The Existentialist Cowboy

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Milton Friedman's Role and His Influence on the Two Worst Regimes in US History

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As recently as 2005, Milton Friedman was still singing the praises of utterly failed economic policies that had been put to the test by Ronald Reagan and Bushes Sr and Jr. Friedman's policies have been found tragically lacking. Friedman is enamored with policies that bankrupted the nation, made terrorism worse, created the longest, deepest recession since the crash of 1929, exported jobs abroad and resulted in the destruction of the American labor movement and, as a result, the loss of employee rights. Because Ronald Reagan put into effect the lame-brained ideas of Milton Friedman, we live poised on the precipice of economic collapse at the end of the very worst Presidency in American history. [note: Friedman died in Nov. 2006.)]

When I met Milton Friedman in Houston, Ronald Reagan had not yet plunged the nation into a two year long depression. At the time, it was the worst depression since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression of the 1930s, the one that your parents, grand-parents or great grand parents have told you about.

Not surprisingly, Milton Friedman was singing the praises of GOP economics for which he must share responsibility, possibly blame. When I asked him about a pernicious trend that had started under Reagan, he was defensive. "Jobs are NOT exported", he said emphatically. He was wrong then and he is wrong now. In fact, it was during Ronald Reagan that jobs declined as US industry lost markets to Japan and China --Faustian bargains cut first on Nixon's behalf and later for Herr Reagan.

American industry is but a shadow of what it was under FDR and LBJ. GOP economics for whom Friedman was the guru, left American workers with increasingly limited prospects, declining standards of living, few opportunities and lower wages. I've cited the official numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Commerce- BEA, and the Census Bureau which prove conclusively that as a result of the GOPs anti-labor policies in terms of both jobs and tax cuts for the wealthy, the rich have gotten very, very rich and everyone else has gotten poorer. Today, about one percent of the US population owns more than the remaining 90 percent or more combined. Under Bush Jr an elite of only about one percent of the nation benefited from his tax cuts and his financially ruinous war of naked aggression against Iraq.

Bush has now resorted to Marxist economics and has proven Marx to have been absolutely correct. But the GOP --typically --has screwed that up as well. Marx said: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!" The GOP version goes like this: "We pull from out of your ass everything that you think you own; then we distribute it to those who did nothing to create it, did nothing to earn it, and do not deserve it!

If because of GOP transfers of unearned wealth to the increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the population, labor is unproductive or impoverished the productivity of the nation will decline and ultimately collapse --especially if the poor can no longer afford decent housing or food because ELITES have bid up prices on commodities.

Given the 'socialist/Marxist' nature of the recent bailout benefiting only the GOP base of elites, it is clear that Karl Marx was right. Capitalism will collapse of its own inconsistencies, 'internal tensions which will lead to its destruction.' We have seen evidence of this in the recent bailout --a 'socialist measure' benefiting McCain's 'base' even as McCain was demonizing 'liberals', socialists, and other "Anti-Americans".

The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

One wonders if GOPPERS ever try to reconcile the irreconcilable inconsistencies that are literally shot through their thought processes.

Monopoly is a board game published by Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro. Players compete to acquire wealth through stylized economic activity involving the buying, renting, and trading of properties using play money, as players take turns moving around the board according to the roll of the dice. The object of the game is to bankrupt the other players. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly, the domination of a market by a single entity.

--Monopoly

In Monopoly, one player wins who owns enough properties to bankrupt the other players. The same thing happens in nature when a PARASITE kills its host!

The Bush bailout of his robber baron buddies and former sponsors, is proof that Milton Friedman's naive, laissez-faire economics is pure and utter bullshit. There was a time when grown up folk who persisted in believing fairy tales were called nuts! Today --they are called elder statesmen and Friedman is considered a sage.

Here's Friedman from a Charlie Rose program of 2005. He's talking about how strong was the US Economy. It would appear that reality has caught up with him.

Some recent EC posts that Friedman would have done well to read:

To sum up: Friedman has been wrong about the economy since 1980 when his 'God' --Ronald Reagan --assumed the role of "President". Ronald Reagan, the living embodiment of Friedman 'economics' hollowed out America's industrial base, plunged the nation into the worst depression since 1929, destroyed the labor movement, enriched ONLY the upper one percent of the nation, doubled the size of the federal bureaucracy and left to Bush Sr and, later Bill Clinton, the worst budget deficit in the nation's history, a situation that did not improve until Bill Clinton's second term. A lot of good it did. Bush II promptly out-performed Ronald Reagan's every instance of incompetence and deceit. Only Bush IIs deficits and debts outstrip those of Reagan who succeeded only in enriching his corporate and elite, privileged sponsors.

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.

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.

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. The name 'Buzz' Krongard comes in connection with a known terrorist organization: the CIA.

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.

Unemployment always increases 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.

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 --in fact -- 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.

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, perhaps with government bailouts, to stay in business during a recession. So much for laissez-faire capitalism. 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. The world at the end of a recession is often inelastic and big and bigger businesses benefit.

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.

Perhaps a quick review of Friedman's policies as they were, in fact, made policy under the dubious and failed regime of Ronald Reagan best remembered for his reprise of the Great Depression, castrating the American labor movement on behalf of his corporate robber baron sponsors, and a criminal/terrorist enterprise which, in fact, made terrorism worse under his administration as that of any other US administration since World War II. Ronald Reagan himself need not have worried about the opinion of Iran/Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh who believed Reagan guilty of conspiring to arm an avowed enemy of the US while funneling money to a right-wing terrorist organization.

To the spellbinder, everything becomes subordinated to their conviction that they are exceptional, sometimes even messianic. An ideology can emerge from such individuals that is certainly partly true, and the value of which is claimed to be superior to all other ideologies. They believe they will find many converts to their ideology and when they discover that this is not the case, they are shocked and fume with “paramoral indignation.” The attitude of most normal people to such spellbinders is generally critical, pained and disturbed.

The spellbinder places on a high moral plane anyone who succumbs to his influence, and he will shower such people with attention and property and perks of all kinds. Critics are met with “moral” outrage and it will be claimed by the spellbinder that the compliant minority is actually a majority.

Such activity is always characterized by the inability to foresee its final results, something obvious from the psychological point of view, because its substratum contains pathological phenomena, and both spellbinding and self-charming make it impossible to perceive reality accurately enough to foresee results logically.

In a healthy society, the activities of spellbinders meet with criticism effective enough to stifle them quickly. However, when they are preceded by conditions operating destructively on common sense and social order - such as social injustice, cultural backwardness, or intellectually limited rulers manifesting pathological traits - spellbinders activities have led entire societies into large-scale human tragedy.

Such an individual fishes an environment or society for people amenable to his influence, deepening their psychological weaknesses until they finally become a ponerogenic union.

-- The Role of the Psychopath in the Generation of Global Evil

Reagan apologists often attack Jimmy Carter because, like the predators they are, they smell weakness. It is a mistake. Critics are invariably wrong or lying about Carter. Carter, is in fact among the best Presidents in job creation and he is the only US President to have brokered a Middle East peace --the Camp David Accords. In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Carter acted quickly. He replaced Kissinger's incremental, shuttle diplomacy with a comprehensive, multilateral approach that included reconvening the 1973 Geneva Conference to include a Palestinian delegation. The GOP feared to duplicate that approach. It might have succeeded. Democrats, meanwhile, should stop running away from what it means to be a Democrat. Get a spine! Stand up and be counted! You have nothing to fear from a gang of lying perverts, discredited 'supply-siders', bigots and war mongers, in other words, the GOP.

Reagan’s election in November 1980 also was welcomed in other quarters. His victory set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anti-communist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.

In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. [Martin Edwin Andersen's Dossier Secreto.]

Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anti-communist action justified, no matter how brutal.
From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.

The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.

The one consistent element in these slaughters was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating from Ronald Reagan's White House.

--Robert Parry, Obama's Dubious Praise for Reagan

Hoping to deflect attention from the new Augustus, Reagan worshipers claim that Carter was responsible for "horrible inflation" and 20% interest rates. So what? Interest rates would be expected to decline under Reagan's depression as interest rates, in fact, decline in every recession or depression.

During Reagan's depression, the GDP declined at a rate of 2.2 percent, quite possibly the biggest such decline since the Great Depression, most certainly it was the biggest decline in the more than twenty years between 1973 to the assumption of the White House by Bush. Millions lost jobs and homes.

In any case, it was the Federal Reserve Board that slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply, thus reducing prices. Ronald Reagan had nothing whatsoever to do with it! It was the Fed --not Reagan, not GOP give-aways to the MIC --who was responsible for the following but short-lived recovery.

Under Carter, people were at work and productive. They were buying homes --not leaving them under the threat of imminent foreclosure as many, perhaps, millions did under Reagan, as millions are doing now under the lame-duck cretin.

It was Reagan who destroyed the trade unions, exported jobs and technology, and plunged the nation into a depression of two years --the very worst since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression! It was Reagan and the endemically crooked, stupid GOP who fucked up America.

Before Reagan, America had a steel industry. After Reagan, it didn't. Before Reagan, America had a viable automotive industry. After Reagan, the US was buying its cars from Japan. Before Reagan, small retailers still existed and many thrived. After Reagan, small stores had all but disappeared, giving way to huge corporate chains, and, in time, WalMart --an economic Kudzu that ate the American economy.

Typically, Reagan would take credit for reforms begun under Carter. It was Carter who gave the rich a capital gains tax cut, even as he deregulated key industries like trucking and airlines. Carter also increased defense spending. I happen to think Carter ought not have done that! But, to his credit, he didn't muck it up nearly as much as did Reagan who sold his soul for the elite GOP base of robber barons and other vote buyers! The moral of the story is this: don't sell your soul to the GOP robber barons. They don't appreciate it and will support a card-carrying "seed pod" like Reagan or Bush anyway.

As bad as all that is, Reagan's lasting legacy is his worst and most dangerous. Reagan may have blown the world's last chance to achieve a non-nuclear peace.

Reagan is a study in complexity. He believed in balanced budgets but never submitted one; feared a nuclear apocalypse but built a huge stockpile of weapons; preached family values while presiding over a dysfunctional family.

--American Experience

The story is about the talks Reagan held with the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik. It was Gorbachev who first put total nuclear disarmament on the table. It was Ronald Reagan, indebted to his radical base, who blinked.

If, that is, the ensuing “Great Society,” to borrow a term from JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, were laid low by a nuclear attack on an American city (or seven, if al Qaeda had its way).

This is the territory into which Gorbachev launched his most daring raids. First, in 1985, he announced that the Soviet Union would no longer deploy intermediate-range nuclear forces (INFs) in Eastern Europe. Later that year, he proposed that both his country and the US slice their nuclear arsenals in half.

The next year, at the memorable Reykjavik summit, Gorbachev got Ronald Reagan to agree in principle to his plan for removal of all INFs from Europe, as well as to draw them down worldwide. Caught up in Gorbachev’s enthusiasm, Reagan expressed a willingness to join Russia in eliminating all nuclear weapons in 10 years.

In the end, though, Reagan clung to his blankie, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars). Gorbachev feared SDI would lead to nukes in space, not to mention leave the Soviet defense establishment with the impression he’d been played. Their dreams of saving the world came crashing back down to earth.

--It’s not a new JFK we need in Obama, but the next Gorbachev

A typical Republican, Reagan said many things and did the opposite. That's because every Republican has two stories to tell: one they tell to their base via "code words" like "family values"; the other, they tell to the world. This second category often consists of lies and pure BS. In this case, Reagan talked the talked --world peace, nuclear disarmament, etc. When Gorbachev raised the stakes and called the bluff --total nuclear disarmament --Reagan blinked! He suddenly recalled his base, the clique, the Military/Industrial complex, the moneyed class that "brung 'em"! Reagan was not, had never been his 'own man'.

Here is what Reagan himself said about the threat of nuclear war.

The Russians sometimes kept submarines off our East Coast with nuclear missiles that could turn the White House into a pile of radioactive rubble within six or eight minutes. Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radarscope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that? There were some people in the Pentagon who thought in terms of fighting and winning a nuclear war. To me it was simple common sense: A nuclear war couldn't be won by either side. It must never be fought. Advocates of the MAD policy believed it had served a purpose: The balance of terror it created had prevented nuclear war for decades. But as far as I was concerned, the MAD policy was madness.

