simplify
choke the beast of it's food (money) and power (fear)

get rid of the crap they try to convince you you need

if they say black, believe it to be any color but.

don't drive anywhere unless absolutely no options exist

do not vote for ANYONE who has stock / interest in the MIC/PROPAMEDIA entity

TURN OFF THE TV.. it is not informative, it is all fluff and lies, designed to keep the viewer's mind numb, and unable to think critically.

Get to know your local neighbors, trade, barter, save your cash and keep "THEM" out of the loop.

if you can join a community garden, plant one if you have room

MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL!!!

Conserve and treat water like there is no more, because we are so close to running out of clean safe drinking water, the Governments of the world are already planning war games over this vital resource.

reject the people who brought us to the current precipitous brink of financial, political and social ruin, they have proven even more decisively than ever before, via all the disastrous consequents(SL, ENRON,BeaherSturns(sp?),etc.) the sole result of greedy people making obscene profits since deregulation began in the Reagan era.

Drop out of the loop and the view will enlighten you.

Why wonder why McCain does anything? He's a fool, a user, a cancer that we can well do without. As for REagan's policies, what about the harm Clintonites have done to the poor when Clinton endorsed the welfare cuts for the women and children? The evil which started to grow during Reagan's Administration has grown leaps and bounds with Bush, then Clinton, then the dope in the office now, and finally with the joke, McCain. And the neo-cons and holy rollers have just spread this insidious immorality ten fold.

"The answer cannot simply be that McCain doesn't care much about economics, as he himself has indicated. Perhaps that would explain his having voted for all of the measures pushed through the Senate by Gramm. Perhaps it even would explain McCain's having been chair of Gramm's own failed presidential bid. But indifference to economics does not explain the prominence of Gramm in the McCain campaign as the top economic adviser during these past months of the U.S. financial crisis. Indifference to the folks losing their homes is a more plausible explanation."

Ummm, obviously ?

In the class warfare that most Americans are clueless about, guys like Gramm and McCain know *exactly* what they are doing, economically (as far as *their* millions go). One class makes billions creating corporations like Enron that stretch/break the laws, or create financial instruments that eventually blow up (packaged sub-prime mortgages) and then they get bailouts from the 'public' (also known as 'the class losing the class warfare'), just as they did with the Savings and Loan fiasco in the 1980's. The ruling class *expects* the government to help them remain wealthy; that's *why* they invest so much money in it. (we can't let [Savings and Loans, Chrysler, investment banks, giant Hedge Funds, Freddie Mac, etc] fail, it's too important for America. Thus when the really wealthy screw up, it's a national tragedy that must be 'fixed'. When *you* screw up, it's a character flaw, or just tough luck, too bad, capitalism lets the weak, stupid and unlucky sink.)

The 'ruled class' argue endlessly over why the government barely helps them, and thinks this justifies not giving any/much money to 'politicians' that just might help them. Much of this confusion stems from where they get their information from; see 'ruling class'.

Note that Obama is raising most of his money from this 'ruled class' over the Internet, so the McCain, Gramm, Limbaugh crowd is quite worried. Either they can co-opt Obama (hey, you're one of us now, play along, your daughters will be worth 100's of millions) or they will rip into him with all the fury of 'saving freedom' or 'fighting Communism' or whatever their PR firms tell them is the best way to attack Obama.

ubrew12 wrote

"In this country, before the Reagan tax cuts, the richest 10% of the country owned 55% of its wealth, a figure that most capitalist democracies in the world maintain to this day through progressive taxation. But in America, the richest 10% now own 75% of its wealth."

Go to:

http://www.inequality.org/

and click on "By the Numbers"

In 2004, the richest 1% has 34.3% of the wealth, the next 9% had 36.9%. The rest of us (90%) had 28.7%.

As far as stock ownership, 1% had 36.9%, 9% has 41.9% and, again, the rest of us had 21.3%.

This was in 2004. It is probably more skewed now than it was then. Does anyone have up to date numbers?

dfabian0,

I also forgot to mention that on so many campaign stops Obama "praised" Ronny RAYGUN. I am sick and tired of the Obama-bots ignoring Obama's blatant pandering to the "right". It was bad enough when Clinton, Gore, and even Kerry did it but Obama's gone way too far and if this is what he calls "courage", then to kind of quote Benson "Senator Obama, you sir are no liberal !" If Obama had actually voted as a real liberal, Nader wouldn't be here this election. As long as the Democrats keep caving in to the GOP as they have been doing big time since 1981, not that they didn't under Nixon in the 70s, people such as this author will keep complaining about some "Reagan Revolution" which just so happened to be propped up by partisan Republicans and cowardly Democrats cashing in on a crisis.

