George W. Bush

Better Off? Hell Yes!

Leo Gerard — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 10:24:32 -0400

Damn right America is better off than it was four years ago.

Four years ago was September 2008. George W. Bush was president and Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers was collapsing. It was a time of fear. It was a time of panic about the future. Recalling that anxiety is unsettling. But it’s important for comparison sake.

Lehman filed for bankruptcy this week four years ago – Sept. 15, 2008. Global financial markets spun into a panic. Credit markets froze worldwide. The stock market plunged. GM and Chrysler fell into crisis. Foreclosures were spiking and housing prices plummeting. Main Street shops and factories couldn’t get ordinary loans essential to sustain routine business. Nearly half a million workers lost their jobs that month. It was the ninth consecutive month of massive job losses. The Bush administration had converted a vibrant economy and budget surplus it had inherited from former President Bill Clinton into the Great Recession and massive deficits. America was still mired in two wars, including one Bush started on false pretenses.

Now, in September 2012, global financial markets have stabilized. Credit is available to Main Street. GM and Chrysler are building cars and creating jobs. Unemployment is declining as the private sector has added jobs to the economy every month for the past 30. The value of housing is rising once again, creating wealth for the middle class. Now there’s a financial reform law to prevent another Wall Street bailout. There’s Obamacare to help families retain and secure health insurance. The war in Iraq is over and Osama bin Laden is dead. Is America better off than it was four years ago? Hell, yes it is!

September 2012 can’t be described as boom times. But it’s sure not the dread-filled days of September 2008. As former President Clinton so eloquently said last week in his convention speech, describing the Republican attitude toward President Obama:

“We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”

Republicans want Americans to put them back in charge. Their presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, has promised to “restore” America, to return the country to the days before President Obama.

The Romney plan to “restore” America involves repealing, revoking and rejecting every advance President Obama has achieved, including health insurance reform and Wall Street regulation. As Andy Borowitz suggested, if Romney could, he’d revive Osama bin Laden and kill Detroit. Anything to take America back(wards).

Luckily, Romney wouldn’t be able to undo President Obama’s auto bailout – although he opposed it from day one, urging “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He wrote:

“If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.”

Well, GM and Chrysler got bailouts, and both are doing fine, thank you, Mr. Romney. In fact, in January GM reclaimed for a few months the title of world’s largest car manufacturer. Both companies are repaying the government loans and 1.45 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout, according to the nonpartisan Center for Automotive Research.

Would America be better off without GM and Chrysler? No, it would not. That according to 1.45 million employed people.

Also luckily, Romney couldn’t undo President Obama’s stimulus. He’d like to, though. His campaign is repeating the false GOP meme that the money was wasted.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the stimulus created or saved as many as 3.3 million jobs. Romney would have preferred no stimulus. He’d have abandoned those workers – your father-in-law, your kid, your neighbor – rendering them unable to pay their mortgages, unable to support their families, unable to imagine a future.

Would America be better off without the stimulus? No, it would not. That according to 3.3 million employed people.

A President Romney could, however, reverse the financial and health insurance reform measures. And he’s pledged to do that “on day one.” Without financial reform, Wall Street could resume, unfettered, the same risky betting that plunged the country into the Great Recession.

Without the health reform law, insurance companies would immediately cancel coverage for millions of young adults now on their parents’ plans and cut off untold millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions and those who have exceeded the now-banned lifetime caps. In addition, senior citizens would have to pay more for prescription drugs and preventative care.

Would America be better off without the financial and health insurance reforms? No, it would not. That according to Americans who would be sicker and poorer and at greater economic risk without the laws.

Romney also promises to restore America to the Bush days of special deals for the rich and up the ante by giving the 1 percent additional tax reductions. Bush didn’t pay for his tax cuts, resulting in massive deficits, and Romney hasn’t specified how he would either.

Would the country be better off if the rich paid even less in taxes? No, it would not. That according to the 99 percent and President Obama. He pledges to end the Bush tax cuts for those making over a quarter million and begin paying down the nation’s debts.

President Obama plans to take the country forward, to create a better tomorrow.

As former President Clinton walked onto the convention floor last week, the Fleetwood Mac song “Don’t Stop” played in the background. This is the refrain:

“Don't stop, thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here,
It'll be, better than before,
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.”

Yesterday’s gone. Thank goodness because America is much better off than it was four years ago. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

Hey, Sarah Palin! Some "Marxists" Here Want a Word With You

Richard Eskow — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:50:44 -0400

A well funded network of right-wing extremists wants to make it socially and politically impossible to express the ideals that made this country great. One of those extremists appeared on their billionaire-funded network this week to attack Elizabeth Warren, and anyone else who isn't on the far right, as a Communist.

How retro, you may be saying to yourself. They haven't pulled that trick since the Eisenhower era.

That's the strangest part of all this: They seem to think "Eisenhower era" is a euphemism for "Bolshevik control."

Mainstream vs. Extreme

Displaying her customary gravitas, here's what Sarah Palin had to say on the FOX News channel this week:

"I will tell you, though. It's cracking me up watching what the Democrats, this idiotic strategy of theirs, to have Elizabeth Warren, who has almost confessed to her Marxist views. These views that replicate failed European countries about redistribution of wealth, you know, and all these failed policies and she is going to be the face of that message in the convention. I think it's very risky ..."

(If those sentences don't seem right to you, if it seems as if something's missing, don't worry: It's not you. As always, Palin's locutions are hypnotizing to contemplate; they're the verbal equivalent of M.C. Escher drawings.)

What is the Demi-Governor talking about? Why is the Person Who Single-Handedly Doomed the GOP Ticket saying that Elizabeth Warren is a "Marxist"? Because Palin, like the rest of the Robotic Right, is harping on some comments Warren made about taxation and "class warfare" rhetoric in a very popular online video:

"There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid for. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything ..."

"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

The Massachusetts Senatorial candidate was referring to the equally moderate and centrist comments President Obama made on the same subject:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business. you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Objectively True

For all their hollerin', the radicals on the right can't point to a single statement by Warren and Obama that isn't objectively and literally true. Has any factory owner ever transported his goods to market on roads the rest of us didn't pay for? Hired workers the rest of us didn't educate? Did any of them not have a great teacher, not take advantage of our American system, or (if they're in the Silicon Valley) not get rich off an Internet create with public funds?