--Ronald Reagan, The Official Site

So, if that's how Ronald Reagan really felt about nuclear madness, why did he blow what is perhaps our last chance at peace? The answer is simple. Reagan had made a Faustian bargain. He had never been free to follow his conscience. He had never been free to do what was right or best for the nation and the world.

Three myths about the cold war"

'We won the cold war'! In fact, the end of the 'Cold War' was negotiated.
'The Soviet Union collapsed because the US brought pressure to bear or because Unca Ronnie 'outspent' them.' In fact, the opposite is true as you will learn.
'Ronald Reagan defeated communism'. In fact, Ronald Reagan defeated America!

Let's set the record straight. Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with the fall of communism. A great statesman-- Mikhail Gorbachev --deserves the credit for withdrawing nuclear weapons from Eastern Europe which he did upon his own initiative. Gorbachev was the architect of Perestroika and, later, Glasnost. Reagan merely followed the leader.

As I have pointed out: Ronald Reagan Blew the World's Last Chance for Peace! It was Gorbachev --a real leader --who had put total nuclear disarmament on the table. It was an offer Reagan could not accept! Reagan had bosses who had already made him an offer he didn't refuse: the sale of his soul!

The real power base back home would have had Reagan's head. Reagan was a typical Republican, that is, he said many things and did the opposite. Every Republican has two stories to tell: one that he/she tells the base via "code words" like "family values" the other, he/she tells to the world. This second category is most often just lies and bullshit. In this case, Reagan had talked the talked --world peace, nuclear disarmament, etc.

As the figure-head for an entire class that had been enriched by 'cold war' military spending, Reagan could not negotiate with Gorbachev in 'good faith'. Today --the same folk have a vested interest in a destabilized middle east. Fortunes were made in Bush's attack and invasion of Iraq.
Why did he blow what is perhaps our last chance at peace?

Rank and file goppers will find reasons not to believe anything unflattering about Reagan but that's not the same thing as refuting anything that I have ever written in my admittedly Quixotic quest to set the record straight.

Reagan-heads have often tried to shout me down on these issues. But facts are facts and the fact is it was Ronald Reagan, indebted to GOP money interests back home, a tiny elite of just one percent of the total population, who blinked at Reykjavik and thus blew --perhaps forever --what might have been the world's last chance for a non-nuclear peace.

If, that is, the ensuing “Great Society,” to borrow a term from JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, were laid low by a nuclear attack on an American city (or seven, if al Qaeda had its way).

This is the territory into which Gorbachev launched his most daring raids. First, in 1985, he announced that the Soviet Union would no longer deploy intermediate-range nuclear forces (INFs in Eastern Europe. Later that year, he proposed that both his country and the US slice their nuclear arsenals in half.)

The next year, at the memorable Reykjavik summit, Gorbachev got Ronald Reagan to agree in principle to his plan for removal of all INFs from Europe, as well as to draw them down worldwide. Caught up in Gorbachev’s enthusiasm, Reagan expressed a willingness to join Russia in eliminating all nuclear weapons in 10 years.

In the end, though, Reagan clung to his blankie, the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars.

Gorbachev feared SDI would lead to nukes in space, not to mention leave the Soviet defense establishment with the impression he’d been played. Their dreams of saving the world came crashing back down to earth.

--It’s not a new JFK we need in Obama, but the next Gorbachev

Recently, Mitt Romney built his failed campaign around two words: 'Ronald' and 'Reagan' just as Giuliani built his around 'nine' and 'eleven', as McCain built his platform around three words: 'stay', 'Iraq', 'surge'!

Morally bankrupt and out of ideas, the GOP has tried to make of Ronald Reagan a "savior". Failing live leadership, the GOP settled for myths and desperate hope for the "second-coming" of Ronald Reagan! It won't work. Reagan is still dead!

At another level, rank and file GOP understand that should a deified Reagan fall out of the Pantheon, the party itself is finished. Reagan was all they had left. In the blogosphere, Reagan defenders themselves are resurrected, more vehement and less rational than ever. To wit:

The lies of the left about Ronald Reagan stink up the blogosphere worse than a rest room at a Greyhound bus depot.

I leave it to Larry Craig to assess the stalls at Greyhound --a topic about which he may have considerable expertise and foot-tapping experience. Craig is but a specimen of GOP hypocrisy, lack of imagination, it's endemic inability to come up with anything other than stupid slogans on the one hand and lies, smears, propaganda, assassination on the other. It's their one-two punch! Various sexual perversions to include sado-masochism and homosexuality are just contrapuntal to the sellouts made to the Military/Industrial complex.

The presidency of Ronald Reagan confirms the assertion: the GOP is not a political party, its a criminal conspiracy, a kooky cult built up around Reagan types who encourage addled followers to 'feel good about being liars, psychopaths, and elite militarists.

In my book, Without Conscience, I argued that we live in a "camouflage society," a society in which some psychopathic traits- egocentricity, lack of concern for others, superficiality, style over substance, being "cool," manipulativeness, and so forth- increasingly are tolerated and even valued. With respect to the topic of this article, it is easy to see how both psychopaths and those with ASPD could blend in readily with groups holding antisocial or criminal values. It is more difficult to envisage how those with ASPD could hide out among more pro social segments of society. Yet psychopaths have little difficulty infiltrating the domains of business, politics, law enforcement, government, academia and other social structures. It is the egocentric, cold-blooded and remorseless psychopaths who blend into all aspects of society and have such devastating impacts on people around them who send chills down the spines of law enforcement officers.

--[Hare, Robert D., PhD., Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Case of Diagnostic Confusion, Psychiatric Times, February 1996: Vol. XIII Issue 2] The Role of the Psychopath in the Generation of Global Evil

Reagan was precisely what the GOP needed at the time. A former movie star, he was a practiced Spellbinder.

To the spellbinder, everything becomes subordinated to their conviction that they are exceptional, sometimes even messianic. An ideology can emerge from such individuals that is certainly partly true, and the value of which is claimed to be superior to all other ideologies. They believe they will find many converts to their ideology and when they discover that this is not the case, they are shocked and fume with “paramoral indignation.” The attitude of most normal people to such spellbinders is generally critical, pained and disturbed.The spellbinder places on a high moral plane anyone who succumbs to his influence, and he will shower such people with attention and property and perks of all kinds. Critics are met with “moral” outrage and it will be claimed by the spellbinder that the compliant minority is actually a majority.Such activity is always characterized by the inability to foresee its final results, something obvious from the psychological point of view, because its substratum contains pathological phenomena, and both spellbinding and self-charming make it impossible to perceive reality accurately enough to foresee results logically.In a healthy society, the activities of spellbinders meet with criticism effective enough to stifle them quickly. However, when they are preceded by conditions operating destructively on common sense and social order - such as social injustice, cultural backwardness, or intellectually limited rulers manifesting pathological traits - spellbinders activities have led entire societies into large-scale human tragedy.Such an individual fishes an environment or society for people amenable to his influence, deepening their psychological weaknesses until they finally become a ponerogenic union.

-- The Role of the Psychopath in the Generation of Global Evil

There is enough probable cause in the public record alone to indict the leadership of the GOP for violations of various US Criminal Codes having to do with "criminal conspiracy". Now we know why the GOP is eager to keep Reagan alive and disprove the existence of conspiracies. If conspiracies did not exist, Ronald Reagan himself need not have worried about the opinion of Iran/Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh who believed Reagan guilty of conspiring to arm an avowed enemy of the US while funneling money to a right-wing terrorist organization.

The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President's willful activities.

What protection do the people of the United States have against such a concerted action by such powerful officers? The Constitution provides for congressional oversight and congressional control of appropriations, but if false information is given to Congress, these checks and balances are of lessened value.

--Lawrence Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matter

As has been pointed out, Jimmy Carter is in fact among the best Presidents in job creation. The GOP attack Carter because they fear and resent his successes.

Reagan’s election in November 1980 also was welcomed in other quarters. His victory set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's anti-communist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.

In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. [Martin Edwin Andersen's Dossier Secreto.]

Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every anti-communist action justified, no matter how brutal.

From his eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the implicated forces.

The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala.

The one consistent element in these slaughters was the over-arching Cold War rationalization, emanating from Ronald Reagan's White House.

--Robert Parry, Obama's Dubious Praise for Reagan

Hoping to deflect attention from the new Äugustus, Reagan worshipers claim that Carter was responsible for "horrible inflation" and 20% interest rates. So what? Interest rates would be expected to decline under Reagan's depression as interest rates, in fact, decline in every recession or depression.

During Reagan's depression, the GDP declined at a rate of 2.2 percent, quite possibly the biggest such decline since the Great Depression, most certainly it was the biggest decline in the more than twenty years between 1973 to the assumption of the White House by Bush. Millions lost jobs and homes. In any case, it was the Federal Reserve Board that slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply, thus reducing prices. Ronald Reagan had nothing whatsoever to do with it! It was the Fed --not Reagan --who was responsible for the following but short-lived recovery.

Under Carter, people were at work and productive. They were buying homes --not leaving them under the threat of imminent foreclosure as many, perhaps, millions are doing now. That was not the case under Reagan who destroyed the trade unions, exported jobs and technology, and plunged the nation into a depression of two years ---the very worst since Herbert Hoover's Great Depression!

Ronald Reagan justified disastrous economic policies with ideological nonsense called 'supply-side economics or, derisively, 'Trickle Down' theory might have worked in a completely "closed economy". But the US imports goods from abroad. 'Tax cuts' to non-productive, American elites who outsource [read: export] jobs abroad will only squirrel away a 'tax cuts' in a safe haven beyond the reach of the tax man. It is money that will never trickle down. It is monies lost forever to investment inside the United States. It is the mechanism by which the GOP has made of America a third world nation. It is the mechanism by which the axis of Reagan/Bush destroyed a once great nation!
The US, a net debtor nation, imports most of its automobiles, appliances, and electronic goods from abroad. No wealth trickles down. Items that had been the staple of the US economic engine had, at one time, provided jobs at home. That has not been the case since Ronald Reagan and the GOP feasted upon the rotting carcass that had been the source of US industrial might. Compounding the tragedy, Ronald Reagan slashed taxes for millionaires and billionaires and everyone else got poor.

"Globalization" amid Ronald Reagan's orgy of union-busting, offshore tax havens and outsourcing, must be blamed for the decline of US exports, the collapse of major US industries, the fact that the US is now a third world nation behind a mask of Hollywood and glitz. The US now pulls up the rear, behind China, Japan, Europe and much of the world. Everything from jeans to binoculars now come from China, IT is outsourced to India, and I see few Americans driving anything but Japanese cars.
Given this hole dug over more than twenty years, I am as outraged as I am 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.
Before Reagan, America had a steel industry. After Reagan, it didn't. Before Reagan, America had a viable automotive industry. After Reagan, the US was buying its cars from Japan. Before Reagan, small retailers still existed. After Reagan, small stores had all but disappeared, giving way to huge corporate chains, and, in time, WalMart --the economic Kudzu that ate America.

Typically, Reagan would take credit for reforms begun under Carter. It was Carter who gave the rich a capital gains tax cut, even as he deregulated key industries like trucking and airlines. Carter also increased defense spending. I happen to think Carter ought not have done that! But, to his credit, he didn't muck it up nearly as much as did Reagan who sold his soul for the elite GOP base of robber barons, war lords and buyers of crooked GOP politicians!

The era was largely characterized by the undue influence of corporate PACs which forced Congress to pass pro-business/anti-individual, anti-family legislation. Supply-siders believed it would trickle down. Like Bush's war on Iraq, it didn't work out as planned. The nation was plunged into the worst and longest (two years) depression since WWII.