P.S.: Will President Obama put back the solar panels on the roofs of the White House or will he be a Big Auto hack like Clinton or a FAT DORKY PIG like AlGore and give all talk and no solutions? I'd like to see the retarded Obama-bot zombies answer this one !

PURVIS AMES: I think Scheer was posing the question rhetorically to get the public to think about the choice.

EXCELLENT comments: UBREW & DFABIAN.

One writer wonders how many voters will accept the worn out republican line. I'm afraid a lot, maybe enough to give him the white house.

Incidentally, hemp4victory's comments are disturbingly accurate. Sometimes you have to point out that the emperor is naked as a jaybird. We do have a single-party government, and the only people who are allowed/enabled to compete are those who will protect the party agenda. Upon winning the primaries, Obama made a sharp right turn, explaining that the public simply misunderstood his agenda, seeing a progressive where none existed.

One vital and lasting aspect of the "Reagan Revolution" that merits much closer examination is the methods used to control the public discussion of US class and poverty. The Reagan years gave us a full-bodied example of the power and structure of a classic effective propaganda campaign. You know propaganda is successful when it causes the public to disregard everything they have seen for themselves in favor of policies that work against their own best interests. Portraying those who care about social and economic justice as "bleeding heart, namby-pamby liberals" was a powerful strategy, evoking images of emasculated men. This was powerful enough to shut down all discussion of the impact that our welfare "reform" policies have on ALL working class Americans.

We've ignored the numerous violations of fundamental human rights that are central to these policies. We haven't yet allowed ourselves to discuss the impact of the policies that created a massive (and growing) bottom-wage/no-workers'-rights
workforce to compete for jobs in a shrinking job market. "Workfare" has proved to be a powerful tool for suppressing wages and crushing unions. But we won't let ourselves think about that, because if we do, we run the risk of experiencing those namby-pamby liberal notions about the poor/working class.

Of course, we might consider using the same strategies in reverse this, restoring the rights that US worers once had while providing a measure of protection to our poor.

In 1978, I traveled to San Salvador, capitol of El Salvador. I stayed in a gated community, but there were thousands living in cardboard boxes on the edge of town. The city sits at 2200ft; every morning the homeless would go about kicking boxes to see who had frozen to death in hopes of scoring a free box. The ethics you use are the ethics you can afford, and with 5% of its population controlling 90% of its wealth, ethics had left that country. In this country, before the Reagan tax cuts, the richest 10% of the country owned 55% of its wealth, a figure that most capitalist democracies in the world maintain to this day through progressive taxation. But in America, the richest 10% now own 75% of its wealth. The richest 1% owns more than the poorest 90%, and the poorest 40% own nothing. Such monopolistic control of the nation's wealth is dangerous for democracy. Today, many Americans are shocked by the torn social fabric and loosened morals of the past two decades. This concern translates into support for the Republican Party and its well-financed image of social conservatism. But the ethics you use are the ethics you can afford. There is really only one difference between the two parties: Democrats support more progressive taxation, Republicans support less. Neither is always correct, but one is more appropriate for a given era. Twenty-four years after the Reagan tax cuts, making Bush's tax cuts permanent would PERMANENTLY damage America, more than its already been damaged.

Jack37, Thanks for educating me because I thought Reagan's First Official Act was firing the Air Traffic Controllers. He is also responsible for demonizing the words "LIBERAL" and "UNION". Two words that before his presidency never had the connotation that they still do to this day. He also coined the mythic term "WELFARE MOTHER" which morphed into "WELFARE QUEEN". Like Bush, he didn't have the intelligence to come up with this on his own, but his speech writers were working overtime.

