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January 27, 2008 at 14:55:33
The GOP Will Have to Steal the Next Election Because They Cannot Win it by Len Hart Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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The War In Iraq. Just as many other Americans find the war in Iraq an unqualified disaster, businesspeople tell reporters that they do not like the lies Bush and Cheney told, to take us into a war that will likely only create more terrorists hating America. Like many others, they see this as dangerous folly. In addition, the war has been a fiscal disaster, with billions thrown away and no accounting whatsoever. As a retired Westinghouse manager and lifelong Republican told the Wall Street Journal, "'We've lost control of spending,' and the administration's execution of the Iraq war has been 'incompetent.'" Businesspeople have little tolerance for incompetence; only true ideologues can over look it.
The Republican party is losing its "business base" because it's on the wrong side of every issue that will decide the Presidency and the make up of congress. Those issues include the economy, the endless war, ballooning deficits and health care. A killer issue is a fact gaining traction even among the GOP: the GOP is bad for a good economy. I've got the stats to prove that beyond any reasonable doubt. Also spelling doom for the GOP is the fact that even hard-nose businessmen are "fed up" with GOP myopia, its fanatical obsession with so-called "social issues", primarily, abortion and gay marriage. These are not the "wedge issues" they used to be. People are just sick of hearing about it! Give it a frickin' rest. Focus On Social Issues. Countless businessmen I know tell me they are exhausted with the Republicans' focus on abortion, gay marriage, and the host of social issues the party insists on putting on the front burner. Business journals have similar reports. This is not surprising, for all polls show that for most Americans, these are not the centrally important issues.
--John Dean, The Dwindling Republican Business Base: It's the Economy, Stupid
This is expected from so-called progressives and liberals, but the growing sense of discontent and malaise found among those who would normally vote or consider themselves GOP may spell utter disaster come election day. Like everyone else, it seems, business people are likewise fed up with the endless war against Iraq.
With all due respect to John Dean, whose columns for Findlaw never fail to cut to the chase, I have been saying for years that when it comes to the economy, any credit given the GOP is unfounded. The GOP has presided over worse economic growth married to increased federal spending at least since World War II. The administration of Ronald Reagan should have been the wake up call. Reagan's tax cut of 1982 was followed by a depression of some two years. GOP types counter that following the recession, the economy rebounded with a boom. Hardly! At the end of two years of negative growth, in fact the worst "depression" since the crash of 1929, Americans were lucky that the economy merely resumed an anemic 3 percent growth rate, nothing to write home about. Big corporations could write off many losses but inividuals and families, as usual, were stuck with the tab. Many never really fully recovered.
We haven't seen incompetence on this scale since Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan or Bush Sr. (all Republicans, need I remind?)
According to supply-side theory, these actions should have nudged the economy in the right direction, not plunged it into the worst recession in 40 years. Other problems involve timing: Reagan's first tax cuts went into effect in 1982, but this was also the summer that the Federal Reserve Board slashed interest rates and expanded the money supply. Most economists believe the Fed, not Reagan, was responsible for the following recovery. Finally, the recession of 1990 began four months before Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge. The recession began in July 1990; Bush signed his tax increases into law in November 1990.
Moreover, the Fed's "peace time expansion" following Ronald Reagan's "depression" of almost two years was uneven. The worst income disparities in American history had already been triggered. As if by design, Reagan's rich base got even richer and everyone else lost ground. They are still losing ground despite an all to brief respite in Bill Clinton's second term. The GOP has ruined the American economy, perhaps forever. The budget shown below --your money squandered by Bush.
And supply-siders are careful to note that Reagan's was the longest peacetime expansion since World War II. In truth, the Kennedy-Johnson expansion was longer: 106 months compared to Reagan's 92.1
The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are all but meaningless in the world apres-Bush. Both terms already mean something different than they did in the 19th Century. For example, British economist John Maynard Keynes was until very recently scorned by the right wing; his brand of economics was called "liberal" and he was simplistically, perhaps, simple-mindedly, associated with Marx. Yet, Keynes took issue with Karl Marx on key points. "I don't want a social revolution", Keynes said. He went on to characterize poverty as a "...dysfunctional threat" to a capitalist system which he favored. Fact is, Keynes, for all his notoriety was conservative.
Nevertheless, that Keynes denounced "poverty" is enough to earn him the enmity of modern conservatives who obviously like the feelings of superiority they experience when millions of others are without jobs and scrambling to feed themselves or, as Bush put it, to "...put food on your families".
It is Keynes' use of the phrase "...extending the traditional functions of government" that inspires conservatives to cross themselves and wear garlic. It was by "extending" those traditional functions that Keynes believed unemployment could be eliminated. This is, of course, anathema to laissez-faire throwbacks like Ron Paul whose economic thinking is stuck in 19th Century mud.
The same conservatives are not bothered by "extensions of government" effected by Reagan, Bush Sr., and now the Shrub. Ronald Reagan's program would have been thought "liberal" had the same program been advocated by a Democrat. As Richard Nixon committed the nation to deficits of truly "liberal" proportions, he famously said: "We are all Keynesians now".
