Haven’t we had enough of Dick Cheney? Hasn’t the entire world had enough of the catastrophe and disaster and subsequent misery caused by this world-class liar and war criminal?
Now he is running around the country to all his few remaining allies, like propagandist Sean Hannity on the Fox Neocon News Network, telling us some fantasy about the economy and about our security. First, the disastrous economy that President Obama has already begun to turn around in the first 100 days, was begun in the Bush Cheney looting-the-government-and-the-taxpayers period. The first TARP money–$700 billion–was handed out to financial firms to keep them and us from going totally broke. We gave them our money and they lost it and now our money is gone. One of Bush’s last acts–which we cannot be certain was not planned–was to have Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson give these banks money to stay alive and keep us from going into a Depression almost overnight. So Cheney lied about that.
Then he lied about our security. We are more secure now that President Obama is in office and people around the world are making overtures to the United States again. He is already perhaps the most popular man in the world and has made our country popular again. Even people who hate what other people have done do not attack men that they admire and with whom they believe they may have some rapport.
Here’s our assessment. Cheney should keep his mouth shut. If he doesn’t we should clearly point out why he should. Namely, that he has been lying all his life. He lied us into a war that has cost literally hundreds of thousands of lives and is still going on. He lied to us about tax cuts that will cost the middle class $6 trillion that Bush and Cheney basically borrowed from the middle class and gave to the rich. Cheney said that the middle class would benefit. They did not. Middle class incomes have gone down dramatically since Bush and Cheney took office and shifted the wealth in this country dramatically towards the already super rich.
Cheney said that lax regulations of financial matters would allow the financial sector to grow, make banks function better and increase prosperity. In fact, lax regulation was a means for the very wealthy and hedge fund managers on Wall Street to create worthless financial instruments about which they lied and sold to pension funds and retirement funds who have now lost half of their value. Cheney and Bush were favorites of ENRON executives, flying around the world and bringing their executives in to make energy decisions. ENRON executives have gone to jail and the former president of ENRON is suspected of killing himself rather than face a prison term. ENRON, while Cheney denied it, proceeded to cheat Californians out of $400 billion through simple manipulation of energy costs.
When Cheney became Vice President and took office in 2001, within two weeks he was already creating new situations from which his energy pals could profit. The energy task force that he created was intended to develop a national energy policy. Our energy would be more affordable, cleaner, and to some extent create cleaner energy. Well, of course none of that happened. Corporations like ENRON, EXXON/Mobil Conoco, Shell and BP America were literally writing the energy legislation. And gasoline went to $4.00 a gallon.
In the Summer of 2008 a court order finally required that a partial disclosure of these materials be made by the Commerce Department. This resulted in the release of documents, maps, and charts, dating back to March 2001, of Iraq’s, Saudi Arabia’s and United Arab Emirates’ oil fields, pipelines, refineries, tanker terminals and development projects. When earlier in the Bush Administration, Treasury Secretary and highly-respected former ALCOA Chairman Paul O’Neill made accusations against Cheney, stating that he had seen these documents, Cheney lied again, calling it “absurd.”
Well, of course, it wasn’t absurd. It was that elusive, always-missing link in Cheney’s life…the truth.
Now Cheney wants to rewrite history. He wants to pretend that the entire economic collapse that he and Bush and his wealthy corporate friends…oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, energy companies, mining, healthcare, credit cards, Wall Street…all the huge organizations that provide the money and campaign contributions through their 32,000 Washington lobbyists…this economic collapse only began once they left the White House. Well, not only is no one buying that ridiculous premise, but we all want Mr. Cheney to stop using his former position to renew his treachery. He has no position. He is not the head of the Republican Party or any party larger than a handful. He is universally despised.
Cheney brought us war, economic collapse, devastation of many government departments, deficit spending so large that it will take generations of good economies to recover. Dick Cheney and Grove Norquist are one and the same in political philosophy. Norquist has said, and Cheney, through his appointments and contracts…outsourcing even military objectives within the United States to private companies…a potentially treasonous act…that they want to “reduce the size of government until it can be drowned in a bathtub.” And that is what they have tried to do. But while cutting staff everywhere, they put in place their own, totally inexperienced, political appointees.
These people outsourced large amounts of government work to private companies. Partly it was to reward their political friends. Partly it was to reduce the number of good paying, unionized, government jobs. It was to unemploy the middle class. And all the while, the rights to our national parks and conserved lands were being sold to oil companies, mining companies and timber companies, but where are the royalties?
Cheney needs to sit down and shut up. The country has had enough…too much…of his lying propagandistic talk about our lack of security. If we are not secure after the two wars he created, after the development of Homeland Security and after $6 trillion dollars more in debt that we had when he entered office, then we need to investigate why we do not. And hold Cheney responsible for what he has done…for the first time in his life. For once, just once, we need to put one of these world-class robbers and looters in jail. People all across this country are hurting. It is time someone paid the piper. And Dick Cheney is the one who should finally pay.