How Two Bushes Sold Out America

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

China is a leech in more ways than one. By way of Wal-Mart, it has destroyed decent wages and productive job creation in the U.S. See the CIA'S own list: China is No 1 with the world's LARGEST POSITIVE Current Account Balance; the U.S. (thanks to Wal-Mart) is DEAD LAST with the World's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance. (formerly called the Balance of Trade Deficit

We don't have far to look for culprits. They are not hiding behind bushes. They ARE the 'Bushes". Let's take a look at the history before it gets re-written:

1. Any Democratic President has presided over greater economic growth and job creation than any Republican President since World War II.
2. When Bush Jr took office, job creation was worst under a Republican, Bush Sr, at 0.6% per year and best under a Democrat, Johnson, at 3.8% per year.
3. Economic growth under President Carter was far greater than under Reagan or Bush Sr. In fact, economic growth in general was greater under Johnson, Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton than under Reagan or Bush. Democrats always outperform a failed party: the GOP!

4. The job creation rate under Clinton was 2.4% significantly higher than Ronald Reagan's 2.1% per year.
5. The "top performing Presidents" by this standard, in order from best down, were Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Kennedy. The "worst" (in descending order) were Nixon, Reagan, Bush.
6. Half of jobs created under Reagan were in the public sector --some 2 million jobs added to the Federal Bureaucracy. Hadn't he promised to reduce that bureaucracy?
7. Reagan, though promising to reduce government and spending, tripled the national debt and left huge deficits to his successor. Bush Jr's record will be even worse.
8. By contrast, most of the jobs created on Clinton's watch were in the private sector.

To sum it all up: any Democratic President beats any Republican President since World War II. The GOP eagerly hitched its wagon to the star of elitism. When just 1 percent owns more than the rest of us combined, it is safe to conclude that the GOP --as a viable party --is finished! Good riddance!

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Why GOP Regimes Create Recessions/Depressions

by Len Hart, The Existentialist cowboy

Every major economist has espoused the 'LABOR THEORY of VALUE'. That includes the conservative Adam Smith and the left-leaning Karl Marx. ERGO: a declining "real' wage that should be going to labor TRICKLES (in fact, FLOWS) upward to the ruling elites.

The Axis of Reagan/GOP are wrong. Wealth does not and has never "trickled down"."Suppy Side Economics" was and remains a scam, a con sketched out, it is said, on a napkin by Arthur Laffer. Laffer is remembered for his "Laffer curve" said to illustrate the theory that by reducing taxes for the very wealthy would result in increased production.

The GOP embraced it immediately! They claimed that by cutting taxes for their 'base' of wealthy folk, wealth would trickle down and create jobs. The very opposite occurred. Reagan's tax cuts were followed by a depression of some two years, the deepest, longest depression since Hoover's big one!

Not addressed with Laffers' curve is the fact that elites have the purchasing power to bid prices UP! That's not inflation! It's THEFT! At least since Ronald Reagan occuped the White House, the GOP has tried to peddle tax cuts benefiting only the eilte classes with various forms of trickle down theory. It has never worked! By now, the wealthy (if not everyone else) knows that 'trickle down" or "supply side theory" is bunkum. The elite classes, however, will always resurrect it if it is believed that they can milk it for another tax cut or "stimulus" as they often like to call it.

The elites know what the general public does not: wealth does not 'trickle down'. Rather --it is labor which creates value and 'value' is the very soruce of a nation'swealth. Windfalls and tax cuts are not re-invested in ways that create jobs. They are squirreled away offshore or, in other ways, removed from circulation. The results are obvious: a recession/depression or --at best --a slow down follows every GOP tax cut. Every GOP administration since 1900 has presided over a recession/depression. Just a fluke? Not a chance!

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GOP Hero, Saint Thomas More, was a Communist

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Thomas More --now 'Saint Thomas More' --was surely the most prominent “secular humanist” in England during the reign of Henry VIII. What makes More a “humanist”, like his friend Erasmus, is his belief in the perfectibility of humankind. What makes More a “secularist” was his insistence, unto his own death, in the separation of “God’s law” and “man’s law”, a principle that we refer to as the separation of Church and State.  Lest we forget, More died at the hands of an all powerful "state". Though it was not Henry VIII who said l'etat, c'est moi he might as well have done.

