Bugliosi: George W. Bush Should be Tried for Mass Murder

It has been my position for years that George W. Bush should be prosecuted for various capital crimes, not the least of which are the deaths following from his wars of naked aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. [See: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] I have urged that a Federal Grand jury bring indictments against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condo Rice, Don Rumsfeld and numerous other co-conspirators, accomplices and accessories-after-the fact. Now --a heavy hitter, a tough-minded, legendary prosecutor wants to see George W. Bush stand trial for mass murder. Vince Bugliosi is famous for his prosecution of Charles Manson and his ascerbic critique of a Supreme Court decision that made no law --Bush v Gore. He now claims that George W. Bush should stand trial for the crime of mass murder of US citizens.

When George W. Bush said of our "Constitution that it is "... just a Goddamn piece of paper!", he declared himself an outlaw at war with the American people. The Bush administration's culture of fear, hate and contempt for law inspires an epidemic of police lawlessness and thuggery that now terrorizes law-abiding Americans. You can be thrown in jail if 'authorities' merely 'deem' you a 'terrorist'. Under Bush, the high standards found in the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution no longer apply. You don't get to make a phone call. You don't get to call your lawyer. You don't get to call your wife or husband. You don't get visitors. It is a state of treasonous war, a capital crime for which George W. Bush must answer.

The following material consists of Bugliosi's article in blockquotes followed by my comments.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

by Vincent Bugliosi

There is direct evidence that President George W. Bush did not honorably lead this nation, but deliberately misled it into a war he wanted. Bush and his administration knowingly lied to Congress and to the American public — lies that have cost the lives of more than 4,000 young American soldiers and close to $1 trillion.

A Monumental Lie

In his first nationally televised address on the Iraqi crisis on October 7, 2002, six days after receiving the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified CIA report, President Bush told millions of Americans the exact opposite of what the CIA was telling him -a monumental lie to the nation and the world.

On the evening of October 7, 2002, the very latest CIA intelligence was that Hussein was not an imminent threat to the US This same information was delivered to the Bush administration as early as October 1, 2002, in the NIE, including input from the CIA and 15 other US intelligence agencies. In addition, CIA director George Tenet briefed Bush in the Oval Office on the morning of October 7th.

According to the October 1, 2002 NIE, “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [chemical and biological warfare] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger case for making war.” The report concluded that Hussein was not planning to use any weapons of mass destruction; further, Hussein would only use weapons of mass destruction he was believed to have if he were first attacked, that is, he would only use them in self-defense.

Preparing its declassified version of the NIE for Congress, which became known as the White Paper, the Bush administration edited the classified NIE document in ways that significantly changed its inference and meaning, making the threat seem imminent and ominous.

In the original NIE report, members of the US intelligence community vigorously disagreed with the CIA’s bloated and inaccurate conclusions. All such opposing commentary was eliminated from the declassified White Paper prepared for Congress and the American people.

The Manning Memo

On January 31, 2003, Bush met in the Oval Office with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a memo summarizing the meeting discussion, Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor David Manning wrote that Bush and Blair expressed their doubts that any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons would ever be found in Iraq, and that there was tension between Bush and Blair over finding some justification for the war that would be acceptable to other nations. Bush was so worried about the failure of the UN inspectors to find hard evidence against Hussein that he talked about three possible ways, Manning wrote, to “provoke a confrontation” with Hussein. One way, Bush said, was to fly “U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, [falsely] painted in UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions and that would justify war. Bush was calculating to create a war, not prevent one.

Denying Blix’s Findings

Hans Blix, the United Nation’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq, in his March 7, 2003, address to the UN Security Council, said that as of that date, less than 3 weeks before Bush invaded Iraq, that Iraq had capitulated to all demands for professional, no-notice weapons inspections all over Iraq and agreed to increased aerial surveillance by the US over the “no-fly” zones. Iraq had directed the UN inspectors to sites where illicit weapons had been destroyed and had begun to demolish its Al Samoud 2 missiles, as requested by the UN. Blix added that “no evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found” by his inspectors and “no underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.” He said that for his inspectors to absolutely confirm that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) “will not take years, nor weeks, but months.”

Mohamed El Baradei, the chief UN nuclear inspector in Iraq and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that, “we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.”

The UN inspectors were making substantial progress and Hussein was giving them unlimited access. Why was Bush in such an incredible rush to go to war?

Hussein Disarms, so Bush … Goes to War

When it became clear that the whole purpose of Bush’s prewar campaign — to get Hussein to disarm — was being (or already had been) met, Bush and his people came up with a demand they had never once made before — that Hussein resign and leave Iraq. On March 17, 2003, Bush said in a speech to the nation that, “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict.” Military conflict — the lives of thousands of young Americans on the line — because Bush trumped up a new line in the sand?

The Niger Allegation

One of the most notorious instances of the Bush administration using thoroughly discredited information to frighten the American public was the 16 words in Bush’s January 28, 2003 State of the Union speech: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The Niger allegation was false, and the Bush administration knew it was false.

Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador to Iraq, was sent to Niger by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate a supposed memo that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake (a form of lightly processed ore) to Iraq by Niger in the late 1990s. Wilson reported back to the CIA that it was “highly doubtful” such a transaction had ever taken place.

On March 7, 2003, Mohamed El Baradei told the UN Security Council that “based on thorough analysis” his agency concluded that the “documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic.” Indeed, author Craig Unger uncovered at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union address in which analysts at the CIA, the State Department, or other government agencies that had examined the Niger documents “raised serious doubts about their legitimacy — only to be rebuffed by Bush administration officials who wanted to use them.”

On October 5 and 6, 2002, the CIA sent memos to the National Security Council, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and to the White House Situation Room stating that the Niger information was no good.

On January 24, 2003, four days before the president’s State of the Union address, the CIA’s National Intelligence Council, which oversees all federal agencies that deal with intelligence, sent a memo to the White House stating that “the Niger story is baseless and should be laid to rest.”

The 9/11 Lie

The Bush administration put undue pressure on US intelligence agencies to provide it with conclusions that would help them in their quest for war. Bush’s former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, said that on September 12, 2001, one day after 9/11, “The President in a very intimidating way left us — me and my staff — with the clear indication that he wanted us to come back with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9/11.”

Bush said on October 7, 2002, “We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high level contacts that go back a decade,” and that “Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gasses.” Of Hussein, he said on November 1, 2002, “We know he’s got ties with Al Qaeda.”

Even after Bush admitted on September 17, 2003, that he had “no evidence” that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, he audaciously continued, in the months and years that followed, to clearly suggest, without stating it outright, that Hussein was involved in 9/11.

On March 20, 2006, Bush said, “I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack on America.”

Vincent Bugliosi received his law degree in 1964. In his career at the L.A. County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder is available May 27.

For more information visit www.prosecutionofbush.com

When Bush said that the "Constitution is just a Goddamned piece of paper", he aligned himself with Hitler, Mussolini, Mao --"state absolutists", fascists, and/or radical communists. Bush declared war on the American people, our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Democracy and freedom. The peace, therefore, is already broken and, by Bush's declaration, a state of war exists between Bush and the sovereign people of the United States.

