption guess who's first in line to ask for a handout? The whole right-wing ideology of the free market should be thrown on the trash heap of history. This article by Helen Thomas is at seattlepi.nwsource.com:


What has happened to those conservative Republican leaders whose mantra was "government is the problem -- not the solution"?

Tell that to the once-bloated financial giants now standing in line for whopping government handouts to the tune of $700 billion. And who can forget those who wanted to "get the government off our backs"? Their silence now is deafening.
In the rush for bailouts for the hard-hit government mortgage finance giants, the U.S. Treasury seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and is trying to rescue American International Group, the largest insurer of the world. It allowed 158-year-old Lehman Brothers to collapse, but came to the rescue of the Bear, Stearns, another Wall Street firm.


RIGHT WING MAKE BELIEVE


What we're seeing now is really the culmination of what started during the Reagan years. Who better than a former actor to offer up a fairy tale world where cutting taxes could lead us to the land of Oz? Never mind that massive amounts of money were spent on the military, that we suddenly had gargantuan deficits, and that the gap grew dramatically between the rich and poor. Hard line right wingers will still defend Reagan, claiming that government revenues actually increased, and that the deficits were due to too much spending. To hear them tell it, Reagan had nothing whatever to do with the deficits, or the corruption that resulted from reducing regulations on business. This article by Robert Parry is at www.smirkingchimp.com:


The lead piper in this parade away from America’s tough choices was Ronald Reagan who insisted in his First Inaugural Address in 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
As President, Reagan attacked the federal regulatory system and cut taxes so recklessly that his budget director, David Stockman, foresaw red ink “as far as the eye can see.” Reagan also justified fattening the Pentagon’s budget by citing dire warnings that the Soviet Union was on the rise (despite CIA analysis at the time that it was in sharp decline).

To marginalize dissent, Reagan and his subordinates stoked anger toward anyone who challenged the era’s feel-good optimism. Skeptics were not just honorable critics, they were un-American defeatists or – in Jeane Kirkpatrick’s memorable attack line – they would “blame America first.”

Under Reagan, a right-wing infrastructure also took shape, linking new media outlets (magazines, newspapers, books, etc.) with well-financed think tanks that churned out endless op-eds. Plus, there were attack groups that went after mainstream journalists who dared disclose information that poked holes in Reagan’s propaganda themes.

September 23, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY


WEALTH DOESN'T EQUAL MORALITY

Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham once described the awe of the rich in the United States as the "wish for kings." Our country was founded by breaking away from a monarchy, but there are many who would truly love a king. Since we don't have official royalty, they defer to the wealthy instead. Just as the "divine right of kings" was a belief system in the past, there are those now who believe that rich people are rich because it is somehow ordained by God. That idea gets shattered when you examine the very rich and see how they got there. Thomas Jefferson had it right in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote, "all men are created equal." No one is better just because they have a big bank account, and the interests of the very wealthy should not supersede the interests of the majority of us. This commentary by Alicia Morgan is at www.smirkingchimp.com:


The Myth of the Free Market is exactly that - a myth. It’s a Utopian model that does not work in real life, because it only works if all things are equal - if the worker, the employer, and the consumer all have equal power and influence. And we know that is not true at all.

So - up to this point, we have: wages falling, prices rising, and profits escalating.
If the profit margin were roughly equal to the wage and price margin, one would assume that the market was working correctly - if there was a downturn that was felt by all, then it would be more or less attributable to forces that were outside of the wage/price/cost/profit structure - perhaps a natural disaster, governmental upheaval, or a failure of some aspect of production.

But if profits are rising for corporations, and growth is rising, and consumers are getting poorer at the same time, the only reasonable explanation is that those profits are coming from somewhere within that system - a transfer.

September 21, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH



IMPEACH CHENEY


GOP IS THE TITANIC


When the Titanic was built its builders thought the ship was unsinkable. Impact with an iceberg destroyed that idea and countless passengers died. The GOP has run all kinds of ideas past us, claiming that privatization and the free market can cure all ills. Never mind that we had a successful run from the time of the New Deal until the early 1970's with ideas that go contrary to what the GOP dishes out.


Since the 1970's, life has gotten considerably worse for the working class in this country. Unions, under constant assault by business elites and right-wing politicians, have seen their membership decline. Good jobs, especially in manufacturing, have been globalized and shipped offshore. We have seen deregulation of many key industries, such as the telecommunications industry, the airline industry, and banking and finance. Airlines are in big trouble now and we have seen the virtual meltdown of the financial sector in the past few days.