The GOP was in need of another 'cold war' when Reagan tried to exploit several 'war' --a warn on porn (Ed Meese's favorite topic), a war on drugs, and, a war on terrorism which Reagan clearly lost. FBI stats prove beyond any reasonable doubt that 'terrorism' is always worse under GOP regimes and that is true because GOP policies create terrorism. The GOP cannot create success with its own policies and will, therefore, subvert the successes of other parties. The GOP can only run against 'commies', 'drugs', 'porn' or 'terrorism'. If it must, the GOP will inspire or support terrorism if there is no real terrorism to exploit. Facts are facts. Terrorism was three times worse under the regime of Ronald Reagan as that of Bill Clinton. There is a rational explanation for that the fact that terrorism is always worse under GOP regimes. That explanation is this: GOP policies cause and inspire terrorism if the GOP does not actively create and support it as it did in the Iran/Contra scandal.

Much is made of the demoralized military under Carter. What had they to be demoralized about? The military was no longer slogging through the swamps in Viet Nam and they had to yet to be sent to Lebanon by Ronald Reagan. The Pentagon brass should just get over it! The Pentagon Brass are created to serve the nation; the 'nation' is not created in order to servce the brass.

The 'Pentagon Brass' are not 'war heroes'. They don't put their lives on the front lines. They don't get shot it! They are glorified pencil pushers and bureaucrats. If they were disgruntled, it is no fault of the electorate. Fuck 'em! If they don't like their jobs, then let them find another line of work. Let them follow Herbert Hooover's advice; in other words, 'let them sell oranges from a pushcart!'

All in all, the enlisted person, under Carter, had it a helluva lot better than do soldiers under either Ronald Reagan who dispatched them to Lebanon to be blown up in a Marine Barracks or under Bush who mired and dehumanized them in Iraq. Has anyone bothered to check out the suicide rates of returning servicemen?

(CBS) Some of America's 25 million veterans face their biggest fight when they return home from the battlefield -- when they take on mental illness.

And, a CBS News analysis reveals they lose that battle, and take their own lives, at a clip described by various experts as "stunning" and "alarming," according to Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian. One called it a "hidden epidemic."

He says no one had ever counted just how many suicides there are nationwide among those who had served in the military -- until now.

The five-month CBS News probe, based upon a detailed analysis of data obtained from death records from 2004 and 2005, found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 as non-vets.

A recent Veteran Affairs Department estimate says some 5,000 ex-servicemen and women will commit suicide this year, largely as a result of mental health issues, and Keteyian says, "Our numbers are much higher than that, overall."

--CBS News: Vets' Suicide Rate "Stunning"

Goppers have been known to opine: ...cleaning up after Carter's utter incompetence was messy. In fact, there was nothing to clean up. There was, in fact, nothing for Reagan to do but screw up and screw up he did! The nation would have been better off if Reagan has done absolutely nothing! See my article: Reagan was no hero but he played one in a movie.
That's because, under Reagan, the GOP became not merely a crime syndicate, it became a kooky cult.

The methods that cults use can be used by anyone in any group setting and can be thought of as a "Management system" or a technique of motivation. Thus there is a benefit to applying this knowledge in other areas.

ISOLATION

An obvious way a cult does this is through isolation from other social networks. The extreme of a cult does not have to be applied. If this is applied to a work setting then the stated rule is "This is work. Leave the other parts of life at the door." Likewise the person can go home and leave work at work. The result is a "work personality" and a "home personality".

ENLIST THEM IN A CAUSE

Nothing is quite so motivating than to be involved in a glorious cause. To do this make the success of the group linked to the individuals success. Make the cause lofty and ideal and progressive always on the wave of the future.

DESCRIBE FOR THEM THE QUALITIES OF A "GOOD SOLDIER"

Once you've enlisted them in a cause you can now tell them how best to serve the cause. By describing the qualities of "good soldier" you create an ideal of behavior. On the one hand it's important to point out qualities that they already have to affirm their part in the cause. But it's also important to describe qualities that they will have to work to develop. These qualities can be actual behaviors or they can values that you wish to impose on them. Either way you are holding them to an ideal and letting them know that they play a vital role in the cause.

DRILL THE "GOOD SOLDIER" INTO EXISTENCE (the Nazi/Gop way?)

A cult may do this process with intense drills and exercises that emphasize the qualities and values of a good soldier. They will create scenarios and situations where these qualities can be tested and followed up with feedback and correction when needed. You can do this in a management setting much the same way. The goal is to make them WANT to bring on this new personality and do it without prompting. This is done mostly by creating a high standard and through a subtle application of rewards and punishment.

CREATE A GROUP MYTH

Nothing will solidify the new personality than getting a group of "good soldiers" together and having them work with some great purpose in mind. By getting your employee, staff, cult member involved in a group and putting them into action as a group you help create an "esprit de corp" that unifies them and helps solidify the newly created personality. Thus, find tasks that your group can do together. It could be a project, a field trip or anything where they have to work together as a group.

Every one of these tactics can be used and applied in your business and social settings.
If your response to this is to recoil at the idea of using cult strategies then stop it. These strategies are used all the time in many different setting and situations. A good manager is a person who would make a good cult leader if they choose to do it.

The benefits of this strategy include highly motivated people who support the team and, when needed, can put work on hold to develop a personal life.

--How cults create an artificial personality in their followers

If the policies worked, Reagan could take credit for them. If they didn't work, Reagan and the GOP noise machine always had Carter to blame! The GOP still bad-mouths Carter though there is not a Republican who can carry Carter's ...uh...water.

When I talk of tax cuts, I am reminded that every major tax cut in this century has strengthened the economy, generated renewed productivity and ended up yielding new revenues for the government by creating new investment, new jobs and more commerce among our people.

--Ronald Reagan, Acceptance Speech at the 1980 Republican Convention

That's a famous Reagan half-truth. Keynesian, Democratic tax cuts, indeed, stimulate economies but only under Democratic regimes --not under GOP regimes. The reason: Democratic tax cuts are egalitarian, benefiting all income groups and classes. GOP tax cuts, by contrast, are deliberately inequitable, benefiting only rich cronies, the corporate establishment, the Military/Industrial complex and other corporate supporters of the GOP establishment. GOP tax cuts do not and have never 'trickled down'. GOP tax cuts are a payoff, just as were the no-bid contracts to Halliburton, Blackwater et al! I've got the stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, and the BEA to prove it.

Despite his over-blown, high sounding rhetoric, Reagan's "trickle down" tax cut of 1982 was quickly followed by a depression lasting some two years --the longest and deepest depression since Herbert Hoover's "Great Depression".

At the end of two years of hardship, Americans were no better off. The GDP growth rate of some three percent was no better at the end of those two years than it had been before the Reagan crash. Nothing had been gained for the suffering.

The Reagan years can be summed up briefly. He doubled the size of the Federal Bureaucracy and tripled the national deficit. The most pernicious effect of GOP economic policy is the effect of declining opportunity, a corollary of decline 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? Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman called Reaganomics a 'Trojan Horse'. He understood that tax cuts were not intended to trickle down. That's just how they are sold. Rather --the tax cuts always do precisely what the GOP insiders know they will do: they enrich the GOP base! They are 'laundered' pay offs. Here is how someone who lived through the Reagan nightmare remembers it:

I was in the automotive field at the time, and dozens and dozens of established tool manufacturers, unionized shops, producing high quality tools, small companies with deep roots and real a commitment to the towns they were in all across the Midwest and the local communities, went out of business.

Why? Because with deregulation any hustler could get virtually unlimited financing and set up manufacturing plants overseas producing exact copies of American made tools and flood the US market with them with no fear of the Reagan administration enforcing any laws against them. It also became easier, and far less risky, to get financing to set up a thousand junky identical chain outlets than it did for small local businesses to get credit or tax relief - restaurants, auto parts stores, hardware stores, grocery stores, florists - thousands and thousands of small businesses chewed up and destroyed.

We have a younger generation of people who have no personal experience with so many things - local businesses and tight knit communities, affordable, convenient and efficient public transportation, wages that allowed one person in a household enough income to support the family, homes that were homes, not investments, easy access to public recreation, confidence in the safety of food and other consumer items, all regulated and inspected for the public welfare, freedom from the relentless intrusion of corporations into our lives, and on and on and on.

Or if we buy into the dishonest rationales and excuses and obfuscations that the Reagan administration used to disguise their agenda and to sell it to the public, we surrender any chance at real change, we bury the coffin forever into which the right wingers have put the left - and by extension, the majority of the American people, and we condemn ourselves to living in this ongoing nightmare of destruction and human suffering.Reagan destroyed the country, and if we try to gloss over that (which at the very least Obama's remarks have done.

It is not time to make nice with the Reagan legacy propagandists, even by implication or omission. It is time to relentlessly and fearlessly point out that the crisis the country is in is best described and analyzed as the chickens coming home to roost from the Reagan era.
It is time to fight. It is not time to heal or move on—no matter how attractive and appealing this may be—it is not time to paper over the profound divide in the country, it is not time to accommodate or apologize for.

--Found on the Democratic Underground

Let's take a look at the history before it gets re-written:

Any Democratic President has presided over greater economic growth and job creation than any Republican President since World War II.
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.
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!
The job creation rate under Clinton was 2.4% significantly higher than Ronald Reagan's 2.1% per year.
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.
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?
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.
By contrast, most of the jobs created on Clinton's watch were in the private sector.
Put another way: any Democratic President beats any Republican President since World War II.

Everything posted above is based upon official, government stats from the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CBO, and BEA among others. They are 'official' and irrefutable unless someone wants to make the outlandish case that the Federal Bureaucracy, the numerous agencies which keep these stats, is somehow biased. That argument is absurd in light of the fact that of those 20 years from the election of Ronald Reagan to the stolen election of 2000, Democrats had the Presidency in only eight of them.

Along the way, Reagan made up a whopper --his story about a Cadillac driving welfare gra'ma. The story reveals the real Reagan --Reagan the bald-faced liar! This bald-faced lie became his rationalization for cutting back social programs. Unca Ronnie most certainly knew it to be a bald-faced lie.

Then there was the attack and invasion of tiny Grenada. Does anyone remember how Grenada became an imminent threat to US security such that a war of aggression against it was necessitated or justified under international law?
Reagan must be remembered for:

having blown a chance for nuclear disarmament at Reykjavik
beginning a trend still underway but for a brief respite in Clinton's second term, that is, the rich get filthy rich exponentially while everyone else loses ground
making those who benefit from this rapacious policy 'feel good about themselves'
institutionalizing government corruption with Iran/Contra, the Savings and Loan Scandal, and a child prostitution ring that was literally run out of the White House
lying about a 'welfare grannie' whom Reagan claimed drove a Caddy! Bullshit
anemic job growth which --contrary to popular myth --trails that of Jimmy Carter
making terrorism worse, in fact, terrorism incidents were THREE TIMES more numerous under Reagan than any Demo president since WWII. [Source: FBI Stats, published, compiled and charted by the Brookings Inst.; See:Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes]
almost starting a nuclear war when he shot off his stupid mouth on an open microphone about radar detecting Russian ICBMs enroute to the US
conquering Grenada (to his credit Reagan did NOT wear an enhancing cod-piece and an ill-fitting jumpsuit)
Ronald Reagan ordered a US invasion of Lebanon in 1982 premised upon a "deceitful pretext", in other words, a bald-faced lie! The "pretext" was that the PLO, called a terrorist organization, had shot the Israeli ambassador to London. In fact, the shooter may never have been a PLO member. See: [Fading Illusions: D-Day and Reagan]
finishing off the last vestige of the labor movement depriving the voiceless of 'voice'
elevating style over substance and stupidity over intellect, an area he pioneered for the Bushmen to come
cutting funding for AIDS research in the hope that all 'immoral' AIDS sufferers would die off and thus 'cure' the disease
waging a war on 'porn' and losing to the un-reported glee of the jerkoffs and child prostitution rackets headquartered inside his White House, his administration
waging war on education by calling for an end to free tuition for state college and university students, demanding 20% across-the-board cuts in higher education funding,repeatedly slashing construction funds for state campuses, engineering the firing of Clark Kerr, the popular President of the University of California, declaring that the state "should not subsidize intellectual curiosity [the rationale: the GOP is safe when all of us are kept stupid, uneducated, or in the dark!]
waging war on the environment and winning!
waging the GOPs obligatory 'war on drugs' and losing!
selling out to the big corporations
presiding over the demise of the US Steel industry, car industry, electronics industry and almost every industry in which the US, at one time, led the world
last --but not least --presiding over the end of American empire by making of the US a net debtor nation which it has been ever since.