MEMORY FLASH; REAGAN'S FIRST OFFICIAL ACT AS PRESIDENT: Smashing down the solar-energy panels that Jimmy Carter had installed on the White House roof. Well, how's that, Mommy? Maybe we can dig up The Gipper and make him McCain's running mate, they'd make a perfect pair (of world-destroying bozo's, that is)

To the partisan hacks who put party above progressive populism,

So let me get this straight from those blind Obama supporters. He's the most "liberal" senator eh? So his votes on more NAFTAs, shoving corporate wrongdoing cases to federal courts, yes to more funding the war in Iraq, empower the NRA against the will of peaceful citizens who already enough insecurity to deal with but would rather not be burdened with too many gun MISusers, vote yes to more FISA and telecom immunity, expanding support of Bush's faith based scams designed to misuse religion to allow employers to fire/hire based on religion, doing nothing to filibuster Bush's federal appointees to SCOTUS even though he happened to vote no on the two, taking bribes from Big Coal/Oil/Nuclear all the while staying silent on solar, wind, public transportation, hemp, etc ..., pandering to the rightwing on "abortion", etc ... makes him "liberal".

No wonder the Democrats are sorry ass losers election after election for most of the past 40 years !

qbaldsmoove, what you are calling Keynesian economic policy seems to precede Keynes with roots in the Enlightenment and inspired by the excesses of the British East India company. THat policy looked on corporations, and power centers in general, as things that should be dismembered after completion of limited scope projects. Jefferson sought limits on a wide variety of things - copyright protection, armies, banks, political parties, corporations, the influence of the church. These Enightenment principles live on today in the social democracies of Europe and elsewhere. Keynes didn't emphasize regulations as much as public works to spur the economy. The regulation seems to come out of the progressive movement, trustbusting, driven by T. Roosevelt, et al. inspired naturally by the Enlightenment ideas, and all of the other manifestations of common sense. It's not clear how valuable an idea Keynes' public works are today given the "pork barrel" tendency. Yes this makes jobs but at what cost? Thus regulation should probably get the emphasis. Small businesses naturally do better than big businesses. Efficiencies of scale in "heavy industries" and "natural monopolies" are now exposed as myths. In virtually all sectors, smaller is better in numerous ways.

PS: Robert Scheer is one of my favorite journalists. He's been doing the truth thing even before the Iraqi war began, brave soul that he be.

The smart guys are in the room on THIS thread! Kudos to: WC DEVINS, QBALDSMOOVE, KIVALS, DAVE WRITE & BRISSOT.

Ultimately it comes down to whether the goal is to raise all boats, or just the yachts.

I do not know what an Obama presedency will bring, but I know it will be a damn site better than what McCain has to offer.

Greg R said:

"hemp4victory-as a local fellow recently pointed out in one of our little hometown papers, obama has had the most liberal voting record in the senate. you're too stoned to see the dif, i think."

Good point. Conservatives are afraid of Obama because he's too liberal. Conservatives hate liberals so much we had to change our name to progressives and Obama has to play the conservative role to get elected.

Hemp is not pot though. Maybe that's why.

Folks, a couple of points that have been bothering me lately. Anyone else remember when LBJ tried to do Nam and the Great Society at the same time without raising taxes. Not much difference from today with the idiot in the w-house lowering taxes and having war at the same time. When Phil Graham complained about whiners he was absolutely right-like anytime someone proposes to raise taxes so our debt doesn't keep on balooning. Of course, when that happens the right wing comes out all lathered up about damm commies.

qbaldsmoove (July 16th, 2008 2:30 pm), you got it mostly right but its not just economies of scale. The market, left to its own, would never serve areas where a profit can not be made. Rural areas, in particular (and poor urban areas to some extent) would never have gotten any infrastructure - roads, electricity, phone, air/rail service etc. - had it not been provided either directly by the government or through its proxies, the regulated monopolies/oligopolies. The irony is that private enterprise benefits as much or more from this as anyone.

In the case of healthcare, there is even less rationale for an unregulated "free" market. The very things that improve healthcare - preventive practices, early intervention, etc. are more costly in the short term which is the window our unregulated capitalist system is most concerned with. Capitalism based healthcare would either discourage such practices - since they are more costly in the short term - or price them at a level which would discourage use by any but the relatively wealthy.

Plus, the market does a very poor job of factoring in social costs - environmental destruction, health impact on productivity, etc.

overkill (July 16th, 2008 5:16 pm) and wcdevins (July 16th, 2008 6:18 pm), BINGO! SCC vs. SPRR is perhaps the single most destructive Supreme Court case in the histroy of our nation. The founders recognized the threat posed by corporations and would never have endorsed such an abomination. The case is ironic on a couple levels; the "finding" that corporations are persons (and, therefore, have certain inalienable rights) was not even part of the case. Chief Justice Waite simply declared it to be so before the case was heard and it was entered into the record; the finding was based on the 14th amendment which, up until that point and for a great while after, was not even successful in protecting the rights of former slaves which was its purpose.

