And we don't play favorites- both parties and we do mean BOTH have collectively destroyed the American dream for tens of millions of Americans over a forty year period, and in 2011, it only appears to be worsening.
So in the effort to be "fair & balanced", and more accurately because the following article is completely true, here's highlights from a MarketWatch.com (May 24th) article of how Ronald Reagan and the rest of the GOP decimated the US economy... (Article will be in blue font)
Warning: long posting but like all long articles, very much worth reading...
" “My G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy.” Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece... the GOP has “destroyed” the U.S. economy, setting up an “American Apocalypse"... Last fall, Stockman’s hard-hitting op-ed was loaded with jabs like ..."The nation’s public debt” screams “for austerity and sacrifice,” instead, the GOP insisted “the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase... Obama blinked, pulled his punch..."
"Stockman’s latest attack proves he’s still a powerful fighter... instead of just looking back at the failure of a self-destructive Reaganomics, (he) focuses us on the paradigm shift that’s destroying America from within... Today, professional economists are no more than hired guns for politicians with myopia... Capitalism has morphed into a monopoly ruled by politicians who are serving a wealthy elite. Competition is a joke. Democracy is a farce. “We the People” no longer exists... (a) coming crisis will trigger another mega-crash, bigger than the dot-com crash and subprime meltdown combined..."
"(Here are) 10 principled facts seen fueling the political drama surrounding the 2012 elections and challenging all Americans at this historic turning point...
1. Politicians are addicts, can’t stop spending America’s future
Reagan’s big government policies “led to the utter failure of spending control.” Today America is “living way beyond our means,” and yet politicians are incapable of thinking past the next election. “They hear the squeaky wheel (of corporate interests), and they respond...
2. Cutting taxes: a cruel joke, defers big tax burden onto kids
“In the Bush era … nothing was cut. Everything was ratified. In fact, they added to Medicare through the drug benefit… you’re kidding yourself if you think cutting taxes today is really cutting taxes. We’re simply deferring massive tax increases into the future... Tax-cutting is a “massive Christmas tree of special-interest tax benefits and loopholes...
3. Social Security is a myth: Forget 2036, there’s no money today
“The top one-third (of Soc. Sec & Medicare) goes to retirees who have private assets, private pensions, other sources of income... and there really is no trust fund there — that’s all fiscal mythology … that money wasn’t saved or hived … it was spent on cotton subsidies and bribes to warlords in Afghanistan. The fact is, this is simply an intergenerational transfer program. … social insurance is a myth...
4. Reaganomics loves war: Military spending is off the table
“Reagan was utterly uninterested in any detail of the defense budget, of any of the claims for dollars made by the Pentagon,” says Stockman... “He gave them a blank check, without question, and that … ballooned spending just as we were massively reducing the revenue” and “it created an enormous political impasse...
5. Gross leadership failure: clueless ex-Goldman CEO at Treasury
“[Henry] Paulson frankly is the most incompetent, reckless secretary of the Treasury that we’ve had in modern history, if ever. He had no schooling in public policy, he had no schooling in the longer-term issues of fiscal management, or even what sound money is all about.” When “the crisis metastasized in” 2008 Paulson got “panicked calls from his buddies on Wall Street who were seeing their pyramids of debt coming crashing down.” And when Goldman Sachs’ stock cratered, Paulson really panicked. “There was no philosophy behind it; there was never an analysis done.” Driven by a clear conflict of interest, he wanted to protect the $600 million fortune he built at Goldman, while saving his Wall Street buddies from bankruptcy. So Paulson failed the American people.
Paulson’s panicky failure “was a profound moment in political history in September 2008… Had we allowed nature to take its course, maybe Goldman Sachs stock would have gone down to $10. But that’s their problem and that’s the problem of speculators who owned the stock, not a systemic problem for the economy.” Instead, Paulson’s panic made matters worse
7. In a “free market,” Wall Street banks must be free to fail
“The fundamental principle of free-market capitalism is that you have to be free to fail as well as succeed,” but “when you go in the opposite direction and socialize losses and privatize gains, you will destroy” our system of capitalism. Why? Because moral hazard encourages new “reckless risk taking, misallocation of capital.”
8. Today’s “crony capitalism” is destroying our faith in America
Wall Street is killing trust in the economy: “Once the broader public sees that the cronies of capitalism are bailed out by their friends in Washington or the Fed, why should they believe that the system we have is fair or is working in their interest?”
9. Derivatives speculation: Wall Street gambles in shady casinos
Gold was “at the heart of it a fixed exchange rate system” before 1971 obligating “each country to settle its accounts at the end of every year … Chronic payments deficits and you were going to… lose your monetary reserves.” But when we “went to pure fiat money … financial volatility and instability” created a “massive speculative casino …
10. Too-greedy-to-fail banks are creating another bigger meltdown
Before the crisis hit in 2007, “the top four banks in this country had $5 trillion of assets combined. After the whole crisis of too-big-to-fail and all of the bailouts, today the top four banks have $7 trillion of asset footings.” ... Antipathy that’s developed towards the crony-capitalist policy of bailing out anybody that’s big and strong like GM and Goldman Sachs” has created a new “generation of workers that’s going to be turned into tax slaves …
~ Do not allow yourself to get caught up in the political left-right game which both parties play every election cycle and every evening on cable news. Neither party has solutions and neither party is truly representing you. Obama does not care about you. Bush did not either.. Nor did Clinton or Bush Sr or Reagan... on and on.. These are all politicians who did their fair share of soul-selling and spiritual compromising to get to be President.
The 2012 election is going to be a most difficult one- every Rep candidate is some form of failure as is this current Democratic incumbent. So there's not much to choose from... Understand this: the quality of life for most Americans has deteriorated since 1970- that's a Fact. And it continues deteriorating at a more rapid rate.. No one--- No political party or leader is absolved of blame.
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