Only the GOP could have destroyed a nation so efficiently and have the nerve to tout it on TV ads! Bush Jr has finished the job begun by Reagan. See ya' in hell!

The government's own numbers prove conclusively that Reagan's tax cuts enrich his base and began a pernicious trend which continues to this day. The nation plunged into a depression of some two years, the longest and worst depression since Hoover's big one of the 1930s. Though he had promised to reduce the size of government, Reagan doubled the federal bureaucracy, doubled the debt, and tripled the deficit. He blazed a trail for Bush, the lesser and idiot!Reagan showed them how to destroy a nation.

Nations which tax the rich progressively are more egalitarian, more efficient, more productive and --it is proven in numerous studies --the people themselves are happier, more productive, and better educated. The opposite is true of America. More people are getting poorer; fewer are getting richer; an increasingly tiny percentage (one percent and shrinking) are getting exponentially richer. It is the end of the United States as a world power, indeed, as a viable nation!

GOP thinking is circular and symptomatic of psychosis. They disdain 'poor people' while deliberately creating conditions guaranteed to create more of them.

How an 'honest' general summed it all up:

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives...

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows...

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill...

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations...

...a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends...

The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it...

Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed.

--Gen. Smedly Butler, War is a Racket!

An essential resource: This War was About So Much More

An addendum: 20 things you have to believe to be a Republican today

1. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.
2. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq.
3. Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.
4. "Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.
5. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all humankind without regulation.
6. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.
7. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.
8. Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.
9. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.
10. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.
11. HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.
12. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.
13. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.
14. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.
15. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war crime in which thousands were killed or murdered is a solid defense policy.
16. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.
17. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's AWOL record, cocaine abuse, and queer exploits is none of our business.
18. You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.
19. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the 1980s is irrelevant.
20. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist; but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

--20 things you have to believe to be a Republican today

Friday, November 21, 2008

Carl Jung, George Bush, and 'White Heat' ---the Psychopathic 'Will to Power' and World War

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

No one has yet made a psychopathic killer criminal movie quite like 'White Heat', a 1949 classic starring James Cagney. The unlikely parallel was George W. Bush whom many feared would reprise Cagney's searing, most memorable performance. For as long as Bush occupied the Oval Office, anyone could imagine George Bush as Cody Jarrett, figuratively climbing on board a nuke, declaring himself to be on top of the world before blowing it all up!

Monsters from the ID

As Bush occupied the Oval Office, monsters from his id made themselves at home. Typically thin-skinned, Bush became unhinged amid the chance that he might plunge the world into a world war the external projection of his internal struggle against demons of his own creation, the spawn of his twisted id.
In the movies, this dynamic was embodied in Cagney's portrayal of Cody Jarrett, whom reviewers called an 'incendiary, disturbed gang leader '. Jarrett, like Bush, became an archetype, a Wotan, literally, the 'monster from the id', Bush's id, the collective worst impulses of mankind made flesh.

As in the movie, 'White Heat', primitive forces threatened to drive Bush in a Hegelian dialectic to an inexorable and iconic apocalypse. In 'White Heat' the process resulted in one of moviedom's most memorable and most disturbing scenes. It has been described as apocalyptic, a word that describes Bush's 'adventure', his war of naked aggression against Iraq, a war in which some 1.6 million people have died by his hand.

White Heat is, of course, the movie that gave us "Top of the world, Ma!", as iconic a Hollywood misquote as "Play it again, Sam" and "We don't need no steenking badges." That cry caps the climactic gunfight showdown between Cody and an army of T-men atop a natural-gas refinery, and the famous fireball explosion that follows may be Cody himself finally spontaneously combusting, not just the timely immolation of all those volatile fluids beneath him. By that point in the story, Cody is pure uncorked id. Whether doing away with witnesses at his gang's train robbery in the opening scenes, or taking cool pride in the casual comeuppance he gives his ambitious lieutenant Big Ed (Steve Cochran) — who has been helping himself to something on the side with Cody's sexy, vulgar wife and mob moll, Verna (Virginia Mayo) — Cody is a force of nature, as efficient and cold-blooded as a forest fire. Not even the government men, who track Cody with sophisticated postwar technology, can stop him. Instead, it's the human element that brings about Cody's Greek tragedy downfall. He risks a trusting friendship with Vic Pardo, a worshipful crook he meets in prison. Pardo, though, is actually Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien), a "copper" who infiltrates gangs by posing as a criminal. When Cody catches on to "Pardo's" betrayal, he almost weeps, a staggering moment of pathos that inflates Cagney's character to three dimensions, guaranteeing that we'll remember him long after the movie has ended.

But it's Ma herself who really makes Cody Jarrett more than just another homicidal thug. Played with chilling mother-love by Margaret Wycherly, Cody's devoted mom is as amoral as any killer on the screen. When middle-aged Cody sits on Ma's lap for love and comfort before one of his crippling headaches, we witness a dynamic that's just steps away from Hitchcock's Psycho eleven years later. In a prison chow hall, Cody snaps when he hears that Ma has died, and Cagney draws out Cody's berserk grief into an animal wail that doesn't stop as he barrels crazed through prison guards who drop before him like straw men. When the big moment comes, Cody's exclamation to the heavens before his apocalyptic finale is as inevitable as Oedipus's own fate, but with a kablooey that 1949 audiences may have felt was not just dramatic, but outright atomic. The gangster genre would never be the same old same old again.

...
When the big moment comes, Cody's exclamation to the heavens before his apocalyptic finale is as inevitable as Oedipus's own fate, but with a kablooey that 1949 audiences may have felt was not just dramatic, but outright atomic. The gangster genre would never be the same old same old again.

--Mark Bourne, White Heat

Wotan Awakened

In 1936, Jung tried to describe what was happening in Germany —as many now try to understand what is happening in America. In his essay, "Wotan", Jung described developments in terms of the mythology of the god Odin, a.k.a. the Germanic god Wotan. Jung wrote: "We have seen him come to life in the German Youth Movement."

We were even beginning to regard war between civilized nations as a fable, thinking that such an absurdity would become less and less possible in our rational, internationally organized world. And what came after the war was a veritable witches’ Sabbath. Everywhere fantastic revolutions, violent alterations of the map, reversions in politics to medieval or even antique prototypes, totalitarian states that engulf their neighbours and outdo all previous theocracies in their absolutist claims, persecutions of Christians and Jews, wholesale political murder, and finally we have witnessed a light-hearted piratical raid on a peaceful, half-civilized people.

--Carl Gustav Jung, Wotan

It is not 'Gods' who came to life in America but, rather, demons loosed upon an unsuspecting world. Gods or demons, they are but manifestations of the human personality.

Bush shares his 'demons' with a demographic represented in Germany by the Nazi party, in America by the Ku Klux Klan, the radical right, the GOP.

The banks are not to blame. There is a generalized contraction of credit in the non-bank financial system where structured finance has blown up and taken half of Wall Street with it. It's the end of an era. Here's how economist Henry C. K. Liu sums it up in his "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy":

"Neoliberal economists in the last three decades have denied the possibility of a replay of the worldwide destructiveness of the Great Depression that followed the collapse of the speculative bubble created by unfettered US financial markets of the 'Roaring Twenties'. They fooled themselves into thinking that false prosperity built on debt could be sustainable with monetary indulgence. Now history is repeating itself, this time with a new, more lethal virus that has infested deregulated global financial markets with 'innovative' debt securitization, structured finance and maverick banking operations flooded with excess liquidity released by accommodative central banks. A massive structure of phantom wealth was built on the quicksand of debt manipulation. This debt bubble finally imploded in July 2007 and is now threatening to bring down the entire global financial system to cause an economic meltdown unless enlightened political leadership adopts coordinated corrective measures on a global scale."
Rome is burning. It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system and move on to "Plan B" before it's too late.

--Mike Whitney, This Is Not A Normal Recession: Moving on to Plan B

The GOP threatens to uncork the evil genie, to summon up the Norse 'god' Wotan, to lift the restraints upon every person's very worst motives, impulses and desires. There are good reasons for the restraints imposed by the 'superego'. Without them, people like Cody Jarrett, George W. Bush, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, and Augusto Pinochet would kill us all in a global conflagration. It is easy enough to imagine Bush, still seeking his father's approval, perhaps competing with him for Bar's attention, climbing upon the pinnacle of his industry's icon --the oil refinery. It is easy enough to imagine Bush screaming from atop a refinery tower: "Top of the world, Ma! Top of the world".

Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist at the war crimes trial of Nazis at Nuremberg concluded that 'evil' was the 'utter lack of empathy'. I might add: empathy with another is possible only if one has come to terms with one's own "shadow", one's own "source of creativity", one's own humanity. One who cannot see humanity in either self or others is a Nazi in spirit, a person lacking 'empathy', a person lacking the ability to see him/herself in another place, time, or body. Those who may be described as Gilbert described 'Nazis' are what Jung would call 'inauthentic'; they live lives hidden behind masks.

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Bush Rejected by Peers

A rejection by peers is mythical. Many so-called primitive tribes make a ritual of ostracizing a member who has breached the most sacred shibboleths. Jung and Joseph Campbell would have had much to say about the fact that some world leaders simply refused to shake Bush's hand. Some even looked away. Bush himself ducked and overtly dodged Angela Merkel.

Bush was shunned by peers. In some Eastern cultures, the loss of their respect might have required a ritual suicide. More recently, Japanese and British commanders were expected to shoot themselves.

Monday, November 17, 2008

'Corporate Prisons': the GOP's Formula for More Crime, Declining Education, and Slave Labor

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Like many crooked GOP schemes, the fascist corporatization of state prisons makes a slick end run around the Bill of Rights, sets up crony corporations with a guaranteed gravy train at tax payer expense, and ---to sweeten the deal --it provides them with slave labor.

It is no accident that under Gov George W. Bush, Texas beat out Mississippi for 'dead last' in education. As education declines, crime increases. Increasing crime fuels the corporate prison gravy train. Justice has nothing to do with it. It's about warehousing and enslaving people for profit. There is nothing in the middle ages half so slick, so cunning, so evil!

Unless the nation wakes up to what happened in Texas, the nation will enter not just an economic depression but a new dark age, perhaps an end to civilization as we know it. In many ways we already share with the middle ages, a careless disregard for every life. In Texas, the crime rate increased as the prison systems --under Bush Jr --went corporate! As a result, one in 100 Texas residents are in prison, many of them 'corporate' lock ups in which prisoners have no rights. As Texas took the GOP/fascist prison route, education tanked --a recipe for future unemployment, poverty and increased crime.

I see a pattern. Declining education is a recipe for guaranteed unemployment, poverty, and crime. It also represents a guaranteed, risk free income to the evil corporations who run the state's corporate gulag often with no-bid contracts! As long as the quality of public education declines, two groups will benefit: the corporate owned prisons and expensive private schools affordable only to the very, very rich and/or privileged. The GOP runs states like Bush ran the war of aggression against Iraq. State prisons are just another money making opportunity, as Iraq was for the likes of Dick Cheney's Halliburton and professional thugs like Blackwater.

My assertions are backed up by a recent Pew study of trends [PDF] that had been embraced by Bush's Texas, primarily the rapid outsourcing of prison construction and management throughout the US. As in Texas, crime rates over the period under study increased. Guilt or innocence is of no concern to corporate robber barons. It is an Orwellian nightmare of waste, graft, and fascism in which no one is held to account.

As the GOP "Enronized" the great state of Texas, an assembly line criminal justice system, in cahoots with a medieval, privatized prison system, proved to be an oxymoron. It was "criminal" but hardly "justice". Despite the GOPs "worst" efforts, crime in Texas, always a topic of much discussion and study, has gotten worse. Texas is big on capital punishment, but even the industrialized application of the death penalty cannot kill off the criminals as fast as they procreate and multiply. The GOP may be seeking a "final solution".