When the GOP embarked upon its unholy crusade to impeach Bill Clinton, it's many flacks tried to lend an imprimatur of legitimacy to their schemes by invoking the name of St/Sir Thomas More.

Typically, the GOP and prosecutor Kenneth Star specifically, mangled More and, in the process, proved themselves to be a party of mediocre intellects, opportunists, shallow sophists, perhaps, liars to a person! The following excerpt from Starr's interview with Diane Sawyer...

Kenneth Starr: Well, I love the letter and the spirit of the law, but it`s the letter of the law that protects us all. And, you know, St. Thomas Moore, Sir Thomas Moore put it so elegantly, you know, in A Man For All Seasons. He took the law very seriously and said, `That`s what protects us. It`s not the will of a human being. It`s not Henry VIII`s will. Henry VIII is under the law. We are all equal under the law.

In fact --no where in the play A Man For All Seasons did the character of Sir Thomas More say anything resembling that. More defended the obedience to "...man`s law, not God`s" [that makes More a secular humanist --a bad word among many throughout the right wing] and never made reference to either Henry VIII's law by name or description. The actual exchange that both David Schippers and Starr are both so fond of misquoting is as follows:

Roper: So now you`d give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get at the Devil?
Roper: I`d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh! (advances on Roper) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you --where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country’s planted thick with laws --man's laws, not God's [emphasis mine]--and if you cut them down --and you’re just the man to do it --d`you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I`d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety`s sake.

In yet another memorable exchange:

Margaret More: Father, that man's bad.
Sir Thomas More: There's no law against that.
William Roper: There is: God's law.
Sir Thomas More: Then God can arrest him.

The dialogue above was written by Robert Bolt for the play and movie: A Man for All Seasons. But should you want to read the original More you will find comments equally biting, equally witty, comments that will most certainly curl the hair of modern right wing reactionaries and intellectual gnomes! More, they will charge, is a socialist for his comments having to do with the business class:

...so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth. They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be.

--Of the Religions in Utopia, St. Thomas More

Clearly, none of the Republicans attacking Bill Clinton had understood the movie. None of them had bothered to learn anything about their “hero” other than what they had seen in a movie. Indeed, this film is among the best movies ever made. Sadly, the real meaning of the film was lost on Kenneth Starr. He came away from it having learned all the wrong lessons and that may be worse than having learned nothing at all.

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Why GOP Administrations are Economic Failures that Prove Marx Correct

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

When Bush Sr fought against, perhaps vanquished 'supply-side economics', it was hoped that the horrible Reagan years could be, would be consigned to the 'dust bin of history'! But no! It was left to 'Shrub', George W. Bush, to unleash unholy forces in order to breathe life into "trickle down theory" otherwise called 'supply side economics!

As it was taken off life support, it was surely Dick 'cyborg' Cheney who may well have yelled: It's ALIVE!

Cheney, of course, professed the Reagan doctrine: "Deficits don't matter". This is a bona fide case of terminal denial and accounts for supply-sider control of the Republican party. But what about Obama? He inherited a run-away train in search of its wreck. As Obama prepared to occupy the White House, the debt grew. Meanwhile, the caped villain (Cheney) and his budding monster(Bush) were still at work licking their chops and dreaming of fight night!

It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE!

Debt had accelerated during Bush's last two budget years. Although Obama had not been directly responsible for that acceleration, the train wreck had been left to him.

As the GOP are wont to do, Bush set records, in fact, the all-time record by increasing the debt by $1.1 trillion in a mere 100 days between July 30 and Nov 9, 2008.

Then there was the not-so-small matter of recession. To be expected, recessions cut tax revenues significantly and this fact may account for the GOP's sorry record of running up the highest debts and deficits! This has been the case since prior to the Great Depression. It is the pattern that is repeated in every GOP administration since H. Hoover's "Great Depression".

In this case, however, GOP mismanagement accounts for almost half of the deficit. We can be sure that the GOP were prepared to blame Obama for the deficit though his only crime was that timing. Machiavelli might have advised him to sit it out, let the GOP take the rap! Let the GOP face the music and dance quickly out to the door to oblivion. Blaming Obama for the full deficit was said to have been akin to "blaming him for not raising the tax rate to keep tax revenues up".

In times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift or joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a genuinely revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay, more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.

If, by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. The "dangerous class", the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped.