Criminals and traitors have seized power illegitimately and operate outside the law i.e, the Constitution so hated by Bush. So far, this gang of crooks have had nothing to fear from the impeachment process though there is probable cause to try Bush himself for capital crimes. As Bush jokes about remaining in power past his term, Americans as well as Iraqis are brutalized without charges, trial or representation. Under Bush, jackbooted thugs may not bother accusing you of a crime. They need only 'define' you as a terrorist. [See: Police Atrocities Define the Bush Police State]

Bush's "War on Terror" is as fraudulent as is the official 911 conspiracy theory which justifies it. It is as untruthful as the uncountable lies told to the United Nations and the world about Iraq. Benazir Bhutto spoke the truth shortly before her death: if US foreign policy does not support world wide terrorism directly, it is, at least, the very cause of it! It is a charge supported by official FBI statistics, published originally by the Brookings Institution. The proposition that terrorism is the inevitable result of imperial aggressions explains Bush's incompetent economic policies as well as America's fascist tilt. That terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes is a demonstrable, statistical fact and for daring to publish it, I was attacked by the right wing Heritage Foundation. My rebuttal remains unanswered.

The CIA creates terrorism two ways by indulging it as a tactic and by inspiring it with US imperial excesses. The legacy of Blackwater USA, an international terrorist organization, will have inspired generations of "terrorists" resorting to a tactic against which top down fascist regimes are impotent. Bush has failed to make us safe. He has, rather, made the world a much, much more dangerous place. And for this --we have given up the cornerstone of American freedom.

Bush has abrogated or violated every provision of the US Bill of Rights, arguably the most important document standing between you and tyranny! [See: Bush's War on the Bill of Rights] Next, an increasingly desperate Bush administration will try to crack down on the internet, among the dwindling sources of truth in a new age of Orwellian suppression!

Bush has put himself above the rule of law even as he denies you the benefit and the protections that are yours under the law! There is a name for this --dictatorship!

A Roper Poll of October 1999 indicated that the American people supported the International Criminal Court by a margin of 66% to only 29% opposed. While public support for the court has not 'translated' into US national policy, the Bush administration worked overtly to subvert the ICC and place 'themselves' above international, universal prohibitions against aggressive war and torture! Bushco anticipated problems with international laws long before 911 and, therefore, sought to place themselves beyond prosecution or justice. A bill sponsored by then House Speaker Tom Delay authorized Bush to order a military attack on the Hague should Americans find themselves on trial for war crimes. Only a crooked regime would plan in advance to subvert only those international laws that made their plans a capital crime.

That record of deceit itself is probable cause to indict George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumself, Colin Powell and others in his administration in connection with a 'false flag' attack --911! Bush's order that forensic evidence related to the crime of 911 be destroyed is 'probable cause' to indict Bush for 'obstruction of justice' or worse ---mass murder! Only those guilty of crimes work overtly to cover them up.

Bush's disregard of American or world opinion is matched by his utter contempt for the the US Constitution, indeed, the very rule of law. The Constitution --he screamed, impatiently --is "just a Goddamned piece of paper!" Clearly --Bush had planned to trash the Constitution even before 911.

Iraq, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with 911 and Saddam Hussein, like Manuel Noreiga, had been a CIA puppet. While Saddam never had WMD, his independent will was, in Bush's opinion, a cause to invade, begin the construction of permanent bases, and the permanent theft of Iraqi resources.

At Abu Ghraib, Bush would find a test of his ability to place the US above international laws designed to prevent, or, at least, punish the those who perpetrate atrocities. To this end, Bush employed the dubious talents of Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, toadies who would tell Bush what he wanted to hear, that is, that he was above the international laws that were, in fact, designed to prevent the very crimes Bush had in mind.

Is the Bush administration a failed presidency? No! Bush will leave office having enriched his base by trashing the Constitution. That's all he ever cared about. He will leave office hated by the American people whose lives he ruined and by the people of Iraq whose lives he snuffed with a smirk.

Additional resources

• Bugliosi audio at Prosecution of Bush
• Vincent Bugliosi: The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
• Tasers, Torture and Terror Tactics: America Becomes a Police State
• The Probable Cause to Charge Dick Cheney With Mass Murder, Terrorism, and High Treason
• History Channel: The Anthrax Attacks Were an Inside Job
• Norman Mineta who contradicts 9/11 Commission Report’s Account of Dick Cheney’s timetable.
• Author sees threats to US economy
• Under US Law Torture is Always Illegal
• How Hitler Became a Dictator

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Twilight of American Empire

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

The fall of the American empire resembles that of Rome in several areas but primarily --military and economic. The economies of the US and Rome ultimately depended on conquest. To this end, the US was sold to the Military/Industrial complex for whom 'conquest' is both an addictive drug and a life's blood. By the time the Roman Empire was sold at auction to one Didius Julianus, Rome's currency had already collapsed, as the dollar is likewise endangered. The smart money had already dumped sestercius for Greek Drachmas and the sale of the empire was concluded in Greek currency --not Roman.

Today, the currency of choice is neither the US dollar nor the Euro. It's oil and because Iran would prefer to sell oil for Euros, nations wishing to buy oil must exchange their dollars for Euros. Iran is threatened because it possesses a precious resource no longer produced economically in the US --oil! Rome was likewise impoverished. The sestercius was essentially worthless. It doesn't require an economics degree to conclude that Rome invaded Dacia for its gold and that the US will attack Iran for its oil.

Lacking oil, lacking a currency of choice, the American empire is finished! Just like Rome!
The US made of the Military/Industrial complex a cornerstone of its economy as Rome had done. War apparently never paid its own way; Rome compelled its people to 'render unto Caeser' beyond the ability of most to do so. Poverty increased with higher prices. Many farmers fled Rome's tax collector; others lost their farms whilst away on wars of conquest. Dispossessed farmers had no choice but to help swell the population of poor in Rome's teaming ghettos --one of which birthed the Great Fire in Nero's reign.

In his Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Gore Vidal called the Pentagon an "economic black hole". Indeed, a study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research makes the convincing case that military spending depresses the economy.

• After an initial demand stimulus, the effect of increased military spending turns negative around the sixth year. After 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in the baseline scenario with lower defense spending.
  
• Inflation and interest rates are considerably higher. After 5 years, the interest rate on 10-Year Treasury notes is projected to be 0.7 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario. After 10 years, the gap would rise to 0.9 percentage points.
  
• Higher interest rates lead to reduced demand in the interest-sensitive sectors of the economy. After 5 years, annual car and truck sales are projected to go down by 192,200 in the high military spending scenario. After 10 years, the drop is projected to be 323,300 and after 20 years annual sales are projected to be down 731,400.


• Construction and manufacturing are the sectors that are projected to experience the largest shares of the job loss.-- Center for Economic and Policy Research: The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending

Military spending is not the only blood sucker loosed on the American economy. At a time when China stocks the shelves at Wal-Mart, Japan supplies the cars and electronic 'play pretties', and oil is pumped almost everywhere but in the US, the business of government is the nation's only business and business thus owns and runs the government. There is a word for this: fascism. 'Criminal Justice' is not just an oxymoron, it is among the biggest businesses in Texas, for example. The same would have been true of Rome in its decline.

• As many as 64 million Americans have arrest records, many of which never resulted in conviction. That means that about 27% of the nation's adult population have a criminal record. (Source: LAC.org).
  
• In 2004, nearly 7 million Americans (3% of adult population) were under some form of correctional supervision: 2.2 million incarcerated in state and federal prisons and local jails; 4.1 million on probation; and 700,000 on parole. (Source: US Department of Justice) 4/23/08 UPDATE: Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations'

America likes to boast: "We're Number One!" I always ask: "in what?"