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:

There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.
The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.
The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

Texas is called the gulag state for good reasons. Certainly, justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Black people represent only 12% of the Texas population but comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison and jail population.

While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day.
One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice supervision.
Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks of 2366 per 100,000.
If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated 824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the US The new figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans incarcerated in the US by 63%.

Do you see the pattern? I allege that Bush deliberately SABOTAGED education IN Texas with budget cuts and other GOP idiocy SO THAT his corporate buddies could make a killing in the prison business!

The corporatization of the nation's prisons is called 'the Prison Industrial Complex. As we have seen, crime increases as education declines. Corporate prisons are, therefore, among the fastest growing industries in America. One should not be surprised to find among the corporate prison owners GOP robber barons in search of big bucks, a gravy train pay back for their loyal support of the GOP.

The Prison-Industrial complex consists of prison construction, staffing, operation. There is something in it for everyone lacking a conscience. Because profitability is directly related to the number of inmates, there is, then, no motive to improve education. Education costs money and corporations haven't yet found a away to exploit it. There are no good reasons for the explosive growth of a new industry --that of warehousing folk.

Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons and several state governments have sent thousands of inmates in recent months to prisons and detention centers run by Corrections Corp. of America, Geo Group Inc. and other private operators, as a crackdown on illegal immigration, a lengthening of mandatory sentences for certain crimes and other factors have overcrowded many government facilities.
Prison-policy experts expect inmate populations in 10 states to have increased by 25% or more between 2006 and 2011, according to a report by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts.
Private prisons housed 7.4% of the country's 1.59 million incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons as of the middle of 2007, up from 1.57 million in 2006, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a crime-data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Corrections Corp., the largest private-prison operator in the U.S., with 64 facilities, has built two prisons this year and expanded nine facilities, and it plans to finish two more in 2009. The Nashville, Tenn., company put 1,680 new prison beds into service in its third quarter, helping boost net income 14% to $37.9 million. "There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future," said Damon Hininger, Corrections Corp.'s president and chief operations officer, in a recent interview.
California has shipped more than 5,100 inmates to private prisons run by Corrections Corp. in Arizona, Mississippi and other states since late 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered emergency measures to control a ballooning state-prison population. Prisons were so overcrowded that hundreds of inmates were sleeping in gyms, according to one report. An additional 2,900 prisoners are scheduled to be transferred to private prisons outside the state by the end of next year, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
--Larger Inmate Population Is Boon to Private Prisons

Sticking folk in a dank cell makes lot of people a good living at the expense of a much better, literate, productive, egalitarian society. There is also the danger that an educated population would see through the various GOP scams and pull the plug on the cons, the outright subversions of law, decency, and all those intangibles that make life worth living. We are basically dealing with venal robber barons who don't give a fuck!

After months alone in his cell, Scot Noble Payne finished 20 pages of letters, describing to loved ones the decrepit conditions of the prison where he was serving time for molesting a child. Then Payne used a razor blade to slice two 3-inch gashes in his throat. Guards found his body in the cell's shower, with the water still running.
"Try to comfort my mum too and try to get her to see that I am truly happy again," he wrote his uncle. "I tell you, it sure beats having water on the floor 24/7, a smelly pillow case, sheets with blood stains on them and a stinky towel that hasn't been changed since they caught me."
Payne's suicide on March 4 came seven months after he was sent to the squalid privately run Texas prison by Idaho authorities trying to ease inmate overcrowding in their own state. His death exposed what had been Idaho's standard practice for dealing with inmates sent to out-of-state prisons: Out of sight, out of mind.
It also raised questions about a company hired to operate prisons in 15 states, despite reports of abusive guards and terrible sanitation.
Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press through an open-records request show Idaho did little monitoring of out-of-state inmates, despite repeated complaints from prisoners, their families and a prison inspector.
...
--JOHN MILLER, Suicide Exposes Squalid Conditions in Privately-Run Texas Prison; Company Operates in 15 States

Another Act of Treason: George W. Bush 'Outed' Valerie Plame

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan has revealed that it was George W. Bush himself who authorized Dick Cheney to 'out' Valerie Plame. When he is no longer President, Bush will not be able to 'pardon' himself for the many 'counts' of high treason that will be charged him. Bush must therefore move to pardon himself while he is still in the White House but doing so will prove his guilt! Innocent folk don't 'pardon' themselves of serious crimes.

Nixon left the White House aboard a helicopter. To make a fast getaway, Bush will need a jet. When he is no longer President, Bush will not be able to 'pardon' himself for the many 'counts' of high treason that will be charged him. I accuse Bush of war crimes, high treason, graft, and various capital crimes as stated succinctly in US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441. Amid the lies he told about 911, the lies he told to wage aggressive war, it is now learned that it was Bush --personally --who 'outed' CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The 'Plame Affair' was also called 'Treasongate'. The 'outing' of an undercover 'operative' exposes that operative to reprisals by an 'enemy'. That's why Bush's act is an act of treason against the people of the United States.

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

--Article III, US Constitution

The word treason covers the more egregious acts of betrayal or disloyalty to a sovereign or nation. That describes perfectly Bush's actions with regard to Plame. Under the US Constitution and, in Britain by common law, sovereignty resides with the people themselves. Bush flouted that principle with stolen elections in 2000 and, again, in 2004. His administration systematically subverted and attempted to dismantle the US Constitution, called, by Bush, a 'goddamned piece of paper'.

Accomplices who must stand trial with Bush and Cheney will include Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Pentagon brass, and numerous co-conspirators in the 'big business' community, in other words, the big contractors who stood to get big contracts when Bush began his wars of naked aggression. Just as Krupp, Thyssen, and I.G. Farben conspired with Hitler and agreed to finance him, some of America's notable 'corporate sponsors' lined up behind Bush for the booty.
Treason, as referenced above, consists in waging war upon the people of the United States. Bushco wages war upon the people of the US in many ways. The 'outing' of Plame is one of them. Bush's campaign of deliberate lies to 'justify' his attack and invasion of Iraq is another. The war itself violates almost every convention to which the US is bound by treaty or agreement.

Bush, an idiot, was at least smart enough to 'unnerstan' that unless Saddam had WMD, a war against him violated US criminal codes, international treaties, the principles of Nuremberg, and the Geneva Convention! Bush was at least smart enough to know that without the 'threat' posed by WMD, a war of naked aggression would earn him the death penalty. He charged his 'legal team' with coming up with ways to make legal --after the fact --the crimes he had already committed. He tried to re-write the laws.

Bush told other lies and none more egregious or harmful than those he told about 911. To protect those lies, Bush quashed every effort to investigate fully the events of 911. He opposed the creation of the 911 Commission and when it was formed, he obstructed it! The result is a whitewash discounted by the Republican and Democratic co-chairs. They don't believe it! Why should you?

Bush, his co-conspirators and accomplices, floated an absurd coincidence theory that on the very day, the very moment that Dick Cheney was supervising an exercise [pdf] in which terrorists would attack the Pentagon and WTC, a rag tag gang of 'terrorists' would do precisely that! The odds alone indict our 'fearless Fuhrer'.

Our 'government', a government unlawfully seized by George W. Bush, thus declared war upon the people of the United States! As Che would have put it: the peace is already considered to be broken. Thomas Jefferson would have already declared 'our' independence of a cabal that had already destroyed the 'legitimate' government of the United States. Jefferson, in fact, declared our 'independence' of a similarly tyrannical 'George'.

The so-called 911 'Truth Movement' began with David Ray Griffin's still un-refuted paper entitled: The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True. Popular Mechanics and MSM propagandists tried to marginalize this paper but they could not refute it! PM presumes to defend an 'official theory' but there is no such 'theory' left to defend. The 911 Commission report is, in fact, the official story and even the co-chairs repudiate their own report.

Griffin is un-assailed. Last time I checked, steel still will not melt or weaken at temperatures less than 2795ºF. Bush could not rewrite the laws of physics. The 'raging infernos' inside the buildings of the WTC were no where near hot enough to have brought down the towers.

The science upon which Griffin based his paper is simply beyond the meager intellectual capacity of idiots like Bill 0'Reilly to comprehend, let alone refute. If steel will not melt at kerosene fire temperatures, then the official theory of 911 is a monumental fraud! Photos of people walking around, waving distress flags, in the hole in the North Tower where some 10,000 gallons of jet fuel was said to have been burning is absolute and irrefutable proof that the fires were never hot enough nor did they last long enough to have brought down the towers. Bushies might wish we would forget WTC 7 about which Larry Silverstein himself said "it was pulled". No airliner struck WTC7. Small, unimpressive fires were much less inflammatory than the rhetoric describing them. It's fall was described in advance by the BBC. What did the BBC know and when did they know it? The only explanation consistent with known facts it that it had been prepared in advance and was pulled just as owner Larry Silverstein said it was. This bears repeating: if WTC7 was pulled, then the official conspiracy theory is nonsense. It was pulled and the official conspiracy theory is nonsense!
Meanwhile, Flight 77 flight data, released upon an FOIA request by the NTSB, indicates that Flight 77 was at altitude of 273 feet at the time of 'impact' at the Pentagon. Therefore, Flight 77 could not possibly have crashed into the Pentagon. Flight 77 --an essential foundation of the 'official conspiracy theory' --could not possibly be true.

In either case, Bush can cite no evidence in support of his absurd lie, his absurd and ludicrous 'official' conspiracy theory in which four flights were hijacked by 19 incompetent pilots. Besides, many of the 'said' hijackers are still alive. The 'official conspiracy theory' cannot account for this fact. The FBI, meanwhile, is on record as having said that there is no evidence linking Bin Laden with the events of 911. Yet --the myths and lies persist among some segments of the population! There is always a high price to be paid for indulging psychotic delusions.

If anything said by Bush at any time about anything has ever been true, then why did Bush oppose the creation of the 911 commission? What was he afraid of?

Why did the Bush administration oppose the creation of a 911 Commission? Why did Bush interfere consistently with the 911 commission when it was, at last, created despite his objections?

Why was 911 forensic evidence destroyed?

Why did Bush sell off WTC steel?

Why did Bush lie about his own activities on 911?

Why did Bush claim to have seen the first plane strike the first tower when there was no live coverage of the event? If he saw it, how could he have seen it? How was that possible? The 'official conspiracy theory' cannot explain it. It was a miracle. Perhaps Bush was psychic!

Why was Dick Cheney supervising a 'scenario' that gamed precisely what, in fact, really happened? How could he have done that?

What are the odds that this incredible and absolutely amazing event would occur for real and on the very day that it was "gamed"? Perhaps Cheney was likewise psychic or had supernatural powers!

Dick Cheney was in a perfect position to have supervised the act of high treason and mass murder that we now call 911. Put Dick Cheney under oath. Demand that he explain his famous "stand down" order given to Norman Mineta! Indict Dick Cheney upon the probable cause that, on Bush's behalf, he supervised the crime of 911.
How coincidental was it that the British Government, like Dick Cheney earlier, gamed the subway bombings on the very day that they happened in fact? The British government was obviously psychic. There is no other explanation. If there is an innocent explanation for that, I would like to hear it from the horse's mouth --Tony Blair himself. If Tony cannot offer up an innocent explanation, then he should join George W. Bush in the dock, charged with mass murder and terrorism. Initially, Bush successfully suppressed dissent at home but failed miserably his self-assigned task of fighting real 'terrorists' abroad. Armed with the Orwellian 'Patriot Act', Bush needed only 'deem' you a 'terrorist' to incarcerate you in a hell-hole in violation of every principle put forward by real statesmen like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. What Thomas Jefferson said of King George III, he would have said of Bush without a re-write. He would have supported efforts to remove Bush. He would have supported efforts to detain Bush, to charge him, try him, and carry out the requisite executions. In Jefferson's day, traitors were hanged, possible shot.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness"

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

Che Guevara said essentially the same thing in his classic treatise on guerrilla warfare.

"When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken."