The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

-- Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

In the U.S. it is the GOP which consistently advocates, perhaps fronts, the interests of its primary sponsor: the ruling elite of just 1 percent of the total population. In effect, every real person but those among the top 1 percent are without representation in what is said to be the world's largest "Democracy". Is it really a 'democracy'? It is ironic that while Marx is most demonized by this unholy alliance, it is the existence of the unholy alliance itself which proves Marx to have been correct about almost everything.

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The Price We Paid for the GOP's Free Lunch with Ruling Elites

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

I am in a cranky mood!

C'mon Obama! Take the gloves off! Obama did not mention several issues that may be found in his own ads. Why not hit Romney with the infamous '47 percent'? Obama could have beaten Romney with his own words. Obama could have held Romney to his his own failed 'standard'.

Obama might have, could have disproved the utter and often meaningless crap that passes for speech these days. Obama might have hit Romney on the issue of the many jobs Romney cut at Bain. Will Democrats never learn this lesson: put the GOP on the ropes or let them hang themselves with GOP absurdities, lies and significant omissions?

Whomever really 'won' the first debate no longer matters. The issue is about the effect it's had on Romney's billionaire buddies who are now prepared to BUY the office for a moron and co-conspirator.
Romney is reported to be collecting money from his millionaire donors "hand over fist". Unless Democrats reach down deep, the race could turn around and elect an UN-ABASHED SHILL for the ruling elites. Latest polls put Romney within one point in Florida (47-46) and just two in Virginia (48-46s).

It would not be this close but for the money factor. Until that issue is addressed, Americans must live under an oligarchy at best, a dictatorship of the 1 percent at the very worst.

While the GOP, kowtowing to the desires of the ruling 1 percent of its creation, poses a clear and present danger to the rule of law, the rights enumerated in our Bill of Rights, the rights of everyone who must, of necessity, work for a living, the rights of those would dissent and protest the right wing destruction of the values of our founding.

The rights of those who wish to work honestly for their living are likewise threatened by the documentable export of jobs during every GOP administration, the export of jobs that are, in fact, the RESULT of GOP policies. And --no --assertions that there are no differences between the parties is (politely) uninformed; and less politely, it's stupid. Democrats who stay at home believing Obama is at fault might as well wait in vain for a Messiah to come again or a Klaato to beam down out of a space craft. Rather than waiting for a 'bailout', I urge Democrats and/or progressives to assume some responsibility and, at the very least, show some initiative.

This is, in a nutshell, the core problem facing liberals. Those who wish to become activists need to direct their energies to dismantling the corporate special interest system and restoring greater equality of income.

--Steve Kangas, The Origins of the Overclass

If the GOP did not invent the sellout, this ongoing auction of the U.S. to the ruling elites, they might as well have. This 'sellout' has enslaved U.S. citizens and, at the same time expects them to pick up the tab for their military adventures on behalf of the obscenely wealthy.

In the meantime, the American people are brainwashed by big media. That's by design. Why do you suppose the Reagan administration worked tirelessly to abolish, perhaps erase the memory of the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE?

Why do you suppose that the ownership of media is concentrated in the hands of some five or six huge conglomerates? Was this decreed by God? Is this the result of 'natural selection', good genes, or is it a product of the Big Bang. No --it was the planned result of the Reagan attack on the Fairness Doctrine specifically and, in general, every provision of the Communications Act of 1934.
The internet has proven NOT to have been effective in countering the well-oiled, well-heeled right wing money and propaganda MACHINES.

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Deluded Mitt Romney says: 'Corporations are people' too!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Here's what Mitt recently puked up:

"Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend."

--Mitt Romney, aka 'The Compleat Cockroach'

Like every other GOPPER, Mitt claims privileges for corporations because, '...they are people''! The 'privileges' he claims for corporation are denied to 'real people' simply because they are real people and corporations are not! Neither Mitt nor the GOP can have it both ways.

In fact, corporations are not taxed as much or even in the same way as are real people. That is by design --GOP design! I say TAX the corporations! But, of course, the corporations themselves will oppose effort to tax them fairly or in the same ways as real persons are taxed. Nevertheless, corporations must be compelled to pay their fair share to support the legitimate functions of government with respect to the 'real' real people who are, by law, the source of all governmental 'sovereignty'.

Funny thing is, Romney's questioner wasn't asking him about corporate personhood. He was asking why Romney wants to cut Social Security but while preserving corporate tax breaks. It seemed as if Romney had already memorized this little speech and was looking for a chance to trot it out. He probably had.