America by the numbers

• The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
• The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
• Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
• "The International Adult Literacy Survey...tound that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
• Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
• "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
• "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
• Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
• Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
• The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
• "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
- by Michael Ventura

There is a palpable sense of despair throughout the "land of the free" as it becomes clear that Bush still insists upon imposing a dictatorship. In the end, Rome became irrelevant as America is rapidly becoming today. The legions, for example, were efficient killing machines and the work of its engineers can still be found from England to the Middle East. It hardly mattered anymore. Few continued to believe in the Roman ideal.

Today, the US espouses peace, prosperity and Democracy as it breaks the peace, confiscates oil, and imposes a fascist and imperial rule. Yet no one outside the US believes in the 'American' ideal and, inside the US, those 'ideals' were disdainfully repudiated by a would-be emperor who said of the only document that made of them law: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper!" The entire world sees Bush for the fraud he is! Why is he still supported in the nation that he has betrayed?

In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive, like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.
The motive of the US establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of "The American Century." The time had arrived, he said, for the United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit."

--Howard Zinn, Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire

This response, Zinn argues, is counter-productive. As this blog has pointed out: terrorism is always worse during GOP regimes. Zinn characterizes American foreign policy in a phrase: "an old way of thinking!". Zinn is right to term it a 'destructive script' repeated at Wounded Knee, the invasion of Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Central American nations such as El Salvador and Nicaragua. According to the US State Department, the US intervened militarily 103 times in foreign countries between 1798 and 1895. Zinn also connects "internal" imperialism with the "external" variety in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's "sole superpower" is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster. The Iraq government's recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with -- we can be sure -- more to come. ... It's called A People's History of American Empire. It's a gem and it's being published today.
--Tomgram: Howard Zinn, The End of Empire?

The Emperor Valens, as I have mentioned too often on this blog, could not even raise an army. Nor can the US which recruits among those who cannot find work in the waste-land economy Ronald Reagan left behind. The real 'dirty work' is outsourced to mercenaries --just like Rome! Rome's defeat at Adrianople was, in fact, a battle fought between 'free barbarians' and 'mercenary' barbarians paid by Rome.

It is ironic that many writers cite the rise of Christianity as a major reason for the fall of Rome. Certainly --many found it impossible to render unto Caesar and unto God and it is equally clear that cultism was rampant throughout the latter empire. The 'Christians' were just one of many strange cults and still are. All of them were symptomatic of needs not met by empire. And nothing has changed. A subtle argument --and one that I have toyed with --is that Rome did not fall; it was, rather, supplanted from within and survives still in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. If the many who see this as a conflict between 'Christianity' and 'Islam' are correct, then, clearly, Bush has taken the bait. The radical fundamentalists who celebrated Bush as a new Richard Coeur de Lion may be in for the shock of several centuries. No one can predict what might arise from the ashes of the short-lived 'American empire'.

Gore Vidal dates the end of the American empire to a time during the Reagan administration when the US became a net debtor nation. It has been since! If that is true, then, clearly, the American empire must have begun in two acts of needless savagery which equal or surpass even the genocide of the Native American, and that is, the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lives of some 200,000 civilians were taken in a flash because imperial Washington wanted to make a point!


But what point? The surrender terms offered before the nukes were dropped are verbatim those signed later on the Battleship Arizona. For what noble principle were the lives of some 200,000 civilians sacrificed?

Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued against its use. "Japan was essentially defeated," he said, and "it would be wrong to attack its cities with atomic bombs as if atomic bombs were simply another military weapon." In a 1960 magazine article, Szilard wrote: "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

--Mark Weber, Was Hiroshima Necessary?

It's never too late to do the right thing!

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Bush's GOP Legacy: A Third World America

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As the US faces a very real prospect of utter collapse where millions may be may be made jobless and homeless, the GOP drags out a tired old lie that goes like this: 'Be happy! Recession is goooood for you!' If that were true, millions would be trying to move to a third world country instead of trying to get out of one.

If fact, the third world is coming to you! Millions have yet to recover from Ronald Reagan's 'recession' of some two years following an improvident tax cut which benefited only the nation's privileged elite. What Reagan failed to achieve was left to Bush Jr to polish off.
The trend begun in 1982 resumed shortly after Reagan's first tax cut. October 2003 figures from the US Census Bureau make stark reading:

• Median household incomes are falling
• The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 5.7 percent to 43.6 million individuals.
• The number of people living below the poverty line ($18,392 for a family of four) climbed to 12.1 percent — 34.6 million people.
• Wages make up the majority of income for most American families. As "Downward Mobility," NOW's report on workers and wages illustrates, many American workers are facing corporate efforts to cut pay and benefits, which could lead to more American families struggling to stay out of poverty.

Republicans, having taken the rap for a Great Depression that followed closely on the heals of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and, of course, Herbert Hoover, were eager to shed their scales with Ronald Reagan --a man who, if he was not of the people, did the Hollywood version of it.

To be expected, nothing said by the GOP about Ronald Reagan is true. One of his adoring partisans was overheard telling reporters --"But he made us feel good about ourselves"! Thus, Reagan inspired and encouraged among his adoring partisans the very worst motives.

Truth is, Reaganites ought not feel good about themselves. They ought not be comfortable inside their gated "communities". They ought to have nightmares and night terrors! They ought to lose sleep at night! They ought to be troubled, neurotic and insecure. Stanford Studies say that, indeed, they are!

Because Reagan would not be bothered to think deeply about issues, it was, to be fair, his adoring multitudes who told most of the lies about him. The lingering myth, the one that is most firmly embraced, defended and spread far and wide is that the Reagan presided over a great economic boom. To drive home the point, Reagan partisans contrast what is called "Reagan's Prosperity" with Carter's "Stagflation".

The Truth About Reagan's 'Prosperity': there was none!

Reagan never presided over what the GOP would have you believe was a modern golden age. Truth is, his policies (GOP policies) triggered a depression of some 18 months or more, the longest since the Great Depression. It followed promptly on the heels of his tax cut of 1982. The results in black and white:

• Twenty percent of the population owns 84% of our private assets, leaving the other 80 percent of the population with 15.6 percent of the assets.
• In 1960, the wealth gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of Americans was thirty fold. Four decades later it’s more than seventy-five-fold.
• Either way -- wealth or income – America is more unequal, economists generally agree, than at any time since the start of the Great Depression…
• And more unequal than any other developed nation today.
—Inequality.org

Bush's economic vampires alone have benefited from a war of endless death and carnage. In January George W. Bush deigned to acknowledge what the rest of us have known for years --the growing gap between rich and poor in America. America's GOP had always denied, ignored or excused the verifiable fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It is understandable that the GOP would do this. Inequalities are historically worse under GOP regimes since the regime of Herbert Hoover.

Bushies and Reagan-heads had embraced a failed theory called trickle down theory or supply side economics, not because it was true but because it made them feel good about themselves. Trickle down theory is the absurd notion that by shifting the proportionate tax burden to working class families while giving a tiny elite whopping tax cuts, the increase in investment capital will eventually increase and trickle back down.