Here's a 1980's bumpersticker from Texas, popular once again:

"A New Feudalism for America"

Greg R-

I'd like a summary of that liberal voting record - are you aware of what it is he has proposed and/or voted on? State and Federal voting records would be great, thanks!

Then a post of McCain's voting record would be in order as well.

And a discussion of his role in the Keating 5 scandal and criminal activity.

And his support of Phil Gramm and failed economic policies explaisn what? That he is senile?

hemp4victory-as a local fellow recently pointed out in one of our little hometown papers, obama has had the most liberal voting record in the senate. you're too stoned to see the dif, i think.

I overheard Tom Hartmann the other day on his radio show, THE TOM HARTMANN PROGRAM, that when you have too many millionaires generated by economic policies of a nation (say the United States)you can start to worry about economic inequality. But, when you generate a significant number of billionaires, then you know you're society is in the process of becoming a Banana Republic. I thought that was a good insight of the "canary in the coal mine" type. Of course we've been here before in the 1890's and the 1920's. Bob's new book THE PORNOGRAPHY OF POWER is good information in a small book.

The national debt, which was under a trillion in 1979, took off with Reagan's presidency and supply-side economics. The idea was partly to build up so much debt and shift so much to the elite that there would be arguably no money left for liberal or poor-people programs. In any case, they believed that the money would trickle down to the undeserving bottom. What happened, however, was corporate raiding, crony capitalism, corporate socialism, deregulation, privatization (even of the military) mountains of uncontrollable debt, and more money in the hands of the top one percent than the bottom 40 percent. Obviously, this philosophy will sink us all.

One has to add the deleterious effects of neoconservatism and the Chicago School of economics that created the monstrous philosophy that Reagan so eagerly embraced.

Hopefully the Reagan era is coming to a close with the painful insanity of Bush Two. Whether America will survive is now the pressing question.

Santa Clara vs SP RR is the 1886 case in which the Supreme Court granted, on their own initiative, the Constitutional right of citizenship to corporations. Since then, the rich have been persuading Americans that unregulated free-market capitalism is the definition of Democracy. It is not. It is the democracy of money, or plutocracy, where the more money you have the more power you wield. That is not Democracy, wherein power is derived from the will of the people without regard to their net worth. Our Constitutional Democracy, which never made it past its growing pains, is now dead at a young age. A vote for anyone is a continuation of the plutocracy.

qbaldsmoove at 2:30, thanks for sharing the link to the Naomi Klein interview and for sharing your thoughts on Reaganomics, which continue to punish us.
One point I would take issue with is "Even Nixon tried to push for government run health care..." Michael Moore's movie, Sicko, portrays his executive activity in a different light as health care for-profit really took off during his administration, and it has worsened every year.

hemp4victory,

I cannot argue with too much hemp. If you say a vote for Obama is a vote for McCain, you must believe it. Go ahead.
Whatever. Over an edge is over an edge.

"Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad" let this disaster spin out of control.

I read somewhere that the number on Reagan's address in Santa Barbara was 666.

Words are important, but repetition of lies is the key.

It would help if the corporate media's political discussions elucidated the difference between economic theories and economic policy goals and examined the flaws of each.

The economic theories, which of course are part of social science and are never subjected to rigorous experimentation and so are mostly speculative, attempt to explain the relationships between economically related inputs and outputs. And since the number of significant variables and the complexity of the calculations in the equations describing the relationships increase considerably when longer periods of time are considered, and because the increase in the number of variables and complexity appears to enormously erode the accuracy of predictions, the theories focus on short-term relationships and predictions.

The most general policy goal which is assumed to underlie rational policy decisions is utilitarianism -- the greatest good for the greatest number tending to maximize happiness. And capitalist theorists long ago decided that the best measure of utilitarian success was the GDP (or GNP for some), and generally this was assumed to build on itself (a convenient assumption given the economic theories are prone to focus on the short term) so maximizing GDP for one year was an appropriate step towards maximizing GDP for any set number of years.

