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December 3, 2009
Trickle-up economics: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me
By Paul Craig Roberts
Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and the ease with which Obama won the presidential election over McCain/Palin, the Democratic Party has totally collapsed. The Democrats have abandoned every constituency. Democrats have discarded the American people.
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“You know, we tend to take
the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when
we say we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began – nearly 600,000
in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than
anywhere else in America, with an unemployment rate over 15 percent; when we
talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, Keystone RV, and Pilgrim
International – companies that have sustained this community for years – we're
talking about Ed Neufeldt and people like him all across this
country.
“We're talking about folks who've lost their livelihood and
don't know what will take its place. Parents who've lost their health care and
lie awake nights praying the kids don't get sick. Families who've lost the home
that was their corner of the American dream. Young people who put that college
acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford
it.
“That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true
measure of this economic crisis. Those are the stories I heard when I came here
to Elkhart six months ago and that I have carried with me every day since. I
promised you back then that if were elected President, I would do everything I
could to help this community recover. And that's why I've come back today – to
tell you how I intend to keep that promise.â€
What's the story in Elkhart nine months after President Obama reaffirms his promise? “Long-term unemployed face dwindling options.â€
Lawrie Covey, 58, has been out of work for two years. “I can't even get a job cleaning rooms at a local motel.†Her son, who was night shift foreman for a local manufacturer and who lost his job after eight years, was splitting the rent. Winter is upon them, and the heating bill is rising. Their transportation is 20 years old and needs a new radiator. Both her and her son's unemployment benefits have run out. Lawrie Covey has fallen back on her experience growing up on a firm. She is raising chickens and picking wild mushrooms and has a garden. If she makes it through the winter, she hopes to get a couple of baby pigs to raise to see them through the next year.
Lawrie Covey, to whom President Obama made a promise could just as well be an Afghan peasant. She doesn't count any more than the thousands of Afghans who have been murdered in their sleep by US air strikes on “terrorists.â€
She voted for a president who spent all the money on wars based in lies and deceptions and on Gold Sacks, the richest institution in the world.
The maniacal left-wing hates Ronald Reagan because “he cut taxes for the rich,†but Obama is loading up the poor with enormous debts that imply hyperinflation in order to make Gold Sacks too heavy to lift and in order to reward the munitions industry for its service to world peace and American hegemony.
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury for Economic Policy in the Reagan Administration. He was associate editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service. He is a contributing editor to Gerald Celente's Trends Journal. He has had numerous university appointments. His books, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is available here, and How America Was Lost, can be ordered here. His latest book, The Neoconservative Threat To International Order: Washington's Perilous War For
Hegemony, can be ordered here.