When 'We the People' Lost America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

We have forgotten what it was like in this country during the Reagan administration. A great reminder may be found in the words of E.L. Doctorow, writing in 1989, who summed up the legacy left to Bill Clinton by the conservative administrations of Ronald Reagan/Bush:

"The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people's suffering for his principles. And so we now have hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of our citizens lying around the streets of our cities, sleeping in doorways, begging with styrofoam cups. We didn't have a class of permanent beggars in this country, the United States of America, fifteen or twenty years ago. We didn't have kids selling crack in their grade schools, or businessmen magnifying their fortunes into mega-fortunes by stock manipulation and thievery. I don't remember such epidemics of major corporate fraud.

A decade ago you did not have college students scrawling racial epithets or anti-semitic graffiti on the room doors of their fellow students...So something poisonous has been set loose in the last several years as we have enjoyed life under the power and principles of political conservatism. ...part of this poisonous thing that I'm trying to describe is its characteristic way of dealing with criticism: it used to be enough brand a critic as a radical or a leftist to make people turn away. Now we need only to call him a liberal. Soon "moderate" will be the M word, "conservative" the C word, and only fascists will be in the mainstream. And that degradation of discourse, that, too, is part of this something that is really rotten in America right now."

--E. L. Doctorow, Jack London, Hemingway and the Constitution

Doctorow continues to describe the change in America during the Reagan/Bush years:

"...we have seen a national regression to the robber-baronial thinking of the nineteenth century. This amounts to nothing less than a deconstruction of America, the dismantling of enlightened social legislation that had begun to bring equity over half a century to the lives of working people, to rectify some of the terrible imbalance of racial injustice and give a fair shake to the outsiders, the underdogs, the newcomers. We have seen the ideals of environmental sanctity sacrificed to the demands of business thinking in which we have done only as much to protect our environment as industry has found convenient, as if only a few songbirds and some poor dumb animals were at stake, as if the bleeding hearts of woodsy environmentalists were the issue, and not our lungs and skins and genes, and the wholeness and health of our children and their children."

--E. L. Doctorow, Jack London, Hemingway and the Constitution

One day, a new generation will awaken to the harm done this country during those halcyon years when Uncle Ronnie made the 'gopper-inclined' feel good about themselves as only goppers and the gopper-inclined can feel good about themselves while stepping over people made homeless by their policies. Was it under Reagan that we lost that last remaining ounce of empathy? The dishonest among us will deny reality, call us a 'name'', or pretend not to know or understand what we're talking about. The rest of us may agree --yes --it was during the Reagan years that our shaky moral footing slipped. Before Reagan, there was hope albeit inspired by dimming light. After Reagan, nothing mattered but wealth and power. Life held little promise. Thus was born of goppo-nomics a nilhistic world in which nothing mattered as all fame is fleeting and wealth is whatever someone else wants at the moment and, perhaps, worth nothing tomorrow when resources grow scarce and oil has run its course.

Corporate Special Interests Come of Age

This 'sea-change' in American attitudes and politics has been dated to the 70s by many 'progressive/liberal' writers and journalists primarily because it was during the 70s that America seemingly abandoned a ' firm commitment' to eliminating poverty, helping the poor, extending the benefits of education to all classes. These were the ideals of FDR's 'New Deal' and LBJ's 'Great Society' and, of course, the so-called 'radical 60s. The 'revolution' was lost, however, with a conservative counter-revolution: the rise of corporate person-hood which was itself the reductio ad absurdum of the corporate special interest system now flourishing openly in the offices of various lobbies on K-street.

How and Why Washington Dysfunctions!

The Power Game: How Washington Works by Hedrick Smith describes the process by which power in the House of Representatives was 'de-centralized'. The year was 1974. Certainly --there were no 'second coming' headlines announcing the sea-change that would result when 22 committees delegated much, perhaps most, of their authority to 172 sub-committees. While the process by which this occurred may be little understood, the results that followed are more obvious, primarily, the resulting mass of competing special interests operating --at first --secretly but now openly, blatantly in fancy offices on K-street! Once discrete, corporations now lobby openly, flagrantly, in an on-going auction of our government.