Still Waiting after all these years

Wealth has never trickled down in America. It invariably trickles up --by design.
Why not "leave" that capital where it is working, supporting small business, hiring people and putting food on tables? Unfair tax cuts --GOP tax cuts favoring only the rich --have never trickled down. It is no coincidence that when the US was most egalitarian it was also most productive. The US led the world in numerous areas.

Ronald Reagan's orgy of union-busting, offshore tax havens and outsourcing is euphemistically called "globalization". This panoply of bullshit is responsible for the fact that the US imports most of its automobiles, appliances, and electronic goods --items that had been the staple of the US economic engine.

Compounding the tragedy, Ronald Reagan slashed taxes for millionaires and everyone else got poor. The US now pulls up the rear, behind China, behind Japan, behind Europe, behind much of the world. Everything from jeans to binoculars come from China; IT is outsourced to India. I see few Americans driving anything but Japanese cars. Where is Detroit these days? Is it still in Michigan. And, if not car makers, who lives there?

Given the hole dug over more than twenty years, I am as outraged as I am utterly unimpressed with the crumbs now thrown the rest of us by this profligate administration, this profligate, arrogant party.

Meanwhile, the nation’s official poverty rate declined for the first time this decade, from 12.6 percent in 2005 to 12.3 percent in 2006. There were 36.5 million people in poverty in 2006, not statistically different from 2005. The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 44.8 million (15.3 percent) in 2005 to 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006.

--US Census Bureau Release, AUG. 28, 2007

Capital "trickling up" to Bush's base is money lost to productive investment, lost to small business, lost to consumers who might have spent it in ways that would have created jobs here in the US. Lost to consumers who must pay higher prices as wealth concentrates among monopolists.
It has never been proven or supported that the increased wealth of those benefiting most from tax cuts has trickled down in any way whatsoever. There is no data at BEA or the Bureau of Labor Statistics to support the insane idea that tax cuts have ever in any way created more job or trickled down to benefit working, productive people. The reverse is true. The transfer of wealth, since Reagan's infamous "tax cut" of 1982, has been up and up to a tiny elite. As this elite grows richer, the GOP rewards the base by excluding them entirely from some forms of taxation.
For example, Senate Republicans have made ending the estate tax their number one priority. Supply-side economics has become the GOP's raison d'etre, a defining issue above even Iraq. Click the image for a larger, readable version.
Being wrong has never stopped the GOP, a party tha that has shown no interest in being right. Party faithful believe that if the right wing noise machine repeats something often enough and loudly enough, many will begin to think it true.

The GOP, meanwhile, trots out a tired, old labeling tactic. With a classic strawman, they label critics "liberals" or "commies" and they are accused of favoring the re-distribution of income. In fact, everyone favors the re-distribution of income and every government --right or left --does it! The GOP, especially, embraces the re-distribution of income upward and will support those policies which result in the transfer of wealth and income from middle and poorer families up to an increasingly tiny elite --the GOP base. The result: a less efficient economy! But that is a fact that is of no concern to the GOP and those who support them.

Indeed, I favor re-distributing the re-distribution. I support the un-doing of every stupid thing done by the GOP. I support efforts to undo every GOP policy. I favor a more efficient, productive and egalitarian society, in other words, the kind of society that might have resulted had the GOP not robbed the poor to give it to the very wealthy who did not need it, did not deserve it, did nothing to earn it and, upon receiving it have not used it wisely.
How did Reagan get away with it? It was an age of disillusionment and Iran-inflicted humiliation. Americans were suffering low self-esteem following the seizure of the US embassy in Iran and a failed helicopter rescue attempt in a desert sandstorm. Pat Buchanan's speech to the GOP National Convention in Houston in 1992 was designed to pluck up a party embarrassed by back to back scandals --BCCI, the Savings and Loan Debacle and Iran/Contra.

The 1992 GOP convention was a right wing circle jerk, remembered for a phrase about Ronald Reagan heard from the floor: "...he made us feel good about ourselves". But a two year recession, the effects of which are still with us, is a very high price to pay for a temporary "feel good". Media whore was a growth profession --and still is.

The re-distribution of income via GOP tax cuts is wasteful and inefficient. This nation's elite is an unproductive, economic vampire, living upon investments which, in themselves, produce absolutely nothing. Had tax cuts stimulated the economy, there would have been an increases in jobs. That did not happen. It has never happened. Reagan's tax cut of 1982, for example, was followed by a recession of some two years, the worst since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression. Unemployment rose. People lost homes and slept in tents. Even 'prosperous' Houston was not spared. Tent cities sprang up under freeway overpasses but --it was hoped --out of sight of the Bush crime family.

If tax cuts had worked as Reagan-heads predicted, more people would have joined the middle class. In fact, the reverse occurred: many in the 'middle class' joined those in the lower quintile! If tax cuts had stimulated the economy, inequalities would have decreased. Instead, wealth inequities increased and the gap between rich and poor widened; wealth, simply, trickled UP --not down! Blinded by the right, the GOP saw no people of any color but a whiter shade of pale.

The most pernicious effect of GOP economic policy is the effect of declining opportunity, a corollary of declining in wealth among all but the very rich.It is merely rhetorical to ask: why does the GOP seem to repeat ad nauseam utterly failed strategies that have never been shown to work? The answer is simple: the GOP sales pitch is what David Stockman called a 'Trojan Horse'.

Like everything else GOP, tax cuts are sold disingenuously. GOP tax cuts always do precisely what GOP insiders know they will do, that is, they enrich the GOP base! It's a payoff.

The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

--Steve Kangas, The Origins of the Overclass

Over a ten-year period, the richest Americans—the best-off one percent—are slated to receive tax cuts totaling almost half a trillion dollars. The $477 billion in tax breaks the Bush administration has targeted to this elite group will average $342,000 each over the decade. This is a calculated, deliberate transfer of wealth, legalized theft!

Only those already rich beyond almost everyone's ability to imagine will benefit [See: The L-Curve; L-Curve: The Video]. Bears repeating: this is planned! This is deliberate! This is by GOP design and conspiracy! This is a nation's privileged and crooked feeding upon the carcasses of those left behind by GOP profligacy, crookery, waste, and outright theft!
By 2010, when (and if) the Bush tax reductions are fully in place, an astonishing 52 percent of the total tax cuts will go to the richest one percent—whose average 2010 income will be $1.5 million. Their tax-cut windfall in that year alone will average $85,000 each. Put another way, of the estimated $234 billion in tax cuts scheduled for the year 2010, $121 billion will go to just 1.4 million taxpayers. That's less than half the population of Houston.
Although the rich have already received a hefty down payment on their Bush tax cuts—averaging just under $12,000 each this year—80 percent of their windfall is scheduled to come from tax changes that take effect after the year 2005 and beyond.

1968 was the year in which measured postwar income was at its most equal for families. The Gini index for households indicates that there has been growing income inequality over the past quarter-century. Inequality grew slowly in the 1970's and rapidly during the early 1980's. ...Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.

—Income Inequality, Census Bureau

What is to be said of an entire class of people who are happiest when others are miserable?

Another “benefit” of a recession is that it purges the excesses of the previous boom, leaving the economy in a healthier state. The Fed's massive easing after the dotcom bubble burst delayed this cleansing process and simply replaced one bubble with another, leaving America's imbalances (inadequate saving, excessive debt and a huge current-account deficit) in place. A recession now would reduce America's trade gap as consumers would at last be forced to trim their spending. Delaying the correction of past excesses by pumping in more money and encouraging more borrowing is likely to make the eventual correction more painful. The policy dilemma facing the Fed may not be a choice of recession or no recession. It may be a choice between a mild recession now and a nastier one later.

