It always puzzles me that some of my (economically) middle- and lower-class friends, none of whom ever seem to do any reading on the subject, believe that Republicans have a better handle on things like lowering taxes, spurring job growth, and just generally protecting our standard of living.  I haven’t lived very long — just a half century so far — but even I have noticed that whenever we have a Republican President, things tank.  Whenever we get a Democrat in the White House, things improve. All the way around.

The current administration has, however, far surpassed past Republican administrations in damaging our country on just about every front imaginable.  Perhaps this is not surprising. After all, influential Republican adviser Grover Norquist once famously said one goal was,

to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.  (Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber, Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State (2004) p. 6.)

And journalist Elizabeth Drew noted that,

It’s not just because taxes are irritating and unpopular and all that.  He [Norquist] has a long-term view, which is the lower the revenues that the government takes in, the less spending it will be able to do, the less money will go to the groups that he sees as the base of the Democratic party and its power—the teachers’ unions, welfare workers, municipal workers and so on.  This is the big, long-term war.  It’s total.  It’s Armageddon.  And I have to say that the people on the right, I think, have thought this through much more than their opponents on the other side who really don’t much know what they do and how the opposition thinks and are just waking up to it.  (Elizabeth Drew, Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America, quoted in Banana Republicans, p. 7.)

I can only hope that people will start to wake up to what’s happening.  I’m personally concerned that the United States cannot survive another Republican President, not even one from the great hockey-playing, moose-shooting state of Alaska.  (Yeah, truth is, Obama isn’t running against McCain; he’s running against Palin.  Because while I’m concerned about whether the United States can survive another Republican President, I’m convinced that his health and age make it unlikely McCain will.)

Maybe it’s time we recognize that there’s a reason George W. Bush continues smiling and appears to be unconcerned about the severity of the problems into which he’s gotten us.  The reason is at least as old as the recognition that Rome needed a more robust fire department. I doubt it’s a mistake that Grover Norquist was once called “Field Marshall” of the Bush economic plan. And people think the administration doesn’t know what it’s doing.  Bush continues to smile and nod and grin and bob his head because everything is going exactly according to plan.

So I’m not surprised at either the economic devastation that we’ve seen under Bush’s watch, nor at his apparent lack of concern.  I suspect there may well be private parties in the now anything-but-transparent White House where Bush gleefully fiddles away, impervious to the vagaries of the economy he and his friends are helping to destabilize.

What does surprise me is the lack of recognition on the part of everyone else that this mess is caused by eight years of unbridled Republican policies. What does surprise me is that middle- and lower-income voters can’t see in their own lives what economists have long recognized:

The real incomes of middle-class families grew more than twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they did under Republican presidents. Even more remarkable, the real incomes of working-poor families (at the 20th percentile of the income distribution) grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House.  (Larry Bartels, “Inequalities” (April 27, 2008) New York Times Magazine.)

Unfortunately, the thing that has created this mess is what will also make it virtually impossible for a true government bail-out.  For that, we need only look at the now-historic (and thus largely forgotten) Great Depression.  Only the oldest amongst us really remembers — and understands — the depth of that depression, the key cause of which was “an expansion of the money supply in the 1920s that led to an unsustainable credit-driven boom.”

The factors noted by the Austrian School economists, primarily Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Murray Rothbard (A History of Money and Banking in the United States), are present again today.  And the government is trying the same things it tried after the crash of 1929 that preceded the Great Depression.

But forget that for now.  If you’ve ever tried to balance a checkbook, or run a household, just think about this:  George W. Bush has spent years — almost eight of them — cutting taxes.  Forget also, for the moment, that those tax cuts have largely benefitted the rich, and not the rest of us — seriously, forget that part for now.  Just think of it this way: Bush has cut the “income” of the United States government.  At the same time, he started a war that costs billions per day to run.  Coupled with that, he and his friends have failed to regulate lenders, effectively removing the controls that kept the kids from dipping into the piggy bank whenever they ran low on cash.

How long would your household last before you lost everything, if you did the same things our government is doing?

Even now I can see Dick Cheney and Grover Norquist sitting in a bathtub, clinking glasses, toasting one another, while George Bush fiddles (read that however you want) in the background.

