The Red State Socialist Next Door…
Violent
Souls, but only as the Hollow Men, the Stuffed Men…
-
T.S. Eliot
Histrionic
conservatives exclaimed: Obama favors “redistribution of wealth”! Which is most
of what modern government does. And it does this even faster under Republicans
than under Democrats.
-
George F. Will, Washington Post
By J.M. Hamilton 10-29-16
Much has been made within the corporate media that Senator
Bernie Sanders is a “socialist – democrat” (you know, from the five
major corporations that disseminate 90% of the news to Americans).
That is to say, Mr. Sanders is a liberal. We can expect a lot more of
this attempted smear campaign, as Mr. Sanders and his supporters turn up the heat
on the Wall Street owned GOP & Clinton, Inc. But conveniently, the
same corporate news media has little to say about the fact that the two
political parties, GOP & GOP-Lite/Dems, have overseen a massive
redistribution of wealth from the 99% to the 1%, since President Reagan’s
inauguration.
JMH has covered this ground before, but it bears repeating:
2) Under the first President Bush (HW), the national debt increased another 150%. To his credit, HW did not believe in trickle–down, or tax cuts of for the rich (aka Voodoo economics), and he was duly relieved of office for speaking the truth.
3) Under President Bush II (W), the national debt skyrocketed from $5.68 trillion in 2000 to 9.98 trillion in 2008, nearly doubling the national debt under his watch. Of course, Bush may have bought into VP Cheney’s quip that “deficits don’t matter,” and we know for a fact that he bought into the redistribution of government largess to the 1%, via tax cuts for the wealthy.
4) The national debt is expected to double again, per the OMB, by the tail end of President Obama’s second term. While President Obama inherited domestic and foreign policy catastrophes from President Bush II, not to mention that the President had to deal with a GOP dominated House of Representatives for much of his two terms, he cannot entirely escape responsibility for the budget mess that occurred under his watch. Mr. Obama made the choice to keep the U.S. immersed in two failed nation-building exercises throughout his two terms: Afghanistan and Iraq, and now is making moves forward into Syria (JMH would argue, perhaps, as a matter of political expediency – to keep the war lobby/MIC/GOP off his back).
5) Bottom line, the GOP, Reagan through Bush II, is made up of either: A) reconstructed Keynesians; or B) believes in a failed trickle-down ideology; or C) all the above. Unfortunately, the GOP only utilized half of Keynes fiscal policy prescriptions, since he recommended raising taxes during prosperous economic times. If your keeping count that's three GOP Presidents, who nearly doubled the national debt. One last figure to consider: during this same thirty-five year time frame, state and federal spending as a percent of U.S. GDP has rested consistently within the 30 to 40% range. So in the land of the free, in the land of rugged individualism and unrequited capitalism, total government spending makes up approximately a third of the U.S. economy. Factor in a Wall Street crash, and government spending bumped up to nearly half the economy for a period of time.
It all
sounds fairly “People’s Republic of the United States” to me: the GOP adopted
borrow and spend fiscal policies, so as to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthy,
while saddling the government and the economy with trillions in debt and
trillions in debt service payments. Or let’s try a new analogy: like a
private equity firm fronting loading profits by maxing out a takeover target's
credit line, the financial & political elite have tapped out the Federal
government’s credit line to pay for their tax cuts, government privatization,
and wars without end.
During the same time frame, it’s no accident that GOP socialism
for the 1%, and austerity for the 99%, coincided with ever-growing wage and
wealth inequality and stagnating wages. Throw in free money or
exceptionally dovish monetary policy, courtesy of the Federal Reserve for Wall
Street, and the table was set for the evisceration of the American middle-class
and the American Dream.
Businesses, multinationals, shadow banking, private
equity and Wall Street showed their gratitude for the GOP’s brand of
socialism (not to mention free trade agreements), by: offshoring American
labor; maxing out/plundering corporate credit lines for executive and stockholder
immediate gratification – a private equity specialty; destroying the
environment; engaging in financial engineering; merging into monopolies
and cartels; the hottest trend - tax
inversions; and issuing pink
slips and gutting the tax base/American worker. Many of these same
businesses have been getting their way for so long at the government
trough, that at the first hint that the government might not yield to their
every demand, they threaten to offshore jobs, the tax base, and business.
