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.