Of course it is clear that maximizing GDP is a far cry from utilitarianism. Not only does the distribution of the resources matter greatly in determining utilitarian success (a population with a handful of billionaires and millions of peasants will not be a very happy one), but (one reason among countless others) some elements of the GDP, such as books, tend to produce a great deal more happiness, and productivity (they have a greater multiplier effect), over time than other elements of the GDP.

And note that the considerable long-term environmental and depletion of resources problems make it clear that maximizing GDP for one year is in no way consistent with maximizing GDP for a longer term of years. Also, sometimes redirection is necessary, and sometimes sacrifice and planting seeds for the future will be much more helpful over the long term than maximizing current production.

But, as in so many other areas, maybe the corporate media would not want the public to have a better understanding of the economic issues, because the public would be more difficult to screw that way.

In this world you are either the trickler or the trickled upon.

In America today, everything that is trickling down is yellow.

I agree with Mr. Sheers comments on corporate welfare. Some companies try the old "heads I win tails you lose" approach.

However, I happen to work in the financial industry and know that Enrons shannanigans started with the deregulation of electricity in 1993 not the Gramm legislation. Enron then started to book false sales and losses to offshore institutions that were under its control. By
1999 these false additions to the balance sheet and earnings statement of Enron amounted to 10's of Billions of dollars. This was under Clinton's watch, only to finally come to light in late 2001.

I personally knew a couple of Enron retirees that were wiped out when the illegal activity came to light.

Do you remember the trickle down effect? If you were at the bottom you were constantly getting trickled on, and it wasn't rain.

That is what every president beginning with Reagan has done to the American people - screw them, piss on them, and the people still keep coming back for more.

George Bush wasn't the worst president, Reagan was, but all those policies were continued under the two Bushes and Clinton.

Have we made major advancements controlling the corporate military complex, health care, environment, corporation corruption since Reagan and gang were in office (many who are still serving a government role today)?

Some things to consider as you ponder the answer- lack of universal health care, banks and corporation being bailed out, a 'government' financed private military, global warming, food crisis, Iraq War (soon to be Iran war?). The list goes on.

The status quo has got to go. Vote Third Party. Vote Green, Vote Nader, write in Ron Paul. Don't willingly give these corporate shills your permission to screw you over.

Vote third party, don't support the corporate elite candidates.

The link below is to an interview with an author named Naomi Klein. She wrote a book recently called "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".

It's informative to know a little about economic theory. Milton Friedman started a movement that Reagan and every republican since has been pushing, called "Trickle down" or Voodoo economics, or Reaganomics, or supply-side. Basically it is lassaiz-faire or invisible hand capitalism taken to its extreme. It says that rich people should be taxed less because they will take all of that money and invest it in factories, etc. The ultimate goal of Friedman was to have everything driven by profits, and ultimately to have everything privatized, from schools to prisons to parks to the post office. There are some obvious problems. For instance, the taxpayers of this country bought and paid for the highway system. Our gas taxes are supposed to pay for its upkeep. Why would we want to sell it to someone now that will then turn around and charge us for its use?

Trickle down is vehemently opposed to Keynesian economics, which is what we had that pulled us out of the great depression, and was implemented by FDR. It says that capitalism is basically the best system, but that it needs to be regulated rather heavily. Things like anti-trust laws that prevent monopolies and price collusion and price fixing, and even price regulation. Monopolies are obviously bad for the consumer, but some things like price regulation aren't so obvious. What regulators saw in the early 1900s was that huge corporations would set up, for example, a gas station at a popular corner where a mom and pop station already existed. Then they would sell gas below cost, drive the mom and pop into bankruptcy, then they basically had a monopoly on that corner, and they could get away with price gouging the consumer. BAD CORPORATION! That's why there's a law saying that no one can sell gas below a certain markup of cost.

Keynes believed that government had a much larger role to play. Some infrastructure, like schools, should be government run because of economies of scale. Some, like energy, might also, but in the very least they should be regulated because the economies of scale say that WE Energies can be much more efficient than if we had 5 little electricity distributors all running wires around the city. Imagine 5 times the number of poles! There would be competition then, but it would really suck. So the government allows a monopoly but ensures that it can't price gouge by regulating its prices. So they have to go in front of the PSC (public service commission) and ask to raise electric rates. And even when they do, people complain, and of course it's the PSC that everyone bitches about, not WEenergies.