A second blow to Democracy came in the form of the SUN-PAC decision of 1975, a decision which 'legalized' corporate PACs --'Political Action Committees'. I can tell you from experience: this move energized, radicalized and mobilized the GOP as it most certainly had not been mobilized before. The effect then was not unlike the impact now of the recent ruling that 'corporations are people'. The GOP was equipped to go where no gopper had gone before'. In 1974, there were but 89 corporate PACs. In another ten years there were 1,682. I have no idea how many operate freely and openly today.

PAC victories came quickly and represented 'an enormous shift' in political power defined by the defeat of Ralph Nader's proposed Consumer Protection Agency. A galvanized, politicized 'corporate community' then celebrated the defeat of a proposed 'tax hike' which journalist Hedrick Smith said: "brought more bees after the honey." Those were heady days for those who now celebrate 'corporate personhood' as recently decreed by SCOTUS.

PAC donations and the resulting passage of laws favoring the right wing/GOP are easily correlated. By 1992, some 67 percent of all PACS were corporate. Their donations amounted to 79 percent of all contributions to political parties. Bluntly, the corporations had --at last --found a way to buy the government of the United States. The recent SCOTUS decision making these 'legal abstractions' persons is, of course, absurd, without precedent in law but even worse is the fact that while the right of individuals to petition Congress is guaranteed by the Constitution, mere real persons lacking donations, lacking funding, are, in fact, never granted access to their elected representatives. Artificial people --corporations --are given seemingly unlimited access.

The SCOTUS decision was and remains disingenuous, dishonest, blatantly contemptuous of the Constitution, disdainful of Democracy itself. I believe, therefore that the corporate special interest system is not merely unconstitutional on its face, it's affirmation by SCOTUS represents a coup d'etat which made official the fact that the U.S. is no longer a Democratic Republic but a fascist oligopoly whose raison d'etre is the waging of war. Worse --death and destruction are the only exports in which we lead the world.

In 1994 Republicans took over Congress, boasting that they would end 40 years of 'liberal' rule. In fact, the 80s were a profoundly conservative era and, tragically for the nation, Democratic politicians participated willingly. It was during the 80s, that corporate PACs hedged their bets by contributing 'liberally' to both parties, though Democrats got only 'sloppy seconds', almost always much less than amounts given GOP candidates.

Did Reagan's misrule constitute "high crimes and misdemeanors"? Many GOP-types will define "high crimes and misdemeanors" as simply "bad behavior". If that is the standard, then surely, Ronald Reagan should have been impeached, tried, convicted, removed! Bankrupting the nation is 'bad' behavior by any standard. Rewarding incompetence while incompetent is worse than driving while drunk! Blowing the world's last chance at nuclear disarmament is even worse, perhaps fatal, behavior. What about the bungling of George Bush Sr toward the end of the Persian Gulf war when he promised to protect the Kurds but allowed them to fall to a strong Iraqi military? Is that "bad behavior"? Certainly, it is! George Bush should have been impeached and so too Lyndon Johnson who staged the Gulf of Tonkin incident leading to wider U.S. involvement in Viet Nam.

The brutal murder of JFK --a cowardly act in which the Warren Commission may have conspired with the FBI to falsify and plant evidence -- was not sufficient to finish off the vestiges of our Republic. There was no single, defining incident in which the American 'republic' ceased to be. There was no dramatic sea-change comparable to the auction of the Roman Empire to nobleman Didius Julianus. There was no great or heroic battle waged and lost. There was no arrest of Essex. There was no play to 'catch the conscience of a King'. And now, there is no speech, no kiss before dying, no Shakespearean exit but a pathetic whimper before the lights are dimmed and a weary audience dismissed.

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The Rising Cost of Idiocy

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The dumbing down of America began with Ronald Reagan who made idiots feel good about being idiots. Reagan proved that not only was intelligence not required to be President, it might even be a handicap.

