Whose "Day of Reckoning?"

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By Stephen Pizzo (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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Not to pile on but, then there's the cost of all the environmental degradation that occurred on their watch. Instead of addressing the mounting evidence they took a page from Big Tobacco's playbook, first using phony science to deny global warming was even happening. Then, once it became impossible to deny it any longer, they changed their argument to “Sure, but there's no proof than human activities have anything to do with global warming.” It was an argument designed to preclude even trying to do anything about global warming, and it worked. (Unfortunately we can't sue them like we did Big Tobacco.)

Then there's the war in Iraq. That little mistake cost us $12 billion a month for more than five of Bush's eight years in office – in all nearly a trillion bucks down a sandy rat hole, and counting.

In Afghanistan they spent a small fortune unseating the Taliban and trying to kill or capture the actual people who planned the 9-11 attacks. On the very verge of success though the Bushies lost interest, turning their attention to Iraq before they achieved those goals in Afghanistan. In the end all the billions of dollars, (and hundreds of US soldier's lives) spent in Afghanistan achieved nothing. All they did was allow the Taliban and al Qaida to infect neighboring Pakistan, regroup and re-engage in Afghanistan, where they now control most of the country once again. Hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain there too, and also, still counting.

All that money the Bush administration spent, wasted, misappropriated, and, in the end, what did we get for those trillions? Well, we got partial ownership of Iraq, full ownership of Afghanistan, and a growing ownership share in nuclear-armed, Taliban/al Qaida infested Pakistan.

Such a deal. Yet during all that no one at the WSJ predicted Bush would “face a day of reckoning when Americans found out how much it all cost.”

Obama's spending is also at historic highs. But there's “spending” and there's “spending.” Governments, just as households, face two kinds of spending decisions: discretionary spending and capital-investment spending.

Discretionary spending satisfies the “I may not need it but I want it” reflex. Capital spending is money invested in things that promise to generate a return over time. Home improvements, are good example of household capital spending as they increase the value of a family's main asset, their home. That big screen TV, on the other hand, is discretionary spending.

The Bushies did very little capital investing and a whole lot of discretionary spending. For example:

Obama is investing in education, because it's going to be educated, uneducated or mis-educated, children who will shape America's future. And right now our schools are turning out an demonstrably inferior product.

Obama is investing in emerging technologies that hold the promise that someday will free us from the nut-hold of those smarmy phony Saudi “Princes.” And, will begin the process of cleaning up the environment, before the environment decides to do the job herself – by getting rid of us.

Obama is restructuring the tax code, so that those who actually go to work, and actually provide services or real producing stuff real people really need, get to keep more of what they make.

That's the opposite of what the Bush administration did when they funneled tax breaks to those who already were doing just fine, thank you very much, while producing little more than paper, much of which has turned out to be so worthless you can't even pay anyone to take off our hands.

I won't belabor the point. But for the WSJ editors to posit that voters will soon be aghast at the cost of Obama's policies, couldn't go unnoticed. Because they sure didn't notice the ruinousness policies of the Bush administration when they could have, and when they should have.

And finally, of all people on earth who should know the difference between out of control discretionary spending, and wise capital spending, it should be the guys and gals running the newspaper a friend of mine refers to as “capitalism's racing form.”

But of course, the do know the difference. But they are to mainstream American politics what the Taliban are to mainstream Islam: not just wrong, but crazy-wrong.

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Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a (more...)

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