Of course not. But when that's pointed out they pivot to their next gambit: Obama and Warren are "Marxists." It's Standard Operating Procedure to suggest, as Washington Post blogger Ed Rogers does, that they're engaging in the "disparagement of private business." Never mind the fact that Obama often praises successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Warren's so-called "disparagement" included the words "Good for you," "God bless" and, for good measure, "Keep a big hunk of it."

"Both the Obama and Warren campaigns are anchored by the belief in offering punitive tax hikes," writes Rogers, "diminishing the role of the private sector and building government dependency in America." He then concludes: "Please show me otherwise if I am wrong."

I'll do better than that: I'll have some of history's most famous Republicans show you. Oh, Ms. Palin? I've got some "Marxists" here that would like to meet you.

Comrade Ike

Our first apparatchik is Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a son of Texas who rose to command the Allied forces in World War II before reaching the Presidency in 1952. How Marxist was this comrade? Eisenhower supported and signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which funded 41,000 miles of highway construction and imposed new taxes on fuel consumption to do it. At a total cost of $25 billion, it was the largest Federal project in history at the time.

Obama was right. When it comes to roads, "you didn't build that": Eisenhower did.

Can a President get any more Leninist than that? Actually, yes. As the Eisenhower Memorial website notes, "Dwight Eisenhower was the principal force behind the greatest single expansion of Social Security beneficiaries in the history of the program. He led the legislative drive to add over ten million Americans to the system."

Ooh. Sounds like a certain former Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force was building government dependency in America.

Eisenhower even dissed the God of Conservative Economics in the process. As Eisenhower's memorial website notes, "Those opposed to the initiative stressed their belief that retirement income was the responsibility of every individual and the federal government should not be involved." Here's how Eisenhower responded to these conservative objections when asked about them at a press conference:

"A strict application, let us say, of economic theory, at least as taught by Adam Smith, would be, 'Let these people take care of themselves; during their active life they are supposed to save enough to take care of themselves.' In this modern industry, dependent as we are on mass production, and so on, we create conditions where that is no longer possible for everybody. So the active part of the population has to take care of all the population, and if they haven't been able during the course of their active life to save up enough money, we have these systems."

What a Commie! Conservatives must have risen up in outrage at his actions, right? Wrong. The leading conservative of the day, Sen. Robert A. Taft, had already assured Eisenhower he supported the idea. We've always had conservatives - but they haven't always been crazy.

Eisenhower also supported lowering the highest tax bracket - from 92 percent for the wealthiest Americans all the way down to ... 91 percent How many of today's right-wingers would support an 91 percent top tax rate?

Eisenhower also kept taxes high for corporations, saying this in his 1954 State of the Union address: "Because of the present need for revenue the corporation income tax should be kept at the current rate of 52% for another year, and the excise taxes scheduled to be reduced on April first, including those on liquor, tobacco, gasoline and automobiles, should be continued at present rates."

Guess he learned that at a meeting of the Abilene Soviet.

Ike had no problem blocking a cut in corporate taxes, even when they were at 52 percent. The highest official rate is now 35 percent, but so many loopholes have been added to the system that the actual average rate paid in 2011 was 12.1 percent - the lowest effective tax rate in forty years. "Disparage private business" much, General Eisenhower?

If you want to call Warren and Obama "Marxists," Ms. Palin, you'll have to get past Ike's five stars to do it.

Quotations From Comrade Ike

In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Comrade 'Honest Abe'

Abraham Lincoln was called many things: Honest Abe. The Rail-Splitter. The Great Emancipator. Lawyer. Orator. Statesman. Peacemaker.

Marxist?

Lincoln established the Federal income tax in 1861. What's more, he used the power of what's called 'transparency' nowadays to ensure that people paid their taxes, by making taxation records public for everyone. (Wonder what Mitt Romney thinks about that?)

Lincoln's tax was progressive, too, starting at a 3 percent tax rate for earnings of $600 and above and rising to 5 percent for earnings above $10,000. Very few people earned $600 per year back then, so yes: It was a tax on the rich. Why, it almost sounds like Honest Abe held "views that replicate failed European countries about redistribution of wealth, you know, and all these failed policies."

We can almost picture the Rail-Splitter saying to the millionaires of his day: That railroad over there? You didn't build that. I did.

Quotations From Chairman Abe

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. (That one's gotta sting Romney a little too.)

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Comrade "W"

George W. Bush stood shoulder to shoulder with Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert and signed a $286.4 billion infrastructure bill.

That alone makes him too Red for today's conservatives. But his rhetoric was even more subversive: "If we want people working in America, we got to make sure our highways and roads are modern. We've got to bring up this transportation system into the 21st century."

Bush expressed these Comintern-style sentiments while dressed as a proper proletarian: no shirt or jacket, collar open and sleeves rolled up. As he triumphantly shook hands with Hastert outside a quonset manufacturing building, they might have been posing for the cover of Soviet Life.

It gets worse. "I mean," said Bush, "you can't expect your farmers to be able to get goods to market if we don't have a good road system. You can't expect to get these Caterpillar products all around the United States if we don't have a good road system."

George W. Bush to Caterpillar Inc: You didn't build that.

CCCP/GOP

There were more Republican Marxists, of course. In fact, the party's history is lousy with 'em:

Richard "Comrade Tricky Dicksky" Nixon froze wage and steel prices, was the first President to propose a national health insurance system (one that was more "leftist" than Obamacare), and even proposed a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) for all Americans that was based on principles which included "economic democracy," "family stability," and "rehabilitation."

George Bush the First raised taxes.

And as for for Ronald Reagan, Paul Krugman explains that "no peacetime president has raised taxes so much on so many people" as Reagan did during his two terms.

Now we know why they color Republican territory red.

Better Dead Than Well-Read

There are only two explanations for these actions and comments: Either the Republican Party's greatest heroes were all closet Communists - or even the most right-leaning among them were not completely irrational human beings. Either explanation opens a yawning chasm between them and today's conservatives.