--Truthout, Shiny Happy Corporate People

Corporations and the ruling elite which runs them can, in many cases, can avoid paying taxes entirely. In practice, however, the 'ruling elite' (now just 1 percent of the total population) pay less and less as a portion of their total income than do middle and lower class individuals. For us, the government's cut is a much, much larger percentage of our income than are the nominal taxes levied the ruling elite.

Why are not corporations locked up when committing crimes that would land real people in a Texas gulag hell-hole? As Truth Out put it: Romney and the GOP at large would ask: "Are you crazy? We're talking about corporations here, not people."

Corporations are often left off the hook entirely when sued for negligence or 'criminal manslaughter'. How many real people are housed in Texas prisons for those crimes? How many corporations are housed in TX gulags for precisely the same crimes? I will tell you: NONE!!!! In practice, perhaps in law, corporations are placed above the law, treated differently, given privileges and exemptions that real people have never had and will never have.

Why is the GOP so eager to bestow upon corporations --a collective abstraction --the status of 'personhood'? The answer is simple: the GOP are 'collectivists'; the GOP is anti-individual! The GOP seeks to establish a 'collectivist' dictatorship in which wealth --created by labor --is shared but only among the ruling elite which did not create it and have not earned a penny of it. Every one else in the GOP vision of AmeriKa is reduced to slavery if we have not been already.

REPUBLICANS: ARE THEY ABOVE THE LAW OR JUST OUTLAWS?

Republicans may say what they want of corporations as people, but, in fact, corporations have none of characterisics of real people, none of the responsibilities. They do not vote as people; they don't have to. They OWN the government! They benefit from its largesse as real people have never benefited and never will!

The only pockets lined by GOP largesse (pork) are the pockets of an increasingly tiny ruling elite now just 1 percent of the total population. The official stats prove my assertions; those numbers can be found by anyone with an internet connection at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Commerce Dept-B.E.A. Look 'em up! Be prepared to see proof that the GOP and Mitt are lying, distorting the effects of every GOP tax cut in U.S. history.

In each case, the cut --having enriched only the upper 1 percent --has been followed by a recession/depression. ERGO: GOP tax cuts do not have have never stimulated the economy, have never created a single fucking job! NOT ONE!

In fact, job creation has declined after every GOP tax cut; and every recession/depression since 1900 has been the result of either GOP incompetence or crookedness or both.

The Reagan depression of some two years is a specimen typical of the recurring problem. Under Reagan, jobs declined, investment declined, millions were thrown out of work, lost their homes and were forced to live in tent cities, under bridges! Ironically, this was the case in 'boomtown' Houston which had been called the 'Golden Buckle of the Sunbelt'. Every such depression/recession has been the result of similar incompetence by previous GOP regimes at least since 1900.

Here's the story that puts all this in perspective: Romney wants to cut Social Security while preserving corporate tax breaks. In other words, MITT ROMNEY --a typical GOP seed pod --wants to enrich those who are already rich upon the backs of those who were never rich, those who can least afford it. Romney wants to rob retirees and literally GIVE that wealth to mere 'legal abstractions' --corporations!

Romney's ideas will most certainly result in a contraction of wealth as 'money' (in varrious forms) will follow the well-rehearsed GOP SCRIPT! In other words, this 'wealth' will wind up in various offshore bank accounts where it creates no jobs and --significantly --does not 'trickle down'! As was the case wtih the Reagan tax cut, a depression, a massive loss of jobs, a contraction of the economy will result. It always has!

THE GOP MODUS OPERANDI

Check the official stats at Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Commerce Deptartment-B.E.A., the U.S. Census Bureau. Following EVERY GOP tax cut at least since Reagan has been a recession/depression [negative growth] defined by the millions of Americans that were suddenly jobless, homeless and living in tent cities, under bridges, as was the case in fact in 'boomtown' Houston.

The REAGAN YEARS SUCKED! [see Cheney's nose at right]

And they sucked because GOP economics have never, ever worked as advertised! GOP economic 'theory' is a fraud, a scam, a conjob. It does precisely what the GOP wants it to do: it enriches the GOP base! It's a laundered payoff for their continued support. As a result of GOP policies, just 1 percent of the total population owns more than the rest of us combined.