Reagan proved that any politician ignoring the 'idiot' voting block [the GOP] imperils his/her political future. Thus, Sarah Palin, who became an expert on Russia by observing its coast line from across the Bering Strait, is assured a growing constituency: the legion of idiots! She is the poster bimbo of idiocy! Its champion!

'Dumbing down' implies that the US still has a way to go before bottoming out! But that observation smacks of intelligence and may safely be ignored. The real idiot i.e, a GOP idiot, does not know where the f_ck we are or how we got there and is not smart enough to care! The word 'idiot' summons up images of Ronald Reagan and, more recently, George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, Reagan had essential Presidential skills. He could read cue cards. Bush could not or did not read! Reagan taught the GOP that how you say something is much more important than what is said. Bush, by contrast, was challenged to speak. 

Reagan spouted racist crap about a welfare 'grandma' who drove a Cadillac. There was no such person. It was Reagan's kindly, grandfatherly head nod that sold it. Bush, by contrast, said: "Who cares what you think?"Had a smart person told that story, he would have been pilloried as a bald-faced liar. The story was untrue but Reagan's telling of it was not only tolerated by most of us but embraced by the increasingly stupid and psychotic GOP.  

Because of that and numerous other whoppers, the GOP was thus set free to roll out their every whopper. Reagan had taken the GOP into new and unexplored territory. Think of it: there was no whopper so outrageous, no lie so egregious, no bullshit theory so incredible that it could not be sold with help from a focus group, a head nod and a smarmy, 'grandfatherly' smile.  

Reagan's idiocy became an insurmountable political advantage, an advantage that would --one day --give us George W. Bush. Reagan was not evil, they said; he was just senile! Give him a break! With this bit of GOP-logic, we should all be thankful. We are --after all --still alive. The US survived eight years in a which a senile idiot might have plunged us into nuclear war. When he thought his microphone was off, he 'reported' that he had just ordered a nuclear strike on Russia. 

The US was as close to nuclear armageddon as during the Cuban missile crisis or the little publicized incident in which the Soviet Union mistook a research launch for a MIRV heading their way. Someone had forgotten to notify them. The hero was Yeltsin who wisely waited for confirmation before launching a counter-strike that would have obliterated the US. Indeed, there is a price to be paid for idiocy, and one day we will pay it.

Others have noticed what has been called the 'dumbing down' of America. Bill Maher decried the trend; blogger Tom Degan responded: 

"We weren't always like this. Inert. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and 11 months later seniors were receiving benefits. During World War II, virtually overnight FDR had auto companies making tanks and planes only. In one eight year period, America went from JFK's ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon, to actually landing a man on the moon."While I admire Bill Maher a great deal, I am forced to take issue here.

This pitiful America of which he speaks is very real - of that there can be little doubt to anyone who has bothered to pay attention. But like a lot of people on the Left (I am sorry to say) he totally ignores - whether by accident or design - the undeniable advantages of living in the America of the first decade of the twenty-first century.For example:I never finished High School. In fact I dropped out at the very beginning of my Junior year. In spite of this unfortunate fact, the I.Q. of my country has dropped to such a horrifying degree in the last thirty years, whenever I arrive at a gathering of, say, two or three-hundred people, I am reasonably confident that I am the smartest person in the room.Do you have any idea how utterly cool that is? Lighten up, Bill.

--Tom Degan, the Rant

The mass media must accept responsibility for often making idiocy cute, quaint, cool, or funny. Idiocy is none of those things. Idiocy is a clear and present danger. Idiots will impoverish us all if an idiot has not plunged us into a nuclear holocaust in the meantime.

Karl Marx applied Hegel's dialectic to economics and concluded that 'capitalism' would die of its own inconsistencies i.e, idiocies! Lately, it is only dyed-in-the-wool wingnuts who are blind to the inherent 'contradictions' that have now brought the world to the brink of yet another great depression.

