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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Don't believe the pundits: It's not over 'til it's over!

by Guest Columnist, Doug Drenkow

News flash! Despite what a lot of the pundits might lead you to believe, the election of 2010 has not yet been decided. Until Tuesday morning, it has not yet even begun! (Except, of course, for mail-in ballots, which -- again despite what some pundits had led us to expect -- are running decidedly in favor of Democrats)

Do we want less regulation of the very companies that crashed our economy?

Do we want greater inequality of wealth in our country?

Do we want to increase our national debt by lowering taxes on the rich?

Or do we want to invest in infrastructure and green energy and other pressing needs in the short run, to increase demand and bring down unemployment -- by the way, the only way to pay off our debts -- in the long run?

Are we going to be bullied by the history-twisting, race-baiting, immigrant-fearing, health reform-hating, climate science-denying, fascism-flirting phenomenon of the Tea Party?

Are we going to give in to the Right-wing political, media, and corporate powers that foment and finance the Tea Party, the very same powers that the Tea Party dupes publicly rail against?

In short, are we going to give our country back to the very same party that drove us into the ditch we're now trying our damnedest to get out of?

Or are we going to say No! to The Party of No, and vote -- and get out the vote -- for Democrats?!

And while we're at it, let's keep up the growing pressure to reform the filibuster rules -- possible only on the first day of the new Congress -- that have killed off more good legislation in the Senate and given the GOP more power than anything else.

Well, as I wish progressive candidates and their supporters across the nation all the best, here are some excellent candidates and strong positions on propositions for our election in California, along with some very good reasons for voting and for getting out the vote:

C A N D I D A T E S

GOVERNOR: JERRY BROWN. He has devoted his life to public service, and done so effectively and with honor. Jerry Brown has consistently worked for fiscal responsibility, environmental protection, diversity, workers rights, new technology, and infrastructure development -- keys to growing new jobs in California -- while being tough on crime, including the "white collar" variety. Even those who have on occasion disagreed with him know that Jerry tells you exactly what he believes; and he's usually been ahead of the curve, out in the lead -- as with his big emphasis on education years before it became fashionable to recognize it as the key to our economic competitiveness in the 21st century. Compare that to his opponent, who has flip-flopped (to say the least) on everything from immigration to abortion. And do we really want to make governor of our great state someone who not only has no experience in government but who also got into big trouble making big backroom deals with Wall Street?

SENATOR: BARBARA BOXER. Sen. Boxer has always stood up for Californians and what's best about California. She has proudly supported economic stimulus money and other legislation protecting and creating clean energy and millions of other U.S. jobs, after-school and education programs for kids, health care reform for all, environmental protections, women's rights, programs for veterans and seniors, and -- overall, as I see it -- standing up for "the little guy and gal" up against formidable powers-that-be. By contrast, her opponent, again someone with no experience in government, paid herself handsomely while shipping American jobs overseas. Are those really the values we want representing California in the U.S. Senate?

LT. GOVERNOR: GAVIN NEWSOM. Yes, he's been an outspoken proponent of civil rights for gay people, and all people. So how is that a bad thing? As mayor of San Francisco, Newsom championed biotech and other new technology jobs, nearly universal health care, solutions for homelessness, and urban renewal. He's a natural leader and will make a great Lt. Governor.

ATTORNEY GENERAL: KAMALA HARRIS. As the first African American woman and South Asian American woman in California to be elected as a district attorney, Kamala Harris has been extremely effective as D.A. in San Francisco, cracking down on crime -- particularly violent crime, as against children -- and working to improve the quality of life, as by increasing prosecutions for vandalism, graffiti, and auto burglary. Harris has brought free legal clinics to immigrant neighborhoods, expanded services for crime victims and their families, and developed programs to prevent re-offending. Like her predecessor, our current Attorney General and candidate for Governor, Kamala Harris will be tough on crime and good for California.

TREASURER: BILL LOCKYER. As State Treasurer, Lockyer has held the unenviable position of having to confront the national recession, the greatest economic challenge of our lifetime. But his smart, hard work with the state's finances has created and maintained more than 100,000 good-paying construction and related jobs and saved thousands of projects for highways, schools, parks, natural resources, and affordable housing. As other investment funds lost trillions when the financial system crashed, Lockyer's prudent investments protected the state's $80 billion investment fund, which actually earned dividends and never lost a penny! He led the national fight against the Wall Street rating agencies that contributed to the crash; and even as credit has dried up nationwide, California has been able to sell bonds at historic low interest rates. Having proved himself "under fire," Bill Lockyer definitely deserves to be re-elected Treasurer of California.