Instead of listening to Mitt, we should be restoring the nation's prosperity by taxing the rich and the even richer corporations FAIRLY! In other words, they should be taxed as was the case until Ronald Reagan wrecked the economy and impoverished everyone but the very, very, very rich who have had the 'bad manners' of investing their ill-gotten booty in offshore bank accounts.

The EXODUS of wealth following every GOP tax cuts is commonly called 'recession' or 'depression'. Look them up at the U.S. Commerce Dept B.E.A. the Census Bureau or the Bureau of Labor Stats. The GOP record of tax cuts followed by recession is there in black and white for anyone curious enough to learn the truth!

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Steps Toward Taking Back America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The U.S. is bankrupt, literally owned by China who tops the CIA's World Fact Book with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance. The U.S. is on the very bottom as a result of the policies of four incompetent, corrupt and/or crooked U.S. GOP Presidents: Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr and, more recently, Bush Jr.

The U.S. position on the very bottom may be traced to Richard Nixon's visit to China in the 1970's, a trip which George H.W. Bush laid the groundwork. Prior to this trip, the United States was competitive in world markets, known for its steel production in Pittsburgh, its automotive industry in Detroit, its oil production in West Texas.

I spoke with Bush Sr personally about the deals he cut in China. Admittedly, the interview was hasty, an opportunity seized. Had I been better prepared, I might have tried to pin the Senior Bush down. What --precisely --had he agreed to? What precisely were the concessions made that resulted in the U.S. conceding its leadership to China, reduced to thanking heaven above for merely pulling up the rear?

The U.S. economy might have already collapsed but for the brief resurgence in 'positive' job creation and the increases in GDP during the Carter years. Check the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You will find confirmation that Jimmy Carter is among the best U.S. Presidents in both job creation and GDP growth. Carter, in fact, beats any GOP President since World War II. Carter is reviled by the GOP --not because he failed but because he succeeded! He will never be forgiven that!

My challenge to the incompetent but unrepentant GOP is this: if you truly believe the economic claptrap that 'you' have sold the American people, then repeat these failures in yet another GOP administration to follow Obama. Undo the good that he will have done, just as Bush Jr wiped off the Clinton gains with more GOP nonsense and failed policy. The problem with challenging the GOP is this: they will eagerly take me up on it and outdo previous debacles. Why should they care? In fact, they don't care! The typical GOP politician is owned by the ultra-rich upon whom he/she is dependent. The typical GOP politician/office holder takes his orders and, like a good li'l Nazi clicks his heels and says Heil, Mein Fuhrer! Then he supports a bill that will exclude his rich, elite sponsors from life in the real world!

The GOP and the elite base that supports them have long ago exported their wealth to offshore tax havens. Neither the GOP nor the increasingly tiny elite that supports them have anything 'riding on' American success! This betrayal of a nation by a political party, in fact, a crime syndicate of kooks, liars, crooks and cultists, is simply unprecedented in world history. I can think of nothing comparable to the GOP betrayal of the United States and millions of hard working U.S. citizens.

Since the Bush/Nixon overtures to China, the U.S. has consistently declined and, most recently, achieved 'dead last' on the above referenced CIA list. But what does the U.S. position on bottom mean? It means that instead of earning more money on your job, you may not have a job at all. It means that the U.S. is no longer a producing nation. It means that the U.S. is better compared to a cow that is milked by China. It means that even if you have a job the dollars you earn are worth less (if not worthless) when you buy products at any other outlet but Wal-Mart. Check the shelves at Wal-Mart. Make a list of U.S. made products! Make a list of those products manufactured in China, to whom Bush/Nixon sold our economic souls by selling out U.S. labor.

Reagan/Nixon/Bush policies are incompetent, to be sure, but they are far worse. The policies were known to be incompetent among 'brighter' members of the GOP but were pursued and/or effected anyway.

But why? Simply --the GOP pursued those policies knowing that it would enrich their base, a payoff for their support! These are, in fact, Faustian bargains struck by ambitious politicians! Owned by the elites who finance them, they do what they are hired to do, that is, support, promote and vote for economic policies that benefit only the increasingly tiny ruling elite --now just one percent of the total population.

We are in debt because we don't produce enough to balance the trade. See the CIA's World Fact Book. We are owned by China who will drop us like yesterday's news when it is no longer beneficial to them. We are already broke and on the bottom of the CIAs list. The dollar is worth what it is only for as long as it is beneficial to China to maintain it; secondly, oil is traded in dollars, thus creating an artificial floor. When China drops the dollar every nation selling oil for dollars will insist upon almost any other major currency BUT dollars. At that point, the U.S. will be finished.