Anyway, the right insists a couple of things: 1) The president doesn't have that much control of the economy (bullshit, we've seen time and again the upward distribution of wealth under them) 2) Bush's economy is really suffering because he's had to deal with an economic hangover from Clinton (bushit again, what about their claims to (1 The president doesn't have that much control of the economy) and if that's so then why are they so damned concerned about who gets elected, 3) if only the damned democrats would let the right play out their scenarios all the way things would finally work (Bush had 6 years of republican controlled congress, this is the result of that).

FDR implemented his New Deal policies after the great depression. Some claim that WWII got us out of the depression, but we're seeing now how a war really affects an economy. Military expenditures have the worst economic Multiplier Effect there is (M.E. is how a dollar spent in one place ripples through a local economy many times over). The Supreme Court of the time (mostly appointed by republican presidents prior to the depression) threatened to rule the New Deal initiatives as unconstitutional, so FDR threatened to add two new justices to it that would vote his way (he could do that then because the country was so ravaged by the depression that the public would have backed him on this). After the war and the new deal policies could play out we grew the largest middle-class economy the world ever knew. Eisenhower (a republican) knew enough not to tamper with it because he was smart enough to see how well it was working, and under him tax rates on the very wealthy were as high as 90% (admittedly too high) and these monies were used to build the highway system and many other infrastructures. In his last speech the former general warned against the growing "Military Industrial Complex." I guess we should have listened.

Even Nixon tried to push for government run health care (what a socialist idea) because he understood the economies of scale that could be put to use, but couldn't get it through congress because the insurance and medical companies lobbied so hard against it. Today, the average American spends a higher percentage of his annual income on medical expenses than anybody else on the planet, and what he receives back for that expenditure ranks somewhere around 25th.

Back then my mother didn't have to work, and my high-school educated dad could put food on the table for the five of us and two cars in the garage of his own home and sent most of his kids through college. Try that now.

BTW, the eight years leading up to the great depression all saw republicans in office pushing lassaiz-faire capitalism: Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover ("Hoovervilles" were tent cities where displaced people lived during the depression).

http://blip.tv/file/521421

Daniel David,

A vote for Obama is a vote for Mccain. Sorry but it's true. Just ask Obama or better yet take a full look at his voting record for the past 4 years. You can't prove otherwise. Besides, you've done rather well for the past 28 years so what's another 4 or 8 years of Obama/Mccain gonna do to you that these past 28 haven't already?

It could be worse and it will be worse until Americans realize that the "market" is not an instrument of democracy, but one of plutocracy. It's just that plutocracy has the means to name anything by any word that seems advantageous.

Republican "wisdom" says the lower the taxes on corporations, capital gains, and wealthy individuals, the more there is left over in the private sector for job creation (in America).

Perhaps we should consider that the way it's working out, the lower the taxes, the greater the incentive for job elimination so that there is more for the owners of capital to keep. It's possible that the exact opposite of the conventional (Republican) wisdom is what we needed to do to properly sail America's financial ship.

With Obama, you "might" get a chance to find out. With John McVeto (and a new crop of Scalia's), you absolutely won't.

Yes, but one of the implications of this article is that Reagan-omics was responsible for the boon of the 90's, and that Clinton screwed it all up by signing when he could have vetoed.

I personally believe that the 90's were a result of the tech revolution and that it would have happened even if Bill Clinton was in office and otherwise going along with deregulation and that G.H.W.B dibacle known as NAFTA (started under Bush the elder but he had to rely on Clinton to get it passed). But think of all the money made by silicon valley and all of it that rippled through via the economic multiplier effect.

I had been hoping that Obama would pick up and fix this. But the way he's u-turned on several key issues suggests to me that he has been purchased. YES, I admit it. If you told me so you were right. ANd after talking to some of his local campaign people, it sounds as if there will be no "holding his feet to the fire." That he can't please every left-wing nut-job out there so we should just shut up about his move to the right and repeat the mantra "it could be worse."

Brian Brademeyer, rather than hyperbolic, this article actually understates the devastating impact of the "Reagan Revolution." We could write volumes about the harm done by the "Great Communicator's" legitimization of hatred and bigotry.

wcdevins, excellent post. Supply-side economics is, in one word, bullshit.

Every competent economist who had been honored with the Nobel Prize should have returned his when Friedman was awarded one.

jj

The Reagan supply-side voodoo economic policies, the Republican "Domino Theory" for domestic policy, has failed us as miserably and as totally as that political theory did for Communist world domination. Yet here we have ol' "Maverick" McCain wanting to continue them both.