Inquiring minds want to know: Were these Republican icons all Marxists, or has today's right gone completely off the deep end? Would today's "conservatives" have been considered radical extremists during any other period of American history, too far outside the political mainstream to be taken seriously?

As their billionaire-funded network likes to say: We report, you decide.

Hey, Romney, Let Voters See What You Showed McCain

Leo Gerard — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:21:27 -0400

John McCain and Mitt Romney share a secret. It’s 23 years of Mitt’s tax returns.

Mitt gave them to McCain in 2008 when McCain, then the GOP presidential nominee, was vetting VP candidates.

This time around, Mitt has won the GOP nomination, but now he’s hiding those 23 years of returns from the American people. He handed them to McCain in exchange for a VP bid. But Mitt is denying that information to the American people when he’s asking them for something more important – the presidency.

Mitt, a quarter billionaire, disclosed his federal payments to fellow one percenter McCain, who owns so many houses he couldn’t count them. To America’s middle class riffraff, Mitt has divulged significantly less -- a partial return for 2010 and a promise of the 2011 return when he finishes it.

Ann Romney told ABC reporter Robin Roberts last week that the riffraff need far less to determine who will be their President than McCain did to pick a VP. Here’s what Ann said:

“We have given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and about how we live our life.”

You people. That would be the uppity riffraff who dare to question the rich Romneys.

Mitt has explained all this before. He’ll tell voters what’s good for them. And what’s good for them is part of one year’s return and maybe another year later. That’ll do it. Here’s how he put it to CNN:

“People always want to get more. We’re putting out what’s required plus more. Those are the two years that people will have, and that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances.”

That’s all that’s necessary. Got it? Mitt told you. Now go home and shut up about it.

Mitt might do better with middle class voters if he got down off his high-steppin’ dressage horse. But if he did that, he might never get taxpayers to repay him the $77,000 he lost on that horse. That $77,000 loss, an amount larger than most Americans earn in a year, was revealed in the partial return Romney did release. No wonder he’s reluctant to disclose more.

Ann Romney described Mitt’s refusal to give additional years this way on ABC:

“There are so many things that will be open again for more attack. And you just want to give more material for more attack. And that’s really – that’s just the answer.”

The answer, Ann Romney said, is that there are so many things in those secret returns that would provoke criticism. And the quarter billionaire running for president don’t countenance no criticism from riffraff.

Ann’s fear is validated by the revelation of foreign accounts and inexplicable retirement funds contained in the one partial return Romney released so far.

It’s incomplete because attachments weren’t included. When a taxpayer has foreign accounts, as Romney does, the IRS requires the filer to include specific documentation about them. Romney didn’t release those for his account in Switzerland.

That documentation and additional years of returns would give taxpayers important information. It would, for example, reveal whether Romney reported the income from his Swiss account on earlier tax returns. That is significant because Romney appears to have closed the account a year after the IRS gave wealthy Americans partial tax amnesty for coming clean on their previously-unreported foreign accounts. Romney’s earlier returns might indicate whether he was among the 34,000 who took advantage of the program to avoid prosecution.

Additional returns might also explain how Romney’s IRA got so extraordinarily massive. Although IRA contributions were restricted to $30,000 a year, Romney’s account is worth as much as $102 million. That’s way more than a lifetime of $30,000 payments. It suggests lowballing the value of contributed assets to circumvent the $30,000 limit. The advantage of such undervaluing is that an IRA account can grow tax-free. So the more wealth in it, the fewer taxes paid.

Romney has assured the American people he’s diligent about his income taxes, saying:

“I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more.”

This sentiment appeases government-hating Tea Partiers. They don’t want to pay taxes to educate the next generation of citizens, to prevent another 9-11, or to prop up the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games with $1.3 billion in federal dollars. Oh, whoops. It was Romney, wasn’t it, who wanted all those tax dollars after he took over planning for the 2002 games.

When Romney’s father George sought the Republican nomination in 1968, he gave a reporter a dozen years of tax information. He set the standard, disclosing more than any candidate before. George Romney derided releasing less, saying:

“One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.”

That’s what his son has done so far, released a partial return for one year. Even Romney’s fellow one percenter McCain released two years, which is far less than the norm. President Obama disclosed seven years; George W. Bush and Al Gore, nine; John Kerry, 20; Bob Dole 30.

George Romney paid an effective tax rate of 37 percent. That is 2.7 times the 13.9 percent rate his son paid on his $22 million income in 2010. Mitt justifies that by saying:

“I don’t think you want a candidate for President who pays more taxes than he owes.”

Maybe not. But Americans definitely don’t want a President who paid less taxes than he owed. With Mitt refusing reasonable disclosure, Americans don’t know for sure whether he skirted taxes altogether some years. Well, one American does, Mitt’s country club pal John McCain.

What Americans do know for sure, though, is that cheaters always have something to hide.

Corporate Primacy Causes People Poverty

Leo Gerard — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 09:17:03 -0400

The Romney v. Obama economic smack down in Ohio last Thursday failed to deliver half the punch of remarks the men made earlier in the week.

President Obama said the nation must focus on the public sector, which continues to lay off thousands of teachers, cops and firefighters, even while the private sector has recovered sufficiently to consistently add jobs. Romney said he would fire more teachers, cops and firemen.

This gets to the dispute between Democrats and Republicans. The GOP has contended for 30 years that the primary function of government is to serve corporations and the 1 percent, and that when they thrive, the 99 percent may receive hand-me-down benefits. Democrats believe the principal function of government is to serve the majority of people and that when they benefit, the economy thrives for everyone.

For all the fancy talk in Ohio on Thursday, it comes down to this: Do Americans want a government of the people by the people for the people, one conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? Or do Americans want a government of the corporations by the corporations for the corporations, one dedicated to the proposition that the rich are better than everyone else?

For the rich, like Mitt Romney, the proposition that they are better than everyone else is a given. Romney believes that he, the son of a wealthy car company executive and governor, the youth who attended exclusive private schools and wallowed in every privilege, is a self-made man.

That is basic Republican philosophy: Every wealthy person and every successful corporation achieved that all by themselves. They didn’t inherit; they didn’t benefit from taxpayer-funded infrastructure like roads, schools and patent enforcement; there was no luck involved. They achieved it alone by virtue of their own grit, hard work and dedication.