CONTROLLER: JOHN CHIANG. Not only has he already proven himself well qualified for the job, as the state's "independent fiscal watchdog" -- weeding out waste, fraud, and abuse and making the state's finances more transparent and accountable to the public -- John Chiang has courageously stood up to both the governor and the legislature in the state's budget crisis -- denying them accounting tricks and holding their feet to the fire. What's more, John has shown himself to me, personally, to be intelligent and sincerely concerned with the issues affecting everyday Californians. He, too, deserves re-election!

INSURANCE COMMISSIONER: DAVE JONES. As Assemblymember from Sacramento, Dave Jones has earned a reputation standing up for consumer rights, children and families, affordable housing, early childhood and other education, environmental protection, healthcare, privacy rights, civil rights, equal access to the courts, and economic development. In short, Dave Jones has what it takes to make a great Insurance Commissioner, looking out for us.

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION: TOM TORLAKSON. A science teacher -- a second-generation teacher -- and high school coach, Assemblymember Tom Torlakson has fought for school funding, textbooks, computers, campus safety, student health and fitness, after-school programs, student nutrition, and physical education, and against hazing, crimes against children, junk foods on campus, and our alarming dropout rates. As State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson wants to work for safe schools, career and technical education, college prep, arts and music programs, and excellence in school management. A vote for Torlakson is a vote for our kids.

SECRETARY OF STATE: DEBORAH BOWEN. As Secretary of State, Bowen has earned a national reputation for exposing flaws and ensuring security in our electronic voting systems. She has also streamlined her agency and cut its budget, increased the public's access to agency information online, improved voter education, and held private contractors more accountable. Sec. of State Bowen has earned our votes for re-election.

P R O P O S I T I O N S

PROP. 19: MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION. YES. Regulate and tax the sale of this already widely available substance, like we do alcohol; the existing prohibition, like that we had against alcohol, costs society dearly -- in terms of policing, incarceration, enriching and empowering gangs and drug cartels, and making criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Supported by L.A. Co. Dem. Party.

PROP. 20: CONGRESSIONAL REDISTRICTING. NO. Empowers the 14-member state redistricting commission -- appointed by three state auditors, in a very untransparent and unaccountable procedure -- created by Prop. 11 (2008) and prevents redistricting by the Legislature -- accountable to us voters -- and does not guarantee the right of voters to reject boundary maps by referendum. If both this and Prop. 27 (below) pass, then the one with the most votes prevails. Opposed by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties and the CA Sierra Club.

PROP. 21: SURCHARGE FOR PARKS AND WILDLIFE. YES. Pay an extra $18 a year on your vehicle licensing to not only preserve and protect our wonderful state parks (in need of a lot of maintenance) and irreplaceable wildlife, but also to get for yourself a free day-use admission to all the state parks. Supported by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties and the CA Sierra Club.

PROP. 22: PROHIBITION ON STATE'S BORROWING OR TAKING FUNDS FOR TRANSPORTATION, REDEVELOPMENT, OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS. NO. A close call -- a power struggle between state and local governments -- but the facts that it will further hamstring the state budgeting process -- already nearly impossible -- and open the door for "sweetheart" deals with local developers argue against this proposition. Opposed by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties.

PROP. 23: SUSPENDS "GREENHOUSE GAS" AIR POLLUTION CONTROL LAW. NO. Don't let the Texas oil companies behind this initiative tear down our state's leading environmental law and destroy clean energy jobs! Opposed by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties and the CA Sierra Club.

PROP. 24: REPEALS CORPORATE TAX BREAKS. YES. Close a big tax loophole that recently passed but benefits almost entirely a few huge corporations, not small businesses, and restore funding to schools and other vital public services. Supported by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties.

PROP. 25: SIMPLE MAJORITY VOTE FOR BUDGET. YES. Make state budgeting fairer and more effective. Restore majority-rule -- and get rid of minority-rule, by The Party of No -- by dropping the requirement for a 2/3 supermajority and requiring only a simple majority (51% or greater) to pass a state budget (although there still will be a 2/3 supermajority required to raise taxes). What's more, if legislators fail to agree on a budget by the deadline, they forfeit their state pay! See also Prop. 26 (just below). Supported by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties and the CA Sierra Club.

PROP. 26. SUPERMAJORITY VOTE FOR FEES AND CHARGES: NO. Changes the vote to approve certain fees and charges -- as on big oil and tobacco, to clean up their pollution and other health hazards -- from a simple majority (51% or greater) to a 2/3 supermajority; in other words, allows minority-rule, by the Party of No. See also Prop. 25 (just above). Opposed by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties and the CA Sierra Club.