--Does America need a recession?

The article quoted conveniently leaves out the millions who never fully recovered from the Reagan 'depression' of some two years following his tax cut, nor does it address the careers lost when the .dotcom bubble burst. If you happen to be among that top sliver of the population that earns more than the remaining 95 percent then --sure --recessions are gooood for you! For every one else, they stink!

On the one hand, environmentalists and those with a sound spiritual foundation rightly point out that over consumption is the cause of so many problems, from plundering the planet's resources to obsession with materialistic satisfactions.
On the other hand, two-thirds of the gross domestic product in the United States (and similarly elsewhere) is composed of personal consumption expenditures, by households; and the lower your income, the more of your income you tend to spend, rather than can save. Those two Econ 101 facts mean that the economy is naturally "demand sided" -- not "supply sided," as Reagan and the other big-business boys have had so many believe -- and that regressive taxes, taking more of the income of those at the bottom than at the top -- the opposite of what progressive taxes do -- are not only unfair but also unwise, "killing the goose that lays the golden eggs."

Doug Drenkow, Producer, Barry Gordon from Left Field, LA

Any credit given the GOP is unfounded. The administration of Ronald Reagan should have been the wake up call. The GOP has presided over worse economic growth married to increased federal spending at least since World War II. Reagan's tax cut of 1982 was followed by a depression of some two years. GOP types counter that following the recession, the economy rebounded with a boom.

Hardly!

At the end of two years of negative growth, in fact the worst "depression" since the crash of 1929, Americans were lucky that the economy had merely resumed an anemic 3 percent growth rate -- nothing to write home about. Big corporations could write off many if not most losses but individuals and families, as usual, were stuck on bottom with the tab. Many never really fully recovered.
The intellectually bankrupt GOP can be counted on to repeat failed strategies expecting a different outcome. Bush stays a failed course amid warnings that our nation is falling apart at the seams heading for third world status and catastrophe.

The warnings come amid the valid assessment that Bush's tax cut for the rich failed to make good on two empty promises: it did not trickle down or prime the economic pump and it did not pay for itself as Bush himself had promised it would. Just one year after Congress bowed to Bush and passed the tax cut of 2001, the Brookings Institution would write:

The official federal budget outlook has deteriorated dramatically since early 2001, due to last year's tax cut, the economic slowdown, and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In addition to the pressures from the long-anticipated increase in entitlement spending as the nation ages, the government now also faces growing spending needs for defense and homeland security. These trends imply that future taxes must rise, future spending outside of defense and the elderly must decline, or obligations to the elderly and to defense be reduced.

—Alan Auerbach, William G. Gale, and Peter R. Orszag, June 2002, The Budget Outlook: Options for Restoring Fiscal Discipline, Brooking Institution

But GOP supply side, trickle down economics also promises more opportunity, a growing economy, more jobs.

Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit….Today’s numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring. That’s what has happened.
—George W. Bush

Bush knows that's not what happened. Any idiot knows that's not what happened. The GOP knows that's not what happened. What happened is an increasingly tiny elite got special treatment. Everyone else got screwed over. Wealth has never trickled down and there is no "higher pie". A Treasury Department analysis refuted Bush directly, confirming in its analysis what many experts and Bush critics had been saying all along: tax cuts do not come remotely close to paying for themselves. [PDF] . In other words, the two promises of "trickle down" theory are dead wrong: wealth does not trickle down and tax revenues do not increase to make up the short fall.

Bush either lied or was stupid or both

We haven't seen incompetence on this scale since Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan or Bush Sr. (all Republicans, need I remind?)

The time has come to bury forever two tired, old, worn-out GOP shibboleths: 1) Wealth does not and never will trickle down; 2) there is no invisible hand!

In the meantime, check out these budget deficits below, caused primarily by profligate tax cuts which have never stimulated the economy and have, in fact, never trickled down. Notice that the worst deficits --like terrorism --are worse during GOP regimes.

According to supply-side theory, these actions should have nudged the economy in the right direction, not plunged it into the worst recession in 40 years. Other problems involve timing: Reagan's first tax cuts went into effect in 1982, but this was also the summer that the Federal Reserve Board slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply. Most economists believe the Fed, not Reagan, was responsible for the following recovery. Finally, the recession of 1990 began four months before Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge. The recession began in July 1990; Bush signed his tax increases into law in November 1990.
And supply-siders are careful to note that Reagan's was the longest peacetime expansion since World War II. In truth, the Kennedy-Johnson expansion was longer: 106 months compared to Reagan's 92.1

--The Reagan Years

Moreover, the Fed's "peace time expansion" following Ronald Reagan's "depression" of almost two years was uneven. The worst income disparities in American history had already been triggered. As if by design, Reagan's rich base got even richer; everyone else lost ground. They are still losing ground despite an all-to-brief respite in Bill Clinton's second term. The GOP has ruined the American economy, perhaps forever. The budget shown below --your money squandered by Bush.
The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are all but meaningless in the world apres Bush. Both terms already mean something different than they did in the 19th Century. For example, British economist John Maynard Keynes was until very recently scorned by the right wing; his brand of economics was called "liberal" and he was simplistically, perhaps, simple-mindedly, associated with Marx. Yet, Keynes took issue with Karl Marx on key points. "I don't want a social revolution", Keynes said. He went on to characterize poverty as a "...dysfunctional threat" to a capitalist system which he favored. Fact is, Keynes, for all his notoriety, was conservative.

Nevertheless, that Keynes denounced "poverty" is enough to earn him the enmity of modern conservatives who obviously like the feelings of superiority they experience when millions of others are without jobs and scrambling to feed themselves or, as Bush put it, to "...put food on your families".

It is Keynes' use of the phrase "...extending the traditional functions of government" that inspires conservatives to cross themselves and wear garlic. It was by "extending" those traditional functions that Keynes believed unemployment could be eliminated. This is, of course, anathema to laissez-faire throwbacks like Ron Paul whose economic thinking is stuck in 19th Century mud. The same conservatives are not bothered by "extensions of government" effected by Reagan, Bush Sr., and now the Shrub. Ronald Reagan's program would have been thought "liberal" had the same program been advocated by a Democrat. As Richard Nixon committed the nation to deficits of truly "liberal" proportions, he famously said: "We are all Keynesians now".

The GOP invoke the name of John Maynard Keynes in vain.

When Democrats practice Keynesian economics, it works. When the GOP does it, the nation slides into recession or depression as the rich get rich off the carcasses left behind. Check the chart! The reason for that is the fact that GOP "tax cuts" enrich an already elite. GOP knowledge of 'Keynes' is limited to its pronunciation.

The biggest spending "liberals" are the GOP, yet, unlike "big spending Democrats" whose deficits were accompanied by handsome and egalitarian growth, GOP big spending is invariably associated with depression, stagflation, outsourcing and rising unemployment! If this is done deliberately to enrich cronies, then the GOP leadership should be tried en masse for criminal conspiracy, pilloried as crooks, liars and/or incompetents.

Reagan had been our biggest spending liberal, tripling the national debt, running up historically high deficits, doubling the size of the Federal Bureaucracy. Bush has now put Ronald Reagan in the shade and achieved even less good --if that's possible! None of the GOP theories worked as planned because none of their theories benefited working Americans in fact.

