Letters to the Editor
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i wonder if americans will ever make...
the connection between voting for politicians, and being ruled by politicians.
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But Andrew...
...The rich are doing just fine.
You didn't think the government was run for the benefit of "we the people", did you?
re: "...a fiscal surplus of about $300 million..."
I think you mean $300 billion.
Ah, yes, remember the 2000 Presidential debates, where the topic was what to do with the surplus?
Let's take a stroll down memory lane:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/
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Plenty of fat
With US military spending higher than that of the rest of the world combined, in the absence of any serious threat, I'd say there is plenty of fat to be had by any administration willing to take on the Pentagon and courageous enough to face the screams of "traitor, traitor".
It also seems to me that the tax cuts were not so much irresponsible as cynical. That the government would go broke was the intention, wasn't it? I don't remember where I read the economic philosophy behind the Bush administration, but if I recall well it boiled down to this: the easiest way to cut social and environmental spending is to empty the coffers.
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Plenty of Fat (take 2)
There is lots and lots of wealth stored up from the Bush years. It's all in the hands of the hyper-wealthy, who did so well with the Bush tax cuts. Wealth can be taxed, you know, even in the lean years.
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billion/million
thanks for catching that, scorpio
must have been the crowds of voters in New Hampshire that distracted me.
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BushCo's Legacy
BushCo has succeeded in their mission to demonstrate the evils of government by eviscerating it, bankrupting it, and incompetenticizing it (it's a word, look it up). I get that they're still buying into Reagan's supply-side / tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy-lead-to-increased-revenues bullsh*t, but the callousness with which these criminals have otherwise damaged the organs of state is breathtaking (FEMA, habeus corpus, election-rigging, ad nauseam). How could they possibly think that all these actions are forwarding any sort of positive vision for the USofA?
I think my next step is to check out Naomi Klein's writings on disaster capitalism. It's devastatingly cynical to think that this could be the core belief, but the actions of this Administration seem to be best explained by the idea that they'll do their best to f*ck up this country so that their corporate patrons (Blackwater, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Merck, Bechtel, again ad nauseam) stand to benefit by unf*cking what should have never been f*cked to begin with.
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Gratitude.
"By cutting taxes for those who least needed a break ..."
And then those same people turned around and showed their gratitude by screwing the whole country into oblivion.
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Graft and corruption are still the story
There were a number of pundits who remarked that Clinton had left Bush with the money to conduct a great deal of mischief. And while Iraq seems like the primary culprit, that was a smokescreen for the graft and corruption that put defense dollars directly into Republican Campaign coffers. Cunningham, Delay, et al. There are rumors to the effect that a sizable quantity of this ill gotten cash has been parked in offshore banks, primarily in the Caribbean, outside the purview of US authorities, as well as Congressional investigators. Does it matter if the name on the account is Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, or Citibank?
Before the advent of CDO's, there were Venture Capital Groups, which set up online casinos offshore, and other dummy corporations, which became fronts for laundering dirty political campaign money, and Jack Abramoff. The story of Wilkes and Cunningham is a story of these fronts, one of which received a lucrative Defense contract. More than half of their alleged corruption involved black, or (still) classified contracts.
Is anyone going to even suggest we throw open the books, on these black contracts, on Citibank and all its shady offshore operations, or is joe taxpayer just supposed to shut up and pay for it all. No, it's all going to be very convenient when Wall Street goes bust, convenient for them. And at the given moment, when the liars have all figured it out, Bernanke will step aside and let the market fall like a stone. His banker pals will get on the sell side, liek Goldman Sachs has already done, by shorting the same toxic mortgage paper that it helped to underwrite.
I would guess that right now the money center banks, and hedge funds are shorting the very stocks they bought for your retirement fund. Cheer up, they might craft a fiscal stimulus package, out of a sense of guilt, and pay us back with our own money, after they take out their fees.
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Reminds me of Futurama.
There was an episode where the Planet Express crew were on this alien planet that looked suspiciously like the one where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn on Star Trek (the original series). A Star Trek-esqe energy being who happened to be a big ST nerd pit them and the actors from the original series against some monster and told them they could find everything they needed to prevail on the planet's surface.
Bender then produces a Thompson submachine gun and shoots into the air until there is nothing left but a big pile of spent cartridge casings on the ground. He then said, "that was fun." This is like what Bush has done for us - everything full of sound and fury, expending much of what might have helped if it were directed properly, but ultimately producing nothing of value.
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Bush? A fuck up?
The hell, you say. C'est impossible. He did so well with his Texas businesses... and the Texas Rangers ball club... and, um... ok, well, maybe not, but gosh darn it he saved us from "terrorism," whatever that's being defined as being today...
Dubya! Pop quiz!! What's worse than a recession? Because that's what's right around the corner. Enjoy the ride, you've earned it!
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I'm sorry what makes you think they even want to?
Maybe you've been watching a different country, but in the this one the administration does not acknowledge anything is wrong let alone has the interest or tools to address a problem if they thought one existed.
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Huge success
From a certain point of view, Bush's fiscal policy has been a huge success. A focused, efficient military operation (Clinton's plan for the Taliban) with little opportunity for contract dollars was moved a thousand miles to Iraq and reconceived as a massive, capital-intensive permanent deployment whose strategic doctrine is essentially whatever involves the most, and most lavish, construction. Actual tactical considerations take a back seat to what is effectively the same logic that leads bankers to require mortgage-holders to live in overbuilt houses. Haliburton and its ilk have enjoyed staggeringly unprecedented war profits.
And of course everything about federal spending has followed suit — elaborate and absurd inefficiencies as an excuse to give money to favored constituents, and when no longer possible to do directly, then indirectly on the policy level, by allowing financial interests to operate the economy in very inefficient ways to their own advantage.
If Bush's people were smarter, they doubtless would have found ways to be even more precise about whose mouths the funnel leads to. I'm sure they would have preferred if rich but traitorous Americans like Warren Buffett, Al Gore, or George Soros could somehow be stripped of their assets and denied further access to wealth.
But you know, having succeeded so massively in their 8 year project, it's hard to imagine that they feel they have too much to complain about. Was it Gerhard Schroeder who described US fiscal policy under Bush as "more like looting"?