PROP. 27. ELIMINATES REDISTRICTING COMMISSION. YES. Eliminates the 14-member state redistricting commission -- appointed by three state auditors, in a very untransparent and unaccountable procedure -- created by Proposition 11 (2008) and returns redistricting to the Legislature -- accountable to us voters -- and guarantees by constitutional amendment the right of voters to reject boundary maps by referendum. If both this and Prop. 20 (above) pass, then the one with the most votes prevails. Supported by CA and L.A. Co. Dem. parties.

Voting is power to the people! Use it or lose it. Vote and get out the vote!

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What Happens When Your Paycheck Comes from China

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the 1930s, millions of Americans lost hope of getting a paycheck. Utterly disillusioned, Americans might have embraced full blown socialism. Now Americans may have no choice but to accede to the ownership of their country by China. Has there been another instance in history in which one nation has foreclosed upon another? Americans have two options: utter collapse or become slaves to your new Chinese landlords!

As the US emerged from the Great Depression, the 'right wing' was spooked as it often is and should be. The FBI considered 'It's a Wonderful Life' to be a subversive film because it "deliberately maligned the upper class" and demonstrated that "people who had money were mean and despicable characters". Aren't they?

Indeed, 'It's a Wonderful Life' was a subversive film. It threatened to subvert the lies and claptrap that is sold us by the Axis of Wall Street, K-Street and the GOP. 'It's a Wonderful Life' threatened to reveal the consequences of lies and perhaps worse the implications of truth about an entrenched establishment that is premised upon a pack of lies and propaganda. In the words of Albert Speer who should have known, the Third Reich was literally built upon 'meaningless platitudes'. The same is true of the US government, especially the fraudulent reigns of Ronald Reagan about which the right wing still lies. The truth about Reagan threatens the self-esteem of every stupid GOPPER and/or right wing knee-jerk who supported him and the Bush crime family.

A rational discussion of the Great Depression is still feared by the right wing because it will expose to the world the economic sand upon which is built their house of cards. The right wing and its willing culprits fear the implications of truth but cannot escape the consequences of their many lies.

The bad news in today’s jobs report is pervasive.

• Private and government payrolls combined have shrunk for 14 straight months, and net job losses since the start of the recession total 4.4 million. (Private sector payrolls have shrunk by 4.6 million jobs over the same period.)
  
• Job losses have averaged almost 650,000 a month over the last four months.
• The official unemployment rate, which was 4.9 percent at the start of the recession in December 2007, reached 8.1 percent last month.
• Other indicators show the breadth of labor market weakness. For example, the percentage of the population with a job (60.3 percent) has fallen to its lowest level since early 1986.
• The Labor Department’s most comprehensive alternative unemployment rate measure — which includes people who want to work but are discouraged from looking and people working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs — stood at 14.8 percent in February, up 6.1 percentage points since the recession began and the highest level on record in data that go back to 1994.
Well over one-fifth (23.1 percent) of the 12.5 million unemployed have not been able to find a job despite looking for 27 weeks or more. (Regular unemployment insurance benefits typically run out after 26 weeks.)

For the recovery law to stem the tide of job losses and lay the groundwork for a strong recovery as quickly and effectively as possible, federal, state, and local governments have to get programs up and running quickly. In particular, states must use the money that Congress provided to them as intended so that it will have maximum effectiveness as stimulus.

--CBPP Economic Recovery Watch: Statement on February Employment Report

Right wing cheerleaders for 'laissez-faire' economics must be chagrined by recent 'Marxist' bailouts of so-called 'free enterprise'. As economists conduct post-mortems on the ongoing crash and dive, economists read the 'bones' left in the wake of the earlier 'crisis', the stock market crash of 1929.

However, in 1963, Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz transformed the debate about the Great Depression. That year saw the publication of their now-classic book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. The Monetary History, the name by which the book is instantly recognized by any macro economist, examined in great detail the relationship between changes in the national money stock--whether determined by conscious policy or by more impersonal forces such as changes in the banking system--and changes in national income and prices.

--Ben S. Bernanke, The Federal Reserve Board, Money, Gold, and the Great Depression

What Bernanke fails to mention is that Friedman --despite his great reputation as a 'conservative' economist --leaned heavily upon the work of John Maynard Keynes in his analysis of the Great Depression. But, on the whole, he most certainly got it wrong.

[John Maynard] Keynes seemed to be the right man for the time as he was reflecting the increasingly common view that blamed the capitalists themselves for the situation. In the General Theory Keynes rejected the view that the boom-bust cycle was due to over-expansive government monetary policy and that the stubbornness of the Depression was due to government interference with market mechanisms. He labeled all economists who believed such views as “classical”—in other words, hopelessly out of touch with reality. Instead, Keynes proposed a “general theory” that he thought capable of explaining not only the good times but also the bad.

