The worse things get...
The more the Republicans get divorced from reality.
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.zeppscomentaries.com/VRWC/worse.htm
07/15/08
On a day when the papers announced that the federal bailout of Freddie Mac
and Fannie Mae might cost the taxpayers $1.75 TRILLION dollars, and an estimate
was floating around that before the end of the year, 150 banks may have failed,
and the FDIC simply didn’t have the funds to save them all, the Republicans
decided that this was all the fault of Senator Schumer, who released a document
last week questioning the liquidity of IndyMac Bank, the big California bank
that went belly up Friday. According to the Republicans, if Schumer had kept the
news that the bank was nearly broke out of the public eye, there wouldn’t have
been a bank run that Republicans say amounted to $1.6 billion last week. Never
mind that with alleged assets of over $32 billion, IndyMac Bank should have been
able to weather the storm, and never mind the fact that we already have a
government devoted to keeping secrets from the American people in order to
protect the corporations, and the track record suggests that it isn’t working
out very well. Schumer should have kept his yap shut and let the people get
screwed, like a good little public official.
George Putsch threw open the coastlines to oil exploration, and the next day,
gas in my neighborhood had dropped from $4.76 a gallon to $1.29, and the owner
told me to come back tomorrow, because it would be 29 cents then. But when I got
back to my house, I found a bunch of Arab terrorists who all wanted to
surrender.
OK. Maybe that didn’t happen. But Republicans are dealing with the oil price
crisis with unenlightened self interest, much the way they deal with everything.
Remember how in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Republicans argued that we
needed a tax cut for the rich NOW if we were to fight a war on terrorism? More
of the same here. The only way to lower prices is to let the oil companies rape
ANWR, and open up the coasts off Santa Barbara and Tampa Bay for exploration.
Never mind that the refineries are only running at 80% capacity, the oil
companies have 67 million acres they haven’t even tested for oil, and that
America presently exports 1.6 million barrels of oil a day. Never mind that oil
out of ANWR would go to Japan, not America, for refining, and never mind that
even if they were able to build all the platforms and oil lines and it all went
to American refineries the price of gas wouldn’t drop a dime: it’s the only
solution. Do it now! Quick! Quick! Don’t stop to think, man, we want to save you
money!
John McCain, still channeling Phil Gramm for his economic acumen, went to San
Diego to sing the praises of NAFTA and off-shore oil drilling, two items bound
to endear him to San Diegans, who love seeing oil platforms off their beaches
and have the usual problems with Mexico. McCain, naturally, offered the usual
false dichotomy that anyone not for NAFTA was an isolationist, and while quite a
few people were looking at the wreck of the American economy and wondering if
isolationism was really such a bad thing, most were simply reflecting on the
fact that free trade works well only between economic entities that are
essentially equal, and that when America is trading with a country such as
China, where workers are paid starvation wages, health and safety regulations
are ignored, and the government subsidizes all this, Americans aren’t going to
do very well beyond being able to buy cheap toxic shit at big barn stores. Even
cheap toxic shit doesn’t sell well when nobody has jobs, and thus no money to
buy stuff. Now, maybe if places like China worked toward a level playing field
regarding worker pay, environmental obligations, and health and safety measures,
then perhaps trade would really be “free” and benefit both sides, just like Adam
Smith intended. Until then, NAFTA just remains an avenue for major corporations
to use slave labor overseas to sell cheap stuff to Americans who can no longer
afford it.
McCain and the rest of the GOP have an answer to all this, of course. Lower
taxes for the rich. The rich, unburdened by having to pay y the social costs of
a large country, will promptly shower the poor and the middle class with
largess, just like they have before. Which is to say, never. They invest the
money overseas. Or spend it on getting more Republicans elected so they can get
more tax breaks and laws to screw over working people. The present scream from
the Republicans is that by not extending the tax breaks for the wealthy (which
they like to characterize as “raising taxes”), this will make the recession we
don’t have far worse. But there is no recession. Only nations of whiners say
there is.
They don’t want you to remember that not only do tax raises not cause
recessions, but they sometimes cure them. The economy improved after Roosevelt
raised taxes in 1934, and it improved when Clinton raised taxes in 1994. Nor
does cutting taxes help.
Putsch has cut taxes more than anyone. Notice any big economic miracles going on
right now after six years of cut taxes?
Guys like Phil Gramm and John McCain get very upset if you point out that taxes
don’t confiscate money, they circulate it. Without money circulating, you don’t
have an economy. You just have a few people with big wads of green paper that
are no longer worth anything. To use a medical analogy I’ve used before, it
doesn’t matter how much blood you have if your heart isn’t beating. If money is
the blood of an economy, taxes are the heart.
It’s always fun saying that to a Republican. Their faces turn the most marvelous
colors. Especially after you start citing real life examples to show that it’s
true.
Finally, they announced that Rush Limbaugh would get a new contract worth $400
million for his radio show. Now, the dirty little secret about Rush is that he
really isn’t a profitable enterprise. If you listen to his show, then you know
that most of his advertisers are the sort of cheap, low-end advertisers you see
on late-night cable TV, plus a bunch of ads from local hardware stores and the
like. Radio stations aren’t making the type of bucks needed to keep Rush fat and
happy. He’s subsidized until hell won’t have it, pure socialism.
It’s like the Moonie Times. In thirty years, the best year that paper ever had
it only lost ten million dollars. Yet there it is, day after day, grinding out
Republican propaganda.
The right wing got some flak from New Republic to grind out a “thought piece”
for obliging newspapers to run explaining that giving Rush all that money was a
good thing, not only because it annoyed liberals (who are mostly laughing their
asses off at the amounts of money being wasted on that passé clown), but because
it showed that trickle down economics WORKED. Rush is proof that if you serve
the rich nobly and faithfully, they will shower you with great wealth.
Well, sometimes.
And despite public disenchantment with GOP policies, and an economy heading
south faster than a duck with an atomic asshole, McCain’s campaign is
confidently predicting they will raise $400 million. I’m sure it’s just a
coincidence that he and Rush have that number in common.
That money isn’t coming from your friends and neighbors. It’s coming from the
folks who think low taxes for the rich are a good thing, and that oil drilling
off Santa Barbara beaches is a good thing, or that spending trillions on the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are a good thing, or that spending trillions
more to bail out banksters so they can continue their predatory lending
practices is a good thing.
They are willing to spend hundreds of billions to elect a man who believes all
that. They are spending a fortune on you to vote against your own best
interests.
This is a very good time to ask yourself ‘why’?