--Che Guevara, Chapter I: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare

Che may have been prescient. Certainly --the "forces of oppression" had maintained themselves in power "against established law". Bush had personally ordered the illegal and treasonous dismantling of established Constitutional law, which he dismissed with a smirk: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper"! Bush broke the law, subverted the law, ordered the law changed to suit him, and had re-written the law --on the fly --with signing statements, nothing more nor less than decrees. He has ordered his attorneys to render opinions telling him what he wanted to hear. What he wanted to hear was an 'opinion' propping up his delusion that the crimes he had already committed could be made legal after the fact.

His most egregious offense were those in which he flouted the supreme law of the land --the Constitution. Bush's attack on the Constitution had been foreseen by the founders and by the man who occupied Monticello. David Hume wrote:

"When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments as well as to the most free and most popular."

--David Hume, Of the First Principles of Government

Bush resorted to unprecedented measures to shut up his opposition. He was aided by the 'mass media' which had become little more than a right wing echo chamber. The Progressive Movement must demand of the new administration that the laws regulating the huge media monopolies be reviewed. It is time for a new "Communications Act", perhaps one as good as the one Ronald Reagan scrapped because the media was a threat to the liars who backed his own crooked, right wing regime.

The biggest threats to 'our way of life' are the governments that are presumably elected to preserve them. Bush is the best example of this. Bush's very first official lie was the one he told as he took the oath of office! He placed his hand on a black book and, with a smirk, he swore to protect, defend and uphold the Constitution. It is the voice of the people that are put down in the Constitution and so proclaimed in the preamble:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Enemies of the Constitution are, therefore, enemies of the people. Bush's occupancy of the White House was an 'occupation' as odious as that of any foreign invader or hostile power. His legacy is that he worked to subvert the principles of our founding, our heritage, what it means to be 'American'. He betrayed our nation with the crimes of subversion, mass murder, aggressive war, and high treason. He waged war upon the sovereign people of the United States! It is now up to us to make certain that the historical record will show that though Bush waged war upon us, he lost!

Saturday, November 15, 2008

The GOP: Architects of Another 'Great Depression'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP has dominated American economic policy since 1980 and with the exception of a brief period in Clinton's second term, the rich have gotten exceedingly richer and the poor, much, much poorer.

This gaping, growing inequality married to Bush's 'bailout', a failed example of corporate welfare and outright theft, has proven Karl Marx to have been absolutely correct. The nation now faces another Great Depression because it had not learned the lessons of Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan and Bush.

Any US history of events leading up to the stock market crash of 1929 and the 'great depression' following reads like a modern US history from 1980. The causes of the 'Great Depression' include a vastly unequal distribution of wealth and, of course, the stock market crash and financial panic of 1929.

This speculation and the resulting stock market crashes acted as a trigger to the already unstable US economy. Due to the maldistribution of wealth, the economy of the 1920's was one very much dependent upon confidence. The market crashes undermined this confidence.

The rich stopped spending on luxury items, and slowed investments. The middle-class and poor stopped buying things with installment credit for fear of loosing their jobs, and not being able to pay the interest. As a result industrial production fell by more than 9% between the market crashes in October and December 1929. As a result jobs were lost, and soon people starting defaulting on their interest payment.

Radios and cars bought with installment credit had to be returned. All of the sudden warehouses were piling up with inventory. The thriving industries that had been connected with the automobile and radio industries started falling apart. Without a car people did not need fuel or tires; without a radio people had less need for electricity.
On the international scene, the rich had practically stopped lending money to foreign countries. With such tremendous profits to be made in the stock market nobody wanted to make low interest loans. To protect the nation's businesses the US imposed higher trade barriers (Hawley-Smoot Tariff of 1930). Foreigners stopped buying American products. More jobs were lost, more stores were closed, more banks went under, and more factories closed. Unemployment grew to five million in 1930, and up to thirteen million in 193249. The country spiraled quickly into catastrophe. The Great Depression had begun.

--Main Causes of the Great Depression, Main Causes of the Great Depression

The era leading up to the crash is remembered for the celebration and practice of unbridled 'laissez faire' or worse --what is now called 'supply side economics'. Laissez-faire is simplistically defined as 'economic freedom' but in practice it amounts to 'license' for the upper classes. It is another set of rules for the rich.

Supply-side economics is not a 'hands off' policy at all. It is, in fact, an active, deliberate distribution of wealth upward to an increasingly tiny elite. It is pseudo-economics touted to justify big tax breaks for the upper ten percent of the nation's income recipients and wealth-holders. Reagan's own budget director, David Stockman, called 'supply-side economics', a trojan horse. It is claimed that the wealth will 'trickle down' by stimulating investment. It never has and never will.

Among the causes of the great depression, the great 'Stock Market Crash of 1929' tops the list.

Many believe erroneously that the stock market crash that occurred on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929 is one and the same with the Great Depression. In fact, it was one of the major causes that led to the Great Depression. Two months after the original crash in October, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars. Even though the stock market began to regain some of its losses, by the end of 1930, it just was not enough and America truly entered what is called the Great Depression.
Bank Failures

Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board

American Economic Policy with Europe
Drought Conditions.

The Grapes of Wrath

Top Five Causes of the Great Depression

The US experienced an overproduction in industry and agriculture just prior to the crash of 1929. Today, American production is 'out-sourced' to other nations and Americans are left with lower paying jobs or no jobs at all. I will not be surprised if the crash of '29 pales when compared to the impending crash for that very reason. Outsourcing, most which may be traced to deals struck by Bush Sr and Richard Nixon with what was then called 'communist' China will certainly leave the US reduced to third world status at the end of another 'great depression'.

The Great Depression is remembered for widespread hunger, poverty, and unemployment, the tragic result of agricultural overproduction and the inevitable decline in prices. We have seen these trends sporadically since 1980 though often papered over and ignored as an increasingly tiny elite continued to benefit from GOP 'supply side' tax cuts.

o the sorrow of small farmers, the Great Depression witnessed a drastic decline in prices for agricultural products. Between 1925 to 1928 there were good harvests all over the world but it didn't seem to matter. Millions were hungry and the food lines were long --starvation amid plenty. Amid this plenty, farmers refused to harvest. But few could blame them. They could not have earned enough to have justified the expenditure to harvest. Indeed, many farmers were foreclosed upon. Others, starving from lack of work, were reduced to soup lines and emergency 'kitchens'. It could not have come at a worse time for small farmers who had assumed great debts in order to expand production.

By 1933, unemployment had reached 26.6%.

As jobs declined, workers were either fired, laid off, or forced to work for declining wages. The effects were not confined to unskilled workers who had no properties. Landowners and farmers could not earn enough to keep up payments. Foreclosures rose exponentially. A form of economic slavery ensued. Workers had no choice but to work much longer hours for much, much less. Today --their jobs are exported to China.

As the US faces the consequences of yet another right wing experiment gone horribly wrong, certain facts must not be lost amid the din. Several factors have made the US extremely vulnerable to another 'Great Depression' and the symptoms were created by the policies of three men: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

It was Ronald Reagan who inherited from Jimmy Carter a healthy economy and wrecked it. Though he is unfairly reviled and lied about, Jimmy Carter is number two among post World War II presidents in 'job creation'. perhaps the single most important economic index. He also beats out every other GOP president in every other category including GDP. In summary, every Democratic president has beat every GOP president in every economic category since World War II. Ronald Reagan must be singled out. It was his tax cut of 1982 which benefited only the upper quintile, the very, very wealthy, which triggered the long, slow decline that has taken this nation to the brink of yet another Great Depression.

The 'L-curve' helps one imagine the degree to which wealth in the United States is inequitably distributed by policy and by design. The US population is represented 'stretched across a football field in order of income, from poorest, on the left, to richest. Imagine a stack of $100 bills 'representing each person's income.' For example: a stack one inch high represents a stack of one hundred dollars bills, i.e, $25,000. The red line on the graph represents the height of that stack compared to an American football field.
"The red line in the first picture is the beginning of the US income distribution. On the scale of the football field the line slopes gradually from zero on the left to less than 2-inches high at the 50-yard line ($39,000), to about 4-inches high at the 95-yard line ($132,000). On this scale the entire graph is less than one pixel high, up to this point. It is not until you are well past the 99-yard line that you hit the $1 million mark: a stack of $100 bills 40-inches high. There were over 144,000 people who turned in IRS returns in 1997 with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more." [See: Houston Independent Media Center, Wealth Distribution in the US

http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2003/07/14100.php ]

One is tempted to posit a general rule: periods of wide and increasing income and wealth inequalities always precede long and deep recessions/depressions. The other rule is that GOP tax cuts have always preceded periods of sustained and increasing transfers of wealth to the upper classes.

In America, the theft has been overt. Bush called his beneficiaries his 'base'. Indeed, they were his sponsors.

Reagan's tax cut of 1980 benefited only the upper quintile. When all the data is in, Bush's tax cuts will prove to have benefited only about one percent of the nation, a fraction of those who benefited from Reagan. In both cases, only those who were already very, very, very wealthy benefited. Everyone else got poorer both in real terms and comparatively.

The effect of this on the economy is not only that the wealthy will get to live in better houses, get adequate health care, 'better neighborhoods', better educations, or drive more reliable cars. It means that many amenities that you might have previously enjoyed on your present income will become off limits to you even if you retain your job and your current income. That's because the very, very wealthy will have 'bid up' the prices on homes, educations, health care, cars, and other items.

There are yet other results that follow from GOP 'economics'.

The GOP has supported and effected outright transfers of wealth from all Americans to an increasingly tiny percentage of the US population. There is but one word for this: THEFT! [See: 'Greed is Good': The Death of an Economic Religion]

Although the US economy produces tremendous wealth, it is always accompanied in GOP regimes by tremendous poverty. The US, for example, was most egalitarian in the years immediately following World War II. During GOP regimes, income inequality increased and is, in fact, measured with the GINI index. Higher Ginis indicate greater levels of income inequality. These indices have been significantly greater in every GOP regime since World War II.

Certainly --there is enough wealth to go around. Instead, wealth flows upward ---not down, as the propagandists of 'supply side' i.e. 'trickle down theory' would have you believe. The problem is systemic --the result of identifiable, right wing policies.

The primary culprits are GOP tax cuts by Mssrs Ronald Reagan and Bush; the effect of those cuts have been the deliberate transfer of wealth first to the upper quintile and, most recently, to an increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the total population [See: Dr. Daniel Weinberger, US Census Bureau Briefings; Also see: The Quarterly Journal of Economics: Income Inequality in the United States at the following. It's a PDF and cites academic and official, original sources of data.

The financial collapse of the US is tragic enough but complicated by the fact that Bush lied to you and stole your money in order to commit capital crimes in Iraq --crimes for which he could be executed when found guilty as charged. [see: US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441] There is a place in the dock for Bush.

The GOP hopes to deflect attention from its traditional marching orders. The GOP raison d'etre is simply this: pass tax cuts and other measures designed to enrich only the ruling elites. IF you are NOT among the top one percent of the nation, the GOP has robbed you under the rubric of "cutting taxes". It's an easy issue to demagogue. If it were difficult, the GOP would never pull it off.

Thanks to GOP policies which concentrate wealth at the top, there are increasingly FEWER 'small business' people. Small business can no longer compete with HUGE corporations favored by the GOP. The GOP has a vested interest in keeping an important truth from the American people. The truth is: wealth does not originate with rich people.

Every economist --even right wing economists like Milton Friedman --subscribe to an established principle --the labor theory of value. The labor theory of value has been the basis for almost every major economic theory since Aristotle.

The GOP believes the opposite. The GOP would have you believe that capital creates wealth. Think about it --if wealth had been created by the rich and, indeed, trickled down, the GOP would never feel 'compelled' to pursue its unfair tax policies. The government's own statistics prove beyond any reasonable doubt that GOP tax policies have enriched an increasingly tiny percentage of the total US population. It only makes sense to support 'trickle down' economics if, in fact, wealth does not trickle down. If wealth really trickled down, elites would not be motivated to support it. They are motivated to support only policies which they know will enrich them further. 'Trickle down' is the lie they use to sell it. They don't believe it themselves. Why should you? The nation's elites support 'trickle down' policies because they know wealth DOES NOT trickle down.

Wealth is created by the act of doing work. Wealth or 'utility' is the product of acts of labor itself. Government has put an unfair 'tax' upon this 'labor' and has transferred the wealth that it represents to an elite who has done nothing to create it and does not deserve it.