Suggested Reading

The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek)	A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II	Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age

“It’s almost too easy to be a terrorist these days,” said Jennifer Mason, 26. “You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city.” — 2 men held over Boston scare released on bond (February 3, 2007) Associated Press via MSNBC.

An advertising company hired an artist to put up signs promoting an upcoming cartoon show. They did. Three weeks later, the Boston police department kicks things into high gear. “Oh my god! It’s terrorists! These advertising signs have electronics and wires!” There’s suddenly a police-generated panic.

Or was there? I mean, the signs were there for three weeks before anything happened. Maybe it’s only the police who panicked. (As a side note, if it took them three weeks to panic, you really gotta wonder just how safe they’re keeping us, anyway. Not that a panic was justified, but if they think there’s a terrorist-based attack, shouldn’t the reaction be a bit more immediate?)

Seattle also had the devices. “We haven’t had any 911 calls regarding this,” said the police. Philadelphia believed they had 56 devices: no mention of any complaints or panic. New York removed 41 devices from Manhattan and Brooklyn, although the NYPD stated they had not received any complaints.

Boston’s mayor wants to sue and there’s talk of criminal charges against the responsible company. Orson Welles must be spinning in his grave, thinking how lucky he was to die before we came to this. War of the Worlds? Nope…just more fallout — way more harmful to us than the radioactive sort — from the Bush Administration.

What have we done to ourselves?

Yesterday, an ordinary American, Ryan Bird, was detained by officers for writing his opinion that the Transportation Security Administration secretary was “an idiot.” The words were written on a clear plastic bag containing carry-on items as he prepared to board a plane. Bird is the Vice-President of an industrial equipment manufacturing company. I might think that could qualify him as some kind of terrorist, but I’d be surprised if most Americans would agree with me.

Or maybe I’m wrong. He did, after all, speak his mind. And that’s increasingly forbidden in the United States of America.

The supervisor [at the airport security checkpoint] told Bird he had the right to express his opinions “out there” — pointing outside the screening area — but did not have the right “in here,” Bird said.— Mike M. Ahlers, ” ‘Idiot’ barb gets passenger detained” (September 28, 2006) CNN

In keeping with modern-day reporting practices, no witnesses to the incident were interviewed other than the “security” personnel. They, of course, described the man as “combative.” Uh, right. And President Bush is the champion of freedom.

Frankly, I hope the man carries this through to a major lawsuit. I only wish I could sit on the jury. Well, okay, I wish that…and that the rest of you would wake the fuck up.

Both circumstances have about an equal chance of occurring, from what I can see.

How many of you are going to contact your congressional representatives to tell them you don’t like this sort of thing? Well, you may be next.

EDIT: I don’t care much for what I’ve heard about “Wonkette,” but following up this story lead me to her blog. You can read what she said ?
???Special thanks to Bob Marcotte for sending the link to this story. ]]> http://unspun.us/the-bush-regime/freedom-of-speech-okay-out-there/feed/ 0 http://unspun.us/the-bush-regime/dont-ask-we-wont-tell/ http://unspun.us/the-bush-regime/dont-ask-we-wont-tell/#comments Thu, 17 Aug 2006 12:46:37 +0000 Rick http://unspun.us/?p=811 Really, this pretty much says it all:

And recently, two former AT&T workers told The New York Times that the company’s facility in St. Louis had a separate room, protected by double doors and retinal/fingerprint scanners, where “a government agency” monitored network traffic. — Levine, “What Does the NSA Know About You?” (July 24, 2006) Yahoo! News

I know, I know: If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to hide.

So why is it you guys get so pissed off when I wander into your homes just for a look around, then? I mean, after all, if you’ve nothing to hide, shouldn’t good neighbors just put my mind at ease by letting me check for myself?

Why is it that we’re okay with the fact that our once-democratic republic is becoming less and less accessible to us — because everything is a big secret — but our lives are a permanent open book to “the government.”

And who is “the government” now, anyway? In the old days, it was us, but, increasingly, “the government” now treats each us of as potential enemies.

And you’re all okay with that for some odd reason.

The sad thing is that when the day comes — and it will — that the tide changes and you regret that decision, it will be too late. There is a reason our Founders distrusted government. There is a reason they made it so difficult for government to exercise power over us. And trust me — you prove this on a daily basis — our Founders were a helluva lot smarter than you.

