Land of Opportunity

Which would be–if a Pew Research poll and piece working it’s way around the internet by a former Reagan Treasury official—not these United States. At least anymore.

The Pew Research poll, published this morning, concludes that “far more Americans now see their country as sharply divided along economic lines.” According to the poll results, in 1988 only 26% of Americans thought the country is divided between haves and have nots; today the country is evenly split 48%/48% on the issue. The number of Americans who see themselves as falling in the have-not category has also grown significantly, doubling from 17% to 34%.

Meanwhile, in a scathing analysis by Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and a former assistant editor of the Editorial page of that bastion of Capitalism, The Wall Street Journal, the hollowing out of the American economy by over twenty years of Reaganomics and neo-liberal trade policies is blisteringly laid out.

Craig opens the piece, entitled “American Economy –R.I.P.” with the statement that “The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.” He concludes “Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.” What flows between is a detailed analysis of the real numbers in US trade and productivity that point toward a continued downward spiral for US middle and upper middle class households.

Click the links above for the documents in their entirety—they are a worthwhile read. They also underscore what is likely to prove to be the final nail in the Bush/GOP political coffin (as if Iraq wasn’t enough) –- the failure of the Republican supply-side agenda to provide true prosperity to the vast majority of the American public. In 1992 Bush the elder went down to defeat because, as Bill Clinton, they forgot “It’s the Economy Stupid. It looks like Bush II didn’t learn from Poppy’s mistake.

You Go To War With The War You’ve Got

Of all the canards presented in this Tuesday’s State of Denial speech, the line that has stuck in my craw the most was the President’s statement, in regards to the situation in Iraq that: “This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we’re in.” What a load of balderdash.

OK, it isn’t the war he and the Vice President of Darkness said we were entering. They told the American people this was going to be a cakewalk. What they failed to mention was that it was going to be a cakewalk lined with IEDs. But plenty of other voices argued loud and long right up to the dropping of the first cruise missiles that this, what we have today, is exactly the sort of war we were entering in March, 2003. An endless list of scholars, political figures, foreign intelligence services and journalists pointed out that if evil Saddam was bumped off, the US would either have to commit a Vietnam-era level of force and money for a Vietnam-era amount of time or face an escalating descent into chaos and sectarian violence which would weaken American security and heighten the power of even more radical regimes in the region.

So, when the President says “This is not the war we entered in Iraq,” he is being either disingenuous, naïve, deliberately deceitful or just plain dumb. None of these being answers that heighten confidence in our Commander in Chiefly-cluelessness.

Oh, and to all of you out there who wake up every morning thinking, “Impeach Bush,” forget about it. The real target of impeachment should be Darth Cheney.

George W. Bush lives a fantasy life that he believes to be real. You know, the one in which he was a successful oilman and big league baseball team owner and not just the beneficiary of the largess of his daddy’s sycophant friends. People may have marveled when George W. met the former KGB’er cum head Russian, Vlad “the impaler of Russian democracy” Putin and could “get a sense” of the up and coming Pinochet of the East’s soul. I didn’t. Having observed both Bush’s and Putin’s rise to power in 1999-2000 while living and teaching in Russia for the year, I saw great similarities in the two. Both are men of such limited imaginations that they cannot conceive of their own limitations.

No, George W. Bush truly and honestly believes everything Dick “I didn’t get to nuke the Commies but maybe I’ll get a chance with Al Qaeda and Iran” Cheney told him. Therein lies the pity. Felony stupid is not grounds for impeachment. But if it can be shown Dick “The truth? We don’t stinkin’ need no truth.” Cheney deliberately lied to Congress on his various beat the war drum forays to Congress in 2002 and 2003, we’ve got a high crimes of the sort that sent Ollie “yeah I was convicted but I got off on a technicality just like all those criminal scum I rail about on the radio” North to jail, albeit briefly.

So if the Democrats in the Congress want redress for the mess the nation finds itself in thanks to Bush & Cheney, Inc., they should vigorously pursue the promised hearings on pre-war intelligence and build an evidentiary trail leading not to the White House, but to Number One Observatory Circle (You know, the place the Veep lives—and charges lobbyists a fortune to have tea at….) That’s where the bill for the political manipulations of the past six years should be presented for payment in full.

(Editorial note. Apologies for all the links– I’m like a kid in a new toy. In 3+ years the UT could never set me up with a weblogging system that supported me, a Mac [the one, true, faith] user allowing me to actually link my blogs. The CityBeat folk, bless their underpaid little hearts, managed to do it in about 7 minutes. Home sweet home.)