The Great Depression should have been a powerful lesson, but apparently it eluded Republicans. In this article Frank Rich talks about the McCain campaign and the consistent and repetitious use of lies. The press has been notably derelict in doing its job in coverage of Republican lies in the past. This commentary is at www.nytimes.com:

If you doubt that the big lies are sticking, look at the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Half of voters now believe in the daily McCain refrain that Obama will raise their taxes. In fact, Obama proposes raising taxes only on the 1.9 percent of households that make more than $250,000 a year and cutting them for nearly everyone else.

You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest-hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on “The View.” Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several falsehoods, including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska. Behar used the word “lies” to his face. The McCains are so used to deference from “the filter” that Cindy McCain later complained that “The View” picked “our bones clean.” In our news culture, Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow.

Network news, with its dwindling handful of investigative reporters, has barely mentioned, let alone advanced, major new print revelations about Cindy McCain’s drug-addiction history (in The Washington Post) and the rampant cronyism and secrecy in Palin’s governance of Alaska (in last Sunday’s New York Times). At least the networks repeatedly fact-check the low-hanging fruit among the countless Palin lies, but John McCain’s past usually remains off limits.

September 17, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


FREE MARKET NOT SO GREAT AFTER ALL


You wonder how history might have been different if Ronald Reagan had been defeated in 1980 in his run for the presidency and sent back to spouting right-wing ideology on the rubber chicken circuit. When Reagan won the White House in 1980 it set in motion the extreme right-wing free market ideology that has resulted in the mess we see now. We've heard it from right-wing politicians, right-wing evangelicals, and the right-wing loudmouths on talk radio: free markets can cure anything that ails us. We have to get rid of big bad government. Social programs are horrible. Things like the minimum wage, national health insurance, and Social Security are "socialism." It always was nonsense. Letting business govern itself is like letting wolves loose among the sheep. This editorial looks at John McCain's attempt to distance himself from the Bush administration and the free market ideologues, even though McCain has been a proponent and supporter of those same policies. The editorial is at www.nytimes.com:


For decades, typical Americans have not been rewarded for their increasing productivity with comparably higher pay or better benefits. The disconnect between work and reward has been especially acute during the Bush years, as workers’ incomes fell while corporate profits, which flow to investors and company executives, ballooned. For workers, that is a fundamental flaw in today’s economy. It is grounded in policies like a chronically inadequate minimum wage and an increasingly unprogressive tax system, for which Mr. McCain offers no alternatives.

As for Wall Street, Mr. McCain blamed the meltdown on “unbridled corruption and greed.” He called for a commission to find out what happened and propose solutions. His diagnosis and his cure are misguided. The crisis on Wall Street is fundamentally a failure to do the things that temper, detect and punish corruption and greed. It was a failure to police the markets, to enforce rules, to heed and sound warnings and expose questionable products and practices.

September 16, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


BACK TO THE REAL ISSUES


Suddenly we don't have to read about the Great Depression anymore because we're seeing the Great Depression II developing. For years now, most of us have experienced flat-lining wages, increases in health care costs, longer periods of unemployment, and seeing jobs outsourced to other countries. We saw a despicable bankruptcy law that makes debt slaves out of us. We saw the Bush administration push through a huge gift for the pharmaceutical industry. Now, thanks to the right wing's beloved concept of deregulation, we're seeing a meltdown of the financial industry. Names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mae, and Fannie Mae are becoming household words. The stock market plummeted over 500 points yesterday. But John McCain and right-wingers tell us the economy is "fundamentally sound." For whom? This column by E. J. Dionne is at www.washingtonpost.com:

All of a sudden, the culture war seems entirely beside the point, an unaffordable luxury in a time of economic turmoil. What politicians actually believe about the economy, what fixes they propose, whether they side with the wealthy few or the hurting many -- these become the stuff of elections, the reasons behind people's votes.

And nothing more exposes the hypocrisy of financial elites riding the coattails of those who revere small-town religious values than a downturn that highlights the vast gulf in power between the two key components of the conservative coalition. Even cultural conservatives will start to notice that McCain's tax policies are geared toward the wealthy investing class and Obama's toward the paycheck crowd. Even the most ardent friends of business have begun to argue that a re-engagement with sensible regulation is essential to restoring capitalism's health.

For some time, McCain's strategists figured they could deflect attention from the big issues by turning Palin into a country-and-western celebrity and launching so many ill-founded attacks on Obama that the truth would never catch up. The McCain strategists' approach reflected a low opinion of average voters, and some Obama supporters began worrying that their opinion might be right.