Andrew-Austin
04-19-2009, 07:28 PM
Propaganda we can't really believe in.
When it seems people like this are running the country, I tend to think the current madness can't be attributed to evil but just stupidity.
http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/c...list-paradise/
America: Socialist Paradise?
By PAUL M. BANKS on Oct. 29, 2008 into Chicago Blue State
You know socialism has arrived in America when it’s listed as one of the top searched terms on Web 2.0 social networking site Twitter.com. Yes, the (not quite red, so I guess) “Pink Menace” is one of the most widely discussed political topics among the internet “twitterati.” And the quasi-pejorative term “socialist” is the latest tag (we’ve already heard terrorist, communist, and “unreal American”) slapped on Senator Barack Obama by the McCain-Palin ticket as they heave desperation Hail Mary passes in the closing minutes of a game where they are down by a couple touchdowns. Probably one of the worst and most self-defeating stump speech sound-bites I’ve ever heard is McCain’s “Obama wants to SPREAD the wealth AROUND” as he denounces his opponent as a socialist.
When the economy is election issue #1, people get laid off left and right everyday, many lose their homes and cars…and those still in solid fiscal shape are scared to death about the very real possibility of losing everything, why would “spreading the wealth around” be such a bad thing? The McCain aide advising him to say something this stupid should get fired for this. With speechwriting like that, you’ll never work in this town again!
On the other hand, I can understand why they are saying this. Due to the paranoia and hysteria generated in this country from McCarthyism and similar domestic movements during the Cold War, socialism is still considered a dirty word here. Like in more recent years with anthrax and the color-coded terrorist warning system, our country freaked out and overreacted in declaring socialism a political gateway drug to communism. This idea couldn’t be any more wrong. Socialist is the most common political party affiliation in the world. That’s right: outside America more people identify themselves as a socialist than in any other political designation in the entire world.
So why does the fear of socialism still persist? When the Milton Friedmanites from the University of Chicago (yes, my beloved hometown does have some blood on its hands for the current crisis) have wreaked more havoc on our economy than any “Pinko” could dream of doing? This country has already had corporate socialism for quite some time. In fact we live under the worst and most unfair form of socialism with big business receiving subsidies (financed by our tax dollars) but the general population itself sees cuts in entitlement benefits across the board. Now the Feds have nationalized the banking and auto industries on top of it.
A great read on the history that brought us to this point is Paul Krugman’s “the Conscience of a Liberal.” The Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist gives us a phenomenal economic history tome articulating how movement conservatism, and its integration with Reaganomics led us into a nation practicing cowboy capitalism until the Wild West of Wall Street was lost this fall. The tax cuts for the rich never stimulated the economy as promised, the Laffer curves have been discredited, and the so-called “trickle-down effect” didn’t trickle very far past the richest 1%. Krugman has stated that he has no interest in being Secretary of the Treasury, but you have to admit he’d probably do a much better job than Hank Paulson is doing. I will make my case for CNBC's Jim Cramer as Federal Reserve Chairman at another time.
There are numerous examples of free market fundamentalists using the legacy of Friedman and Reagan to achieve economic atrocity. But for brevity’s sake, I’ll go in-depth on the most extreme example: no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. Because what says “free market” better than not allowing anyone else to compete with you for a job?
Forget about entitlement spending and Reagan’s infamous “welfare cheats.” The real thieves of the treasury are the cronies of Cheney and Rumsfeld and company. Robert Greenwald’s documentary “Iraq for Sale” conveys how taxpayers got charged $100 for a soldier to do a bag of laundry and $20 for a can of Coke. Companies like Halliburton, Blackwater, Kellogg, Brown, and Root, (KBR is also affectionately known as Kill, Buy, Replace) privatized the job of the military, and everything these “consultants” did was without any oversight. These private contractors were not accountable to anyone and sometimes made up to ten times what the U.S. soldiers did while doing the exact same job in Iraq. How on Earth is that “supporting the troops?”
It doesn’t matter how much the conservative information establishment (The Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Wall Street Journal op-ed page, Fox News Channel, Drudge Report, John Stossell, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin etc.) could or would reinforce this as a natural part of the “free market.” This practice of privatization and complete lack of any regulation stands against everything true fiscal conservatives believe in. Only the neo-cons and most extreme of movement conservatives could get behind this deplorable practice of deregulation uber alles.
Despite the long laundry list of Bush administration fiascoes and scandals, this specific type of fraud and illegal behavior will always be the most offensive and repulsively un-American to me. Why? Because no-bid contracts as a fundamental part of economic “pure competition” is the most blatant and obvious lie sold to us during the past 8 years. And by far the most egregiously intelligence-insulting! After enduring this, how can socialism actually be an economic system worth fearing?
