June 30, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

CEASELESSLY BACK TO THE PAST

When you look at the horrendous rulings of the Supreme Court in the past few months you think of a line from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby about being "borne back ceaselessly into the past." Right-wing ideologues have this vision of a mythical utopia that existed before government took steps to make the justice system fairer, to address racial discrimination, to deal with monopolies, to give working people some rights, and so on. Now landmark Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade are in danger and we will lurch back into the past. This article by Brent Budowsky is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

The United States Supreme Court is moving to reverse long-cherished American notions of constitutional law.

The divisions that plague American society have invaded the sanctity of the court, with angry dissents and at times personal criticism among justices that illustrate both the passions and dangers of the debate.

These events escalate a pattern of extreme actions that violate cardinal American ideals on matters including torture, the Geneva Convention, attacks on the Bill of Rights, presidential assertions of authority to violate statutes with non-binding statements, secrecy of unprecedented scope, the inability of Congress to perform its historic function of preventing executive abuse, and now a bitterly divided Supreme Court that threatens values long thought to be part of our national consensus…

We can no longer believe that Brown v. Board of Education establishes a national consensus on policies that promote integration versus those that tolerate segregation.

THE REAGAN MYTHOLOGY

Another golden age, according to right-wingers, was the administration of Ronald Reagan. I lived through those years, and they weren't that wonderful. Reagan's administration, like that of George W. Bush, was shot full of corruption. Massive transfers of wealth went to the economic elite. Poverty rose. The so-called jobs created during that time were mostly illusory. This article by Susan J. Douglas is at www.inthesetimes.com:

While much of the neocon agenda is in tatters right now, certainly one of its most successful achievements has been the canonization of Ronald Reagan, which rests crucially on one thing Reagan himself did so well: forgetting the facts. So it’s time to exhume a few.

First to go is the myth that Reagan was the most popular president since FDR. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting reminds us, “During the first two years of Reagan’s presidency, the public was giving President Reagan the lowest level of approval of all modern elected presidents. Reagan’s average first-year approval rating was 58 percent—lower than Dwight Eisenhower’s 69 percent, Jack Kennedy’s 75 percent, Richard Nixon’s 61 percent and Jimmy Carter’s 62 percent.” At the end of his second year, (remember the Reagan recession?) Reagan’s approval rating was 41 percent; after the Iran-Contra scandal was revealed, Reagan’s approval rating stood at 46 percent. His approval rating for his entire presidency was lower than Kennedy’s, Eisenhower’s and even Johnson’s, and at times he was one of the most unpopular presidents in recent history.