Later in the week, he declared:
“My Administration has been
clear and candid on the state of the economy. We saw the economic
slowdown coming, we were up front about these concerns with the
American people, and we’ve been taking decisive action.”
A lie.
In his radio address, Bush touted his tax rebates of $600 to $1200 as
manna for the maxed-out.
“Most economic experts predict that the
stimulus will have a positive effect on the economy in this quarter and
even a greater impact in the next. And Americans should have confidence
in the long-term outlook for our economy.”
A lie.
Is it any wonder that, in a casual interview in-between magical spells,
Bush could actually say: “Interestingly enough, it is a lot harder to
have been the son of the president than to be the president. And, so,
it’s been a joyous experience.”
For whom?
Now, while Bush is as ignorant about economics as he is, uh, everything
else, he does have competition for the vaunted King of Fools mantle.
Here’s John McCain explaining to members of construction and trade
unions why migrant farm workers are hurting our economy.
“Now, my friends, I’ll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you’ll go pick
lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So — OK?
Sign up. OK. You sign up. You sign up, and you’ll be there for the
whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can’t
do it, my friend.”
A rough translation. He’s telling folks who do the most backbreaking
labor imaginable that they’re not up to picking lettuce…for $400 a day.
Or $2,000 a week. Or $104,000 a year. Adding insult to imagery, last I
heard, migrant lettuce pickers weren’t making $50 an hour.
Now, it’s easy to excuse McCain’s economic embolisms because,
basically, he’s an idiot. But how do you justify Hillary Clinton’s
newfound foray into financial fantasyland?
Answer: you can’t.
Both McCain and Clinton have recently embraced a summer gas tax
vacation. This piece of election year chicanery would lift the
18.4-cent Federal gas tax (24.4 cents for diesel) for summer months.
McCain wouldn’t bother to make up the lost money. Clinton says that the
lost revenue will be replaced by windfall profit taxes imposed on oil
companies…taxes Congress will never impose.
The plan would save Americans an average of $30 over the summer. It
would cost the government at least $8 billion, most of which has been
earmarked for keeping our infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) from
total collapse. This lack of funding, in turn, would cost about 300,000
jobs. It would increase the profits of oil companies because more gas
will be consumed. It doesn’t guarantee lower gas prices at the pump,
either. In fact, because of increased demand during the already
hard-pressed summer months, it might actually send gas prices higher.
150 leading American economists have issued a bi-partisan letter
trashing the idea. The American Road and Transportation Builders
Association are against it. The American Trucking Association is
against it. The American Society of Civil Engineers is against it.
NYT columnist Tom Friedman wrote that it’s:
“...so ridiculous…it takes your
breath away. - This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering:
we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a
little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks.”
“Newsweek’s” Jonathan Alter wrote:
“It will cost the U.S. Treasury at
least $8.5 billion and probably much more, according to state highway
officials. For McCain that’s no money at all–merely one month in Iraq.
For Clinton it’s money she’s already spent. She has said in the past
that any proceeds from a windfall profits tax would go for renewable
energy. The $8.5 billion figure assumes the tax would be reapplied
after Labor Day. Fat chance. The one-year costs are probably closer to
$30 billion.”
NYT columnist Paul Krugman noted:
“...the tax cut really goes to the oil companies.”
NYC Mayor (and billionaire) Michael Bloomberg called it:
“...the dumbest
thing I’ve heard in an awful long time, from an economic point of view.”
In short, it’s the economic version of “Sorry you lost your job. Why not just get drunk for a week?”
So, with 99% of economists saying the plan stinks, how does Hillary
Clinton respond? She goes back into rootin’ tootin’ mode, declaring
that Congress has to go on record showing that it’s either “with us or
against us” and she don’ need no steenkin’ economists buttin’ in. “I’m
not going to put my lot in with economists,” she declared on “This
Week.”
Playing the populist, she also described the gas tax vacation deriders as having elite mindsets.
Hello, Sucker!
While voters mull over various new and improved ways to screw
themselves, Bush is quietly dismantling what’s left of our government.
His version of the Environmental Protection Agency has officially
mutated into the Environmental Persecution Agency. (Remember after 9/11
when the New York air filled with pulverized body parts and fluids,
concrete, plaster, asbestos, plastic, jet fuel, soot, rubber, steel,
and feces was declared “A-OK” to breathe by the EPA just so Wall Street
could re-open? That was the mutant agency’s first “baby step.”)
