By Tom Kando
Today I saw another bumper sticker saying, “Get the government off my back”!
There has been an amazing change in public opinion since Obama’s election - for the worse. I attribute this to the brainwashing of a gullible population by the enormously rich private interests. Consider the following facts:
1. Prior to 2009, the federal government was already running massive deficits. Under Bush, the annual deficit was approaching half a trillion dollars. The last time the government was in the black was during Clinton.
2. The first massive rescue package - the $700 billion bailout of investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mack, etc. - was the 2008 Bush-Paulson TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).
3. The economic debacle which the Obama administration has been fighting valiantly is the legacy of the Bush administration. It was not caused by excessive government spending or government meddling, but by precisely the opposite, namely excessive deregulation - the Alan Greenspan-Milton Friedman ideology - and excessive corporate tax cuts. The world crisis was caused by Wall Street, not by Uncle Sam, i.e. by private capitalism, not by socialist government.
4. So far, Obama has at least stanched the bleeding. Thanks to his 2009 stimulus program - the $787 billion ARRA (American Recovery and Investment Act), America and the world have moved back from the abyss.
Yet, the noisiest clamor we hear these days is that our problems are caused by excessive government, and that the government is the greatest threat to our future well-being. This is the noise you hear the most in California, where the State is broke, and nationwide, in the health care “debate.” I believe that these people are the useful idiots who have been brainwashed by the likes of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and that the brainwashing campaign is funded by our society’s immensely powerful plutocracy.
Just think:
1. As long as the federal deficit served to feed the military-industrial complex and our wars in the Middle East, few people blanched at deficits approaching half a trillion dollars a year. But now that the money goes more to social services, suddenly everyone has become a deficit hawk!
2. When the government allocated $700 billion to bail out investment banks and other Wall Street entities, there was no outcry. But now that a similar amount is devoted to public works, to unemployment benefits and hopefully to health coverage, suddenly, “We can’t afford it.”
3. Until Obama took over the presidency, Joe Blow either didn’t know anything about the deficit, or he didn’t give a damn. Now suddenly Joe Blow has turned into an economist. He worries about the deficit, inflation, the devaluation of the dollar.
Of course, the rapidly rising deficit is a problem. It’ll have to be dealt with. Taxes will have to become more progressive, military adventures will have to be curtailed, both the government and the people will have to live within their means.
But what I find so striking at this moment is the obscene upside-down values expressed by some of the protesters. Isn’t is a warped value system, which approves of deficits to wage war, but not to provide people with jobs, with unemployment compensation and with health insurance? A value system which approves of spending $700 billion to save the likes of AIG executives who then continue to pay themselves dozens of millions of dollars in bonuses, but disapproves of spending a similar amount of stimulus money on public works and other programs which benefit the people?
This is the upside-down Republican world. A world in which all government programs except the military are evil, and Wall Street is the savior. When Lenin coined the expression "useful idiots," he had in mind bourgeois fellow-travelers and parlor communists. Today, the term seems to apply more to the millions of working-class people who for some unfathomable reason swallow the Republican lie, hook, line and sinker.leave comment here
Today I saw another bumper sticker saying, “Get the government off my back”!
There has been an amazing change in public opinion since Obama’s election - for the worse. I attribute this to the brainwashing of a gullible population by the enormously rich private interests. Consider the following facts:
1. Prior to 2009, the federal government was already running massive deficits. Under Bush, the annual deficit was approaching half a trillion dollars. The last time the government was in the black was during Clinton.
2. The first massive rescue package - the $700 billion bailout of investment banks, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mack, etc. - was the 2008 Bush-Paulson TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).
3. The economic debacle which the Obama administration has been fighting valiantly is the legacy of the Bush administration. It was not caused by excessive government spending or government meddling, but by precisely the opposite, namely excessive deregulation - the Alan Greenspan-Milton Friedman ideology - and excessive corporate tax cuts. The world crisis was caused by Wall Street, not by Uncle Sam, i.e. by private capitalism, not by socialist government.
4. So far, Obama has at least stanched the bleeding. Thanks to his 2009 stimulus program - the $787 billion ARRA (American Recovery and Investment Act), America and the world have moved back from the abyss.
Yet, the noisiest clamor we hear these days is that our problems are caused by excessive government, and that the government is the greatest threat to our future well-being. This is the noise you hear the most in California, where the State is broke, and nationwide, in the health care “debate.” I believe that these people are the useful idiots who have been brainwashed by the likes of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and that the brainwashing campaign is funded by our society’s immensely powerful plutocracy.
Just think:
1. As long as the federal deficit served to feed the military-industrial complex and our wars in the Middle East, few people blanched at deficits approaching half a trillion dollars a year. But now that the money goes more to social services, suddenly everyone has become a deficit hawk!
2. When the government allocated $700 billion to bail out investment banks and other Wall Street entities, there was no outcry. But now that a similar amount is devoted to public works, to unemployment benefits and hopefully to health coverage, suddenly, “We can’t afford it.”
