Showing posts with label GOP propaganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOP propaganda. Show all posts
Sunday, September 08, 2013
Why GOP Regimes Create Recessions/Depressions
by Len Hart, The Existentialist cowboyEvery 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!
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Time To Stick a Fork in Reagan's Ass
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Friday, December 14, 2007
How the GOP Abuses Language to Cloak its Criminal Political Agenda
Let's make a few things clear at the start. "Water boarding" is not "harsh interrogation" nor is it an "enhanced interrogation technique". It's bloody torture. "Water boarding" was invented by the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition --expert in such matters --called it what is: tortura del aqua. In English: Water Torture! I suggest that GOPPERS persisting in playing stupid word games submit themselves to tortura del aqua. Afterward, I will be happy to debate the issue with them.My comments are in response to the latest GOP absurdity from GOP Senator Kit Bond who likened Water Boarding to "swimming the backstroke":
GWEN IFILL: I just would like to -- but do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?The fact of the matter is the GOP deliberately masks its real and heinous intentions with euphemisms and code words --techniques designed to simply change the subject, like "re-framing", itself a "euphemism" designed to hide GOP intentions to deceive.
SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It's like swimming, freestyle, backstroke.
--GOP Senator Says Waterboarding Is "Like Swimming, Freestyle, the backstroke.
That's why I wrote a "A New American Lexicon" for my business and political clients. But it soon made its way to the Internet, where it raised a storm among Democrats in Washington, DC, and in the blogosphere, who accused me of the worst kind of spin. They say I'm manipulating the debate in an attempt to obscure the true effect of the policies I advocate. Yet this lexicon genuinely seeks to establish a common language for a pro-business, pro-freedom agenda.I have news for Luntz. Indeed, he is complicit in GOP intentions to deceive the American people. This is a subject about which I have some personal experience. For a brief period of time, as a result of my fairly extensive experience as a major market broadcast journalist, I "hired out" to big corporations to include Shell Oil, Exxon-Mobil, DuPont, HCA and Humana. My job was to teach their top executives how to "bridge" from unpleasant topics to company "lines", a process called "staying on message". I quit doing this for reasons of conscience. "Bridging" itself is a euphemism for changing the subject; staying on message a euphemism for avoiding the issue. I wrote manuals about this. And later burned them. The GOP will not debate because it dare not debate. It dare not deal in fact. The GOP, like the corporate flacks who support and inspire them, dare not deal with issues because the issues are against them. When corporate/GOP flacks are not lying outright, they lie by spinning. The GOP conducts "campaign schools" where "campaign manuals" instruct potential candidates with Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. It is disastrous for the nation that the GOP has made more malevolent use of those techniques than have the people's radicals for whom it was all intended. It was Alinsky who advised: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.--Frank I. Luntz, The Lexicon of Political Clout
Torture is among the most pernicious issues obscured by the Bush administration's application of deceptive, right wing techniques. Bush's war of aggression on Iraq is another. Never the war on terrorism that it was called, it is rather, a war of naked aggression, a war crime, a violation of Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Convention.
The Bush administration and the GOP generate euphemisms by the dozens to help shield the American people from the harsh realities of their foreign and domestic policies. Euphemisms like “collateral civilian casualties,” are some the most disgusting examples of using words to remove the life from something and turn it into a non-issue. Most Americans who would hear, “We regret any collateral civilian casualties,” would probably not think about what that statement really means. “Collateral civilian casualties” is of course a nice way to say “killing innocent people.”Social Security is another. Luntz, a self-described practitioner of these new psycho-socio linguistic techniques employs them himself in defense of Bush's attempt to dismantle the only governmental program that is an unqualified success: Social Security.
