Republicans:

The Party of the Very Rich and the Gullible

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2003-12-23 - 7:22 p.m.

An Economics Lesson for Our Time

This is a comment related to the article by Mike Duncan: 'Lying about unemployment', which was as good as or better than the article itself:

The comment is by RexDevious on Tuesday, December 23 @ 13:08:13 EST. The whole comment follows:

I just had to weigh in on this one. I just read an article on the "liberal" New York Times which claims that:

"The U.S. economy, propelled by tax cuts and low interest rates, roared ahead at an 8.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the best showing in nearly 20 years, while Americans' incomes and spending both showed healthy gains in November."

Hey hey! Happy Times are here again? Sure they are, and our country is safer, and Iraq is a democracy too.

The Bush administration and Enron have a wee bit more in common than shady campaign financial deals. For one thing, they both use the same cookbook for their financial recipes.

Let's start with the ol' GDP, that number which dictates whether or not we're in a recession or not. Remember that $87 billion that went to Halliburton and friends, and the hundreds of billions before that? Despite the fact that it was spent by our own government, and that we had to max out the national credit cards to raise the cash, that all counts towards the GDP. This is the equivilent of taking out 3 mortages on your house, draining your bank account, and maxing out your credit cards, so that you can boost your families income by buying $200,000 worth of your daughter's girl scout cookies. And then telling your wife not to worry about the debt because, "Hey, our gross income just rose by $200,000, thing are really picking up for us!". Does this seem like a sound financial strategy to you? Well, it would if you planned on leaving your wife anyway, and taking a cushy job at the Girl Scout Cookie Company after the divorce. And if the house, bank account, and credit cards had all been in your wife's name anyway.

As for the unemployment rate, all you have to do to smell the Enron-aroma coming from the GOP kitchen is to look at the way other countries calculate their unemployment rate. In Canada, a country that a lot of well-read people are looking at moving to these days, the employment rate is determined by calculating how many people above age 15 don't have living wage jobs. It's the same for most civilized nations. In America, it's how many people qualify for unemployment payments. So, according the GOP, if you didn't have a job long enough to qualify for unemployment in the first place, or your company fired you so they wouldn't have to pay more unemployment insurance, or if your benefits ran out before you could find work, or you just got out of school and never found work to begin with, or if you took a below the poverty-line job cleaning at Wal-Mart or Rush Limbaugh's house... Presto: you're not actually unemployed! What a relief huh? Those homeless families, the destitute war vets, the prisoners rotting in jail for selling a bong on the Internet? Not a one them is actually unemployed either. Oh happy day!

And of course, even these rosy number don't address the working conditions people are reduced to in order to keep their jobs. That computer programmer who works as a dog sitter because their company switched to off-shore labour? That accounting department who agreed to a 33% salary decrease to avoid another round of lay offs? The frazzled adminstrative assistants who work 70 hour weeks with no overtime pay to make up for all the people who were downsized? The CPA who just took a position at 40% of the salary she would have accepted 3 years ago? Don't worry about them, they're not unemployed either. But dollar for dollar, they're certainly a lot more "productive" than they used to be. That's what they mean when they tell us that productivity is up.

So before you slap down your visa at Best Buy to get a "hot deal" on that Japanese manufactured PDA for Christmas because the GDP and the DOW are up, unemployment is down, and productivity is "skyrocketing", ask yourself this question: How long can these accounting tricks really be sustained? Certainly through the 2004 elections, the GOP is nothing if not brilliant strategists. But don't expect some timely warning that your company is about to go under, your cost of living will skyrocket, or the value of your savings in US currency is about to plummet. It happened to Enron investors in a matter of weeks, and not until they were already already locked into being the very last passengers off of that sinking ship. If you're looking for an advance warning that things are about to go belly up, well, you just got it. So unless your a high level Bush campaign donor, or an impoverish Indian computer whiz who'd be thrilled to get $15,000 a year; don't just worry that you'll be working harder for less money in 2005, count on it.

2003-12-20 - 1:22 p.m.

The Economy and Our Future

If you watch the corporate TV media, or listen to the Bush administation, you might think the economy was recovering, and that the future looks rosy for America.