Reagan had in mind "extending the traditional functions of government" but only in order to benefit the wealthy and the corporate. When FDR extended the traditional functions of government, the nation experienced what Paul Krugman has called the 'Great Compression', arguably the most egalitarian period in American history. Sadly, it didn't last nearly long enough.

Even the GOP cannot ignore the effect of the Iraq war on the US economy. But, as John Dean points out, business folk, normally considered the GOP base, are just as fed up with the war as are most other, normal Americans. No one can now deny the fact that the war against Iraq has very nearly defeated the US economy, now on the brink of collapse.

Google the title: "Terrorism is always worse under GOP Regimes". That was originally my article and it would appear that it has gone "viral". I am grateful that those who have graciously published it on hundreds, if not thousands of blogs and other sites are kind enough to link back to the original which is parked right here on this cowboy's ranch. Let us hope that another irrefutable truth goes viral: the Republican party is bad for a good economy!
The idea that by cutting a robber baron's taxes, the economy will boom is just plain stupid on its face. The robber baron class has it all their own way anyway. More money in the hands of those who spend it, thus driving the economy might have a stimulus effect. But cutting taxes for privileged elites has never, ever in any way, put money into the hands of those who need the money and would, in fact, circulate it.

GOP tax cuts have never, ever trickled down!

In fact, the opposite has always occurred: wealth has trickled up! Those already rich have gotten richer still! I've got the stats to prove it and some of them are posted here. The 'middle class' must be slow learners. Most were not 'rich' enough to have qualified for Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982. No one I know benefited from it. At the end of a recession of two years, many 'middle class' had fallen into the bottom quintile, three or four rungs down the ladder, never to pull out again though they had paid dearly for the 'privilege' of joining Reagan's 'new poor'. Their crime? Not rich enough to qualify for GOP tax cuts!

Until now, China has had an interest in keeping the U.S. ponzi scheme propped up --they sell billions to U.S. citizens via Wal-Mart, the economic Kudzu that ate America.

Between 1989 and 2003, the ever-increasing US trade deficit with China has led to about 1.5 million jobs that either moved overseas or never were created in this country as production shifted to China, according to a report released Jan. 11, 2005, by the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a congressionally appointed panel. The pace of job losses has picked up since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, with about one-third of the total, or 500,000, occurring in the past three years.

Lower Wages for US Workers

By supporting foreign-made goods on such a massive scale, the company that trumpets its All-American image is creating incentives for corporations to destroy good jobs in the United States.

• As the world’s largest company with sales of $288 billion in 2004, Wal-Mart exerts a strong downward pressure on wages, and not only for its own workers. Its sheer size and buying power gives it the ability to influence wage rates of its competitors and suppliers, including manufacturing and construction companies.
• Wal-Mart pressures its suppliers through a policy that says the price Wal-Mart will pay and will charge shoppers must drop each year for basic products that don't change. To survive in the face of the retail giant’s pricing demands, suppliers have had to lay off employees and close US plants in favor of out sourcing products from overseas.

By purchasing such a large amount of goods produced in China, Wal-Mart indirectly supports continued workers’ rights abuses by Chinese authorities.

--Wal-Mart's Imports Lead to US Jobs Exports

Meanwhile, don't miss a Washington Post report that shows how Wal-Mart pits suppliers against one another and squeezes them for the lowest price. The result is that factories respond with longer hours and/or lower pay. Wealth, as we have learned the hard way, trickles UP --not down. The robber baron will always make up his losses out of your ass. In China, the workers have no choice: China forbids independent trade unions. That is a policy not unlike that of the US GOP and Ronald Reagan, specifically, who is not fondly remembered for his effective War on Labor and his ineffective war on terrorism and drugs. [See also: The Peace Tree]

Since a Chinese sub popped up undetected in the middle of the U.S. fifth fleet, it has been apparent that the honeymoon is over. The rest of the world had kept the U.S.S dollar afloat not because the dollar or the economy was strong but because they were not. China now leads the world in dumping dollars. The phrase "debtors death spiral" is used to denote what happens when consumers borrow to cover only the interest on previous loans. New debt compounds old ones and bankruptcy is just around the corner. The rest of the world is little better off. They cannot afford not to keep us afloat. What would happen to China if Wal-Mart suddenly went belly-up?

It is because Iran is accepting Euros for oil --not 'nukes' --that the country is now a target of the war criminals inside the Bush White House!

If this were mere recession staring back at us from a fun house mirror, it might be shrugged off. After all, the GOP has always loved recessions and benefited from them. A clue is found in the work of conservative Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter who regaled his Harvard students in the mid-1930s with a pithy observation about how economic depressions actually benefit certain social and economic classes.

Chentleman, [sic ] you are vorried about the depression. You should not be. For capitalism, a depression is a good cold douche.
--Joseph Schumpeter, Economist, Harvard University Lecture, circa 1930s

Everyone who is not an initiate into the cult of gopperism gets douched. The administrations of Reagan, Bush and Bush are like lab experiments that prove the hypothesis: GOP policies are designed to benefit an increasingly tiny elite or, as Bush called it, "my base."

"During the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America, as labor unions organized and gathered power, as socialism grew in popularity among working and other oppressed peoples, industries owned by Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman, Carnegie, and others, began hiring their own police forces and goon squads to infiltrate labor unions and spy on the political and personal activities of union organizers for the purpose of bringing arrests and convictions and eliminating all socialist activity in the nation. The most notorious example was the Homestead Strike of 1892, when Pinkerton agents killed several people while enforcing the strikebreaking measures of Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie."

--Carolyn Baker, PhD, US Government Targets American Dissent - Part I

This is no mere recession but complete collapse.

As feared, foreign bond holders have begun to exercise a collective vote of no confidence in the devaluation policies of the US government. The Federal Reserve faces a potential veto of its rescue measures.

Asian, Mid East and European investors stood aside at last week's auction of 10-year US Treasury notes. "It was a disaster," said Ray Attrill from 4castweb. "We may be close to the point where the uglier consequences of benign neglect towards the currency are revealed."

The share of foreign buyers ("indirect bidders") plummeted to 5.8pc, from an average 25pc over the last eight weeks. On the Richter Scale of unfolding dramas, this matches the death of Bear Stearns.

Rightly or wrongly, a view has taken hold that Washington is cynically debasing the coinage, hoping to export its day of reckoning through beggar-thy-neighbour policies.

--Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Foreign investors veto Fed rescue, UK Telegraph

Bush, meanwhile, seems unconcerned, perhaps, like Nero, fiddling as Rome burns. Then again, the GOP 'class' has always benefited from US recessions, depressions, and other economic catastrophes.