Anyone can do it, the GOP believes, if they would just buckle down, work hard and follow all the rules. As a result, in Republican world, anyone who isn’t rich has only himself to blame.

Therefore, in GOP-logic, the poor and middle class are inferior beings. Government should not serve them. The government, Republicans think, should bow to the successful, who earned service. The government must not, according to the GOP, reward shiftlessness by providing benefits to middle class scallywags who have failed to do what it takes to get rich.

This doctrine of primacy for corporations and the 1 percent has set back the middle class. And the nation’s economy. Middle class income has stagnated. Meanwhile, the wealth of the top 1 percent and corporations has skyrocketed, so that now as much wealth is concentrated at the top as was during the robber-baron age immediately before the Great Depression.

A report issued by the Federal Reserve Board early last week showed that both the income and net worth of the average American family declined so drastically between 2007 and 2010 that nearly two decades of accumulated family wealth was wiped out. Seventy percent of those losses occurred in the years while Republican George W. Bush was still president.

By contrast, on the 1 percent end the scale, corporate executives raked it in last year. Forbes calculated that the CEOs of the nation’s top 500 corporations got an average 16 percent pay increase. The 2011 paycheck for each – a cool $10.5 million.

Also, corporate balance sheets are back in the black, with profits now shooting above pre-recession levels. Rather than investing in America or creating jobs with that money, corporations are hoarding more than $2 trillion in reserves.

And they are stuffing $10 million checks into GOP SuperPAC funds to ensure that Romney keeps his promise to lay off teachers, cops and firefighters while cutting taxes even further for the rich and eliminating any and all regulations that annoy corporations.

No air or water pollution controls on factories. No food safety inspections. Repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Law that was enacted to prevent the reckless Wall Street gambling that crashed the economy. Repeal ObamaCare that was enacted to end abusive practices by health insurers.

Romney reiterated last week that he opposes the provision of ObamaCare requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. So if a child is born with asthma and his working-poor parents don’t have employer-provided health insurance or the money to buy coverage, too bad for the kid. Let him die gasping for breath. The toddler should have had more grit, hard work and dedication and earned himself some insurance. Or he should have picked better parents. Like Romney did.

Democrats, like Obama, believe in the primacy of the majority, as did the founders of the United States. The revolutionists wrote in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . .” The 1 percent, CEOs the lucky, the super-smart and the well-born are not more equal. The government was created to serve the needs of everyone.

And when it does, the economy fairs better. After the Wall Street crash of 1929, the great Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman instituted changes that supported the majority, including establishing collective bargaining rights. World War II, paid for by high taxes on the 1 percent, created a massive employment program, after which veterans benefits provided higher education for a generation. The result was lower concentration of wealth at the top and the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Then came Republican Ronald Reagan who gave the doctrine of corporate primacy a cute name -- trickle down. America must end his spell of voodoo economics or Romney and the Republicans will continue to stick it to the middle class.

The Nihilist Party: Republicans Who Believe in Nothing

Richard Eskow — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:32:06 -0400

Some people's only exposure to nihilism comes from the German gang in The Big Lebowski who said things like "We are nihilists, we believe in nothing" and "Tell us where the girl is or we cut off your johnson, Lebowski." Or the nihilist humor of comedian Brother Theodore, who liked to say things like "I looked at the void, the void looked back - and neither of us liked what we saw."

That's exactly how I feel when I watch the Republican Presidential debates.

The void that looks out through their eyes is the absence of any underlying principle, ideology, or ideas, especially on economic issues. It's not that their beliefs are different than yours or mine. It's that, as now seems clear, they don't actually believe in anything - anything, that is, except greater power for themselves and greater wealth for their financial backers.

Nothing in nihilism's long intellectual history has prepared the world for its latest incarnation as the 21st century Republican party, or in its ultimate flowering in the likes of Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.

Void, Meet Void

ni*hi*lism a: a viewpoint that traditional beliefs and values are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.
- Merriam-Webster Online

Matt Bai has a piece in today's New York Times Magazine subtitled "The G.O.P. Elite tries to take its party back." It's well worth reading. But it doesn't point out that neither side of that struggle represents a coherent worldview. Today's G.O.P. has no core beliefs. In both its policies and its politics it has devolved into a set of actors without core beliefs, fighting for domination on the ruthless and bloody stage of soulless nature.

We're not nostalgic or sentimental or naive. The pursuit of power has always driven politicians on both sides of the aisle. But there was once an underlying ethos, and it's gone. Once Republicans believed in certain things, like the importance of business as part of society, a smaller role for Federal government, and states' rights. But the new Republicans are nihilists. They believe in nothing.

And when it comes to Medicare and other Great Society programs, they're even willing to cut off the country's "Johnson" to prove it.

Whatever It Is, We're Against It

ni*hi*lism b: a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth and especially moral truths

The Tea Party was built around burning rage, which billionaire-funded Republican operatives channeled for their own uses like it was geothermal energy. It's possible to sympathize with their anger while recognizing that the movement's only ideology is destruction - of government, and of anyone or anything it believes to be its enemy.

But the party "establishment" Matt Bai writes about doesn't have an ideology either. It did, back in the Reagan days. But then came Newt Gingrich, whose pole star was the use of language to win elections. His ascension to the Speakership in 1994 marked the beginning of the end of Republican ideology.

From that moment on, winning was the only thing that mattered.

Whatever Democrats propose, Republicans oppose. Republicans passed and signed a $286 billion infrastructure spending bill under George W. Bush. (Boehner's predecessor, Denny Hastert, was on hand to celebrate the spending for bridges, roads, and mass transit.) Today they oppose all such spending. Why? Because it's proposed by Democrats.

The GOP abandoned states rights when it began overriding states on social issues, and then when it pushed to strip the states of the ability to regulate businesses. It abandoned free-market principles when it pushed for bank bailouts and other corporate subsidies.

And balance-sheet executives like Mitt Romney and Herman Cain are even willing to abandon the inexorable logic of numbers when it suits their purposes.

Less Than Zero

Cain chaired the Board of Governors for the Kansas Federal Reserve and has an undergraduate degree in mathematics, so he's capable of performing basic arithmetic functions. Yet his "9.9.9" program (in German that's "Nein! Nein! Nein!") is, among other things, bad arithmetic. It doesn't reflect a different economic philosophy than yours, or mine, or Joe Stiglitz's. It's just gibberish.

