June 06, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
RIGHT WING FAILURE
Everything right-wingers touch turns into a ruin. Look at anything: the environment, the economy, civil rights, foreign policy, and our educational system are all a mess thanks to right-wing policies. Just a few days ago a letter writer to The Fresno Bee made the claim that "socialism has never worked." I would suggest that neither has unregulated capitalism, unless you consider the rich acquiring everything the way it should be. In this article Ernest Partridge looks at the massive failure of right-wing policies since Ronald Reagan. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Thus began a grand experiment: Release the American economy from the bonds of government regulation. Individual enterprise and initiative, the profit motive, the free market and open competition will usher in a new birth of freedom and a new era of unprecedented prosperity.
“It’s morning in America.”
Twenty-six years later, what do we have? A dismantled and “outsourced” industrial base, an impoverished work force, a nine trillion dollar debt burden upon future generations, and a degradation of education and scientific research, and a captive media that deprives the public of essential news as it issues outright lies. In addition, the Bush administration, the current keeper of the covenant, has accomplished the trashing of the Constitution and its guaranteed Bill of Rights, a seemingly endless war with no prospect (or even definition) of victory, and the contempt of the peoples and governments of the civilized world.
The grand experiment has failed, and we are just beginning to realize the enormous costs of that failure.
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Friday, December 29, 2006
December 29, 2006
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICAN "REVOLUTION" UTTER FAILURE
A dark moment in our history was the election of the Republican Congress in 1994. We were told it was a "revolution." We heard about the "Contract With America." We saw a group of right-wing reactionaries come into power whose major objective was to demonize opponents, bring the government to a screeching halt, and push through tax cuts for the rich. Even the claims that they would reduce the size of government have proved to be bogus. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.roziusunbound.blogspot.com:
After first attempting to deny the scale of last month’s defeat, the apologists have settled on a story line that sounds just like Marxist explanations for the failure of the Soviet Union. What happened, you see, was that the noble ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were undermined by Washington’s corrupting ways. And the recent defeat was a good thing, because it will force a return to the true conservative path.
But the truth is that the movement that took power in 1994 — a movement that had little to do with true conservatism — was always based on a lie.
The lie is right there in “The Freedom Revolution,” the book that Dick Armey, who had just become the House majority leader, published in 1995. He declares that most government programs don’t do anything “to help American families with the needs of everyday life,” and that “very few American families would notice their disappearance.” He goes on to assert that “there is no reason we cannot, by the time our children come of age, reduce the federal government by half as a percentage of gross domestic product.”
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
REPUBLICAN "REVOLUTION" UTTER FAILURE
A dark moment in our history was the election of the Republican Congress in 1994. We were told it was a "revolution." We heard about the "Contract With America." We saw a group of right-wing reactionaries come into power whose major objective was to demonize opponents, bring the government to a screeching halt, and push through tax cuts for the rich. Even the claims that they would reduce the size of government have proved to be bogus. This column by Paul Krugman is at www.roziusunbound.blogspot.com:
After first attempting to deny the scale of last month’s defeat, the apologists have settled on a story line that sounds just like Marxist explanations for the failure of the Soviet Union. What happened, you see, was that the noble ideals of the Republican revolution of 1994 were undermined by Washington’s corrupting ways. And the recent defeat was a good thing, because it will force a return to the true conservative path.
But the truth is that the movement that took power in 1994 — a movement that had little to do with true conservatism — was always based on a lie.
The lie is right there in “The Freedom Revolution,” the book that Dick Armey, who had just become the House majority leader, published in 1995. He declares that most government programs don’t do anything “to help American families with the needs of everyday life,” and that “very few American families would notice their disappearance.” He goes on to assert that “there is no reason we cannot, by the time our children come of age, reduce the federal government by half as a percentage of gross domestic product.”
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