September 16, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

THE CULT OF RIGHT WING ECONOMICS

The core belief of right-wingers is that the rich count and the rest of do not. The rich are there, we're told, because they're just better than the rest of us. They're smarter, work harder, are more innovative, are "risk takers," or possibly even favored by God. So to tax the rich to make society better for everyone else is just "stealing," you see. It ignores the fact that the rich wouldn't have much of a life without the labor of the rest of us and that the rich ultimately prosper most when there is a sane and stable society. What we've been given since the age of Reagan is insanity disguised as some form of "intellectualism." This article by Jonathan Chait looks at the cult of right-wing economic belief. The article is at www.tnr.com:

American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane. The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago--that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government--are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.

The result has been a slow- motion disaster. Income inequality has approached levels normally associated with Third World oligarchies, not healthy Western democracies. The federal government has grown so encrusted with business lobbyists that it can no longer meet the great public challenges of our time. Not even many conservative voters or intellectuals find the result congenial. Government is no smaller--it is simply more debt-ridden and more beholden to wealthy elites.

EVEN GREENSPAN ATTACKS BUSH

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, once called "Maestro" by celebrity reporter Bob Woodward, has criticized George W. Bush in a new memoir. Greenspan is critical of Bush's fiscal irresponsibility. It's not a major insight to say that Bush has thoroughly messed up the budget and the economy, of course. But it does buttress the case against right-wing economic theory. This article from the Forbes website is at www.forbes.com:

Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has criticized President George W. Bush for paying too little attention to financial discipline.

In a forthcoming book, Greenspan, 81, says Bush ignored his advice to veto "out-of-control" bills that sent the U.S. deeper into deficit. "Little value was placed on rigorous economic policy debate or the weighing of long-term consequences," he writes of the Bush administration.

The Republicans deserved to lose control of Congress in last year's elections, Greenspan writes in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, to be published on Sept, 17. He charges that Republicans in Congress "swapped principle for power" and "ended up with neither".