If you believe this, you are seriously blind to what the Bush Administration's policies are doing to the future of our nation and to the people who live and work here.

While things may be looking up for the very rich, and those who run the large corporations, for the rest of us the future looks pretty grim.

Here are some articles which present three different aspects of our economic future, with an excerpt from each:

First, an article from ABC (Associated Press) pointing out the gloomy future of the runaway deficit in the years ahead.

Highlighting how dire the long-range budget picture is, even the scenarios that let trillions of dollars in tax cuts enacted under President Bush expire, which would bring in piles of new revenue, would mean that "fiscal stability is not assured."

Second, an insightful article by Kevin Danaher and Jason Mark, in AlterNet, about the loss of high-tech and decent paying jobs overseas.

The shift from being a winner to a loser is bound to prompt some serious rethinking about whether corporations should be given free rein to do whatever they like.

And finally, and most thoughtful, an article in The Nation, by economist Paul Krugman, which makes very clear the disastrous direction the economic policies of the Bush Administration are taking us, as the tax burden is being shifted from the rich to the working poor.

Put it this way: Suppose that you actually liked a caste society, and you were seeking ways to use your control of the government to further entrench the advantages of the haves against the have-nots. What would you do?

One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could more easily accumulate even more. You'd also try to create tax shelters mainly useful for the rich. And more broadly still, you'd try to reduce tax rates on people with high incomes, shifting the burden to the payroll tax and other revenue sources that bear most heavily on people with lower incomes.

Meanwhile, on the spending side, you'd cut back on healthcare for the poor, on the quality of public education and on state aid for higher education. This would make it more difficult for people with low incomes to climb out of their difficulties and acquire the education essential to upward mobility in the modern economy.

And just to close off as many routes to upward mobility as possible, you'd do everything possible to break the power of unions, and you'd privatize government functions so that well-paid civil servants could be replaced with poorly paid private employees.

It all sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it?

It is essential that we vote this reckless and subversive administration out of office before it's too late for the country that we love.

2003-12-17 - 12:20 p.m.

Senator Byrd Speaks Out Again

Senator Robert C. Byrd, the 85 year old dean, and wise old man of the Senate, has given another fine speech, telling it like it is with regard to the war in Iraq. He spoke to The Nation, giving a speech entitled, Challenging 'Pre-emption' and some excerpts follow:

The capture of Saddam Hussein will not be the keystone for peace in that volatile region. This day's news does not lessen the danger that the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strike poses to international peace and stability.

...

As each day passes and as more American soldiers are killed and wounded in Iraq, I become ever more convinced that the war in Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place for the wrong reasons.

...

What a huge price we are now paying for the President's bullheaded rush to invoke the unwise and unprecedented doctrine of pre-emption to invade Iraq, an invasion without provocation, an invasion without the support of the United Nations or the international community.

It would be tragic enough if the casualties of the Iraq war were confined to the battlefield, but they are not. The casualties of this war will have serious repercussions for generations to come.

Truth is one casualty. Despite the best efforts of the White House to contort the invasion of Iraq into an extension of the war on terror, there was never a connection between Saddam Hussein and September 11. There was never a connection between Iraq and September 11. Not a single Iraqi was among the nineteen hijackers of those four planes.

Despite dire warnings from the President, Saddam Hussein had at his fingertips neither the means nor the materiel to unleash deadly weapons of mass destruction on the world. Despite presidential rhetoric to the contrary, Iraq did not pose a grave and gathering menace to the security of the United States.

The war in Iraq was nothing less than a manufactured war. It was a war served up to a deliberately misled and deluded American public to suit the neoconservative political agenda of the Bush White House.

A lasting casualty is the international credibility and reputation of the United States of America. We have squandered the good will that had rallied to our side after the attacks of 9/11, attacks that struck just a few short blocks from where we sit tonight.

At the end of that fateful day, the world was with us. The French newspaper Le Monde proclaimed, "We Are All Americans." But we squandered that good will. We turned our sights on Iraq and turned our back on the United Nations.

As a result, in some corners of the world, including some corners of Europe and Great Britain, our beloved nation is now viewed as the world bully.

You can read the whole speech here.

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