The conservative movement in the United States has been successful, with millions of dollars in propaganda, in fooling the American people into believing that the Democrats are responsible for the Great Recession, successfully forgetting eight years of Bush rule.
This has been no mean feat. In the 2006 and 2008 elections the Republicans were thrown out of power on multiple levels in American politics. For a time, there was talk that the Republican Party was finished.
Desperate to gain traction, the radical right wing, using millions of corporate dollars, manufactured the “Tea Party” movement. This began as an “Astroturf” movement, paid for by the Koch brothers and corporate money, and now has now morphed into a “popular movement” of Fox News and Glen Beck. Ordinary people are buying it!
What has fueled this is the Great Recession, that threatens to become a double dip recession because the federal stimulus has been constrained and maligned by radical conservatives bent on one thing; getting back into power. Obama has not delivered on jobs they say, so try us again!
Any kind of accurate economic analysis and approach to getting the United States out of this mess, has been compromised by a firestorm of attack ads that are meant to discredit “big government” as a solution to the recession. In fact, that is STILL THE ONLY solution to the recessions (s)!
Tragically, through all of this, the welfare of the American People has been thrown under the bus. The very economic free enterprise, de-regulation economic philosophy that has decmimated the middle class, is now being sold to the middle class as a “jobs” approach.
History tells a different story.
In 1936 the American Great Depression was ending. The New Deal, with massive (for that time) government intervention, the passage of Social Security, and the establishment of strict financial regulations, was bringing the country out of a multi-year depression. Franklin Roosevelt, following the convential economic wisdom of the time, to counter the growing conservative criticism of the federal deficit, dramatically cut spending and allowed the new Social Security taxation system to take effect. Projections at the time called for a balanced budget (no deficit) in about three years. Prosperity was right around the corner.
What raising taxes and cutting spending does is to balance budgets. This is similar to a household budget in that you increase your revenue and cut your spending, and you will either balance or run a surplus. Unfortunately, this does not work in a national economy.
You cannot apply the same principles of a household budget to a national economy. There are other people and multiple variables involved in the national economy. That should be common sense. Of course, this is the analogy that conservatives use all the time, except when they go tone deaf about cutting taxes and balancing budgets (fiscally impossible without drastic spending cuts).
Franklin Roosevelt made a horrible mistake in 1936. He cut spending and raised taxes at a critical time, to reduce the deficit that convential wisdom said would fix the economy BUT instead ruined the economy. Consequently, it took another four years to get out of the depression, aided by renewed government spending due to World War II. The facts are, regardless of conservative revisionist history, that the New Deal was ending the Great Depression, conservative principles of budget balancing, just as Hoover had mistakenly done, pushed the country back into the Great Depression. Roosevelt to his dying day said it was his greatest mistake.
Today, we are headed exactly in the same direction. The conservatives, desperate to regain control of the Congress, are screaming that the federal deficit will ruin the country. They have blocked any further government stimulus spending, and created a climate of conventional political wisdom, that dictates cutting spending to end the recession. Of course this includes Social Security and Medicare (that have nothing to do with the deficit). Incredibly, this wisdom also calls on maintaining the tax cuts that created the deficit in the first place!
The Bush tax cuts, for the very wealthy, have decimated the middle class. Wealth has been concentrated in the top ½ percent of the population, jobs outsourced, and welfare safety net programs shredded.
The result has been the destruction of the consumer engine of the United States economy. This is of no consequence to multi-national companies, who have new consumer markets in India and China (and Brazil, and Argentina…and..and). The middle class does not count anymore to multi-national corporations. There are now other massive consumer markets to be mined. Americans simply do not matter anymore to these people. THEY DO NOT CARE..
The result? We are headed into a Great Depression. This one will be different however. In the last Depression everyone suffered. This time the top ½ percent of the American population are doing quite well. Multi-national corporations are prospering.
In effect, the United States is quickly becoming a “third world” country. Deflation is predicted in American markets. As the Depression spreads, it will take down upper middle class families, as the corporations spread their political power and ordinary people suffer. The “ruling class” (sounds un-American doesn’t it but get used to it) has absolutely no problem in doing this. THEY SIMPLY DO NOT CARE!!
The result will be an RULING CLASS oligarchy, like you see in Mexico for example. The United States is headed toward the end of its democracy at the hands of the tea party who purports to stand for “founding values” but is being manipulated by economic elites for their selfish gains. The middle class is done, and with goes American democracy.
What is developing is fascism. That’s right, fascism, with corporate elitist control that hates democracy. All we need is a Hitler. Sarah Palin will do.
The history is there. The lessons are there. The will to actually see, to actually understand, is being blurred and obscured by millions of corporate dollars who are jobbing history for their selfish advantage.
We have failed to read our history and are doomed to repeat it.
World War II was a direct result of the Great Global Depression. Over 75 million people were killed. Our fate will be far worse!
The result will be an RULING CLASS oligarchy, like you see in Mexico for example. The United States is headed toward the end of its democracy at the hands of the tea party who purports to stand for “founding values” but is being manipulated by economic elites for their selfish gains. The middle class is done, and with goes American democracy.
What is developing is fascism. That’s right, fascism, with corporate elitist control that hates democracy. All we need is a Hitler. Sarah Palin will do.
The history is there. The lessons are there. The will to actually see, to actually understand, is being blurred and obscured by millions of corporate dollars who are jobbing history for their selfish advantage.
We have failed to read our history and are doomed to repeat it.
World War II was a direct result of the Great Global Depression. Over 75 million people were killed. Our fate will be far worse!
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