November 30, 2006


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


MILTON FRIEDMAN'S LEGACY

Milton Friedman was the economist who laid the groundwork for what became Reaganomics and what we're seeing now with the Bush administration. Friedman was an advocate of unfettered free markets. We see the horrendous consequences of his ideas now. There is a gulf between the rich and the poor, millions of Americans have no health insurance, and the country is mired in massive deficits. It's good evidence that you should never believe the utopian ideas advanced by right-wingers. This article by Dave Zweifel is at www.madison.com:

Economist Milton Friedman died several days ago and to read the glowing obits in much of the nation's press, you'd have thought we just lost a national hero.

Friedman was a hero all right, but not to the nation's working people.

He became the hero of corporate America and all those who believe that government should keep its nose out of the economy and let an unregulated marketplace control the people's destiny.

It was Friedman who legitimized the economic theory that came to be known as Reaganomics, the Ronald Reagan blunder that threw America into the throes of debt under the ludicrous assumption that you could cut taxes, increase military spending and the results would "trickle down" to the country's workers as the economy soared.

SEVEN DOLLARS A DAY

According to a new report, the 60 million poorest Americans reported incomes of less than seven dollars a day. That's like a Third World country, and it's inexcusable. We have billionaires in this country who are getting tax breaks from the Bush administration and we get a litany of excuses for why the government can't assist the poor. If you're in the middle class, you're told you have to get training and more training and yet more training to just stay in place. There's something very wrong here. This commentary by Matthew Rothschild is at www.commondreams.org:

A story on the front page of The New York Times business section on November 28 spells out the problems.

Average real incomes fell by 3 percent between 2000 and 2004.

Most Americans actually lost more than 5 percent.

But not those who were on the top 95th to top 99th rungs of the income ladder. Their income went up 53 percent. And check this out: Those on the top 0.1 percent rung saw their incomes more than triple between 2000 and 2004.

That is obscene.

We have a plutocracy in this country, not just of the rich or the very rich but of the unbelievably rich. This 0.1 percent are the ones who benefit most from the George Bush economy.

As he once put it, “Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”

Meanwhile, the poorest 60 million Americans “reported average incomes of less than $7 a day.”

Seven bucks a day! That barely gets one meal at McDonald’s.