Karl Marx was absolutely correct with regard to the class struggle which he believed followed inexorably from the division of the world into 'capital' vs 'labor'. Bush's America is the LAB study that proves Marx to have been absolutely correct on this point. Never has the the US been so divided. Just one percent of the US population owns more than about 95 percent of us combined. I have REAMS of official stats from the US Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Commerce Dept-BEA, and various think tanks and University Studies which PROVE --beyond any refutation --that following EVERY GOP tax cut, this increasingly tiny elite was enriched. If the trend continues, the ruling 1 percent will become just one half of one percent owning more than about 99 percent of the rest of the population. No nation can sustain that kind of inequality unless by the application of coercion and dictatorship incomprehensible to Americans.

Tax cuts for the wealthy --we are told --will stimulate investment and thus jobs. The official stats prove that that has never, EVER happened. Rather, windfall tax cuts wind up in offshore tax havens and other 'shelters' which HAVE NEVER INCREASED US jobs nor have they helped, in any way whatsoever, to diversify the US economy. 'Tax havens' --available only to the very, very privileged --are just one reason supply side or 'trickle down theory' has never worked and will never work. It was all a PR campaign, a focus group approved strategem --not a legitimate or valid economic theory. There is a name given the outflow of monies from an economy: contraction. Contraction of the money supply is not merely the cause of 'depression', it is the very definition of it.

The GOP rank and file told us that while US industries had all but vanished during the Reagan nightmare years, HI TECH and US expertise would save us. It didn't! IT is done in India and China. Steel is produced in Japan. Cars, it seems, are produced everywhere BUT in the US. The US boasts the world's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance; China --the world's largest POSITIVE Current Account Balance. Being at the bottom of that list tells me that if the US produces anything at all these days, the rest of the world does not buy it.  

China  literally 'owns' us. It is China primarily that props up the buck so that the impoverished US can buy Chinese made stuff at Wal-Mart. How smart is that? Was it intelligence that got us into this mess --or was it GOP idiocy? Don't answer; that is a rhetorical device!

Clearly, the Reaganite goppers --idiots to a person --lied to us and got away with it because we had become the bigger idiots for their cut backs in education, their domination of the mind-numbing media, the assaults made on logic and common sense. We are idiots for getting stuck with the tab run up by the idiots in power. Bottom line: idiocy is no longer an option. Get Smart!

Intrepid writer, communications expert and guest columnist Doug Drenkow observes:

As I read the -- surprised and surprising -- reactions to Pres. Obama's receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, I am reminded of something that happened ten years or so ago, when my father was still alive. I was complaining about one thing or another that then-Pres. Clinton had done. Dad, who had first voted for FDR and had years later become very embittered by Pres. Nixon -- in other words, he had seen and lived through the best and worst that our nation had to offer -- told me something I'll never forget: "A leader can't control everything. He has to work with what he's got. So he can't make everything right overnight. And he'll make some mistakes, too; he's only human. But the thing to watch is the direction he's taking us. It might be slower than you'd like, but are things generally headed the right way or not? That's how you judge a leader."

By the way, that was part of my dad giving his approval of Pres. Clinton's actions, in general and in particular for his achieving the first growth in real (inflation-adjusted) wages for American working people in a great many years. In awarding the Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee cited Pres. Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Against the background noise of insane but persistent cries from the "birthers," Pres. Obama fulfilled his campaign pledge and spoke to the world's billion Muslims shortly after attaining office, to reassure them that -- despite what the bin Ladens (and some of the "crusaders" in our nation) say -- Americans want peace in the world, including with Islamic peoples. That was indeed "extraordinary." (Can one image Pres. Obama's predecessor making the same speech or impact?)

And yes, Pres. Obama has inherited wars in the heart of the Islamic world. But I believe he is doing everything humanly possible to not fight a "dumb war" -- as he said in his famous speech opposing intervention in Iraq -- while securing the safety of Americans, and others, in uniform and at home. He is drawing down our forces in Iraq, and even somewhat faster than had originally been thought possible, while trying to retain some sense of stability in the "Pottery Barn" we broke.

The strategy he is formulating for Afghanistan is admirably being based first and foremost upon helping everyday Afghan people stabilize their own economic and political situation (despite the apparent corruption of their leaders), which unavoidably requires security -- by our forces for now and by Afghan forces being trained -- as to protect otherwise defenseless humanitarian assistance. At the same time, American drones, special ops, and other forces are as surgically as possible disrupting and destroying al Qaeda command and control centers, leaders, and networks, now based primarily in Pakistan, which of course poses dicey problems and limitations of its own. There is no easy fix.