1. Recessions, though not caused by declining stock markets, are always accompanied and often predicted by a plunging stock market. Republicans sell out at the peak, taking their profits. Enough selling will trigger the plunge; less knowledgeable investors begin to follow suit from fear but too late. Last man out loses.
2. Having taken their profits on the upside, a depressed market is but an opportunity for the rich Republican to get back in at lower prices. Guess who sells at the lower price: the poor schmuck who is 180 degrees out of phase and can only dream of being a rich Republican. In reality, those he aspires to join are exploiting him.
3. Very knowledgeable investors make money "selling short", buying "put options". These investors get peak prices for stocks even as the price declines. Illegal insider information is executed with "calls" and "puts." The perpetrators of 911, for example, made millions, possibly billions, selling short the stocks of UA and AA. I defy anyone to come up with an 'innocent' explanation. The recipients of those profits had guilty foreknowledge of 911 --an inside job! The name 'Buzz' Krongard comes up in connection with a known terrorist organization: the CIA.Now --a planned financial meltdown might have presented the same opportunities. Historically, 'elites' have always emerged richer, stronger from recessions. On the other side of Ronald Reagan's recession of some two years, the rich had gotten richer while the middle class was all but wiped out. The ill-effects of that recession are still seen in the decline of middle class neighborhoods, the permanent loss of manufacturing base and the jobs it created.The profits and volume were most certainly outside norms, proof that those executing the options had precise foreknowledge of the attacks. Those making those profits had "guilty knowledge" of the attacks; they were at the very heart of a murderous conspiracy.
4. Unemployment always goes up in a recession. At the end of a longer recession, companies have the luxury of hiring from a larger labor pool at lower wages and/or salaries. Some companies --citing hard times --may reduce benefits, cut vacation or sick time. Big business must hate good times; it is only during times of full employment that workers have any leverage at all. Offhand I can think of only two times in history that have come close: the Clinton years, and, interestingly, Europe after the Black Death. The labor supply had been depleted by plague. Employers were often forced to accede to worker demands for better conditions, money, a place to live! Serfs had been freed and it marked the beginning of the end for Feudalism and set the stage for 'corporate feudalism', an age in which we still labor and suffer.
5. Admittedly, many businesses go belly-up during recessions. While lip service is given to 'free markets' and Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', die hard robber barons hate the 'free market'. They prefer 'monopoly' when they can create one and 'oligopoly' when they can't. Free competition among many sellers is the last thing they want. Recessions are welcomed. It's the 'cold douche', a ruthless flush, so beloved by Schumpeter and the robber barons of American capitalism.
6. Don't expect recessions to bring down prices. More often, higher prices are the light that is seen at the end of the long, dark tunnel. In other words, those businesses fortunate enough to survive a 'downturn' are in the enviable position of raising prices on the other side. Higher prices benefit businesses that manage, even with government help, to stay in business during a recession. So much for laissez-faire capitalism. Those fortunate businesses now make more money per unit produced and will do so with fewer employees. The world is not so kind to everyone else, primarily smaller businesses and entrepreneurs, freelancers, and worker bees. Prices, we learned in Economics 101, are determined by supply and demand. If the demand is such that the market is quite willing to pay any price for it (prescription drugs, gasoline, certain rents) then demand is said to be inelastic.
7. At the expense of over-simplifying, consumer demand is the arbiter of price only in markets characterized by diffuse competition. Recessions militate against a market of this sort, weeding out all but 'privileged' businesses, primarily those with juicy government contracts or GOP cronies in office. Only in the textbook model, is it assumed that the oligopolist's market demand curve becomes less elastic at prices below a certain point. In markets characterized by the continuing decline in the number of 'sellers', it is obvious that there are fewer motivations for oligopolists to reduce prices. In such a market, the oligopolist (an aspiring monopolist) makes more money selling fewer units at higher prices than could be earned selling more units at lower prices. How many people are out of a job makes no difference to the American right wing for whom Scrooge is their abiding inspiration.

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

—Scrooge

For 'one brief shining moment' in Bill Clinton's second term a trend begun with Ronald Reagan not only slowed but reversed. The robber barons are not concerned that as a result of preferential treatment given them by the GOP they had starved the market for their consumer junk. America doesn't seem to be manufacturing anything anymore anyway. Steel, cars, and electronic geegews are made in Japan; oil is 'stolen' in Iraq; programming is done in India; and the shelves at Wal-Mart are stocked by China. Detroit neighborhood look like ghost towns. Nor can I image Pittsburgh exporting steel to the world. Pittsburgh was already on the rocks when I was a kid.

The legendary talk show host Brad Crandall (WNBC, deceased, 1991) said of the "Big Apple" that it was more properly a cow to be milked by Albany. We are Bush's cows though he is but a phony cowboy. What we spend does not circulate. It trickles up and out to China and India and the robber barons of big oil, i.e, Dick Cheney's consortium of oil thieves and war mongers.

Gore Vidal was correct: the Pentagon, which now, as the enforcement arm of the Military/Industrial complex, is an economic black hole. Our GDP, inflated by military spending, does not reflect the fact that we haven not been a net producer of real jobs nor a net exporter of "made in the U.S.A."  products since Ronald Reagan sold us down the river to fascists.

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The Origins of the Bush Regime in Hitler's Third Reich

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Germany may have lost the war but the Bush family transplanted Nazi ideology to American soil where it took root and thrived. The history of the rise of the Bush family is a history of how Nazi ideology rose up like a Phoenix in its new 'homeland' --America. It will be tragic if the final triumph of Nazi ideology should prove to have been the stolen election of George W. Bush.

It's up to the American people to write a new and final chapter and right the wrongs that a transplanted Nazi ideology has visited upon us and the world. During World War II, the Bush family betrayed America, helped finance Adolph Hitler, and laid the groundwork for the creation of the CIA.

On Oct. 20, 1942, the US government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City which were being conducted by Prescott Bush. Some ten months after the US had entered WWII, as America prepared a first assault against the Nazi military machine, Prescott Bush, the shrub's Grandfather, was managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman. His 18-year-old son George, the future US President, had just begun training to become a naval pilot.

US forces landed under fire near Algiers on Nov. 8, 1942; heavy combat raged throughout November. Nazi interests in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act on Nov. 17, 1942. In this action, the government announced that it was seizing only the Nazi interests, leaving the Nazis' US partners to carry on the business.

These and other actions taken by the US government in wartime were, tragically, too little and too late. President Bush's family had already played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the USA.; and in the development of Nazi genocide theories and racial propaganda, with their well-known results.

The facts presented here must be known, and their implications reflected upon, for a proper understanding of President George Herbert Walker Bush and of the danger to mankind that he represents. The President's family fortune was largely a result of the Hitler project. The powerful Anglo-American family associations, which later boosted him into the Central Intelligence Agency and up to the White House, were his father's partners in the Hitler project.

President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing the property of Prescott Bush under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The order, published in obscure government record books and kept out of the news, explained nothing about the Nazis involved; only that the Union Banking Corporation was run for the `` Thyssen family '' of `` Germany and/or Hungary ''--`` nationals ... of a designated enemy country. ''

By deciding that Prescott Bush and the other directors of the Union Banking Corp. were legally front men for the Nazis, the government avoided the more important historical issue: In what way were Hitler's Nazis themselves hired, armed and instructed by the New York and London clique of which Prescott Bush was an executive manager? Let us examine the Harriman-Bush Hitler project from the 1920s until it was partially broken up, to seek an answer for that question.

--George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter - II - The Hitler Project

While Americans in general opposed involvement in foreign wars, American industrialists were not inclined to turn down a quick buck. While Americans were at war with Hitler, the American corporate establishment was ideologically sympathetic to Hitler --his cause, his war aims, his partnership with big corporations like I.G. Farben, Thyssen, Krupp and other big corporations, including American companies, who financed Adolph Hitler. [See: Who Financed Adolf Hitler?]