Last week, it was revealed that EPA assessments of the health dangers
posed by toxic chemicals have been delayed and/or changed because
non-scientists are participating in the reviewing process. The
Pentagon, the Energy Department, NASA, political appointees and
chemical manufacturers have participated “at almost every step in the
assessment process,” reported the non-partisan Government
Accountability Office.
“The (EPA) scientists feel as if they have lost complete control of the
process, that it’s been taken over by the White House and that they’re
calling the shots,” one anonymous scientist said.
So, remember, kids: discarded rocket fuel in your tap water doesn’t cause cancer. It gives you extra “oomph!”
Meanwhile, 60% of the EPA scientists responding to a survey done by the
Union of Concerned Scientists said that BushCo. was either twisting or
tossing scientific findings that didn’t benefit the Administration or
its cronies across the board.
“Our investigation found an agency in crisis,” said Francesca Grifo of
the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Distorting science to accommodate a
narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health and our
democracy itself.”
A case in point: the Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has to
regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The scientific research is done.
Tougher regulations are in order. The EPA, however, has sat on the
documentation and has refused to either make a ruling or make the
documentation public.
When California recently moved to impose stricter regulations on its
own, the EPA quashed it, although its own scientists were for it. EPA
chief Stephen Johnson has tossed out every excuse in the book in order
to hide any of the EPA’s in-house findings, from national security to
the chance that documents showing scientists voting in favor of cleaner
air and the EPA ignoring them would be confusing. It “could result in
needless public confusion about the Administrator’s decision.”
No, I think most of the public would get it. The concepts of
“unscrupulous whore” and “partisan hack” are pretty much part of
Americana, these days.
Just last week, EPA/BushCo. forced its top environmental regulator in
the Midwest to quit because she went after Dow Chemical for not
cleaning up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment extending 50 miles
beyond Dow’s Midland, Michigan plant, contaminating both Saginaw Bay
and Lake Huron. Highly respected EPA employee Mary Gade said that she
was stripped of her powers as a regional administrator and told to quit
or be fired by June.
The EPA mumbled its usual disgruntled employee riff. The amazing thing
about Gade’s firing is that Dow has already taken responsibility for
the toxicity. It just doesn’t want to do anything about it. This site
has been banging around the Superfund clean up realm for years. Back in
the 1980s, the EPA fired someone in the same position for proving that
Dow was responsible for the deadly dioxin in the first place.
Meanwhile, as the air heats up and the land bubbles with poison, thus
ensuring greater profit in the private sector, here are a few stories
that BushCo. hasn’t been able to politicize into oblivion as yet.
-
“New Study Raises Major Questions On Biofuels” (is the use of land for
biofuels worsening global warming as well as leading to a food
shortage)
- “Pine Beetle Outbreaks Turn Forests Into Carbon Source”
(dying forests will release more carbon dioxide than they absorb)
- “Warming Shifts Gardeners’ Maps” (those growing zones that backyard
gardeners use are now 20 years out of date – but they haven’t been
changed for political/economic reasons)
- “Arctic Ice Melting Faster
Than Predicted”.
- “Scientist Says New Zealand’s Biggest Glacier
Shrinking”.
- “US Judge Orders May 15 Decision On Polar Bears” (BushCo.
has been dodging making a decision on whether polar bears are an
endangered species or not).
- “Major Arctic Sea Ice Melt Is Expected This
Summer”.
- ...and a headline that sums up the entire Bush/EPA approach to
the world
- “US Climate Change Plan Branded ‘Neanderthal’”.
Probably the most bizarre environmental dance being done by the
administration, and that’s saying a lot, is Dick Cheney’s fight against
legislation protecting the endangered right whale. The White House has
delayed rules restricting the speed of ships near American ports. Fast
moving ships are creaming the whales, either killing or severely
injuring them. Accordingly, Dead-Eye Dick wants to protect the ships.
His staff “contends that we have no evidence that lowering the speeds
of ‘large ships’ will actually make a difference.”
As the EPA and BushCo. continue to torture the environment, the Bush
Administration is furiously backpedaling from the fact that America has
routinely tortured political detainees or enemy combatants or whatever
we’re calling people whose balls we bust these days as part of our
larger “War On Terror” fandango.
As Congress continues its investigation, led by John Conyers, America’s
Team Torture is furiously trying to locate Bush’s missing magic wand in
an attempt to make the whole subject go away. Until they find it,
throwing up handfuls of legal dust while inflating their cheeks and
shrieking seems to be doing the trick.