Whether or not we agree with his decisions, I think all of us should appreciate that Pres. Obama and his national security team, including Secretary of State Clinton, are doing their very best to be responsible, for all concerned. Remember, our allowing al Qaeda to have a safe haven previously cost us dearly, and led to the situations we are in now. Preventing further disaster prevents further war. Pres. Obama's efforts to curb nuclear proliferation are also being cited for his receiving the Peace Prize.

Every day the catastrophic potential of this threat becomes more real, as nuclear materials and technology are being disseminated and developed at an increasing rate, by nations and groups that openly and clandestinely threaten us and our allies. Pres. Obama's working with all parties -- including making agreements already with Russian Pres. Medvedev and holding the first (tentatively promising) talks between our nation and Iran in decades -- is a mark of good faith on the part of the American people in the world, after years of our -- disastrously -- "going it alone."

Pres. Obama is trying to regain -- re-earn -- for America the international good will that the previous administration squandered in the wake of 9/11. Pres. Obama has dispatched George Mitchell, who helped make the peace in Northern Ireland, to help make the peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, another conflict that has persisted stubbornly for decades, and that inflames and complicates all the other issues in the Middle and Near East. Like Al Gore (and unlike the previous administration), Pres. Obama has taken leadership and agreed to cooperation in alleviating global climate change, another problem too big for one nation to solve alone.

And finally, remember that Pres. Obama's "extraordinary efforts to strengthen ... cooperation between peoples" does not just apply to international efforts. Like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Pres. Obama I believe has won the Peace Prize for his leadership in helping make peace between people of different races -- and every other description -- here in our country, where such differences have long divided us and thus weakened us, socially, economically, and morally. America is more at peace with itself because of Pres. Obama's leadership -- and really, for what he represents to so many of us. The Peace Prize often helps give impetus to international movements that are gaining momentum, such as the fight against Global Warming. As Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said of Pres. Obama's award: "He got the prize because he has been able to change the international climate. ... Some people say, and I understand it, isn't it premature? Too early? Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond -- all of us."

It is obvious that Pres. Obama represents a new face, ethnically and figuratively, of America -- the most powerful nation -- to the world: a vision of hope through working together with, not against, one another. And that indeed is the only road that leads to peace. Pres. Obama says he is "humbled" by the Prize; I am proud of the honor he has brought to America. And I'm sure my dad is smiling down on us all.

--Doug Drenkow, Communications Consultant, Columnist

In another time, before we were 'dumbed down', someone winning the Nobel Prize would be lauded for his/her achievement. Not so, today! Since 1980, the US has entered a world on the other side of the looking glass. Idiocy is preferred over intelligence; screw ups are 'cool' and real achievement just means you're a nerd.

We used to hear a lot about 'values' from the party that now flouts every 'value' worth having,  affirming or  nourishing. If the media --Fox and CNN particularly --seem shallow, obnoxious, stupid, it's because they are but mirrors held up to this cowardly retreat from excellence.

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Right Wing 'Shock Doctrine', Idiocy and Evil Intentions Come Home to Roost

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Shortly before his death, the late Hunter Thompson wrote that '....the American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime'. He said that our prospects for the future were even worse. Indeed, we are poised on the brink of a financial collapse that may yet make the crash of '29 and the subsequent Great Depression look like a walks in the park.

The difference is that in 1929, the US still had industries and small farmers many of whom survived the depression very well. As youngster, I recall talking to some of these people and listening in awe. Some of them actually lived off the land like pioneers. For some, 'polk salad' was a staple. Others lived off ' 'Possum'. Still others waged war on the 'game warden' who might have prevented their living off the land. A great Uncle wrapped up a 'Game Warden' in a cow hide, hoisted him over a high limb in the Texas 'Big Thicket'. He left him there --swinging in the high branches. They were inventive, resourceful and ruthlessly determined to survive. The 'man' would not deprive them of a right to survive.