The GOP has managed to screw up even that tried and proven formula. When Democrats practice Keynesian economics, it works. When the GOP does it, the nation slides into recession or depression as the rich get rich off the carcasses left behind. Check the chart! The reason for that is the fact that GOP "tax cuts" enrich an already elite. Very little of any of those "tax cut windfalls" ever trickle down to anyone in any way at any time. It is probably found offshore like every job that the GOP has managed to export despite the bullshit that was told me by Milton Friedman personally.
The biggest spending "liberals" are the GOP, yet, unlike "big spending Democrats" whose deficits were accompanied by handsome and egalitarian growth, GOP big spending is invariably associated with depression, stagflation, outsourcing and rising unemployment! If this is done deliberately to enrich cronies, then the GOP leadership should be tried en masse for criminal conspiracy. If not, they should be pilloried as the lying incompetents that they have proven themselves to be.
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Ron Paul
Ron Paul has the best ideas. Man, look up Greenspan and his book "Gold and Prosperity". he endorses the gold standard and many other ideas Ron Paul has. You say his ideas are stuck in the 19th centuy, and i guess you would venture to say that the ones we are using now are working better? Have you taken any high level economics classes? Studied monetary policy? Read austrian economics, Von Mises, Rothbard??? Ron Paul has written several books on economics. I just can't believe you would go out and trash Ron Paul if you actually researched what he says. Quit drinking the cool aid man and wake up. Do your own research and quit listening to sound bites. The man is very very intelligent. he is the only economist running. by jason carr (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 5 comments) on Sunday, Jan 27, 2008 at 6:08:07 PM  (0+)
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Reply: Ron Paul is clueless
Paul wants to go on the Gold Standard. Sheesh! The whole world knows the US has practically no gold left. Why do you think Nixon took the US OFF the gold standard. What if there was a run on the bank???? You can count on it!!!!! NO ONE IN HIS RIGHT MIND WOULD PASS UP A CHANCE TO SWAP AN INCREASINGLY WORTHLESS PIECE OF PAPER FOR A PIECE OF GOLD. IN FACT, MILLIONS ARE ALREADY DUMPING THE BUCK FOR BETTER STUFF NOW!!! Do you really think that by offering gold for bucks would stop a run? HARDLY!!!! It would ENCOURAGE one. Think about it. The US would, in effect, say to the world: YOU GIVE US ALL YOUR WORTHLESS PAPER GREENBACKS AND WE'LL GIVE YOU A LITTLE PIECE OF WHAT PRECIOUS GOLD WE HAVE LEFT!!!!!! Talk about a world wide recession and the utter collapse of the US economy!!! RON PAUL IS AN IDIOT. He knows nothing about economics. by Len Hart (134 articles, 175 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 555 comments) on Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 at 9:53:44 AM (0+)
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Reply: You're clueless
"Paul wants to go on the Gold Standard. Sheesh!" No he doesn't, you idiot. All he wants to do is remove taxes on purchasing and selling precious metals and allow people to trade these metals for goods and services. You can still have your stupid dollar bills. So sick of people having no clue bitching about positions Paul doesn't have and what is most terrifying is that you clueless idiots are still allowed to vote having no idea what candidates actually stand for much less their history which indicates what positions they actually hold. You're incompetent. by fuzzy wzhe (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 33 comments) on Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 at 2:03:42 PM (0+)
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The Economy
You guys have no idea what is coming down the pike. Basically, we are facing a financial collapse that is worse than the 1970s and might even be worse than that of 29. It really doesn't matter who is president now, it cannot be stopped. Basically, I hope Paul is president, because he's got enough brains to know the government isn't going to be able to fix the problem. Let stupid creditors go bankrupt for lending money to stupid debtors that couldn't pay the money back. That will be rough but it will force businesses to stop giving money to people that will not be able to pay it back, but will instead just become wage slaves for the rest of their indebted lives. If we get a Democrat in office (and we probably will), watch the dollar collapse as new money is created out of nowhere and given to these financial institutions to bail them out. That was Keynes solution. A lot of people think Keynes had a decent solution. His solution was to use the government to prevent recessions artificially, but the result is that we're going to have one hell of a recession to make up for all those recessions we should have had, and didn't. Did you know that from 1800 to 1920 we had no net inflation or deflation? We had periods of inflation and deflation between then, but after 120 years the inflation and deflation during that time results to no inflation at all. Since 1920, what used to cost 1 penny, costs 25 cents today. The smallest unit of our currency in the 1920s was effectively, a quarter. It's not going to be fun either way in the next 4 years. by fuzzy wzhe (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 33 comments) on Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 at 2:15:25 AM (0+)
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You AND Paul are STILL utterly clueless, naive, and ignorant
"Paul wants to go on the Gold Standard. Sheesh!" by Len Hart (134 articles, 175 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 555 comments) on Tuesday, Jan 29, 2008 at 5:29:33 PM (0+)
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