Think about it.

Here is a guy who spent a lot of time hanging out in Iraq, potentially getting mixed up with terrorists. And when he arrives home on a flight from Dubai, the Department of Homeland Security grabs and detains him for about six hours.

Why? Because he once sold bootleg t-shirts as a youth. Oh, and he once had an argument — which he won in court — with a parking attendant and then accidentally missed the final court date (i.e., after he won the case).

As he notes in his article, he spent significant amounts of time in what would be potentially questionable activities in Iraq and other places. But did the Department of Homeland Security ask him one question about these activities?

Uh-uh.

So. Whether you get this or not, we’re not one whit safer since erasing the constitutional protections we formerly had, when the government of the United States was “a limited form of government.”

If only our schools still taught civics. If only it was still part of our normal education to learn about the Federalist Papers.

Maybe then we’d actually be safer, instead of just — like an ostrich with its head in the sand — mistakenly believing we were.

And, really, there’s nothing I need to add to it. Berg’s father said it all.

Update: Bob Marcotte found another interview involving Mr. Berg. This one is from An Axis of Idiots over at Faux News. They had so much trouble with what Berg said that they wouldn’t allow him to speak after they realized his position. It even appears they may have made it seem he was having some audio trouble.

Yes, I know we don’t care that they’ve stolen many American lives by tricking us into backing their war for oil. And I know we don’t care about the coincidence of having an oilman for President, an oilman for Vice-President, several oil people on the President’s staff and oil executives secretly meeting with the Vice-President at the start of the first term in office while gasoline prices have increased dramatically. And I know there’s a whole host of other things that we’re just not concerned about, including lost freedoms and civil rights.

The “limited form of government” established by the Founders via the Constitution is becoming unlimited. We no longer recognize that, under the Constitution, citizens have virtually unlimited rights. It is the government that is supposed to justify any increase in the powers it claims for itself. Instead, we’ve learned to argue that the People don’t have certain rights “because they aren’t guaranteed by the Constitution.” And we complain about individuals constantly “discovering” new rights that are nowhere to be “found” in that document.

Au contraire! Under the Constitution, as originally conceived and as written, the only rights individuals do not have are those rights we expressly gave up in “constituting” the federal government. All other rights that someone might assert are now and always have been ours.

But I know we no longer care about that.

The ignorance, apathy, or languor that leads us increasingly to abandon any attempts to rein in our government — and reign as self-governors intended by the Constitution — is saddest though, when it extends to our complacency about stolen elections. As more time passes, we find increasing evidence that this is, indeed, what happened in 2004 (and likely as not in 2000 as well).

What makes the lack of outrage and anger over this so very sad is that — should we ever actually awaken from this ennuitic nightmare — it will be too late.

At that point, the only thing that will fix our government will be actual — not metaphorical — revolution.

Today, it appears, he has completed that task.

Yahoo!’s AP news feed reports: U.S. moves 1,500 reserve troops to Iraq.

While it may cut down on lawsuits, the new move means we’ll have to hold up a little on militarization of the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Damn! I was so looking forward to living in a police state!

Yahoo! News today reports that President Bush has decided to militarize the United States borders — well, the one between us and the brown people, anyway.

What many Americans don’t know is that brown people from other nations sneak in through the northern border with Canada, as do some illegal white people. Now fully hyped up on the idea that we’re being invaded by Mexicans, though, we’ve got to make sure our National Guard, already bearing a heavy burden fighting a war Bush tricked us into in Iraq, will be stretched even thinner. But if we’re going to freak out over brown people pouring across our borders, shouldn’t we militarize all our borders?

Perhaps Bush’s goal is much more basic, though. Maybe it’s not really about making our borders impermeable to illegal aliens. Rather, with a war right here on U.S. soil, maybe people will stop thinking about Iraq.

And that, after all, does seem to be the primary goal of the Bush Administration and its supporters. Rather than actually fix things — most likely they haven’t a clue how anyway (remember, Bush was a repetitive failure in business before coming to politics) — the Administration would prefer to keep us distracted.

Yet Lee Ellis of the Gannett News Service denies this, saying Americans everywhere are really just ignorant twits, pulled and pushed about by a liberal press and socialist teachers in our schools.