In the meantime, turn off FOX and boycott Wal-Mart. Trouble is, even locally owned merchants sell imported goods. I keep wondering --does anyone work for a living anymore? The U.S. used to make cars, steel, appliances and electronics products amounting to millions of jobs. Where did they go? Asia, primarily China! Thank you George H.W. Bush!

During the Reagan years, it was 'economist' Milton Friedman who succeeded in providing the GOP with some 'intellectual cover', a plausible sounding rationalization for 'free market' claptrap that has never worked. The abysmal records of every GOP President since WWII compared to any Democratic President over the same post-war period utterly refutes the many absurd right wing claims about "Friedman" economics. I met Friedman when he was riding the crest of celebrity --his book and TV series 'Free to Choose' was out; he was doing a TV thing on PBS (as I recall). Friedman's assertion --""What kind of society isn't structured on greed? " --was most surely the inspiration for Gordan Gecko's: "Greed is good", a line that defined the motion picture "Wall Street". Friedman was eagerly embraced by goppers desperately in need of an intellectual; 'Greed is good' justified rapacious practices by Wall Street predators and wannabes.

In the wake of the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, there’s no silver-screen villain scarier than a banker. Far from the halcyon days when a loan officer like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life’’ could be a town’s hedge against financial ruin, the current crop of financiers — both fictional and, even more terrifying, nonfictional — are the least palatable of the new vampires, sucking the lifeblood from 401(k)s, mutual funds, houses, and livelihoods. Victims wake up, pale, depleted, and broke while, engorged with cash, the incubi race to Tourneau for yet another Vacheron Constantin watch.While the latest “Wall Street’’ movie packages its contempt for the whole venal crowd in entertaining trappings, Charles Ferguson’s just-released documentary, “Inside Job,’’ is an altogether different matter. This film, a feature-length investigation of what really happened to bring our entire financial system to the brink, is harder to stomach simply because it’s true. Around the globe, people are living with the consequences of that manic perversion of the system every day.

--'Greed is Good' cinema

Even so, Arthur Laffer would upstage them all with a curve drawn on a napkin. It was all bullshit too! Wealth, in fact, did not trickle down, as promised, but upward, eventually enriching just one percent of the total population. GOPs might have known this if Laffer himself did not. Otherwise, why was the party so eager to embrace this convenient, easily marketable means by which the party could enrich, i.e, pay off its base for their continued support. Laffer was either a naive dupe. and didn't know better, or he was in on the scheme from the 'git go'. Frankly, I don't know and don't care!

American's might have gotten another version, a better, more accurate play-by-play as this all unfolded. But --alas --the Fairness Doctrine had been trashed by Reagan et al and media, increasingly concentrated in fewer corporate hands, seized upon the opportunity, the green light to be irresponsible robber barons. The very first remedies are about the media because nothing else can follow until truth and real debate is restored.

Therefore:

1. Restore the main points of the Communications Act of 1934, primarily the principle that the people own the airwaves. Updated to include cable easements;
2. Restore strict ownership limitations that will end the concentration of all media into very, very few monopolistic hands;
3. Restore the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time. That means that Beck, Billo, Lard Ass and other liars can be refuted and exposed on their time and 'airwaves';
4. Require 'licensees' to devote a percentage of cable and/or air time to public service and information.

Concurrent with the media reforms I mentioned and support, campaign and election processes MUST be reformed:

1. the primary system militates against against any system other than the two - party system, i.e, dumb and dumber;
2. strict limits on campaign contributions will be possible IF the media reforms outlined above are effected;
3. Direct election of the President via 'instant runoffs' which will a) cut costs of holding elections; b) cutting out those 'middle men' will more nearly put people back in charge of the government while minimizing, as much as possible, the influence of the huge lobbies in various campaigns.

These are merely first steps. Redressing the wealth an income inequalities that have literally destroyed America will require widespread popular resolve, a courageous and competent government free of interference from the paid, entrenched lobbies on K-Street! It will require politicians of courage and integrity. Bluntly: we have very few of those and when one is elected, Obama, for example, he is unfairly attacked, stymied and reviled by crooks, idiots, liars and the big corporate media.

A miracle is required! Alas --the age of miracles is over. I daresay, that short of a miracle, America, as we knew it, is finished!