Last week, the lawyer for Dick Cheney claimed that Congress lacks any
authority to examine his behavior on the job. Kathryn L. Wheelbarger
declared: “Congress lacks the constitutional power to regulate by a law
what a Vice President communicates in the performance of the Vice
President’s official duties, or what a Vice President recommends that a
President communicate in the President’s performance of official
duties, and therefore those matters are not within the Committee’s
power of inquiry.”
A year ago, Cheney’s office held onto all of its classified documents
(which includes everything from memos to take-out menus) by declaring
the vice-president’s office a hybrid branch of government – both
executive and legislative yet, somehow, neither. It’s sort of like when
a unicorn and a Minotaur mate. The offspring is butt ugly but,
technically, doesn’t exist.
Two witnesses sought by Conyers, former US attorney general John
Ashcroft and former US justice department lawyer John Yoo, have already
claimed that their involvement in civil lawsuits related to harsh
interrogations allows them to avoid appearing before Congress to chat
about torture.
Then, there are also national security concerns. Documentation can’t be
produced because terrorists would read them. The process of how torture
was made legal can’t be disclosed because terrorists would somehow
learn how to avoid being caught and/or beat the system. Woo’s aunt
Martha has an ingrown toenail. Ashcroft is trying to get his band back
together. The reasons for non-cooperation go on and on.
The Justice Department has pretty much told Congress that American
intelligence (?) operatives can use whatever tactics they want if they
think they’re thwarting a terrorist attack.
Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, penned a
letter noting: “The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a
threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation
or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the
outrageousness of the act.”
To cut through the crap; America doesn’t torture. We prevent further
terrorist attacks by NOT torturing prisoners in ways that are
considered torture everywhere else. See? It makes sense.
Meanwhile, the “Best of the Gitmo Guys” kangaroo courts are revving their engines.
Former Chief prosecutor for the Gitmo tribunals, Air Force Col. Morris
Davis, has thrown a spanner in the works, submitting his retirement
papers after recently quitting his post because, per “The Washington
Post,” “of fallout from his criticism of the Guantanamo court and
because of family concerns.”
Davis left his gig because it had become “deeply politicized.” He added
that Pentagon official Williams Haynes, who took over the tribunals,
told him “we can’t have acquittals.”
Testifying for the defense at the trial of bin Laden driver Salim
Hamdan last week, Davis said that the trials were rushed and political
in nature. “There was that constant theme that if we don’t get this
thing rolling before the election, it’s going to implode,” he said.
“Once you get the victim families energized and the cases rolling,
whoever took the White House would have difficulty stopping the
process.”
The Bush administration set up the much-criticized kangaroo courts
commissions to try suspected terrorists outside the regular civilian
and military courts, as war criminals. Even if the accused were to be
acquitted at a trial, the White House system says the newly found
“innocent” can be held as an ‘’enemy combatants'’ as long as there’s a
war on terror. (That’s infinity times twelve in layman’s terms.)
‘’From the start, it’s been not just the detainees but the whole system
that has been on trial,'’ said the American Civil Liberties Union’s Ben
Wizner, a Pentagon-approved war court observer.
With the entire system on trial, it should be noted that not too many
news outlets are covering the ghastly goings-on. After all, there’s
Reverend Wright to discuss, again. And Hillary is out there sticking it
to da oilman. And McCain is figuring out his new budget on an abacus.
Now, THAT’S important stuff!
This country, at present, is so inept that it LOST money allowing the
IRS to outsource collecting delinquent tax payments. Think about that.
We lost money - getting people to pay us what they owed us.
Speaking of lost money, Bush wants another $70 billion to fund his war of the week club.
Frank Zappa once said of America, “The illusion of freedom will
continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion.”
Right now, we’re in the red - big time.
Two decades ago, in a lengthy interview with writer Bob Marshall, Zappa
accurately summed up our current situation, both in terms of the reign
of Bush and his possible successor.
“The environment that is hostile to dreamers is always the environment
that is run by right-wing administrations because in order for the
right-wing administration to maintain its fiction, it has to be
ideologically pure and that ideology does not admit for creativity.
There is nothing creative about a right-wing administration. The whole
goal of it is to freeze time and to move things backward. So, obviously
the people who are most at risk, whenever there is a right-wing
administration sitting in place, is anybody who is an intellectual
dreamer or creative person in any field. They are at risk because they
pose a threat to the administration.”
Yet, in 2008, some people still dare to dream.
And, in 2008, some people dream of flinging more crap further still.
Hello, Suckers!
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