Try to find this liberal press, however. They’re well-hidden. Clicking on the “News results for bush polls” link that came up when I was googling for such information reveals only stories arguing that the low ratings are false and fantastic creations of the liberal press (and socialist teachers in our schools). [Caveat: The link in this paragraph was created on May 15, 2006 at approximately 10 a.m. PST. By the time you view it, the stories on the page may have changed.] Laura Bush wants us to believe that when the polls favored her husband, they didn’t appear on the front page. When they’re against him, they’re always on the front page.

Fact is, though, I remember seeing front page stories about Americans supporting various Bush proposals, until they found out those proposals were based on lies. I remember, also, the Bush Administration paying to plant news stories in the papers, some of which ended up on the front pages of various local papers. Furthermore, stories about Bush’s “sagging” poll numbers have been around for some time — there are, after all, some newspapers that still largely print news — but they are only recently starting to get widespread attention. Sooner or later, even FAUX News has to admit the truth.

And socialist professors? Perhaps they are everywhere, after all. When you look at the Bush Administration definition, those are the ones who disagree with the Administration’s policies. I’ve been called a socialist myself because of my disagreements with Bush, even though I have never supported socialism and doubt I ever would. (The fact that I would not support unbridled capitalism does not mean I would support socialism. Both are harmful to the average American human being.) It stands to reason that as more and more people find they disagree with the Bush Administration, more and more of them will be classified as socialists. And some of those newly-minted “socialists” are bound to be professors!

But you have to ask yourself, “Is Lee Ellis right? Are Americans really stupid?” Well, quite possibly. After all, in spite of the fact that we all should be able to see what rising gas prices are doing to our own pocketbooks and should be able to extrapolate from that to recognize the damage being done to our nation’s economy by the Bush Administration’s coddling of oil companies — remember, Bush and Cheney are, first and foremost, (failed) oilmen — we do nothing about it. We may get riled up enough to commiserate with one another over the water cooler — who can afford beer anymore when we need to buy gas so we can get to work? — but we haven’t had much impact on our elected representatives. If enough Americans complained to those representatives, though, you’d better believe they’d act to punish oil companies for raping us at the pump. So maybe Americans are stupid.

Still, it’s difficult to believe that Americans are stupid enough not to be able to see what’s happening in their own lives, yet smart enough to pay heed to “erroneous” news stories about the Bush Administration. If Americans are really so dumb as the Bush Administration says, how would they be swayed by a non-existent liberal press and legions of imaginary socialist professors in our schools?

The fact is, Bush’s militarization of the border is doomed to fail. It won’t stop illegal immigration. And, hopefully, it won’t distract Americans from recognizing that the real threat to our way of life is sitting in the White House.

Because the real problem in America isn’t a liberal press. It isn’t socialist professors in our schools. It’s an inept and bumbling failed businessman trying to run America as if it, too, were a corporation. The only difference is that Bush has forgotten that if America were a corporation, then under the Constitution, we would all be shareholders entitled to a return on the investment. Instead, he’s focused only on the rich, provide tax cuts and opportunities for obscene oil and munitions profits, and trampled the rights of the rest of us. And the truth is, some of us are finally getting a little tired of it all.

No matter how hard he tries, no increase in domestically-deployed National Guardsmen or Republican-endorsed propaganda is going to change that.

Oh, sure, I know, I know. The White House and Mr. Goss are telling us that he resigned willingly. Uh, right. Mr. Goss had to go; he wasn’t enough of a patsy, apparently. Stand up to the Administration’s Bad Boys and you’re going to get your ass kicked corporate-style.

And that’s just how they do it in corporate-land — even in poorly-run corporations like the sort George Bush is used to heading up. Higher-level mucky-mucks seldom actually get the ax. They all “willingly step down.” After all, you never know in that rarified atmosphere when someone who was once below you, once a friend, is going to be above you — or, worse, in King George’s case, is going to betray you by telling the American public what’s really happening. You just don’t want to piss them off.

You have to wonder exactly what Mr. Goss said, though, when he characterized his surprise resignation as “just one of those mysteries.”

Personally, I think it’s no mystery at all. Rosa Brooks fairly clearly explained how things work with King George yesterday in her Op-Ed column for the LA Times.