I have encouraged supporters of Social Security reform to counter such inaccuracies by talking about how the president's plan "personalizes" Social Security. When you personalize something, whether monogrammed towels or Social Security, you enhance ownership by allowing the owner to leave his or her mark on it. In this case, personalizing Social Security means partial ownership of our retirement. Instead of Washington making all the decisions, we will personally determine how a portion of our retirement savings should be invested.Let's take this bit of re-framing apart. First of all, he even puts into quotes a new label, in fact, a new "frame". He wants you to believe that Bush's plan would "personalize" Social Security. How does giving your money to a Wall Street insider who gives you a worthless piece of paper in exchange "personalizing" Social Security? It isn't. Who would you trust --the only government program that "turns a profit" or a Wall Street insider whose only interest is the money to be made from it? What Luntz does not tell you is that it's your money already. It's already "personalized".--Frank I. Luntz, The Lexicon of Political Clout
We don't need the government to "personalize" or, in any other way, put its stamp of approval upon our right to the money that we have earned. It has been GOP regimes primarilythat have raided the Social Security trust fund since 1980. It was the profligate regimes of Ronald Reagan, Bush Sr and now Bush Jr that have manufactured the crisis by routinely raiding the "Social Security Trust Fund" to gloss over GOP deficits. Ronald Reagan alone doubled the size of the federal bureaucracy and tripled the national debt. But for that fact, Social Security might not be in trouble.
Before looking at taxation under Reagan, we must note that spending is the better indicator of the size of the government. If government cuts taxes, but not spending, it still gets the money from somewhere—either by borrowing or inflating. Either method robs the productive sector. Although spending is the better indicator, it is not complete, because it ignores other ways in which the government deprives producers of wealth. For instance, it conceals regulation and trade restricdons, which may require little government outlay.Or --the government just raids the Social Security trust fund. The GOP philosophy is this: break Social Security so that the party can justify abolishing it or worse "fixing" by using it's "failures" as excuse to enrich their Wall Street cronies. The GOP war on Social Security endangers not only the "security" of millions of Americans, it endangers to their lives, health, and well-being.--Sheldon L. Richman, The Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan
"Broken" is another term with which the right wing hopes to "frame" the Social Security debate. Social Security might have been running a surplus were it not for GOP greed and incompetence. At last, turning Social Security over to Wall Street is not "personalizing" your retirement. That's the frame. What it is, in fact, is a payoff to Wall Street for its support of the GOP. The GOP/Wall Street insiders will make a killing off your money. Facts from the "no frame zone".The practice of journalism has succumbed to the right wing onslaught not only because most media has been bought out by the ideologues. Working journalists, who should know better, will write about "true facts" when writing about Bush.
He cited more facts (true or not, no reason to start believing anything he says now) than he has ever used in a speech. Second he remained particularly defiant.Facts are, by definition, true. Secondly, I am hard pressed to name an instance in which Bush has uttered a "fact" --true or otherwise described, if that's possible.
What Democratic strategists can learn from Luntz is to pay closer attention to crafting the language of political discourse, a pivotal factor in GOP victories of recent years. If we keep our language clear and straight, the GOP will be regarded as the party of equivocation.But will they? Issue framing is now practiced by armchair consultants and both parties are tarred. Focus groups are, in fact, consulted by both parties. Key words and phrases are tested for their effect. The holy grail is the sound byte distributed via various media. The media may be blamed for having conditioned the public, but our educational institutions must be held responsible for not having encouraged critical attitudes, for having failed to provide the cognitive skills necessary to cut through the crap. In summary, "water boarding" is not harsh or enhanced interrogation, it's torture, a war crime, as is the war of aggression against the people of Iraq. Privitizing Social Security is not "personalizing" it; it's another way the GOP pays off its base.
100 Examples of GOP Corruption, Lies, and Ignorance
GOP
Bush
Torture
Spread the word:
Saturday, March 11, 2006
A plague on ALL your houses!
by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyI know how to put 99% percent of the world's religious charlatans and political demagogue war mongers out of business for good. Simply hold them to this standard: behave in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so. How many could be held to that standard? Maybe none!
Chuck Dupree, of Bad Attitudes, wrote recently:
...the right has come to dominate the discussion through clever, and not always honest, use of language and control of the definitions of terms.This seems to be the crux of the problem, a pandemic malaise that has poisoned our political discourse.
