Larry Beinhart: The Trillion Dollar Wrong Thing

[babylonsister]

The Trillion Dollar Wrong Thing
George W. Bush
by Larry Beinhart | September 27, 2008


Reason #1 to be suspicious of the Big Big Bailout is George Bush.

This is not a Bush bash, it's actually an analysis. All major George Bush initiatives, and most of the minor ones too, have certain things in common.

1. They're failures.
2. They leave a big mess for other people to clean up. Someday.
3. They make matters worse.
4. Some small group of people profit from it, and they profit hugely.
5. That profit comes from using the government to take money from ordinary people and give it to people who are already very rich and well connected.


The Bush initiatives include:

1. The decision, before 9/11, to ignore Al Qaeda and concentrate on... who knows exactly what.
2. The invasion of Afghanistan for the purpose of capturing (or killing) Osama bin Laden & the rest of Al Qaeda. (When thinking about this war, and the others below, keep in mind that an unknown amount of the spending - but certainly more than half - goes to private contractors, the defense and the intelligence industries.)
3. The invasion of Iraq.
4. The occupation of Iraq.
5. The reconstruction of Iraq.
6. The reconstruction of New Orleans.
7. The Medicare Care enrich the pharmaceutical companies bill
8. The tax cuts that would promote jobs - "good jobs" - and growth.
9. When the tax cuts failed and led to a recession, more tax cuts.
10. The theory that tax cuts would not create deficits and would pay for themselves.
11. Anti-regulation efforts. There were thousands of these. They came through setting policies, executive orders, selecting pro-industry, anti-regulation, incompetent - and sometimes corrupt - staffers.
12. Hyper-low interest rates from the Fed. This created the flood of cheap money and created the conditions under which the most profitable thing that banks could do was to borrow from the Fed, turn around, make loans as fast as possible, then rush back for more. It was the equivalent of giving free coal to power companies and not anticipating that they would then proceed to create more pollution.
13. The attempt to privatize Social Security.

If we step back a moment from the crisis, and look at it as if we're not involved, the likelihood is that saving Wall Street - in this fashion - will do exactly the same thing. It is certain, absolutely certain, that it will make a group, a very small elite group, of very, very rich people, even richer.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17503

[SheilaT]

1. Larry Beinhart wrote the book American Hero.

They changed the title for the movie, and it became Wag the Dog.

If you haven't watched Wag the Dog lately, do so. It's even more on point today.

And if you think the movie is cynical, read the book. It's far more cynical and much better.

[CrispyQ]

2. A kick for the morning crowd.

This is a great article & should be read by everyone.

snip...

The real problem is that we have moved from a production economy to a consumption economy. Even worse, a consumption economy that supports the production economy in other countries. When we start to consume more than we produce - which we have - we must borrow. That means we're selling off or mortgaging our assets. If we were to do that to create more production which would ultimately pay for the investment, that would be alright. But we're not, we're just consuming more.

You can't borrow your way out of too much debt. At least not without a plan to create more income.

You can't consume your way out of an over-consumption problem.

If we don't address the fundamentals now, we will have to do so later. At that time, they we will be worse. Both by themselves and with the addition of the new $700 billion debt.

The ultimate problem is remaking ourselves into a production economy.

[bbgrunt]

3. there's not much more anyone needs to know about it. k n r

[yurbud]

4. sometimes he's a little too DLC, but this time he's dead on

[struggle4progress]

5. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy: they smashed up things and creatures and then

retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made"

The Great Gatsby

[OakCliffDem]

6. Kick

[ShortnFiery]

7. We need to ORDER Nancy Pelosi to get off her high Corporate bail out horse.

She's embarrassing us democrats and the entire "working American People."

DAMN THEM! Stop this shit! It's going first to the BushBotBorg and overseas, set aside the bone of less Golden Parachutes and realize that WE, the US Taxpayers are giving "the wealthy" our hard earned tax dollars. :grr:

STOP THEM!