The lower and working classes pay more than their fair share of taxes. The government has it backward. The government taxes labor and gives capital a free ride with numerous dodges. This is the recipe for the impending economic collapse, a collapse that appears to be well underway and beyond anyone's power or ability to stop. But that has not stopped the government from playing it's well-rehearsed role as the shakedown arm of the nation's tiny and shrinking elite.

If because of GOP transfers of unearned wealth to this increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the population, labor becomes unproductive or impoverished and the productivity of the nation declines. It will ultimately collapse like the house of cards that it is. That is what we see happening as I write this. If the poor can no longer afford decent housing or food because elites have bid up prices on commodities, the house of cards will not stand. If you can no longer afford decent housing, health care or food, you have then, perhaps recently under Bush, fallen off the ladder. It's the GOP way.

Bush's bailout proves Marx correct but, like everything else the GOP tries, they've mucked it up. It's not even 'good' Marxism. Not surprisingly, it benefits only the GOP base of elites and, because of that fact, it will have absolutely no effect whatsoever except that of hastening the impending collapse. Marx said that Capitalism would collapse of its own inconsistencies, 'internal tensions which will lead to its destruction.' The GOP has hastened that result. Bush drove a wedge between capital and labor. Karl Marx must be indulging schadenfreude from the grave.

Some history may illustrate the point: the Wall Street crash of 1929 was followed by a severe world wide depression acutely felt in the US, Germany, France, and to a lesser degree --Great Britain and Sweden. Nevertheless, unemployment was high in Sweden when that nation returned a Labor government committed to a program of public investment to address the high unemployment problem. It worked. By 1935 real output in Sweden was 7 percent above its 1929 level. Unemployment was reduced and the finance minister was said to have been happy to suffer another budget deficit to stimulate the economy.

Ronald Reagan's budget deficit did not have as happy a result. His tax cut of 1982 was quickly followed by the nation's worst recession since the Great Depression, a recession of some 18 months characterized by record levels of unemployment, home losses, the newly poor sleeping under bridges and overpasses.

Reagan's best critics were found in his regime. Primarily, budget director David Stockman who blamed a "noisy faction of Republicans" for Reagan's infamous tax cut. Reagan might have achieved the prosperity that Keynes had predicted had his policies not been designed to reward only the filthy rich --his base!

One wonders why Reagan didn't just cut out the middle man. A more equitable tax policy might have put more spendable income directly into the hands of consumers. Business would have benefited from additional sales to richer consumers. Spent money circulates and drives an economy. That consumers spend money seems to be a fact lost on the likes of Reagan, Bush, and the nation's rich and callous elites. Tax cut monies never stimulate growth and most certainly squirreled away --perhaps offshore--in ways that never create new jobs. It is jobs and the work done by way of jobs that is the wealth of a nation.

Surely, there were knowledgeable advisers in Reagan's regime who knew better. The tax cut, therefore, was entirely political, a pay off to the rich for their support. Nothing has changed in the GOP. The Bush administration has made several such "payoffs" during his catastrophic and criminal regime.

When the dollar collapses, you must know that its origins are found in the Nixon and Bush trips to China and Reagan's give away to his elite and greedy base. The policies have eaten away at our economic health like wood worms.
Additional resources:

Obama: Beware the Lessons of '93

The "L-Curve"

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

GOP History: 100 Years of Crooks, Liars and Failures

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In a bit over 100 yeas, the GOP loosed upon an unsuspecting nation the likes of Calvin Coolidge, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr. Coolidge said little and did less. Harding died in the middle of a scandal --the Tea Pot Dome Scandal.

The exact cause of Harding's death was never learned because Mrs. Harding refused to allow an autopsy. She also declined the casting of a death mask. And the body was embalmed immediately, before it ever left the hotel. All this led to rumors that Mrs. Harding had poisoned the President while they were alone together shortly before his death, perhaps with the help or knowledge of Dr. Sawyer.
In 1924 eyebrows once again were raised. Dr. Charles Sawyer died suddenly--and his death was strikingly similar to that of President Harding--while Mrs. Harding was visiting the Sawyer home. Had she slipped something into Sawyer's drink, too, perhaps to ensure his silence? Mrs. Harding herself died in November, 1924, before the ugly rumors of her role in the President's death ever reached print. In 1930 Gaston Means, an unscrupulous detective and convicted swindler, published The Strange Death of President Harding, in which he claimed he had been hired by Mrs. Harding to serve as her personal investigator. One of his most important tasks was to follow Harding's longtime mistress Nan Britton, who had borne the President's only child, out of wedlock.The widely read book broadly hinted that Mrs. Harding, seeking revenge for this affair and for Harding's many other infidelities during their marriage, had poisoned her husband.
Means also suggested that Mrs. Harding had another motive, a more compassionate one: to spare the President the disgrace of the political scandals about to be disclosed. "My love for Warren has turned to hate," she supposedly told Means. "The President deserves to die. He is not fit to live . . . and he knows it." Means claimed that after the President's death Mrs. Harding confided to him, "Warren Harding died in honor. . . . Had he lived 24 hours longer he might have been impeached. . . . I have not betrayed my country or the party. . . . They are saved . . . I have no regrets. I have fulfilled my destiny."
--Was President Warren G. Harding Murdered Also see: [Tea Pot Dome Scandal]

Since 1900, the GOP has given us failure, idiocy, crookery, wars and industrial scale graft. Only death would distance Warren Harding from the Tea Pot Dome Scandal and, as he called them, his 'God damn friends'. And he was probably as right out his 'God damn friends' as they surely were of him.

But nothing has 'distanced' the name Herbert from the word 'depression' --the economic kind. Hoover was the McCain of his era. Defending the very policies that caused the crash of '29, Hoover said of the victims: "let the poor sell oranges from a pushcart'.

The Republican Great Depression began in 1929, not 1932, and it was the direct result of 9 years of unrelenting trickle-down economics delivered under three Republican Presidents (Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) and their treasury Secretary, the anti-tax, anti-regulation corporate titan, Andrew Mellon.
As I write in the introduction of my new book, Yeah, Right: "This Economy Is Strong and Other Tall Tales:
Hoover came to the presidency in March 1929 after a campaign in which he insisted that a "continuation of the policies of the Republican party is fundamentally necessary to the future advancement of this progress and to the further building up of this prosperity."
When the market crashed in October 1929, the true cost of the Republicans' get-rich-today-and-don't-worry-about-tomorrow policies became all too apparent. Years of corporate deregulation, Wall Street manipulation, rampant speculation, cuts in taxation for the wealthy, and easy-credit expansion for consumers had fueled an unsustainable bubble of artificial wealth that popped with devastating effect.
But Hoover refused to acknowledge the collapse. The "fundamental business of the country," he insisted, was "on a sound and prosperous basis."
Compare those pre- and post- crash Hoover statements to these pre- and post-crash McCain statements:
He should be judged very, very well as far as the economy is concerned. We're in a long sustained period of economic growth.
- John McCain on George W. Bush, March 5, 2007
I still believe the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
- August 2008
Based on that record, there are few people in America who could more rightly claim to be the heir of Herbert Hoover than John McCain (if you're thinking Bush, you're close, but he's actually Calvin Coolidge's heir).
--Jim Oleske, Memo to McCain: Hoover was a REPUBLICAN, Daily Kos

Americans may be forgiven their often overt nostalgia for World War II. It was the only time in the twentieth century that American society was, in any way, egalitarian. By the time Ronald Reagan assumed the White House, the GOP had unfairly demonized Jimmy Carter¹ and had begun to roll back all the gains. Ronald Reagan seemed determine to return the US to a pre-1929 state.

The trail thus blazed, Reagan --by way of 'Reaganomics' --would effect a great roll back to earlier Twentieth Century economics in which only the very, very rich benefited. Reagan succeeded. Since 1980, the gulf between rich and poor has created two Americas --those who have very, very little and those who have almost everything. The GOP 'base' of just one percent of the total population idolize Reagan for having brought this about. The rest of the GOP idolize Reagan because they have no clue! Ergo: the GOP consists of two types: the rich and the stupid!

Those who have very little amount to some 95 percent of the entire population. Those who almost have it all amount to about one percent of the nation, yet own more than the other 95 percent combined. Hoover, Harding, Nixon, Coolidge must be beaming up from hell.

Clinton was reviled because he was not a part of the GOP plan to exploit America's riches for the very, very few. Every GOP charge against Clinton was disingenuous. The GOP didn't really care about the President's sex life. Not even the GOP could be stupid enough to equate oral sex with arming an avowed enemy of the United States, a crime that Reagan, in fact, perpetrated and lied about. The GOP, rather, could not forgive Clinton his success which, in turn, reduced the GOP to framing Clinton for trivial offenses. It's all the GOP had.

Clinton dared to protest his innocence of an act that was not even a crime. In pursuit of a dubious case, Kenneth Starr exceeded his charge, attempting to 'pin' a crime on Clinton that Clinton could not have committed for another three days. Starr was either 'psychic' or 'crooked'. Until this kind of 'psychic' phenomena are proven to exist, I will continue to believe that Starr was just crooked, that the subpoena was a set-up! Starr's investigation turned up nothing and nothing was left Starr but a crass entrapment for which he should have been disbarred.

Clinton was accused of lying to Starr's legalized 'witch hunt', the federal grand jury convened for the purpose of finding something that could be 'pinned on the President'. This panel, under Starr's direction, began its investigation of 'perjury' fully three days before it could have occurred.

Over the course of four years, Kenneth Starr's investigation of 'Whitewater' cost American taxpayers about $40 million dollars. The taxpayers got absolutely nothing for the utter waste of their monies. By Starr's own admission, his investigation had already found absolutely nothing in Whitewater that he could pin on Clinton.

"Trooper-gate" was a hoax! David Brock's story in Richard Mellon Scaife's 'American Spectator' consisted of allegations by Arkansas state troopers Larry Patterson and Roger Perry. To keep the heat on, Scaife tried and failed to buy witnesses against Clinton using laundered money. Original stories referred to 'Paula' whom we later learned was Paula Jones who found the eager market for lies about Democrats.

David Brock branded the exposé a case of "bad journalism" and called the troopers 'greedy'. He said they had 'slimy motives.' The words 'slimy' and 'GOP' in the same sentence are redundant.

The amount of conspiracist material attacking Clinton before and during the impeachment hearings was staggering. There are few reasons to think the attacks will cease now that the impeachment crisis is over. The small but vocal minority that originally supported the Starr investigation was nurtured by the conspiracist stories circulating about Clinton.

Much of the media coverage of Clinton from 1997 until 1999 focused on scandal and impeachment rather than ideological political issues or electoral politics. This was true not only in alternative right-wing media, but also in mainstream corporate media. Reporter Gene Lyons is especially critical of The New York Times (and to a lesser degree the Washington Post) for devoting so much coverage to the alleged “Whitewater Scandal” over a collapsed land deal, for which no evidence implicating the Clintons in criminal acts has ever been substantiated.

Lyons argues that much of the scandal coverage in the mainstream media “rests on ‘facts’ that are somewhere between highly dubious and demonstrably false,” and he calls it “journalistic malpractice” resulting from a coordinated right-wing “dirty tricks” campaign. In addition to corporate newspaper and magazine coverage attacking Clinton, there were books, newsletters, fax reports, videotapes, audiotapes, direct mail pieces, Internet sites, and more that spewed out from tiny—sometimes one-person—operations to international media conglomerates.
The most alarmist attacks on Clinton originated in right-wing alternative media, then spread throughout right-wing information networks, finally appearing in mainstream outlets. This troubling dynamic was described in a 1995 White House memo “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce.” The memo was widely
derided in the corporate media, but it is essentially accurate.
--Chip Berlet, Clinton, Conspiracism, and the Continuing Culture War

Scaife's office building was back in the news but a bit later when the body of liberal activist, Steve Kangas, was found dead in a bathroom stall. Kangas' death was ruled a 'suicide' --the first case in history in which the deceased managed to shoot himself --reportedly --twice in the head.