According to Keynes, what drives the economy is aggregate demand or aggregate expenditures. Aggregate demand can be broken down into three main components: personal consumption (C), private investment (I), and government expenditures (G). The relationship can be summed up with this formula: AD = C + I + G. If Aggregate Demand is strong, the economy will be strong. However, if Aggregate Demand falters, businesses will end up with large unsold inventories and will cut back on production to avoid surpluses in the future. As they cut back they will of course need fewer inputs—including labor—and high unemployment will result.

The culprit in this story, the element that throws the entire system out of whack, is private investment. Private investment consists of business expenditures on machines, buildings, factories, and so on. In other words, investment is capital formation. Keynes claimed that private investment is inherently unstable due to what he called the “animal spirits” of businessmen/capitalists. He believed that businessmen are ultimately irrational and prone to herd-like behavior. Like sheep that blindly follow other sheep in the herd, it is easy for businessmen to become “irrationally exuberant”—as well as irrationally lethargic. Investment lethargy would trigger a large decrease in private investment, thus decreasing aggregate expenditures and triggering an economic downturn.

--Ivan Pongracic, Jr, The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman

In the motion picture 'It's a Wonderful Life', George Baily represents the 'private investment' part of the Keynes' equation. Had he jumped off the bridge, the picture of Bedford Falls as "Pottersville" might have come true. This is a picture of wealth benefiting the community. Potter, by contrast, represents the Axis of Wall Street/K-Street/GOP. This is wealth 'trickling up' by way of Reaganesque tax cuts that benefit only the ruling elite. Contrary to the lies with which this scheme is sold, this is wealth that finds its way to 'offshore' tax havens where it does not and cannot benefit the people of the United States by way of jobs or opportunities.

Here's how the model works. Unfair tax cuts are a windfall to rich elites. Despite the sales pitch, this 'windfall' is not re-invested in ways that will create new jobs or higher wages. The 'windfall' is instead invested offshore, in tax havens where it is forever lost to US consumers who might have used it to invest in better housing or in goods that are still manufactured in the US. Even if the consumer should decide to 'save' his windfall, the chances are good that his domestic 'bank' will sell his 'paper' to a larger institution and eventually offshore. Briefly, tax cuts benefiting only the nation's increasingly tiny elite are forever lost to domestic investment or domestic spending. These are dollars that are effectively removed from the economy. This is, in fact, a mechanism by which the supply of money contracts. Another word for it is 'depression'. All the official records, charts and data analyses prove that following every GOP tax cut is a recession/depression. Now you know why!

More than 83 corporations have offshore subsidiaries where their funds are protected in tax havens in the Caymen islands such as: The Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and even Pepsi and General Motors who received 13.4 billion have hundreds of millions of dollars in tax havens offshore. All these corporations receive protection from paying the US government their taxes and the loss to the US is into the 100 billion dollars of lost tax revenue.

Senator Carl Levin a democrat from Michigan and Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota requested the report to be released and are pushing for new laws prohibiting these bailout scam corporations from being tax dodgers while asking for bailouts from the taxpayer.

The Government Accounting Office includes 63 of the 100 largest contractors who receive government contracts also have accounts in tax haven countries.

--Bailout Corporation Tax Havens in Caymen Islands

I see a Pottersville whenever I see Wal-Mart put the locals out of business. It required an intervening angel to save Bedford Falls from its fate at the hands of a greedy banker. Like John Maynard Keynes, we wonder: who will save "capitalism from itself”? Where is our guardian angel?

Her aim was to convince China to keep investing its foreign exchange reserves in US treasury securities in order to help finance the bailout of failing US banks and pay for the $787 billion US stimulus package. The US treasury has indicated it must raise nearly $500 billion in the first quarter of this year alone.

In an interview on China's Dragon TV just before concluding her trip and returning to Washington Sunday, Clinton warned that if the US economy collapsed China would pay a steep price as well. "It would not be in China's interest if we were unable to get our economy moving," she told her interviewer.

"Our economies are so intertwined," she said on the talk show. "The Chinese know that in order to start exporting again to its biggest market ... the United States has to take some drastic measures with the stimulus package. We have to incur more debt."

Clinton added, "We are truly going to rise or fall together. By continuing to support American treasury instruments, the Chinese are recognizing our interconnection."

--Hillary Clinton presses China to keep buying US debt

It would appear then that America's only hope in the short term is that it continue to export American jobs and industries as it has done since Richard Nixon and the Bushes sold us all out to China. If what Hilary says is true, then --once again --the American labor movement will have to suck up the many harms that were in fact perped by the crooks on Wall Street, K-Street and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It would appear that once again the weight of the US economy must be borne by the class of productive Americans who have been screwed silly by the Republican party and their legions of paid liars. If Hilary is correct, then In the longer term, we will have been owned lock, stock and barrel by China, the FOX Broadcasting/Wal-Mart of countries, the country that willingly made a Faustian pact with the Axis of Nixon/Bush/Bush. I simply must ask you: how do you feel about slaving away your life for waqes that will ultimately come from the nation that annexed Tibet, a nation in which there is most certainly no pictograph for 'human rights'?