Thompson wrote that he was 'surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. As I have written on this blog, the US has exported its industries, primarily to China. We have Nixon and the Bushes to thank for that.

Even before the US entry into WWII, Adolph Hitler and his 'inner circle' often ridiculed American automobiles and highways --or lack thereof. Germany had the autobahn. Albert Speer, in his "Inside the Third Reich" recalled an auto 'trip' he took with Hitler. They were overtaken that evening by someone in an American made auto. The Nazis would not be outdone. As I recall, Hitler, himself, was behind the wheel in a Mercedes. In a burst of testesterone, Herr Hitler put his 'pedal to metal', overtook the American car and left it 'in the dust'. Speer recalls that they all had a good laugh. At our expense.

It could be argued that the way in which Thompson wrote a lot of his work is attributed to the New Journalism movement during the 1960's, led mainly by Tom Wolfe. New journalism aimed to revolutionize and break all the rules of traditional journalism, including features like writing as if you are inside the head of a character or documenting everyday events and details. Thompson has adopted many of the features that are deemed to be part of this movement, but he has made a positive contribution and a significant impact on it by taking these features to a new level and putting his own spin on them. Thus publicizing an original branch to this wave of new styles, although what he writes about is largely non-fiction he relies on satirical devices to drive his point's home.

--Hunter S. Thompson's World of Fear and Loathing

As Thompson pointed out:

Our highway system is crumbling, our police are crooked, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam...

Hitler and Goring must be laughing in their graves. The American GOP has achieved in the US almost everything Hitler might have dreamed about except the extermination of Jews, Gypsies other 'untermenschen'. The GOP with key and strategic Democratic sellouts here and there betrayed the people and subverted the Constitution

Thompson called 'disastrous' US defeats all over the world. The 'Gonzo' also predicted that the 'stock market' would never come back.

There were other 'harbingers', prophets warning of impending disasters. In his 'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man' of 2004, John Perkins gave us an insider's account the 'neo-colonist' exploitation of the Third World by what Perkins called a cabal of corporations, banks, and the US government.

It was done against the backdrop of 'economic hitmen' laughing it up, toasting the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom up that the world had ever seen. As a counter-point, Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine seemed to be working according to plan.

Naomi Klein: Shock Doctrine

The book and film argue that free market policies of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics rose to prominence in Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin and in the US under George Bush. The Katrina disaster is the most recent example. The 'privatization of Iraq's economy' under the Coalition Provisional Authority was not popular and was not Democratic. The citizens of Iraq were, in fact, in a state of shock. The US even boasted of its campaign of 'Shock and Awe'. As I have written myself --short a revolution, we are fucked!

Two big factors have already made the US a THIRD WORLD nation

Reagan's tax cut of 1982 which began a trend in which wealth trickled up to the top one percent. The trend, reversed in Clinton's second term, resumed with Bush Jr. Today--as a direct result of unfair REGRESSIVE taxation --the nation's elite of about 1 percent of the populations owns MORE than about 90 percent of the rest of the population combined.

Nearly three decades that Reaganomics has been allowed to survive, if not thrive, have been enough to allow the trickle-down theory to come to fruition. Unfortunately, it is debt -- and not wealth --that has been trickling [down].Reagan's economic target was to drown government in a cocktail of lowered government spending, deregulation and reduced tax rates. However, in order to shrink government to bathtub size, the role of private business had to expand to fill basic needs, which was totally fine with Republicans.

But another consequence of Reaganomics, one that doesn't jive so much with traditional Republican values, is the reduction of states' powers. Local governments are beginning to see the real meaning of trickle-down economics: dwindling federal funds make it harder for states and cities to meet annual budget requirements. While the U.S. government can live on credit, many local budgets are required by law to be balanced. So the largest tax cuts to date were bound to trickle down to local governing structures, and now many governors and mayors are responding in an uncharacteristically Reaganistic fashion.