When it seems people like this are running the country, I tend to think the current madness can't be attributed to evil but just stupidity.
http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/c...list-paradise/
America: Socialist Paradise?
By PAUL M. BANKS on Oct. 29, 2008 into Chicago Blue State
You know socialism has arrived in America when it’s listed as one of the top searched terms on Web 2.0 social networking site Twitter.com. Yes, the (not quite red, so I guess) “Pink Menace” is one of the most widely discussed political topics among the internet “twitterati.” And the quasi-pejorative term “socialist” is the latest tag (we’ve already heard terrorist, communist, and “unreal American”) slapped on Senator Barack Obama by the McCain-Palin ticket as they heave desperation Hail Mary passes in the closing minutes of a game where they are down by a couple touchdowns. Probably one of the worst and most self-defeating stump speech sound-bites I’ve ever heard is McCain’s “Obama wants to SPREAD the wealth AROUND” as he denounces his opponent as a socialist.
When the economy is election issue #1, people get laid off left and right everyday, many lose their homes and cars…and those still in solid fiscal shape are scared to death about the very real possibility of losing everything, why would “spreading the wealth around” be such a bad thing? The McCain aide advising him to say something this stupid should get fired for this. With speechwriting like that, you’ll never work in this town again!
On the other hand, I can understand why they are saying this. Due to the paranoia and hysteria generated in this country from McCarthyism and similar domestic movements during the Cold War, socialism is still considered a dirty word here. Like in more recent years with anthrax and the color-coded terrorist warning system, our country freaked out and overreacted in declaring socialism a political gateway drug to communism. This idea couldn’t be any more wrong. Socialist is the most common political party affiliation in the world. That’s right: outside America more people identify themselves as a socialist than in any other political designation in the entire world.
So why does the fear of socialism still persist? When the Milton Friedmanites from the University of Chicago (yes, my beloved hometown does have some blood on its hands for the current crisis) have wreaked more havoc on our economy than any “Pinko” could dream of doing? This country has already had corporate socialism for quite some time. In fact we live under the worst and most unfair form of socialism with big business receiving subsidies (financed by our tax dollars) but the general population itself sees cuts in entitlement benefits across the board. Now the Feds have nationalized the banking and auto industries on top of it.
A great read on the history that brought us to this point is Paul Krugman’s “the Conscience of a Liberal.” The Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist gives us a phenomenal economic history tome articulating how movement conservatism, and its integration with Reaganomics led us into a nation practicing cowboy capitalism until the Wild West of Wall Street was lost this fall. The tax cuts for the rich never stimulated the economy as promised, the Laffer curves have been discredited, and the so-called “trickle-down effect” didn’t trickle very far past the richest 1%. Krugman has stated that he has no interest in being Secretary of the Treasury, but you have to admit he’d probably do a much better job than Hank Paulson is doing. I will make my case for CNBC's Jim Cramer as Federal Reserve Chairman at another time.
There are numerous examples of free market fundamentalists using the legacy of Friedman and Reagan to achieve economic atrocity. But for brevity’s sake, I’ll go in-depth on the most extreme example: no bid contracts to rebuild Iraq. Because what says “free market” better than not allowing anyone else to compete with you for a job?
Forget about entitlement spending and Reagan’s infamous “welfare cheats.” The real thieves of the treasury are the cronies of Cheney and Rumsfeld and company. Robert Greenwald’s documentary “Iraq for Sale” conveys how taxpayers got charged $100 for a soldier to do a bag of laundry and $20 for a can of Coke. Companies like Halliburton, Blackwater, Kellogg, Brown, and Root, (KBR is also affectionately known as Kill, Buy, Replace) privatized the job of the military, and everything these “consultants” did was without any oversight. These private contractors were not accountable to anyone and sometimes made up to ten times what the U.S. soldiers did while doing the exact same job in Iraq. How on Earth is that “supporting the troops?”
It doesn’t matter how much the conservative information establishment (The Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Wall Street Journal op-ed page, Fox News Channel, Drudge Report, John Stossell, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin etc.) could or would reinforce this as a natural part of the “free market.” This practice of privatization and complete lack of any regulation stands against everything true fiscal conservatives believe in. Only the neo-cons and most extreme of movement conservatives could get behind this deplorable practice of deregulation uber alles.
Despite the long laundry list of Bush administration fiascoes and scandals, this specific type of fraud and illegal behavior will always be the most offensive and repulsively un-American to me. Why? Because no-bid contracts as a fundamental part of economic “pure competition” is the most blatant and obvious lie sold to us during the past 8 years. And by far the most egregiously intelligence-insulting! After enduring this, how can socialism actually be an economic system worth fearing?