While there are many analogies to be made with the Great Depression of 1929, the lessons themselves have obviously been missed. The right wing, for example, will never admit that their policies were simply dead wrong and incompetent. The Democrats will never admit that they might have effectively opposed the GOPs Four Horsemen of Economic Apocalypse. While even Nixon famously said 'We are all Keynesians now', the lessons of Keynes may never have been heeded and less so since the US entered into its faustian bargain with our new landlords --China.

It seems an extraordinary imbecility that this wonderful outburst of productive energy [over 1924-1929] should be the prelude to impoverishment and depression. Some austere and puritanical souls regard it both as an inevitable and a desirable nemesis on so much over expansion, as they call it; a nemesis on man's speculative spirit. It would, they feel, be a victory for the mammon of unrighteousness if so much prosperity was not subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy. We need, they say, what they politely call a 'prolonged liquidation' to put us right. The liquidation, they tell us, is not yet complete. But in time it will be. And when sufficient time has elapsed for the completion of the liquidation, all will be well with us again.

I do not take this view. I find the explanation of the current business losses, of the reduction in output, and of the unemployment which necessarily ensues on this not in the high level of investment which was proceeding up to the spring of 1929, but in the subsequent cessation of this investment. I see no hope of a recovery except in a revival of the high level of investment. And I do not understand how universal bankruptcy can do any good or bring us nearer to prosperity... [p. 349].

While some part of the investment which was going on in the world at large was doubtless ill judged and unfruitful, there can, I think, be no doubt that the world was enormously enriched by the constructions of the quinquennium from 1925 to 1929; its wealth increased in these five years by as much as in any other ten or twenty years of its history... [p. 347].

Doubtless, as was inevitable in a period of such rapid changes, the rate of growth of some individual commodities [over 1924-1929] could not always be in just the appropriate relation to that of others. But, on the whole, I see few signs of any serious want of balance such as is alleged by some authorities. The rates of growth [of different sectors] seem to me, looking back, to have been in as good a balance as one could have expected them to be. A few more quinquennia of equal activity might, indeed, have brought us near to the economic Eldorado where all our reasonable economic needs would be satisfied... [pp. 347-48].>

--John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory and After: Part I, Preparation; Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 13, pt. 1, Donald Moggridge, ed., (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press).

There is in America, then, a ruling class that willingly and knowingly lies to you not because they don't know the truth but because they do. This 'class' will never face up to the truth about tax cuts from which they alone benefited. This 'class' will forever blame others for a collapse that is well under way. This class denies the implications of the truth and in vain tries to avoid the consequences of their lies.

It's a Wonderful Life

A hat-tip to Crooks and Liars for the following vid and comment:

Rush Limbaugh Get his Sorry, Stupid, Arrogant Ass Kicked!!!

I found this clip this morning and thought I'd share it here at C&L. The clip is from 1990 when a much younger Rush Limbaugh got owned by the studio audience during his very brief career in television. The crowd eventually becomes so incensed by his nasty attacks on women that he can't get a word in edgewise and they are forced to clear the studio in order for Rush to actually finish the segment.

Rush has challenged President Obama to a debate, but only because he knows there isn't a hope in hell it will ever happen. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance, but that's not going to stop him from rallying his ignorant minions. He cares nothing for his party, this nation or its people, he's out for power,money and fame -- much like the party he now leads.

--Flashback: Limbaugh Gets Pwned By Studio Audience

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Billionaires For Bush Reveal How Bush Paid Off His Base and Stuck You with the Tab

If you think the astounding rise of income inequities and the rise of the GOP are just coincidental, please email me. I would like to speak with you about the many advantages and pleasures you might derive as the new, proud owner of the Brooklyn Bridge. The GOP sold Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982 like George W. Bush sold his war on Iraq. The benefits of both have accrued only to this nation's power elite and, in both cases, everyone else is stuck with the tab. It will be left to sons, daughters, grand-children and great grand children to retire the debt Bush has run up murdering civilians in Iraq. Yet, odds are, many of those same sons, daughters and their offspring will start life pulling up the rear having been denied pole position at the outset.

Bush stuck you in yet another way. His "elite" base got the tax cut that you didn't. Those who did not get a tax cut are considered "poor" but are getting poorer as we live and breath. His "base" was rich at the time Bush cut their taxes. They've gotten richer as a result. Where will Bush's base hide, I wonder, when the bill he has run up in Iraq comes due? They are not worried. Bush has been bought and paid for.