On December 20, 1922 the New York Times reported4 that automobile manufacturer Henry Ford was financing Adolph Hitler's nationalist and anti-Semitic movements in Munich. Simultaneously, the Berlin newspaper Berliner Tageblatt appealed to the American Ambassador in Berlin to investigate and halt Henry Ford's intervention into German domestic affairs. It was reported that Hitler's foreign backers had furnished a "spacious headquarters" with a "host of highly paid lieutenants and officials." Henry Ford's portrait was prominently displayed on the walls of Hitler's personal office:

--Henry Ford and the Nazis

Opposition to US involvement in World War II is most often linked to Charles Lindbergh.

However, most AFC supporters were neither liberal, nor Socialist. Many simply wanted to stay out of the war. Since many also came from the Midwest, an area never as sensitive to European problems as the east coast, isolationist arguments was soon buttressed by more traditional prejudices against eastern industrial and banking interests. (Almost two-thirds of the Committee’s 850,000 registered supporters would eventually come from the Midwest, mostly from a radius of three hundred miles around Chicago.)[13] Many AFC supporters were certain industry and the banks wanted war for their own profit.[14] Many other supporters were Republicans who flocked to the AFC for partisan political reasons. [or treasons?] Still others were covertly pro-German. Some were German-Americans whose sentimental attachments had not been diminished by the crimes of the Nazi regime. Others, whether of German origin or not, were attracted to Hitler’s racism and anti-Semitism.

--David Gordon, America First:the Anti-War Movement, Charles Lindbergh and the Second World War, 1940-1941, History Department, Bronx Community College / CUNY Graduate Center

Ideologically, Bush and Lindbergh have much in common. It is no stretch to imagine this faction welcoming a Hitler victory in Europe, perhaps plotting a Nazi coup d'etat in the US had Hitler won in Europe. Certainly, Prescott Bush had planned a coup intended to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictatorship. It would appear that where Prescott Bush failed, his idiot grandson succeeded. [See BBC: US Businessman (Prescott Bush) Planned Fascist Coup in US ]

Lindbergh wanted Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, and was willing to accept Nazi domination of Europe as the price.[118] His protests to the contrary are not convincing.[119] Long before most Committee members, he had come to believe the existence of the Soviet Union had made Hitler’s dictatorship necessary. The German invasion of Russia in June 1941 made the need to keep America out of the war greater than ever. As a result, the efforts of America Firsters to keep America neutral became more frenetic as German successes in Russia mounted, and Roosevelt’s efforts to enter the war increased.

--David Gordon, America First:the Anti-War Movement, Charles Lindbergh and the Second World War, 1940-1941, History Department, BronxCommunity College / CUNY Graduate Center

Lindbergh opposed US entry into WWII for the same reasons the Bush family continued to do business with Hitler and the Nazis' after war had begun. The Bush family were Hitler's trading partners.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behavior has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.

The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.

--British Guardian: How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

By now it is common knowledge, verified in the public record, that in October of 1942, Prescott Bush was accused of "Running Nazi front groups in the United States". He was charged under the Trading With the Enemy Act as the US government shut down the operations at New York's Union Banking Corporation.

Bush's actions might have been considered high treason. They are interesting by virtue of the myriad connections about what is commonly referred to as the "Bush Crime Family" and partners --Avril Harriman, the Rockefellers, Allen Dulles, James Baker III, Gulf Oil, Pennzoil, and ominously, Osama bin Laden. The connections are labyrinthine, involving a host of corporate connections, high ranking Nazis, the CIA and Allen Dulles.

More recently, we have learned of yet more Bush family treasons: Prescott Bush, the "President's" grandfather, was involved in a fascist coup attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression.

--William Bowles, The Bush Family Saga

Now that the cat is out of the bag, Bush apologists would have you believe that the Bush/Nazi nexus is long over. Not so! Documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress confirm that the Bush family continued 'Nazi' dealings well into 1951. GWB's grandfather, Prescott Bush and his 'Nazi' colleagues --a 'secret web of Thyssen-controlled ventures' --routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators. This web including former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and younger brother, E. Roland Harriman and the New York private banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman, presided over a 'quarter-century [1924-1951] of Nazi financial transactions. These activities included a financial relationship with the German city of Hanover and several industrial concerns. They went undetected by investigators until after World War Two.

The sub-plot is equally interesting. Allen Dulles found a 'young Naval Officer' who was in charge of captured Nazi documents that would have revealed Dulles to have been a traitor to the United States. The 'young Naval officer' eagerly sold out, agreeing to bury the documents if Dulles would finance the young man’s first political campaign. The 'young Naval officer' was Richard Nixon. The timeline of this infamy records that in 1946, Richard Nixon defeated Jerry Voohris for congress and he did it by selling out to Allen Dulles, a prominent figure in the Bush/Nazi axis of bankers and Nazis. In 1950, however, Prescott Bush lost his race because of the Nazi company he kept --the American eugenics movement.

At about this same time, Project Paperclip began importing Nazis into the US. The CIA recruited five of Adolph Eichmann's Nazi assistants. This information came to light only as the result of a lengthy battle waged by the non-profit group --The National Security Archive. It's mission statement is to 'expose government documents under the framework of the Freedom of Information Act'.

The newly-revealed documents are based on internal investigations in the CIA's history department. The agency has steadfastly refused to make the documents public for fear they would cause embarrassment.

The revelations cast a negative light not only on American intelligence activity but also the US Army's conduct in Germany at the conclusion of the war. The military made efforts to recruit members of the SS and the Gestapo into its ranks despite simultaneously waging a campaign of de-Nazification over vanquished Germany, a process which included arresting and trying Nazi war criminals.

The documents also reveal in great detail CIA efforts to recruit Reinhard Gehlen, who was the Wermacht's chief intelligence officer for the eastern front during the war. The recruitment evolved into a new intelligence sub-organization known as "Gehlen's Organization," which served as the basis for what would later become West Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

According to the new findings, Gehlen's Organization employed a number of Gestapo and SS officials. Gehlen and his senior associates secretly operated out of a building with the knowledge of the American occupation forces.

--Documents reveal CIA recruited five of Eichmann's associates

The documents were discovered in internal investigations by the CIA’s history department; they had been kept secret for fear 'they might cause 'embarrassment', or cast the agency in a 'negative light'. It is not only the CIA but efforts by the US army to recruit former Nazis --SS and Gestapo members --that justifies the charge of high treason throughout the ranks of the American 'intelligence community' and the Pentagon. After all, the US went to a great deal of trouble to prosecute high ranking Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Justice Robert Jackson lead the prosecution through an historic trial that, in the face of history and precedent, dared to bring 'war criminals' to account for crimes in a court of law.

The most tragic chapter is being written at the very moment you read this. Whether or not Jackson's historic achievement at Nuremberg will stand depends upon whether or not the Bush regime gets away with the crimes of aggressive war and crimes against humanity. Hermann Goring called the Nuremberg trials "victor's justice". George Bush, like Goring at Nuremberg, places himself about this nation's historic commitment to international justice. If the illegitimate regime regime of George W. Bush is allowed to get away with the crimes charged Nazi defendants at the end of WWII, then Bush's legacy will be that he proved a Nazi --Hermann Goring --to have been absolutely correct. That is, it's all politics. There has been no crime, there has been no war, there has been no slain.

It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: "Say I slew them not." And the Queen replied, "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are..." If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.

--Summation for the Prosecution by Justice Robert Jackson, Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, July 26, 1946

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