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The GOP 'Scorched Earth' Policy

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The American Democratic party, the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, was a force to be reckoned with. Most often allied with labor, Democrats --not Republicans --presided over the hard-won triumph over the Great Depression. It was Democrats, not Republicans, who later presided over a thriving economy, an egalitarian economy in the late 40s and much of the 50s. It was the Democratic regimes of FDR and Harry Truman that were the most egalitarian in U.S. History.

This prosperity continued through the JFK years. Not even Nixon could undo the good that had been done. That job was left to Ronald Reagan whose infamous, inequitable tax cut of 1982 breached the wall. Only the upper quintile benefited from Reaganomics of which the infamous tax cut of 1982 was the centerpiece. Only the upper 1 percent have benefited from subsequent GOP largesse.

Over the same period of time, American manufacturing --steel, automotive, appliances et al --declined. Labor was denied a base upon which to build a movement or even an effective opposition. Out of work and out of money, labor was neutered. As a result, steel is produced in Japan and imported. Appliances are increasingly made in China and imported, denying jobs to US workers. Once a center of world automobile production, downtown Detroit is but a shadow of its former glory. Various suburbs like Flint have deteriorated.

The antipathy shown labor by the American right wing has a long history. In 1911, L.A.Times owner/publisher Gen. Harrison Grey Otis exploited the bombing of the L.A. Times building to win a landmark propaganda war against labor. Two brothers, labor leaders, were accused of this act of 'domestic terrorism' around which Otis rallied opposition to labor despite the fact that the trial ended with a plea bargain. Arguably, the more lasting fallout was the subsequent trial of Clarence Darrow who was accused of bribing prospective jurors.

The GOP has not won the debate with its 'scorched earth' methods and politics. It has merely hollowed out the soul of a nation for the benefit of just 20 percent in the 80s and only 1 percent recently. The GOP did not defeat labor or its ideals. Rather, it exported their jobs and shut them up. It's the GOP way.

Not just labor, the nation as a whole has paid dearly for this cynical strategy. Confirmation and results can be found at the CIA's own World Fact Book where you will find the U.S. at the bottom of the list with the world's largest NEGATIVE CURRENT ACCT BALANCE; China, with whom GOP Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush cut sweetheart deals, is on top. China prospers. America is near collapse and will eventually be reduced to third world status if it is not there already.

It was all by design. The GOP willingly amputated a nation's leg and arm to save the increasingly stupid head, a ruling one percent which has done little or nothing to deserve is role as the nation's ruling plutocracy! In the meantime, the Democratic party is robbed of its traditional, base --labor. Thus, was forced upon Bill Clinton the odious 'triangulation' of the increasingly moribund 'center', a strategy for which he was roundly criticized and rightly on principle. In fact, however, it was all that was left him in the wake of the GOP's scorched earth policy.

The U.S. is now a limping, one-legged man where everyone fancies himself an aristocrat but, in fact, everyone but the top one percent are getting poorer. It's a slow boil but coming to a head very quickly now. Interestingly, those benefiting from Reagan's policies were but about 20 percent of the total population. More recently, those benefiting are reduced to just one percent of the population. At what point will the fabulously wealthy one percent become one-half of one percent, eventually, one half or just one quarter of that amount? This curve can be plotted on a graph. A rate of decline can be pinpointed. All it takes is a bit of first semester calculus to plot the very rate at which the GOP impoverishes all of us.

The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It's how the the 'pay-offs' are laundered. Clinton reversed the trend but briefly. That he dared get a blow job was much more important than saving a nation from a disastrous fate. In fact, it was all the GOP could pin on him, though he was under a sweeping investigation seemingly from the get go. An investigation in search of real crimes and, finding none, invented the 'felony blow job'.

‎Someone said that Satan's biggest 'trick' was convincing the world that he did not exist. The GOP's biggest trick is convincing the American people that they are a political party. They are, in fact, a crime syndicate with characteristics of a kooky cult. Stanford University studies have proven that GOP-types have more night terrors and horrible nightmares than do normal people. This is understandable. Certainly, the GOP rank and file are insecure, in fact, frightened if not terrified. Nightmares are but dream manifestations of fears and anxieties. Likewise, GOP policy. In short, we, the people have paid and continue to pay for GOP fears and neurotic hang ups. I would think that like me, you are fed up with doing so!