Jean-Paul Sartre, in both Being and Nothingness and Existentialism and Human Emotions wrote of mauvaise foi i.e. "bad faith". He attributed that characteristic to people who literally lie to themselves. It's a good description of the GOP. GOPPERS find various reasons for willingly believing lies and nefarious motivations for speading them —knowingly and willingly. In general, howver, GOPPERS choose to believe Republican propaganda —meaningless slogans and platitudes —because it is focus group designed to make them feel good about themselves. Republicans have forgotten, however, that one is responsible for what one believes. Bertolt Brecht put it this way:
A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook!Nothing good comes of believing a falsehood. Even worse outcomes are to be expected when falsehoods are espoused and touted by those who know them to be false. Bush's very administration was begun and continues upon various frauds deliberately perpetrated upon the American public.—Bertolt Brecht
Republican Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian from Texas, denounced the NeoCon agenda on the floor of the House of Representatives. His speech has been summarized in bullit points and quoted in John Dean's book Worse than Watergate. Rep. Paul pointed out that the NeoCons are really latter day Machiavellians. They believe that the state is all powerful; lying is essential for the survival of the state; certain facts should be kept secret from the people; and, finally, NeoCons dismiss any argument based upon the U.S. Constitution. Put another way, NeoCons share Bush's attitude with regard to the Constitution.
The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!The NeoCon belief that truth is whatever they can either force or trick you into believing may prove to be America's undoing. I am a realistic person. No one in government will ever live up to the standard mentioned earlier. Having grown cynical of popular religion and politics, I am inclined to trade all the world's ideologies for a single, verifiable truth.—George W. Bush
Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet at a time when Catholics and Protestants were at war with one another. William, himself, was most certainly an "underground" Catholic. I will leave to a bona fide Shakespeare scholar the task of debunking my belief that Shakespeare had grown cynical about the faith of his father, the faith that he, himself, had grown up with. On the other hand, Shakespeare may very well have witnessed the gruesome executions of blood relatives for the perceived threat they posed to Elizabeth I. It was in Romeo and Juliet that we find a most memorable line by Shakespeare: A plague o' both your houses!
To Muslim and Christian alike, to Democrat and GOPPER alike, I say: A plague o' both your houses!
As bad as things are, I remain optimistic and many reasons for optimism can be found in much of Shakepeare who returned time and again to the theme that evil is self-defeating. We need only wait —and survive. It was Sir Thomas More, an early casualty of England's religious wars, who said that our natural business is that of "escape".
Why was I surprised when Enron came crashing down? After all, just a few years prior, I had written of Houston's glitzy, pretentious downtown: "...green towers of Oz, smoke and mirrors"! That's what it turned out to be.
Corporate crap, propaganda, and faux cowboy bullshit passes for culture in Houston. But it doesn't stop there. Recently, Houston became home to the largest "mega" church in the world. The Lakewood Church took over what had been the Summit, where the Houston Rockets played basketball. [See Forbes: Christian Capitalism Megachurches, Megabusinesses ] Three pointers are now given up for glitzy media versions of Jesus.
Zealots in Houston?
An excerpt from the Forbes article:
Welcome to the megabusiness of megachurches, where pastors often act as chief executives and use business tactics to grow their congregations. This entrepreneurial approach has contributed to the explosive growth of megachurches--defined as non-Catholic churches with at least 2,000 members--in the U.S. Indeed, Lakewood, New Birth, The Potter's House and World Changers, four of the biggest, have all experienced membership gains of late. Of course, growth for them has a higher purpose: to spread their faith to as many people as they can. "In our society growth equals success," says Scott Thumma, faculty associate at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. "And religious growth not only equals success but also God's blessing on the ministry."In a nation now ruled by corporations, the corporatization of religion is an unholy and theocratic merger of church and state. It's the very picture of fascism. Is that a Nazi salute that I see in that picture?
Also in Houston, the kooky Rev. Sun Myung Moon is wooing black ministers and rewriting history. One of his "representatives" in Houston is proselytizing the idea that the Jews invented the Holocaust. There are places in Europe where "Holocaust Denial" is a prosecutable crime. However you feel about that, I hasten to add that the Holocaust happened. It's a fact! Live with it!
Our sister paper SF Weekly recently did a story on the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's extravagant attempts to make inroads among black churches by offering preachers such things as free vacations to faraway countries. Dozens of ministers have heeded Moon's call to throw out their crosses and replace them with crowns, the symbol of Moon's church.Moon is not divine. Not even a little bit. He's an idiot —and so are 99% of the Protestant ministers I've ever met. I have met more than my share.The Reverend Bennit Hayes of the Gloryland Missionary Baptist Church in Sunnyside was cited as a minister who had a drawer full of discarded crosses from his parishioners (although the article didn't directly accuse him of taking free trips).
A Moonie in Houston?
Q. Has Reverend Moon paid for your travel expenses?
A. Naw, naw, naw, naw. See, that's one of the most misconceived things that most folks think. That just 'cause you're black you got to have folks pay for your travels.