Ten years after George W. Bush dropped our highest tax rate to 35%, the country's in shambles. The combination of lost tax revenue, upward distribution of wealth, and the stagnating wages and buying power of the middle class has most of the country locked in permanent recession. In the midst of this chaos, Cain's proposing to drop the top marginal tax rate to 9% - which is 1/10th of what it was at one point under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

Maybe he just really, really hates taxes? No. He wants to raise them dramatically on some people, by imposing the same 9% Federal tax rate on those people the goofy, would-be "53% movement" complains about - people who don't pay Federal income tax, like the working poor.

A radical tax cut for the wealthiest Americans can't be offset by imposing a taxes on our lowest earners. It doesn't add up.

Republicans For Higher Taxes

Cain also wants to add a 9% Federal sales tax to ... well, everything. That's economic insanity, since our crisis was brought on by a lack of demand which this would make much worse. But it's not just insane - it's also a tax hike. Sure, wealthy people would have a net cut, but everybody else's taxes would go up.

The Republican front-runner would raise taxes for most Americans.

His 9% corporate tax rate is staggeringly low. But corporations are already sitting on $2 trillion in cash. What would make them spend that money? Demand. And what would kill demand even more than it's been killed already? A Federal sales tax - like Herman Cain's.

Besides holding opinions that one of his fellow Governors considered "in step with Fed policies of the time," Cain was a successful CEO. He didn't get that successful by misreading financial information. So when he wrote that "Current projections indicate that Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017" he almost certainly knew he was lying. Killing or gutting Medicare would be a symbolic emasculation of Lyndon Johnson, but it would also relieve a source of government spending that's increasing the demand to raise taxes on the wealthy.

There's no internal logic to Cain's economic positions except this: They would benefit the wealthy and corporations, and they're handy gimmicks for getting publicity. That's not ideology; it's cynicism.

59 Ways to Leave Your Values

During the last debate Cain asked Romney if Romney could list all 59 points in his economic plan, and Romney laughed. He's not expected to know what's in his own proposal - or to care.

Romney begins his proposal by observing that "In 1947, the year I was born, unemployment was 3.9 percent. In 1968, when I turned 21, it was 3.6 percent." What he doesn't say is that the top marginal tax rate in 1947 was more than 86%, and that in 1968 it was 75%. Today it's 35%, and Romney wants to drive it down even more.

The Romney plan would make it even easier for companies to send jobs overseas. It would lower their taxes and remove the regulations whose removal led to the meltdown of 2008. It would accelerate the destruction of the middle class by taking away collective bargaining rights and cut all government spending - include the kinds that create jobs and keep us safe on the highways and in the air.

Economically, Romney's as radical as Cain. He just hides it better.

Economic Nihilism

ni*hi*lism c: a doctrine or belief that conditions ... are so bad as to make destruction desirable for its own sake, independent of any constructive program or possibility

When Republicans rejected Obama's jobs act last week, their alternative proposal was ... nothing. Their sole motivation appeared to be not letting Obama succeed, even if millions of Americans suffered as a result. Obama's infrastructure proposal was much more modest than the one signed by George W. Bush, during a period when it was much less needed. But they rejected it anyway.

There's no common thread here except self-interest - and the fact that they all help wealthy individual and corporate donors. This dovetails nicely with the Tea Party's "Disco Inferno" attitude toward government: "Burn the mutha on down." That's smart, from a purely opportunistic point of view. But it leaves no room for negotiation.

As for Romney and Cain, they both understand numbers. They can both read a spreadsheet. And they have the added advantage of not being trained economists, so never undergoing what my friend Mike Konczal calls " by far the most ideologically indoctrinating class I've ever seen" - an introduction to graduate-level macroeconomics.

That's why I'm so certain they know they're speaking nonsense. As good business people,they know how smart it would be to borrow money at today's historically low rates and then invest it in jobs, growth, and infrastructure. But that wouldn't serve their interests or those of their patrons, so they're not going to tell you that.

Blood Oaths

Who trusted God was love indeed/And love Creation's final law/Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw ... shriek'd against his creed.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

A creed - any creed, however flawed - has as its base the greatest good for all. Without that, people are just reflecting that bloody side of nature that is without belief or principle. And there's no point negotiating with people whose sole objectives are their own pursuit of power, which involves your destruction, and to serve their paymasters' interests as efficiently as possible.

The "values" party has none - certainly none that would be recognizable in any religious tradition.

The "bipartisan" school of political thought finds this kind of thinking heretical. Everybody has their point of view, the thinking goes, so we just need to find "common ground ..." But when your opponents' sole goal is to win, that becomes impossible. There's no common ground on scorched earth.

Sure, the Democrats have often been weak and vacillating, diluting their own values and echoing some of thir opponents' nihilistic anti-government rhetoric. And there's a raging ideological war in that party, too, between those who believe in the role of government and those who support the right-leaning Clinton/Obama economics represented by Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner.

But the Democrats still seem to have, or at least want, a core set of beliefs. The natural (and usually admirable) desire to negotiate and find peace is one of them. But it conflicts with another value, one that's even more central to our democracy: to point out the differences between you and allow the public to choose. If the Democrats aren't up to the task, another group will step in - or democracy will fail.

Nothing

"Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada as it is in nada."
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

For what it's worth, I wish things were different. I wish there was an honorable if misguided GOP to be dealt with like the Republicans of old. Whatever their faults, those Republicans managed to build the national highway system (under Eisenhower), proposed a guaranteed national income (under Nixon), and negotiated honestly if conservatively over Social Security (under Reagan.)

You could negotiate with those Republicans because they had an ideology. They had beliefs and values. Half a loaf was better than none for them, because compromise served a greater goal. It would be a better world if today's Republicans were like that. But today's Republicans can't be negotiated with. They can only be defeated. Defeated, or forced to change by intense political pressure.

The problem is that these Republicans don't have a greater goal. Their actions are simply reflections of a baser nature, red in tooth and claw and shrieking against any creed that seeks the just and the humane. They live only to serve their wealthy and powerful sponsors. They believe in nothing.