We have grown up with "official myths", Horatio Alger stories of rags-to-riches, stories about how down-and-out boys might achieve an American dream of wealth and success through mere hard work and fair dealing. The US, myths say, is not an aristocracy; it is a "meritocracy". On the other side of the coin is an implicit message that if the deserving poor eventually get rich, those that are not rich deserve to be poor.

The GOP are well-advised not to waste my time and their time denying it. Their progenitur is Scrooge.

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons...then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

—Scrooge, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Still, the GOP is indicted best in their own words. Pat Buchanan is the class example.

One by one, the prophets of doom appeared at the podium. The Reagan decade, they moaned, was a terrible time in America; and the only way to prevent even worse times, they said, is to entrust our nation's fate and future to the party that gave us McGovern, Mondale, Carter and Michael Dukakis.

--Patrick J. Buchanan, 1992 Republican National Convention Speech, Houston, Texas

Buchanan targeted Democrats already tarred with the label "liberal", a GOP code word for anyone opposing GOP robber-baron economics. Any Democrat would have made a better President than any Republican chosen at random. At least one on Buchanan's hit list did. Jimmy Carter, now demonized with a GOP made-up, code word --stagflation. There is, in fact, no real word for an economic condition that only Republicans seemed to have complained about. Certainly, when another Democrat interrupts the GOP diet of government gravy and Pentagon pork, he/she will be accused of stagflation --or whatever word GOP consultants and focus groups can make-up or otherwise "pass".

The critics Buchanan so vociferously publicized were right about Reagan's disastrous presidency. Much of the rest of Buchanan's speech credits Reagan with any number of things which Reagan had nothing whatsoever to do with or things which occurred despite Reagan's worst efforts.

It was under our party that the Berlin Wall came down...

Thus it is implied that Ronald Reagan, who paid tribute to Nazi SS dead at Bitburg, had something to do with bringing down the Berlin Wall. Reagan is more accurately remembered for having "blinked" when Gorbachev put total nuclear disarmament on the table for negotiation at Rekjavik.

Buchanan's next absurdity must be read while remembering Bush v Gore:

We stand with President Bush in favor of federal judges who interpret the law as written, and against Supreme Court justices who think they have a mandate to rewrite our Constitution.

To be fair, Buchanan could not have known in 1992 that in a mere eight years a "conservative" majority on the high court would prove him wrong yet again. For all the right wing bluster about "strict constructionist" interpretations of the US Constitution, it will be forever recalled that it was the Republican majority on the Supreme Court that rewrote the Constitution in order to put into office an imperial "President" who would finish off the venerable document for good!

Wealth "trickling up" is a world wide phenomenon but the effects are stunning. In the year 2000, almost twenty years after the infamous Ronald Reagan tax cut benefiting only the richest Americans, a tiny elite, the richest 1% of adults, owned 40% of the world’s total assets. In 2000, the richest 10% of adults owned 85% of total assets. The bottom half of the world adult population owned a mere 1% of global wealth.

[See: World Institute for Development Economics Research, The World Distribution of Household Wealth, 2006]. It's gotten much worse since then.

It is well known that wealth is shared out unfairly. "People on the whole have normally distributed attributes, talents and motivations, yet we finish up with wealth distributions that are much more unequal than that," says Robin Marris, emeritus professor of economics at Birkbeck, University of London.

In 1897, a Paris-born engineer named Vilfredo Pareto showed that the distribution of wealth in Europe followed a simple power-law pattern, which essentially meant that the extremely rich hogged most of a nation's wealth (New Scientist, 19 August 2000, p22). Economists later realised that this law applied to just the very rich, and not necessarily to how wealth was distributed among the rest.

Now it seems that while the rich have Pareto's law to thank, the vast majority of people are governed by a completely different law. Physicist Victor Yakovenko of the University of Maryland in College Park and his colleagues analysed income data from the US Internal Revenue Service from 1983 to 2001. They found that while the income distribution among the super-wealthy- about 3 per cent of the population- does follow Pareto's law, incomes for the remaining 97 per cent fitted a different curve- one that also describes the spread of energies of atoms in a gas.

In the gas model, people exchange money in random interactions, much as atoms exchange energy when they collide. While economists' models traditionally regard humans as rational beings who always make intelligent decisions, econophysicists argue that in large systems the behaviour of each individual is influenced by so many factors that the net result is random, so it makes sense to treat people like atoms in a gas. The analogy also holds because money is like energy, in that it has to be conserved. "It's like a fluid that flows in interactions, it's not created or destroyed, only redistributed," says Yakovenko.