Edward R. Murrow: Wires and Lights in a Box

Note: The Existentialist Cowboy is currently bombarded by spam from lunatic name callers of the right wing ilk! Therefore, comments are moderated; threats are deleted and, when possible prosecuted! Ads are outta here! And I am not interested in whatever stupid name idiots apply to smarter people these days. Intelligent comments are, as always, very welcome! Ad hominem attacks, spam, advertising and psychotic drivel is not! Psychos should get help but not here! Eventually, the offending party will be committed to an asylum and we adults can once again engage in intelligent, articulate dialogue. Thanks for understanding.

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One Million Strong Against the GOP

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP has been infiltrated by a kooky kult of korporatists! It is not the party of Eisenhower-like fiscal conservatives or of Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt anymore. It has become the party of the MIC and the big lobbyists on K-street. It has become the official party of the big corporations, the ruling one percent of the population which alone has benfefited from GOP fiscal policy.

Ronald Reagan doubled the national debt and tripled the deficit. While revenues declined as a result, Reagan compounded the problem by ramming through Congresss a TAX CUT from which ONLY the upper quintile benefited. It was a recipe for historic deficits, in fact, national bankruptcy. Concurrently, a trend, in which the rich get richer and everyone else poorer, did not abate until Clinton's second term. Under Bush the Shrub, the trend resumed with a vengence.

Today --as a result --just one percent of the nation owns more than about 95 percent of the rest of us combined. The inevitable result of transferring this wealth to the wealthy is that the net gain to the wealthy is, in fact, exported out of the economy and into offshore bank accounts.

That being the case --why were we surprised that the inevitable collapse occurred under Bush and carried over into the Obama regime. In effect, monies were removed from the economy --a contraction. Economists call this recession.

I have enough material on Reagan's irresponsible profligacy to fill several volumes, more data than I have time to 'twitterize'. Sometimes, you just have to read the long, dull story.

Bottom line: the GOP is just not credible when it claims to be fiscally conservative. The GOP is just not credible when it tries to trick you into believing that there is no difference between the GOP and Obama. The GOP has no legs when it claims to be fiscally conservative. Listening to goppers cry about Democratic 'deficits' is like hearing a million or more crocodiles singing the Hebrew Slave Chorus.

Because the big corporations dominate K-street, Americans inevitably get a ONE SIDED view, the GOP spin. The actual facts available from the Labor Dept, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis and EVEN the conservative Brookings Institution paint a different picture.

It's hard to set the record straight on a TWITTERIZED net. Even so some key facts utterly disprove the GOP/Reagan myth. To wit:

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents

Johnson 3.8%
Carter 3.1
Clinton 2.4
Kennedy 2.3
Nixon 2.3
Reagan 2.1
Bush 0.6

--Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Current Employment Statistics Survey

The Reagan ERA was a period in which corporate PACs literally compelled Congress to pass pro-business legislation. According to supply-side theory, these actions should have nudged the economy in the right direction, not plunge it into the worst recession in 40 years. But that is PRECISELY WHAT HAPPENED.

The resulting 'depression' of some two years was the longest, deepest since Hoover's GREAT DEPRESSION triggered by the crash of '29, an event not seen again until Shrub's second term.

Given the economic 'crimes' committed by Reagan, Sr, and Shrub, the lame ass charges against Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pale.

How the GOP --which ran up the highest debts and deficits in US history --can lay that rap on Democrats which had control of Congress just eight of almost 20 years is just plain ludicrous.

ANY Dem Prez beats ANY GOP Prez since LBJ. Now --I would say that JOB GROWTH --essential for a healthy economy --is reason enough to fire the GOP until it repents and gets down on its knees to beg forgiveness of the American People, until it pleads, on its knees, for political salvation. Say Hallelujah!!!

Addendum:

This article would not have been possible had not Steve Kangas braved the wrath of a crooked GOP! Given that background, I have a message for Richard Mellon Scaife: FUCK YOU!

The Who: Won't Get Fooled Again!

Additional Resource: One Million Strong Against the Republican Party

Why I moderate comments

• SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
• Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

Also see:

• A Spiritual Mind Movie
• How the US Became a Vassal State of China
• Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes
  
• The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World's Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism
• Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
  
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization
  [w/LINKS]
• Why the CIA is the World's Number One Terrorist Organization [PDF]
• How the GOP Pays Off its 'Base' of Elites
  

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