They are nihilists.

Colombia FTA: Rewarding Promises Instead of Performance

Leo Gerard — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 10:22:56 -0400

Tragically, the government of Colombia exhibits the behavior of an addict. And, just as regrettably, the United States is co-dependent, so addicted to so called free trade that it plans to award Colombia an agreement based solely on promises.

Addicts always promise. They’ll stop, they pledge. Their co-dependents desperately want to believe, so they cooperate with the addicts’ demands.

Colombia, the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, has pledged to try to stop the murders to persuade Congress to approve a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Promises, promises.

And the United States has agreed to accept those promises rather than demand performance before signing an FTA. American’s Wall Street banks and multi-national corporations crave another FTA so badly they will believe anything.

When the Colombia FTA was first proposed, Congress refused to approve it because so many trade unionists are assassinated each year by the Colombian military and paramilitary forces that the murders exceed the number of unionists killed in all other countries of the world combined. In 2007, the year that former President George W. Bush completed the agreement, 39 Colombian unionists were slain.

The Colombian government knew why Congress denied approval. It could have responded four years ago by protecting trade unionists and preserving their lives. It did not.

Instead, the murders increased. In 2008, 52 Colombian trade unionists were assassinated, one a week. In 2009, the number declined by 5 to 47, but it was back up to 52 last year. Six have been slain so far this year, including Hector Orozco and Gilardo Garcia, members of the agricultural union known as Association of Peasant Workers of Tolima, who were threatened by the Colombian military just before they were assassinated. Promises, promises.

In response to the concerns expressed by Congress about the murders, the newly-proposed FTA requires Bogota to improve safeguards for workers by April 22, and to develop a plan by May 20 to enhance the capacity of regional judicial offices because the murders of trade unionists go unpunished by the Colombian government – giving the killers an impunity rate of approximately 95 percent. And by mid-June, the Colombian government promises to increase penalties for threatening workers.

The government of Colombia could have completed all of those steps four years ago. It didn’t bother.

To this point, Congress has taken the moral high ground by refusing to approve the trade deal. It said, basically, as long as Colombia continued to countenance the slaughter of its community and labor leaders, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, America would not give it special treatment for trade purposes.

In addition, Congress recognized the FTA’s potential to devastate Colombian farmers. The FTA would speed forced displacement of Afro-Colombians and indigenous people by encouraging increased exploitation of their land by business interests, such as palm oil companies, half of which are owned by paramilitary groups. Expelling these farmers from their land would further swell Colombia’s internally-displaced population – the largest in the world at 4.3 million.

Making matters worse for Colombian farmers, the main U.S. beneficiaries of the FTA would be big agricultural companies which would be permitted to dump cheap, subsidized food stuffs into Colombia duty-free. This would result in farmers’ impoverishment and land loss because small growers would not be able to compete with the low-cost American produce. In Haiti and Mexico, domestic food production was wiped out by similar free trade agreements. It’s likely that Colombia would follow the path of Mexico, where, as the ability to grow legitimate crops became economically impossible, farmers turned more and more to producing illicit drugs. Colombia already produces as much as 80 percent of the world’s cocaine.

Business groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, protested the refusal by Congress to approve the FTA, contending that increasing American exports and jobs was more important than protecting Colombian lives and human rights.

The Chamber’s position is not only depraved, it’s based on flawed calculations of exports and jobs. Just like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and granting China entrance to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Colombia FTA will cost America jobs and exacerbate the U.S. trade deficit.

Previous projections by the Chamber and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that NAFTA and China’s WTO membership would improve the U.S. economy proved catastrophically off base.

When the U.S. signed NAFTA in 1993, it had a $1.7 billion trade surplus with Mexico. After the agreement, that surplus quickly morphed into a deficit, which ballooned to $64.7 billion in 2008. These annual deficits cost the U.S. 560,000 jobs between 1993 and 2004.

Similarly, the ITC predicted that the tariff reductions China offered when it entered the WTO would result in a trade deficit of $1 billion a year. Instead, between the years of 2001 and 2008, the actual result was deficits of $185 billion, and the loss or displacement of 2.3 million American jobs.

The U.S. already runs a trade deficit with Colombia. It was $1.86 billion in 2009. The Economic Policy Institute calculates that the proposed FTA with Colombia would nearly double that trade deficit by 2015, which would cost the United States another 55,000 jobs.

Frankly, the EPI calculation, which factors in effects on trade like currency manipulation, is far more credible than the ITC and Chamber reports, which ignore these issues.

Bogota wants the FTA because it believes the deal will be good for Colombian business interests. One immediate bonus, for example, is that the FTA would eliminate tariffs on 80 percent of Colombia’s exports to the U.S.

To get what it wants, the Colombian government is willing to say anything. Just like an addict. Promises, promises. The Colombian government’s past performance shows its pledges to protect workers from assassination are empty.

America must reject the role of co-dependent. It must demand the proof of performance before rewarding the government of Colombia with an FTA.

Without proof of performance, the government of Colombia will get away with murder. It will export more of its goods – crude oil, coffee, fruit and flowers -- to the U.S. And unwitting Americans will buy more blood red Colombian roses.

Political Corruption: GOP Embraces the Ken Lay Way

Leo Gerard — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:40:30 -0500

The GOP has adopted the Ken Lay principles – that is obfuscation, false statements and feigned innocence. Republicans are obfuscating about the real reason for their opposition to extending unemployment benefits, the way Enron CEO Ken Lay concealed the truth about billions in losses his corporation racked up.

Lay assured Enron workers the corporation was strong – five weeks before it failed. When the nation’s 7^th largest corporation collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001, Lay walked away, by his own estimate, with $20 million. By contrast, Enron’s 4,000 workers and creditors left with debts. The employees lost their jobs and pensions, and the creditors lost $65 billion.

Lay cooked the books. A jury, and a judge in a separate case, convicted him of it in 2006 – finding him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and false statements. He obscured Enron’s massive losses with accounting hocus-pocus then lied about it so pervasively and persuasively that in February of 2001, ten months before the bankruptcy, Fortune magazine awarded Enron first place for innovation and second for management quality.