Q. That's not what I meant.
A. Naw, naw, naw. I want you to just get what I'm saying. I came in paying my own way, up until the time I became a member of the executive committee. And once I got on the executive committee, my travels [are] paid for by the committee...I'm a giver. A lot of the black pastors do come on board for the free ride. That's a fact. But most of us come in here giving.
Q. Reverend Moon has said that the Holocaust is a consequence for the Jews' killing of Jesus. Do you believe that?
A. I was at the Holocaust museum in Israel. And let me say that the Jews themselves, the ones I met, repented for that.
Q. For the Holocaust?
A. No, no. That they actually did set up the murder of Jesus. They repented for that. Because they're the ones that led to the death of Jesus.
Q. But do you believe the Holocaust is a consequence of that?
A. I have my own views on that. But see, Reverend Moon doesn't control your mind. He gives you the liberty, you know, to think for yourself...Reverend Moon has done much more today than what Jesus did in his day. Jesus didn't travel all over the world. Reverend Moon has traveled all over the world. The Reverend Moon's been in prison. Jesus was never in prison. You see what I'm saying?
Q. Reverend Moon has called gays "dung-eating dogs." What do you think of that?
A. That's a little extreme for me. I wouldn't call them that. They're all children of God.
Q. But that kind of statement doesn't turn you off Reverend Moon?
A. Naw, naw. That's the human in him. That's what makes him not totally divine.
"Not totally divine" sounds like something Carson Kressley on Queer Eye would say, but we're sure Hayes wasn't implying anything.
--One Houston preacher gave up the cross for the cult
Idiocy is not limited to preachers. It contaminates those in government who may be influenced by them. Voltaire said that if God did not exist, it would necessary to invent him. Is that what happened? Americans are fond of invoking "God" —most often: "God Bless America". I worry that someone, somewhere, some time, said "God Damn America" and God took them up on it.
Elsewhere, people are having to deal with what is, rather than what they would like to think it is:
IN 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Russia and, after success at the battle of Borodino, marched on and occupied Moscow. Napoleon and his generals took over the palaces of the court princes and great houses of the mighty boyars.False prophets are celebrated daily on FOX and similar ilk; Cindy Sheehan, who speaks for millions who have declared the megalomaniacal emperor to be naked, are gagged and threatened.Sadly for Napoleon, the Russians had different plans for their nation. Within days after abandoning their city to the French army, they torched their own palaces, homes, enterprises, and cathedrals. They burned Moscow down around Napoleon. Denied his last great triumph, the disappointed emperor abandoned Moscow and started home. Along the way, he lost the world's most powerful army.
Recently one of Islamic Shi'ites' most revered sites, the golden mosque in Baghdad, was destroyed by sectarian enemies. By this act and the reprisals that followed, Iraq moved a substantial step closer to civil war. Though a remote, but real, possibility, an Iraqi civil war could cost the United States its army. ...--US Army in jeopardy in Iraq, Gary Hart | March 11, 2006
If "dissent is Democracy. [Then] Democracy is in Trouble. Never before, Lewis Lapham argues, have voices of protest been so locked out of the mainstream conversation, so marginalized and muted by a government that recklessly disregards civil liberties, and by an ever more concentrated and profit-driven media in which the safe and the salable sweep all uncomfortable truths from view."In the midst of the 'war on terror' - which makes the hunt for Communists in the 1950s look, in its clarity of aim and purpose, like the Normandy landings on D-Day - we face a crisis of democracy as serious as any in our history. The Bush administration makes no secret of its contempt for a cowed and largely silenced electorate, and without bothering to conceal its purpose the government coordinates 'not the defense of the American citizenry against a foreign enemy but the protection of the American plutocracy from the American democracy.' "Gag Rule is a rousing and necessary call to action in defense of one of our most important liberties, the right to raise our voices in dissent and have those voices heard."—Lewis Lapham, Cindy Sheehan Brutalized... more than 'Gag Ruled!'And from the Washington Post, a harbinger of things to come:
Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush's top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht's stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.As Buzzflash says: he had best get used to it.
Allen, 45, of Gaithersburg, has been released on his own recognizance and is awaiting trial on two charges, felony theft scheme and theft over $500, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a police spokesman. Each charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. ...--Bush says he's shocked and saddened by the arrest of his ex-aide.
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