Take Obama's home territory, for example. Chicago, under the firm grip of Democratic Mayor Richard M. Daley, is deeply committed to privatization. Not because it's a popular idea, mind you, but because the city is desperate for funds.

Still, they don't call it the Chicago school of economics for nothing.

--Local and State Governments are Selling Off Public Property and Services

Deals cut by R. Nixon, Ronald Reagan primarily have resulted in the outsourcing of a) jobs; b) entire industries. As a result --the CIA lists the US as leading the entire world with by far the BIGGEST BALANCE OF TRADE DEFICIT! In stark terms, one is hard pressed to name a single industry in which the US still leads the world! Yet --we OWE the world for having picked up and carried our debt.

The US simply cannot continue to survive as a nation, let alone a world power. And for all of this we owe the GOP for having been its architect and the Democratic party for having caved on crucial issues.

Supply-side economics is not a 'hands off' policy at all. It is, in fact, an active, deliberate distribution of wealth upward to an increasingly tiny elite. It is pseudo-economics touted to justify big tax breaks for the upper ten percent of the nation's income recipients and wealth-holders. Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, called 'supply-side economics', a trojan horse advocated by what he called a 'noisy faction of Republicans'.

If the US should slide off into another great depression, it will be because consumers of all classes and primarily the middle and lower classes do not have money to spend. Another great depression will result for two basic reasons:

• the investor classes have exported their tax cut windfalls offshore causing net declines --not increases --in jobs;
• The productive (working) class is taxed disproportionately, effectively robbing them of their purchasing power which alone drives the economy.

It is easy to understand, then, why economies contract. A contracting economy is an economy that is in depression. GOP supply-siders have a stake in promoting the simplistic 'theory' that the great 'Stock Market Crash of 1929' was the primary cause of the Great Depression.

As class warfare propaganda, this myth is matched only by 'supply side (trickle down) economics. Indeed, many believe that the crash of Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 is one and the same with the Great Depression. In fact, there were many causes for the Great Depression which was, in fact, the contraction of the money supply among those who were most likely to spend it.

Nevertheless, the crash is significant. Stockholders lost more than $40 billion dollars within two months of the crash. The market had regained some of its losses by the end of 1930 --not enough to prevent the nation from entering the Great Depression.

Bank Failures

More significant, is the fact that millions lost their 'savings'. People save in order to spend. It is spending that might have kept a viable economy afloat. In the 1930s, over 9,000 banks failed at a time when bank deposits were uninsured. Surviving banks stopped making new loans, reducing total amount of money in circulation. That's called a 'contraction'; the other word for 'contraction' is 'depression' as in 'Great Depression'. The same thing happened recently, when those favored by Reaganesque 'tax cuts' exported their monies to offshore tax havens. Another 'contraction' occurred! It is often called Reagan's recession. Others, recalling that it was the deepest, longest 'contraction' since Hoover's 'Great Depression' of the 30s will call it what it was in fact! Depression!

As a result of the '29 crash, fears, and bad news, millions of all classes just stopped buying, leading to sharp reductions in production and jobs. As unemployment increased, people fell behind in their installment payments; homes and items were repossessed. Inventories increased, sat idle, and could not be sold. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose above 25%.

American Economic Policy with Europe

As businesses failed, it was hoped that the Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930 would protect American companies. The act charged a high tax for imports causing a reduction in US-foreign trade.

Drought Conditions.

While not a direct cause of the Great Depression, the drought that occurred in the Mississippi Valley in 1930 was of such proportions that many could not pay their taxes or other debts. They were forced to sell their farms for no profit to themselves.

This was the topic of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. GOP policies are clearly responsible for the income and wealth disparities that are at the root of every GOP recession/depression since 1900. Ronald Reagan's GOP tax cut of 1982 is the easiest target. Several points should be made about this improvident move. One --if 'tax cuts', the GOP panacea for every evil, were in any way effective against depression, then why did a depression of two years follow the Reagan tax cut?

Instead of making peace with the GOP, the Democrats should have waged JIHAD! By bending over and taking it, by capitulating to the robber barons, the US has been sold down the river.

It's all over folks. This US may not come back in our lifetimes.

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