Republican acolytes of the Ken Lay way contend that the federal budget deficit prohibits spending $65 billion to extend emergency unemployment insurance for a year. But, at the same time, they insist the deficit doesn’t constrain extending tax cuts to the richest 1 percent at a cost of $61 billion for the year 2011. It’s masterful. And as corrupt as Ken Lay.

In the past 60 years, Congress has never terminated emergency unemployment benefits when joblessness was this severe. The highest point at which Congress ended the program previously was 7.2 percent, and that rate was declining. Now, unemployment is stuck at a rate significantly higher -- 9.6 percent. There are 14.8 million unemployed workers, five jostling for every single job opening. They subsist on unemployment checks averaging less than $290 a week, which for too many is insufficient to forestall foreclosure because it’s half of what an average family spends for necessities.

Despite that six-decade precedent, Republicans blocked extension of unemployment benefits on Tuesday, then on Wednesday announced they’d vote on no measure until they got renewal of the Bush tax cuts and a resolution continuing funding for the federal government. As a result, 800,000 jobless Americans lost those small, family-preserving checks. Republicans are holding them hostage, with a ransom demand of tax cuts for the nation’s richest 1 percent. If the GOP doesn't get what it wants, 2 million will lose unemployment insurance by year's end.

Like Ken Lay, Republicans mouth right-sounding words. They claim they care about creating jobs and improving the economy. All the while, just the way Lay covertly defiled accounts, the GOP kicks the economy in the stomach.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ranked unemployment insurance as among the best economic boosters and job creators. CBO determined it generates as much as $1.90 in economic activity for every government dollar. Similarly, a study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that extending the benefits for a year would create as many as 488,000 jobs, which, ultimately, would reduce the cost of benefits because those workers would pay taxes rather than seek food stamps.

Republicans swear that the way to create jobs is to extend the Bush tax breaks for the nation’s richest – people earning more than a quarter million dollars a year. The GOP slyly says those words over and over, hoping repetition will spin them into truth. Like Ken Lay’s assertion that Enron was strong as it disintegrated, the GOP tax cut talking point defies truth.

The CBO concluded that extending tax cuts for the rich was among the least effective economic stimulators. It calculated that extending unemployment insurance would revive the economy up to 19 times as much as extending tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent. In addition, those tax breaks didn’t achieve promised job creation during the Bush administration. Since Harry Truman, no president but George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, both one-termers, generated fewer jobs than the 3 million George W. Bush did over his eight years. Even one-term “stagflation” President Jimmy Carter produced more than three times as many jobs as George W. Bush.

Again, aping Ken Lay, Republicans are engaging in accounting fraud. Professing deep concern over the budget deficit, Republicans say they’d extend unemployment insurance for a year if Democrats would cut federal spending by $65 billion to pay for it. They don’t acknowledge any parallel requirement to cut federal spending by $61 billion to pay for extending tax cuts for the rich for a year.

Just like Enron furloughing 4,000 while Ken Lay and fellow executives stole away with millions, Republicans would take food from the mouths of the unemployed while bulking up the deficit to appease the rich who feast on Almas caviar and White Alba truffles.

That’s corrupt accounting.

And it makes sense. It comes from the party of Ken Lay, who flew George H. W. and Barbara Bush on an Enron plane to George W’s inauguration. You can betcha Republicans won’t take responsibility for the personal and economic devastation caused by their decision to continue moving wealth from the middle class to the rich, just like Ken Lay denied responsibility for Enron’s bankruptcy – right up to his death -- which occurred at a Colorado resort as he awaited sentencing.

Mourning in America: Death of the Middle Class

Leo Gerard — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:58:25 -0500

The deficit commission report issued last week is another Saturday night special pressed to the temple of the American middle class.

“Turn over your money and your benefits or your country will die,” the report screams at workers. “You want your country to go bankrupt? No? Then you gotta delay retirement, get less from Social Security, pay more for health insurance and lose your precious few income tax breaks like the one that helps pay your mortgage while the banker is breathing down your neck right now.”

For 30 years, rich conservatives have successfully threatened the American middle class this way, ever since that rich conservative Ronald Reagan converted the White House into a castle.

The result is a country with greater income inequality than during the age of corporate robber barons at the turn of the 20^th century. It is a country whose 21^st century robber barons, the richest 1 percent of Americans, take nearly a quarter of all income and demand that politicians relieve them of their obligations. The rich -- hedge fund owners who rake in billions, Wall Street banksters handed bonuses in the millions, CEOs paid eight-figure golden parachutes after they mess up -- insist that politicians place government debt burdens on the middle class, the unemployed, the elderly, the struggling young, people whose income has stagnated for three decades.

The co-chairmen of the deficit commission complied with that mandate from the flush when they recommended the middle class bear the brunt of the cost of reducing the deficit. Simultaneously, conservatives in Congress are acquiescing by insisting on extending tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest. Those are the very tax breaks that contributed dramatically to creating the debt – the one that the deficit commission now wants heaped on workers’ backs.

This will be the death of the nation’s strength -- its successful working class. Without the slightest regret or hesitation, the rich are killing the great American middle, rendering it a casualty of their shirked social responsibilities. Their campaign has been abetted by Republicans since Ronald Reagan. The Gipper contended slashing taxes for the wealthy would increase revenues for the government. Republican George H. W. Bush rightly ridiculed Reaganomics as voodoo.

In the GOP years between the beginning of Reagan in 1981 and the end of Bush II in 2009, the federal deficit exploded as Republican presidents failed to control spending and repeatedly cut taxes for the rich.

Reagan reduced the rate on the richest first down to 50 percent, then to 28 percent. The resulting budget deficit converted the U.S. from the world’s largest international creditor to its largest debtor. And now, the deficit commission sends the bulk of the bill for voodoo economics to the middle class, not the rich.

While Reagan gave the rich those breaks, income inequality increased. The share of total income taken by the richest 5 percent grew from 16.5 percent the year before he took office to 18.3 percent the year before he left. In that same time, the share of total income that went to the poorest 20 percent of households fell from 4.2 to 3.8 percent.

Democrat Bill Clinton fulfilled a campaign promise by increasing taxes on the rich -- to a 39.6 percent marginal rate. He balanced the federal budget and left Bush II with a surplus.

