We are about to elect a Neocon-Republican House of Representatives—if all the numbers are correct—that will do its best to further set back the Middle Class and return us to the policies of “Everything for the Rich” of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Before you vote, please remember what happened between 2001-2008.
We had two tax cuts. Those tax cuts changed the socio-economic relationships in this country. Those in the top 1% saw their average annual incomes go from $347,000 to $1.3 million. On the other hand, those in the middle class saw their incomes go from $44,100 to only $55,300. To do this, to create this vast increase at the top, Bush and Cheney created a huge national debt. They basically borrowed money from all American citizens and gave it, as you can see, to the rich.
During the second tax cut, we engaged in an unnecessary war that was unpaid for, an unprecedented situation. Moreover, it was a war which we now know pretty clearly was illegal and irresponsible, and a war that, because it was unfunded, added another $1 trillion—at least—to our national debt.
During that war…for which there was absolutely no need…we lost 4,500 of our own young men and women and wounded and often maimed 30,000 more Americans. Many of us served in the military; some for many years before returning to civilian life. So most of us understand the risks of being a soldier. But no one wants to be used for a President’s personal vendetta or a Vice President’s desire to enrich his friends and former colleagues.
In 2001, under Clinton, the Republican Congress was all-too-willing to cut spending under a Democrat so that no monies would go to Democratic House of Representative districts and they would therefore be very vulnerable to Republican campaigns against them. And what happened?
It worked and many Democrats lost their seats in the 2000 elections. But Clinton and Gore knew it was the right thing to do and so did Democrats in the House who had authorized a pay-as-you-go system of funding the government. They sacrificed their political careers for fiscal sanity.
But the Karl Rove slash-and-burn personal attacks and the growing alliance with Fox News and the big money that funds the Right Wing talk machine in over 5,000 radio stations buried the message that it was important to hold down spending.
Bush drained all the surplus that Clinton had built up and within his first term had created a monumental additional deficit. Yes, Bush is stupid, semi-literate and a coward…yes…all those things. But Dick Cheney had been at the very top, at the core of the government for over 30 years. He knew better. The deficit spending was deliberate. He has even said recently that “we learned that deficits don’t matter.”
Deficits don’t matter? Well, because of the Bush-Cheney caused deficits, we added $8 trillion and climbing. And that is merely the part that Bush and Cheney created. The first Bush and Reagan created $5 trillion before that.
We’re still paying for them because of the huge Bush Recession…they left us. The Republicans now want to take over government to cut Social Security, Education, alternative energy research, environmental protections, Medicare, Medicaid….and more….so deficits damned well do matter!
In 2000, Clinton’s last year in office, the budget surplus was $86 billion. By 2002, Bush-Cheney had added $350 billion to the deficit with their spending and with the first tax cut for the rich. (These numbers all come from the historical data tables directly from the U.S. Treasury Department.)
The following years went like this: in 2003 another $536 billion was added to the debt. In 2004, $674 billion; in 2005, $543 billion; in 2006, $469 billion; in 2007, $465 billion; in 2008, $486 billion.
In 2009, the year after the crash of October 2008, we were recouping the $700 billion in loans that Bush and Hank Paulson had to give to banks. Those loans have now been paid down to about a $65 billion balance due.
The government suffered the loss of income taxes from about 8 million people laid off in the last year of the Bush Administration and the carry-over into the first 9 months of the Obama administration. It suffered a big part of an $878 billion stimulus, a third of which…because of Republican insistence was in virtually useless, merely revenue-draining tax cuts.
But even with those handicaps, and $300 billion in lost revenue and another $300 billion in additional unemployment benefits that had to be paid, the Obama administration held the 2009 deficit to $500 billion, almost the same as in 2008…a remarkable achievement.
Bush and Cheney not only caused the Great Recession, the 8 million in job losses and the $8 trillion in cumulative deficits by the beginning of the 2010 budget but they also did some other interesting things.
Did it ever occur to you why you have to take off your shoes, be frisked, be x-rayed at an airport? Because, even though terrorism expert…and Republican…Richard Clarke was running around the White House warning of a terrorist attack for months before 9/11, the President and Condoleeza Rice, his totally unprepared National Security Advisor, ignored those warnings.
As a result, 3,000 Americans died. As close to 9/11 as late August of 2001, the CIA and Clarke were frantically urging the President to take action, but he and his supposedly experienced Vice President did nothing.
But after the attacks, the Vice President sprang into action and began to organize a legislative program to spy on all Americans. How many of those would be Democratic politicians, one wonders? The ability, for example, to check your video records, your phone records and your library records and those involved are never allowed to speak of it under penalty of federal prosecution.
How is that for Big Brother? Does anyone believe that a Karl Rove, working in the White House for Cheney, would not take political advantage of that? We know that he fired all U.S. Attorneys who served under Clinton. He then replaced them with only those attorneys who had been approved as dedicated Neocon ideologues by the Federalist Society, a Right Wing legal organization.
Some of them didn’t even have degrees from accredited law schools. The woman in charge of supervising them and making sure they followed the Neocon Republican political policies was barely out of the law school at Jerry Falwell’s religious college. The Bush-Cheney regime merged politics and government. It became one big political movement.
And when the U.S. Attorneys didn’t involve themselves enough in trying to prosecute Democratic candidates, they were fired. Nine U.S. Attorneys were fired and one was later paid off with a big job by a large corporate law firm.
Is this what you want to go through again? Christine O’Donnell, the Senate candidate from Delaware believes that the Church and state should be one. She doesn’t even have a religion. She grew up Catholic and has experimented with every kind of religion….including…famously…witchcraft! This is a U.S. Senator? The Republicans think so.
Joe Miller of Alaska was appointed to West Point. He made it through and won a Bronze Star in the first Gulf War. He has a law degree from Yale and a Masters in Political Science from the University of Alaska. He is no dummy.
So why does he insist that each and every piece of legislation show that it is authorized to be enacted based on a provision in the Consitution? Why does he want to wholesale disband large government departments, privatize the Veteran’s Administration, cut the minimum wage and dismantle Social Security and Medicare?
Because he is an ideologue. He is a true believer. Look….Hitler…was he a dope? Was Goebbels, Dr. Goebbels, the inventor of propaganda, a dope? Joe Miller is no dope. He is simply not a decent human being. He is even more dangerous than a dope. He is a modern-day American Neocon…someone who wants the country run by big corporations, by the Republican Party, and by the authority of the military, just in case you don’t like people spying on your library records.
So if you vote Republican, this is what you will get. Ideologues. Not dummies. Dangerous, committed people…just like those who were committed to Soviet or Chinese-variety Communism, Fascism and other totalitarian rules.
We were saved from the Bush-Cheney variety of Neoconservatism, where their political-agenda specialist, Karl Rove tried to pack the entire government with Neocons. They came within months of being able to declare an Cnd trying to suspend elections under Bush rule NSPD-51 which said that the President has virtually dictatorial powers in certain instances.
For example:
“…any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”
And when can he do this–
“When the President determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the President can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an “enduring constitutional government.”
And what can he do?
the President “may seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.”
NSPD-51/ HSPD-20 also makes no reference whatsoever to Congress. The language of the May 9 directive appears to negate any a requirement that the President submit to Congress a determination that a national emergency exists, suggesting instead that the powers of the executive order can be implemented without any congressional approval or oversight.
So that is how close we were to dictatorship. The National Emergency Act is still there. Obama won’t take advantage of it. But the next Republican President might. And if he or she is anything like this crop of anarchist, totalitarian Neocons….watch out for your freedom and your civil rights.