Tax cuts for the rich and tax breaks for corporations have not stimulated economic growth except for the wealthy micro-minority benefiting directly from the cuts. No job creation has resulted, at least not in this country, from the trickle-down policies of the right, yet McCain continues to insist that this tired old course is a boon to working Americans.

Deregulation has not resulted in corporate investment in R&D or big new ideas. The oil giants, the biggest benefactors of public largesse, continue to rake in obscene profits without investing a dime in new refining capabilities, without drilling new holes on lands they already own the rights to, never mind without turning their attention to alternative fuels. All this while they increase the price of gasoline daily. And John McCain supports continuing along these same failed Republican policy lines.

Lack of oversight of mortage lenders, energy brokers, accounting firms, and banks gave us the housing crisis, energy crisis, Enron, Worldcom, Bear Stearns, and the whole current economic disaster. John McCain thinks these Republican policies should continue.

A few days ago in Senate hearings about cancer-causing formaldehyde in FEMA trailers elicited this defense from the trailer manufacturers: There was no government standard on cancerous formaldehyde when we built the trailers. In other words, business is admitting openly that if there is not a government regulation forbidding it, they will continue to endanger Americans with their products. Yet McCain and the discredited Republican economists continue to sell the idea that good corporate citizenship will be a direct result of a deregulated free-market.

Now the taxpayer will be bailing out the failing mortage giants, who were allowed to gamble with private money, rake in the profits when they won, and fall back on the taxpayer when they lost. But McCain and his Republican economic advisors see no contradiction in bailing out corporations when they fail in the free market they so adore.

How many Americans will be stupid enough this election cycle to buy the Republican line? Stay tuned...

A little hyperbolic to call this the "real" legacy of the Reagan Revolution. More like a footnote to "greed is all we need".

It's unfortunate that now we only have (at least from my perspective)a choice to elect Obama for the major reason of the possible upcoming Sup Court nominations.

I' a registered non-partisan voter. I wish all Americans would re-register the same. It would in the short/medium term force all politicians to re-think their "campaigns." And, would erase all those "red/blue" categories.

We are in a terrible international economic mess. Robert Rubin was Clinton's economic adviser; he is now Obama's. Clinton signed the destruction of the Glass/Steagal Act passed decades ago to separate investment companies from banking. It saved many a bank account for the "little people." He is another nut along with Phil Gramm (and his wife).

Does anyone really believe outside of the Supreme Court appointments that it is advisable to vote Dem in the coming elections?

Is that what this has all come down to?

It's unfortunate that now we only have (at least from my perspective)a choice to elect Obama for the major reason of the possible upcoming Sup Court nominations.

I'm a registered non-partisan voter. I wish all Americans would re-register the same. It would in the short/medium term force all politicians to re-think their "campaigns." And, would erase all those "red/blue" categories.

We are in a terrible international economic mess. Robert Rubin was Clinton's economic adviser; he is now Obama's. Clinton signed the destruction of the Glass/Steagal Act passed decades ago to separate investment companies from banking. It saved many a bank account for the "little people." He is another nut along with Phil Gramm (and his wife).

Does anyone really believe outside of the Supreme Court appointments that it is advisable to vote Dem in the coming elections?

Is that what this has all come down to?

It is painfully ironic that as a young man, Grandpa Caligula (Ronald Reagan), benefited from New Deal policies. He then goes in his dotage to begin the process of destroying it, thus betraying the ideals of his youth and the interests of the class he was born into. It is important that the Grandpa Caligula cheering society be confronted at every opportunity and not granted the almost free pass as they work to virtually canonize the scum bag.

Is Robert Scheer a complete moron? Here he is wringing his hands and wondering how, oh how could the Maverick pick an overt crook like Gramm to formulate financial policy. McCain is a liar, a psychopath, and a thief. What better choice than Gramm as the consigliere of his new crime family?

Robert writes,
"Hows about some "tough love" for those bankers suddenly in trouble? You know, the sink-or-swim approach of "welfare reform" that Gramm and Clinton applied to poor people to end their addiction to government handouts."
Exactly, how about some 'Shock Doctrine' applied here. Along the lines of, you can get the help you need AFTER you implement these needed drastic policy changes!