Starr became a pornographer when he was left with nothing to send up to Congress but the pornographic "Starr Report" shot through with prurient minutiae having less to do with substantive charges than with the appearance of Lewinsky's breasts and the shape of ejaculate on her dress.

Normal folk think it absurd to charge a man for perjury or obstruction of justice for merely protesting his innocence --a basic and guaranteed right. Bush tried to get around the principle by merely 'deeming' one a 'terrorist', a neat little trick that Kenneth Starr was unfortunate enough not to have thought of earlier. During the Clinton administration, the GOP had not yet discovered how easily one is deprived of every right guaranteed in the Constitution. Only one word was necessary: 'terrorist'. The GOP might have labeled Clinton but were, instead, obsessed with sex, primarily the sex that was begrudged Clinton. Certainly, in Clinton's case, absurdity was compounded. Clinton was accused of a 'cover up'. But of what?! Getting a blow job is not a crime and the 'acts' for which Clinton would be charged would not occur until at least three days later. Starr was psychic!

In the middle ages, accused witches were subjected to a trial by water. Those lucky enough to 'float' were condemned as witches and grimly executed. Those drowning were considered to be innocent but --unfortunately --dead! The US practice of 'water boarding' throughout its CIA run gulag is the modern equivalent.

The GOP embraced the 'trial by water' and would base American jurisprudence upon the model. GOP justice is Medieval justice. Under Bush, the rule of law would lose all meaning. Bush would call the Constitution a 'goddamned piece of paper'. He would subject 'suspected terrorists' to the modern equivalent of the 'water trial'. The innocent and guilty alike are dead. And so --too --the rule of law.

The 'Watergate' case against Richard Nixon differed substantially from the spurious, purple rhetorical charges leveled against Clinton. Nixon was charged with real crimes -- 'obstruction of justice and perjury' with respect to actual crimes --not set ups or 'sexual' gotachas'! Nixon was accused of using the IRS as a means by which he might retaliate against political enemies. His gang of 'plumbers', tasked with plugging up leaks in the government, were paid by way of elaborate money laundering schemes --all illegal.

Nixons's crimes were real crimes. The Articles of Impeachment against Nixon should be read and compared with the Articles of Impeachment against Clinton. The charges against Clinton are rhetorical fluff, insubstantial claptrap, pornographic and purple prose. The charges against Nixon are, rather, descriptions of real crimes, possibly treason.

The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:
making false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;
withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;
approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;
interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees;
approving, condoning, and acquiescing in, the surreptitious payment of substantial sums of money for the purpose of obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses, potential witnesses or individuals who participated in such unlawful entry and other illegal activities;
endeavouring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States;

disseminating information received from officers of the Department of Justice of the United States to subjects of investigations conducted by lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States, for the purpose of aiding and assisting such subjects in their attempts to avoid criminal liability;
making or causing to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States into believing that a thorough and complete investigation had been conducted with respect to allegations of misconduct on the part of personnel of the executive branch of the United States and personnel of the Committee for the Re-election of the President, and that there was no involvement of such personnel in such misconduct: or
endeavouring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favoured treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony.
In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
--Articles of Impeachment against Richard M. Nixon, Republican

Two of most troubling aspects of recent Republican history are the crooked nature of the Reagan Administration and the "election" of George W. Bush. Among hundreds of 'black marks' against Reagan, the words of Iran/Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh are the most damning.

The Iran/contra investigation will not end the kind of abuse of power that it addressed any more than the Watergate investigation did. The criminality in both affairs did not arise primarily out of ordinary venality or greed, although some of those charged were driven by both. Instead, the crimes committed in Iran/contra were motivated by the desire of persons in high office to pursue controversial policies and goals even when the pursuit of those policies and goals was inhibited or restricted by executive orders, statutes or the constitutional system of checks and balances.
The tone in Iran/contra was set by President Reagan. He directed that the contras be supported, despite a ban on contra aid imposed on him by Congress. And he was willing to trade arms to Iran for the release of Americans held hostage in the Middle East, even if doing so was contrary to the nation's stated policy and possibly in violation of the law.
The lesson of Iran/contra is that if our system of government is to function properly, the branches of government must deal with one another honestly and cooperatively. When disputes arise between the Executive and Legislative branches, as they surely will, the laws that emerge from such disputes must be obeyed. When a President, even with good motive and intent, chooses to skirt the laws or to circumvent them, it is incumbent upon his subordinates to resist, not join in. Their oath and fealty are to the Constitution and the rule of law, not to the man temporarily occupying the Oval Office. Congress has the duty and the power under our system of checks and balances to ensure that the President and his Cabinet officers are faithful to their oaths.
--Concluding Observations, FINAL REPORT OF THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL FOR IRAN/CONTRA MATTERS

Reagan armed Iran, an avowed enemy of the United States. Lest it be protested that we were not engaged in a declared war with Iran, I must point out that, likewise, our wars with the Taliban and against the people of Iraq were not and remain undeclared. Nevertheless, members of the Bush administration were quick to tar critics with the word 'treason' when, in fact, it is the very worst 'president' in American history whose loyalties must be questioned within the context of a full century of GOP incompetence and outright betrayal of the nation, its people and its Constitution.

The following video supports my contention that Bill 0'Reilly is a crook, a liar, a miserable worm, a waste of human DNA. But because the GOP has apparently made it party policy to be everything that defines Bill 0'Reilly, the 'right' will watch this video and cheer the lying idiot. Good folk, whom I define as being those people who still believe that some things can be proven true and that it is important to do so, will watch this video and be confirmed in their own beliefs.

Why is all that important? I give you the words of Jacob Bronouski and Bertolt Brecht.

Behave in such a way that what is true may be verified to be so.
--Jacob Bronouski, Science and Human Values

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Bush Could be Executed For War Crimes

Members of the Bush administration and George W. Bush personally conspired to violate the Geneva Convention, US obligations to it as well as US criminal codes! When it became apparent to Bush that he and high ranking members of his administration were culpable and could be put to death upon conviction, Bush tried to make his crimes legal --but only after he had committed them.

Clearly --the Bush administration itself is aware that it is in deep, deep trouble.

...there is one group of people that has always taken the war crimes charges seriously--the members of the Bush administration themselves. They have good reason for doing so, because they have exposed hundreds of Americans to possible prosecution for violating US law.
As long as George Bush is president and controls the Department of Justice, there will no prosecutions for war crimes, but after Bush is gone, anything could happen and hundreds of Americans could be charged with war crimes.
--David Wallechinsky, Is George Bush Guilty of War Crimes...and Who Cares?

Unless Bush plans to make his escape to Paraguay while still 'President', his exit from the Oval Office will make him vulnerable to process for violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by both houses of Congress without dissent. The act covers every crime that may be charged to Bush as of this moment and as of the time Bush will exit the 'cover' of the Oval Office. The act deals specifically with his deliberate "killing, torture or inhumane treatment" of 'detainees' at Abu Ghraib, GITMO and the gulag archipelago of 'detention centers' throughout Eastern Europe. Violations of the War Crimes Act that result in the death of a detainee carry the death penalty and there is no statute of limitations.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
--TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441 § 2441. War crimes

Bush had been planning to commit capital crimes long before 911 and, in fact, tried to make 'legal' the crimes that he had intended to commit.

Wishing to rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein, in 1996 a Republican-dominated Congress passed the War Crimes Act without a dissenting vote. It defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. It thereby advanced a global trend of mutual reinforcement between national and international law.
The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the United States captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."
--The Nation, Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

Bush did not succeed in putting himself above the laws that prescribed the death penalty for the very violations of laws that he had planned. Title 18 of the US Code as currently published by the US Government [as quoted above] reflects the laws passed by Congress as of Jan. 3, 2007, and it is this version that is published here.

It was because Bush knew he was guilty that he tried to ram through Congress amendments to the War Crimes Act that would exonerate him EX POST FACTO. Ex post facto laws are unconstitutional. Bush defenders will waste their time trying to convince me that ex post facto prohibition applies only to those laws making one prosecutable for acts that were legal at the time of commission. In other words, if it was legal to spit on the sidewalk at the time you did so, you are immune to prosecution under any law passed after you had so spit! Clearly --Bush can not commit murder now and expect to escape prosecution by making it legal after his crime of murder. Don't confuse this with amnesty, which, to my knowledge, Bush has not sought nor does he deserve. Rather, Bush has tried to rewrite both laws and history. He tried to make legal those capital crimes that he had already committed.

Several yeas ago, I wrote an article that pointed out that any federal grand jury could indict Bush for capital crimes and, in fact, could begin an investigation of Bush upon its own volition. Any federal judge can, upon his/her own motion, convene a federal grand jury to consider any case deemed worthy of investigation. I would suggest that any Federal Judge reading this, get off your bench and convene a jury! It is your patriotic duty to this nation and its laws!

Former LA Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi makes another case, that because Bush deliberately lied in order to send US soldiers to their deaths in an illegal war, Bush is prosecutable for murder.

In the first sentence, we're told:
The book you are about to read deals with what I believe to be the most serious crime ever committed in American history - - the president of the nation, George W. Bush, knowingly and deliberately taking this country to war in Iraq under false presences, a war that condemned over 100,000 human beings, including 4,000 American soldiers, to horrific, violent deaths." (V. Bugliosi, p. 3)
The president "knowingly and deliberately" caused the deaths of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians and that's called murder, plain and simple. This is not a hypothetical case that could happen under special legal interpretations. When the president leaves office, he is subject to the same law as the rest of us. Bugliosi explains the ability to prosecute the case against George W. Bush by a district attorney or states attorney in any local jurisdiction where a life was lost in the Iraq war. Federal prosecutors also have that option. Bugliosi's detailed analysis of this phenomenon offers some of the best analysis in the book and the detailed end notes.
--E. Pluribus Media, Bugliosi's The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

Because he has notoriety, Bugliosi has succeeded in attracting some attention to this issue. My fear is that in the post-election atmosphere of relief that Obama turned back the GOP wave the pressure to bring George W. Bush to justice will subside. That would be a grave mistake, a catastrophic precedent. If Bush is allowed to make good a get away, the signal will have been sent that US presidents are above the law and may perpetrate mass murder and war crimes at will.

Violations of US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441 are NOT to be confused with violations of international treaties which may have the effect of putting Bush in the dock at the Hague. Certainly, Bush had planned to commit acts that were known to be violations of US laws and our treaty commitments. Even before 911 provided Bush the pretext to attack and invade both Afghanistan and Iraq, Tom DeLay sponsored legislation that provided for a US military invasion of The Hague in those instances should Bush find himself in the dock for war crimes. The timing of the bill is material to the case against Bush and speaks to the fact that Bush had been planning to wage war and wished to immunize himself against prosecution for the acts that were known at the time to be violations of international laws to which the US was bound by treaty.

I know of no reason why Bush should be impeached before he is indicted. Impeachment is a political remedy, the purview of Congress. What is discussed here are specific acts that are against the law. Bush should fear the very real possibility of being hauled before a federal judge charged with capital crimes.

There are yet other legal ghosts that will haunt Bush. He may be charged with perpetrating the crime of genocide.

U.S. Code; Chapter 50A; Section § 1091. Genocide
(a) Basic Offense. - Whoever, whether in time of peace or in time of war, in a circumstance described in subsection (d) and with the specific
intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.

(1) kills members of that group;

(2) causes serious bodily injury to members of that group;

(3) causes the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques;

(4) subjects the group to conditions of life that are intended to cause the physical destruction of the group in whole or in part;

(5) imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group; or

(6) transfers by force children of the group to another group; or attempts to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b0.
--US Codes; Chapter 50A, Section § 1091. Genocide

Hat tip to: Above Top Secret

The Congress did not have the stomach for impeachment and shirked it's duty --that of impeaching a 'President' that should have been impeached for his crimes against the Constitution. Impeachment might have saved this nation the nightmare that it has not yet survived.

I would hope that a hard nosed federal judge will take a different view. I would urge that a federal grand jury be convened immediately to consider upon the probable cause and the evidence whether or not George W. Bush is guilty of capital crimes and whether or not he should be put to death!

Bugliosi: Bush Should be Prosecuted for Murder