--New Scientist, There's one rule for the rich

Some essential background:

• In 1979, the top 1 per cent of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20 per cent. In 2000, the multiplier had grown to 88.5. Certainly, since Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982, US "inequality" grew steadily but for a brief respite in Clinton's second term. Bush's final record will be even worse.
  
• Surveys have also identified a small, but fast-growing global group of 70,000 super rich individuals with more than $30 million in financial assets. This group is growing even faster than "paupers" in the $1 million-plus bracket." [See: World's richest worth $29 trillion in 2003; Survey: Wealthy now back at level before dot-com bust. MSNBC.com, June 15, 2004 ]
• The top fifth of households saw their income rise 43 percent between 1977 and 1999, while the bottom fifth saw their income fall 9 percent.
  
• The top fifth now makes more than the rest of the nation combined
  
• Table 2: Share of Total Available Household Net Worth, 2001*
  
  

  Wealth Group	Share of Net Worth
  99-100th percentile	32.7%
  95-99th percentile	25.0%
  90-95th percentile	12.1%
  50th-90th percentile	27.1%
  0-50th percentile	2.8%
  Total	100.0%

  [See: Kennickell, 2003. See data from the Federal Reserve Board for details.

The "center" itself would not be so bad were not the centers so far to the "right", in other words, skewed. Imagine a line with a tiny, ruling oligarchy on the right end and a perfectly egalitarian democracy i.e, a group sharing both power and wealth in perfect equity on the left end. The bulging bell curve in the middle of this line is not --in America --the middle at all, but far to the right. In America, the center is not in the center and may never have been.

While a tiny few, like Bill Gates, may indulge acts of philanthropy from time to time, the over all trends have not changed. A more egalitarian society is the preferred remedy to injustice --not isolated acts of charity, however kind. Moreover, with very, very few exceptions, those growing rich at the expense of others are unlikely to become more liberal as they gain riches. With few notable and statistically insignificant exceptions, the nouveau riche will continue to "...dance with the party that brung 'em." Reagan-heads called it the "Reagan Revolution" for good reason. Conditioned to think of "revolution" in terms of the French or Russian revolutions, Americans might not have grasped the significant harm "Reaganomics" have done America. It was for real.

How many people actually rule America by virtue of their great wealth, their ability to finance political campaigns, their ability to open doors with a phone call? The size of this group is variously estimated, but the fact is no one really knows. Surveys don't ask that question and political consultants like Karl Rove or Paul Caprio will most certainly not tell you. It is possible, however, to estimate the size of a group that literally owns some 99 percent of all "wealth" in the US. As this group grows both smaller and richer, the GOP declines in terms of total votes that can be counted on. This is why the GOP must, of necessity, communicate to its core base via "code words". The GOP, in other words, cannot afford to be honest even with its rank and file. It has cut a Faustian bargain with a tiny elite, Bush's base.

This tiny elite, Bush's base, must work behind the scenes. Robber barons have the money and the power to interfere with the electoral process in numerous ways. The most glaring development is the rise of super-conservative "networks" like Fox and talk shows like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. These programs are the Right Wing's propaganda machine, "faux news" programs that make no effort to tell the truth. Gullible people who have nothing in common with Rupert Murdoch will nevertheless fall for the Fox line. In more egalitarian days, opposing voices could demand and get "equal time". The Fairness Doctrine was deliberately targeted by un-American, "monied" interests for whom the open exchange of ideas is a threat.

Even Roman Emperors gave the vox populi lip service with a healthy soupcon of bread and circuses. The most successful oligarchs --real and faux --are those who succeed in tricking the "folk" into thinking them "...of the people". A regular contributor to this blog wrote recently:

Howard Dean, along with the other main stream Dem orgs. and the progressive Dem.orgs had better figure out a way to co-exist and share resources, they are going to need, if they are to over come this corrupt bunch they are about to take the field with.

Certainly, as more voters grow dis-enchanted with George W. Bush and the GOP in general, Democratic prospects will improve. But there is a downside to the political reality that even as they grow smaller in number, the GOP's natural base grows very, very rich.

Sadly, our electoral system seems designed to weed out dissent deviating past a certain "norm", a norm acceded to by a tiny, exceedingly rich, ruling cabal, a "norm" established by the Democratic and Republican wings of a single party.

An update.

Americans Now Resemble Pre-War Nazi Germans

You see them at the supermarket aggressively pushing their shopping carts around, and you get this feeling that if you do not move fast enough they might just run into you. You detect an undercurrent of suppressed rage, hostility, and detachment as if they are on some other planet.

You feel the same thing when you are driving down the road, and you see them driving with one hand on the wheel, the other hand holding up a cell phone to their ear, wheeling their SUVs around just as aggressively and at the same time detached, like those people in the supermarket pushing their shopping carts around.