Then Bush II squandered it. He gave the rich more tax breaks, accumulated debts larger than all those created by previous presidents combined and worsened income inequality. During his administration, from 2002 to 2007, the pretax income of the richest 1 percent increased 10 percent every year. Over that same period, the median income for working Americans declined and the poverty rate rose.

From Reagan through Bush II, more than four-fifths of the total increase in U.S. income went to the richest 1 percent. Hedge fund owners, whose income is literally in the billions, pay income taxes at 15 percent – lower than the rate paid by their secretaries, who earn far less in a year than any of the top 10 hedgers do in half an hour.

Wall Street recklessness crashed the U.S. economy, throwing millions of middle income earners out of their jobs and their homes. The banksters went to Washington and got politicians to hand them bailout billions, and now those Wall Streeters plan to increase their bonuses -- while unemployment remains stuck at 9.6 percent in the Main Street economy.

It is those guys, bankers grabbing year end bonuses totaling two and three times what middle class earners get for a year’s labor; it is the five-home wealthy demanding that the foreclosed-on middle class suffer for the deficit. The rich, who have received the greatest benefits from this society, have no intention of paying their share of this national responsibility.

The deficit, the Social Security shortfall, difficulties with Medicare – they could all be solved if the nation returned to taxing policies that existed under Republican President Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, when the rate on top earners was 91 percent. That was not even the high point. In the mid-1940s it was 94 percent. Generally it fluctuated between 81 percent in 1940 and 70 percent when Reagan began slashing it in 1981.

Those rates may sound confiscatory now, but it’s not like the rich actually paid them after they subtracted out all of their exemptions, deductions, loopholes, special deals, tricks and wiles.

The dozen years in the 1950s and 1960s when the rate on the richest officially was 91 percent is a time considered by many Americans to be among the nation’s greatest for the middle class, a period when American workers could afford to buy homes, send their kids to college and travel across American on vacation.

There’s no talk of that now. Raising taxes on the rich now is considered ludicrous. Ridiculous. The whole Social Security shortfall could be solved if the rich paid taxes on their entire incomes, not just the first $110,000, a break that means the wealthy pay a smaller percentage if their income toward Social Security than the impoverished. But the deficit commission didn’t propose that.

No, the rich have succeeded in eliminating as a possibility their paying an increased tax share. Now, the only consideration is cutting their taxes. They didn’t hold an actual Saturday night special to anyone’s head. The rich are snake oil salesmen slick, Bernie Madoff-style schemers. They sold voodoo economics to America, and now they’re intent on making the middle class pay for what that policy has wrought in deficits.

Reagan’s re-election ad was wrong. He didn’t institute “Morning in America.” It was mourning for the once great American middle class.

Obama continues to lie about Iran's nuclear program.

Michael Kwiatkowski — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:02:37 -0400

And the lies just keep on coming. When Iran announced the existence of its second nuclear site, something the U.S. has apparently known about for years, Barack Obama once again followed Bush-Cheney policy by lying about Iran's nuclear activities.

Obama joined the leaders of Britain and France in accusing the Islamic republic of clandestinely building an underground plant to make nuclear fuel that could be used to build an atomic bomb. Iranian officials acknowledged the facility but insisted it had been reported to nuclear authorities as required.

Obama should try reading intelligence reports, like 2007's National Intelligence Estimate (the combined consensus report by all sixteen known U.S. intelligence agencies), which stated quite clearly that there is no concrete evidence of a weapons program in Iran. In July and August of this year, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed the lack of evidence although it refuses to state anything definitively. Yet still Obama, the D.C. political establishment, and the corporate media continue to lie to the contrary.

We've already been lied into one failed war, lied into ramping up another failed war, are so hurting for fresh soldiers that the Pentagon is now actively accepting white supremacists, yet still the establishment seeks to lie us into another conflict.

For THIS we elected a Democrat to the presidency? Obama looks more and more like the shrub every day.

VIDEO: GOP Brags That McCain Will Continue Bush's Economic Legacy

David Sirota — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:21:23 -0400

Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss the inflammatory comments by Phil Gramm (John McCain's top economic advisor) and how those comments really epitomize the Republican Party's country clubbish, let-them-eat-cake outlook on the economy. Notice about half-way through as the Republican strategist I'm debating actually acknowledges that McCain's major idea for fixing the economy is continuing George W. Bush's tax policies - and that when she's called out for saying that, she tries to deny what she just said:

The interchange is instructive for two reasons.

First and foremost is the admission: namely, that Republicans still want America to believe that the way to steady the economy is to follow Bush's efforts to slash taxes for millionaires. As I show in the very first chapter of my book, this is a prescription being rejected even in some of the most conservative parts of the country.

Second, there is the denial: When called onto the carpet for wanting to continue the policies of the most unpopular president in history, Republicans start running for cover to the point of claiming they never said what they just said. The denial is a tacit acknowledgment of the power of the populist uprising now boiling throughout the country. The GOP knows the country is very angry at conservatives' free market fundamentalism - and so will deny and obfuscate to pretend they aren't championing such fundamentalism.

Of course, moments after appearing on Fox, my email in-box was filled with hate mail from conservative viewers. For instance, Dave in Bokeelia, Florida told me "Gramm was abolutely correct" in blaming Americans for the economic downturn, then asked, "Why don't you get and your boyfriend move to Denmark or some other socialist country?" (apparently, he's not aware I'm happily married to my wife, Emily). Then he declared, "Obama has already lost, you moron."

A guy named Charles angrily asked, "When did raising taxes ever stimulate economic growth?" then said "raising taxes will only cause a deeper recession," and added "Do your homework before berating someone on television." Apparently, he forgot that our most recent economic boom during the 1990s came immediately after President Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy.

My favorite was from a guy named Steve who wrote, "hey girlyboy, do you have any idea how pitiful you look to normal folks when you open your sissy moth beging the government to help?" (that is his spelling - for real).

These comments show how powerful conservative propaganda has been - it has convinced a number (albeit a dwindling one, according to polling data) of people to believe that the real problem in our country is that we have too few royalists running the government - not too many. Though this conservative ideology is clearly on the ropes, the Fox News clip shows that the GOP is going to continue trying to ram it down our throats.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.