How very patriotic. Then again, the government has
allowed many sectors of the economy to metastasize into cartels and monopolies,
so that politicians have no choice but to yield to corporate demands and surrender
to blackmail.
Factor in regulatory, tax, and government capture by the
1% - made permissible by Republican led White Houses, SCOTUS, and GOP led
Congresses, and one has to conclude there are no greater socialists than
Republicans. Americans really saw this with the ’08 Wall Street bailouts
under the Bush (W) administration; that is, per the usual, the profits of GOP
(and Clintonian
Dem) backed businesses are privatized, and the bailouts, tax cuts, and
social costs are redistributed to the American public/taxpayer – who are left
holding the bag. The GOP, and yes, Dems too,
don’t mind bequeathing trillions in welfare to Wall Street banks, but talk
about spending an
extra billion on indigent children and the GOP controlled House of
Representatives acts as if the world might end.
The GOP
wrings their collective hands that welfare might be a corrupting influence…. And welfare can
indeed create moral
hazard, particularly when it is gifted to the plutocracy.
The difference then between a Republican socialist, and a
Sanders socialist, is rather simple: Republicans believe in
redistributing government largess to the 1%, while – let us pray – a President
Sanders would redistribute government largess to the 99%, perhaps the 100%.
Our Corporate media has also already begun to attack
Senator Sanders on how he’s going to pay for all this “free- stuff” (to use
Mr. Jeb Bush’s language). Mr. Sanders has some ideas, among them:
increase taxes on the wealthy, who often pay at rates significantly below the
middle class – if they pay taxes at all; a more progressive tax structure (as
opposed to the regressive tax structure currently in place); and there’s also
the matter of making sure that government vendors/contractors stop shafting the
U.S. taxpayer. For instance, military
contractors stick it to the U.S. taxpayer for tens of billions in the form
of cost overruns and fraud (it’s hard to put a precise figure on it because the
Pentagon isn’t subject to audit), and neither political party has the courage
to say a word. Big
Pharma is finally getting the attention it deserves, and Americans are
waking up to the shear unmitigated greed with which the pharmaceutical industry
operates. The U.S. is the only Western democracy that does not set caps
on Big Pharma’s drug mark ups, and this industry is fiscally
disemboweling the United States.
Time to send some of these CEOs to prison? You
bet.
That’s just the low hanging fruit. Show JMH a
government contractor, like Mr. Cheney’s former company, Brown
and Root (aka KBR), and the odds are pretty good that said contractor is
taking the taxpayer for a ride. The odds are also great that these same
government contractors are kicking back a gratuity to the U.S. Congress and
Presidential candidates, in the form of campaign and Super-Pac contributions.
They might even contribute to the Clinton
Foundation.
All of which brings up the obvious need for a
constitutional amendment separating money and state. But I digress.
Tis the Season, and the right-wingers, and GOP-lite/Dems,
will attempt to scare us with spooky tales of communist and socialist, failing
to mention that there are no greater socialist than red state Republicans and
GOP-Lite/Dems. When Republicans spend on corporate welfare, they make Dems
look like amateurs. So
dear reader, the next time you hear the word “socialist” from our corporate
news media, or from Senator Sanders’ critics…. Please think of Presidents
Reagan, Bush (HW), and Bush II (W), as well as, GOP led Congresses, from Reagan
forward.
Not
that socialism is always bad, it’s just a matter of where government largess is
allocated. Should government money go to those who are fabulously
wealthy, so they can continue to pillage and plunder the planet? Or
should social spending go to those less fortunate so that they can receive a
hand up? (Ditto Capitalism… do we want crony capitalism that enriches an elite-insider-few
and favors cartels and monopolies; or real capitalism with plenty of
competition that favors the market, consumers, employees, and innovation?)
These are the political questions of our time, perhaps of
the 2016 Presidential campaign?
Either way, the U.S. owes a debt to red state Republicans,
who have shown America how socialism works, that is exceptionally well for the
1%. As a result of this hypocrisy,
xenophobia and overt racism, the GOP, as a brand, is nearly destroyed.
The double-standard of establishment candidates – speaking out on the evils of socialism – are on full display for all the world to see.
P.S. Happy Halloween!
P.S. Happy Halloween!
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2015
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