3. Until Obama took over the presidency, Joe Blow either didn’t know anything about the deficit, or he didn’t give a damn. Now suddenly Joe Blow has turned into an economist. He worries about the deficit, inflation, the devaluation of the dollar.
Of course, the rapidly rising deficit is a problem. It’ll have to be dealt with. Taxes will have to become more progressive, military adventures will have to be curtailed, both the government and the people will have to live within their means.
But what I find so striking at this moment is the obscene upside-down values expressed by some of the protesters. Isn’t is a warped value system, which approves of deficits to wage war, but not to provide people with jobs, with unemployment compensation and with health insurance? A value system which approves of spending $700 billion to save the likes of AIG executives who then continue to pay themselves dozens of millions of dollars in bonuses, but disapproves of spending a similar amount of stimulus money on public works and other programs which benefit the people?
This is the upside-down Republican world. A world in which all government programs except the military are evil, and Wall Street is the savior. When Lenin coined the expression "useful idiots," he had in mind bourgeois fellow-travelers and parlor communists. Today, the term seems to apply more to the millions of working-class people who for some unfathomable reason swallow the Republican lie, hook, line and sinker.leave comment here
2 comments:
Tom, This problem isn't either a Republican OR Democrat problem. It is a problem of the use and abuse of Federal Power. The outright arrogance of power and defiance of the public will definitely began with Bush-Cheney, but Obama isn't fixing it, and neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court are doing their job to return federal power to its proper role.
Republicans AND Democrats in Congress conspired to create the real estate bubble with irresponsible subsidized housing loans people could not afford. After the housing bubble blew up, they next created a car bubble, and now they plan an appliance bubble next. They are using "consumers" as their slaves, rather than treating them as citizens.
You are correct that deregulation under Republicans created some of the problems like junk bonds and rewards for mergers and acqusitions, but it was Clinton who signed the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, paving the way for the Wall Street ponzi schemes and stock market crash.
These consolidations in economic power parallel the consolidations of federal power with republicans promoting economic consolidation and democrats promoting government consolidation. But consolidation itself is wrong and strips people of their citizenship and individual power, leaving them pawns (useful idiots) of another nomenklatura--only this time in the U.S.
The so-called "across the aisle" legislation is nothing more than a euphemism for Republicans agreeing to support some Democratic special interests if the Democrats reciprocate. Generally none of these special interests that get passed serve the well-being of the people or the country; taxpayers are useful idiots supporting it.
It is time to return anything related to social welfare to state governments where the citizens can hold legislators more accountable. Otherwise, the system will collapse anyway--before another president succeeds in getting elected. Our financial viability is getting very close to where the Soviet Union was in 1989.
Gordon, thank you very much for your as-always thoughtful comment. I agree with most of it, and it is worth a serious reply:
1. I’ll grant you that I am probably too partisan, and that the two parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee.... although today, the Republican party seems to be more under the influence of the rabid right than in the past.
2. You favor more states rights, local autonomy, a truly federal society, etc...etc. Good. In principle, I agree that most things are better handled locally than by a distant central government, where unresponsive power accumulates and corrupts. True.
3. Nevertheless, a national health care system might still be a good idea. Medicare works well. A similar system for all Americans might be the best way to go. Maybe this is worth a debate.
4. Your final point is the one I couldn’t agree with MORE: This is precisely the danger which has been keeping me awake at night (and against which I have railed many times in my blog and elsewhere): America is broke! And we are broke because of overstretch - even if that overreach is not necessarily imperial (Yale historian Paul Kennedy).
Don’t misunderstand me: I believe that America’s role as a world power has been benevolent, not malignant, unlike that of other great powers such as the Soviet Union. But overstretch it is, however you look at it. We simply cannot afford to do it all (policing the world). We no longer need to station 50,000 soldiers in Japan, dozens of thousands in Okinawa, Germany, Kosovo, Macedonia and fifty other countries.
And our two current wars? We will never be able to pacify and democratize Afghanistan. No one ever has, over the past two and a half thousand years since Alexander. Taking out the heads of Al Qaeda with drones remote-controlled from Las Vegas, great (if it works)! Sending a quarter million soldiers to be bogged down in the Middle East for decades, no.
I suppose the domestic programs on the books, plus the new ones proposed (Social Security, Medicare, a trillion-dollar health care plan) are equally endangering our fiscal future. Agreed.
But I see other fronts (as well), on which we can work at re-establishing our society’s economic solvency. And granted, I am now mixing apples and oranges - talking about both the bankruptcy of the government and that of our country as a whole:
1) Correcting our horrendous trade imbalance, I.o.w., somehow export more and import and out-source less.
2) Become less wasteful, which is an environmental must anyway. For example, the average American house could still be comfortable at under 1700 square feet instead of 3000.
3) Raise corporate taxes back to the reasonable level where they were for much of the 20th century.
4) And again, stop bleeding to death by trying to police and to save the world.
So my criticism is based on deep concern and love for America. I agree 100% that we are in danger of following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union, and of earlier great powers such as Imperial Spain, while I totally reject the Left notion that we are an evil empire.
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