No-one smiles any more. No-one wants to talk about things that matter. If you want to discuss anything other than sports, sex, or Dancing with the Stars, no-one seems interested.

What is happening? Is it something in the water, or is Invasion of the Body Snatchers actually happening for real?

I do not remember people being like this. They are hostile, impatient, full of suppressed anger, abrupt, suspicious, and some even threatening.

Not so many years ago, you couldn't walk down the street without running into your friends and neighbors wanting to talk about anything and everything, and have a good laugh. People, I remember, used to communicate -- now they just glare at you, or completely ignore you.

No-one wants to complain about anything. No-one seems to be bothered by high taxes or inflation. They just look at you and roll their eyes like you are crazy if you dare to express your dissatisfaction with the status quo. And God forbid, do not mention the wars, that topic really gets people uncomfortable. It is as if you are asking some personal question. ...

Just how much debt will Bush leave to your children to pay back --unless, your children somehow become billionaires?

As percentage of GDP, "deficit is twice as large as it's ever been"

Billionaires for Bush

Bush Restricting Travel Rights Of More Than 100,000 Americans

Monday, September 3rd, 2007 by RLR
From True Blue Liberal
By Sherwood Ross

Citizens who have done no more than criticize the president are being banned from airline flights, harassed at airports’, strip searched, roughed up and even imprisoned, feminist author and political activist Naomi Wolf reports in her new book, “The End of America.”(Chelsea Green Publishing)

“Making it more difficult for people out of favor with the state to travel back and forth across borders is a classic part of the fascist playbook,” Wolf says. She noticed starting in 2002 that “almost every time I sought to board a domestic airline flight, I was called aside by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA) and given a more thorough search.”During one preboarding search, a TSA agent told her “You’re on the list” and Wolf learned it is not a list of suspected terrorists but of journalists, academics, activists, and politicians “who have criticized the White House.”Some of this hassling has made headlines, such as when Senator Edward Kennedy was detained five times in East Coast airports in March, 2004, suggesting no person, however prominent, is safe from Bush nastiness. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia has also been mistreated. And it can be nasty. Robert Johnson, an American citizen, described the “humiliation factor” he endured:“I had to take off my pants. I had to take off my sneakers, then I had to take off my socks. I was treated like a criminal,” Wolf quotes him as saying. And it gets worse than that. Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s foreign minister, said he was detained at Kennedy airport by officers who “threatened and shoved” him. And that was mild. Maher Arar, a Canadian software consultant was detained at Kennedy and “rendered” to Syria where he was imprisoned for more than a year by goons that beat him with a heavy metal cable. Read the rest of this entry »

From an Amazon reader review of John Perkins' "The Secret History of the American Empire.

In his first book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, John Perkins lifted the veil on a world rarely seen by most people. He took us on a tour of the costs and consequences of American corporate hegemony, dispelling myths of the `free market', and forcing us to peer deep into our own souls. As Perkins states in his earlier works, "The world is as you dream it," so the question is, what will you dream?

Picking up where he left off, Perkins continues down the path of redemption. Once serving the masters of modern slavery, Perkins now works tirelessly to free those who have been oppressed by the corpratocracy. His thesis? Our planet cannot survive ruthless consumerism at the expense of the world and its people. When all the trees are gone, and all the oil is tapped, what will be left? Does your shirt still feel nice when you understand the suffering involved in its production?

The world John Perkins envisions is one in which personal participation is crucial, and power does not rest in the hands of the few. We have everything we need to create a sustainable global society. We have the resources, the technology, and viable social models. What we need now is a vision, and the inspiration to create such a world. In 329 pages, Perkins provides us with the inspiration to fearlessly question ourselves, and the power structures that exist around us.

Traveling through countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Bolivia, Iraq, and Iran, Perkins paints a picture so vivid its life-altering. This is an amazing follow-up to Confessions, and I strongly recommend this book to anyone who still believes the `free market' benefits all, or anyone who is still waving a flag. This story is brutal, harsh, and real. But the good news is: life can change. We can change. Deep down we all share common values. We all want to live peacefully, we all want to prosper, and we all want to feel love.

If you wish to understand the world for how it really exists, and you seek the tools to help create positive changes, then you have to read this book.

As John says, "Today is the day for us to begin to truly change the world."

Additional resources

• The Meritocracy Myth by Stephen J. McNamee and Robert K. Miller, Jr. University of North Carolina at Wilmington
• We're Right, They're Wrong
• Wealth Inequality ChartsPublish Post
• War Profiteering and the Concentration of Income and Wealth in America
  

Discoveries

• Carl Jung - Matter of Heart

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