The Great American Stickup:

How the Political Class Mugged America

and Handed the Money Over to Wall St.

With so much opportunity, why has Obama presided over such an economic disaster?

By Amy Goodman and Robert Scheer

Progressive America Rising via Democracy Now

September 7, 2010  

Goodman: As we continue our discussion on the state of the economy, we’re by veteran journalist and Truthdig.com editor Robert Scheer. His book is just out; it’s called The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street. What is wrong with the economy today? And how did we get here?  

Scheer: Well, you know, you say a longtime journalist. I worked for the Los Angeles Times as a national reporter, and I covered these hearings in Washington when the Clinton Administration in the '90s basically fulfilled the promise of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan was not able to reverse the sensible regulations of the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt designed to prevent us from getting into another depression. And those regulations of Glass-Steagall, which Feingold was against -- was for keeping and against reversing, said that investment banks playing with supposedly rich people's money should not be allowed to merge with commercial banks that were using the deposits of people that were insured by the taxpayers and that these were different activities. And Reagan could never pull off that kind of deregulation. In fact, because of the savings and loan scandal at the end of his term, he actually had to sign off on increased financial regulation. But when Clinton came in, he brought in one of the big players on Wall Street, Robert Rubin, who has been head of Goldman Sachs, and basically turned to him and said, "You know, what do I need to do to get Wall Street on my side?" And they said, reverse what they considered to be onerous financial regulation. And Clinton delivered on that. He brought in Rubin then to be his Treasury secretary, who was followed by Lawrence Summers, who’s now the top economics adviser in the Obama White House.

And in addition to the Gramm bill that reversed Glass-Steagall, he did something even more significant for our current crisis. He -- after Summers had pushed it through, Congress signed off on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. He was already a lame duck president. It was in the closing weeks of his administration. And this is the source of our whole problem, really, in terms of the housing meltdown, because we had these suspect derivatives that sensible people in the administration, like Brooksley Born, had warned against. No one knew what these toxic investments all about, the bundling of mortgages, which is what encouraged all of the wild subprime and Alt-A financing, because they were then going to be packaged together, made into securities, and then backed by credit default swaps, and all of this stuff that really didn’t exist. It certainly didn’t exist in Adam Smith’s capitalism, but it didn’t really exist even in Ronald Reagan’s capitalism. This newfangled -- these gimmicks that were developed and spiraled wildly out of control were made possible because of that Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Clinton signed and which said in Titles III and IV, no existing government regulation, no existing government regulatory body, will be allowed to supervise these credit default swaps, these collateralized debt obligations that were there.

And as a result, we had this wild runup of irresponsible mortgage lending. The banks no longer did, as in the old days, worry about whether you could make your payments, whether there was value in the house, because they weren’t going to hold that mortgage for thirty years like in the old days. They were going to sell it, you know? And that wild runup of the market—I call it the Clinton bubble. I think his administration deserves or should be given the main responsibility. And that is at the source of our problem. And this has not gone away. This is why we’re threatened with a possible 'nother steep decline, or we're threatened with a decade of Japanese-type stagnation. And the reason is because we now, taxpayers, are holding, you know, trillions of dollars of this stuff, these toxic investments. And as a result, housing right now is in a terrible state of affairs. There are 11 million homeowners that are underwater. They owe more on their mortgages than their houses. That translates to about 50 million people living in houses that are now worth less than what they owe on them, and they’re tempted to walk away from them. That’s why we don’t have any consumer demand. And it’s not just the people who are in trouble with their own houses, which is a tragic enough story, but even if somebody’s made every payment, even if they own their home outright. If you foreclose a house or two in that neighborhood, it brings everyone else down.

And all this stuff that Obama has been talking about really does not meet the problem. And the basic problem is, instead of throwing money at Wall Street, which is what Bush did and what Obama continued to do, you should have had a moratorium on housing foreclosures. You should have said, "OK, Wall Street, we’ll help you, but you are now going to be forced, through bankruptcy courts, new rules we’re going to put in place, to adjust people’s mortgages so they can stay in their home." And all this malarkey about "We’ll do more infrastructure," you know, and so—they always do that. We’ll spend $50 billion on this—what he said in Wisconsin. What is that $50 billion? It’s chump change compared to, say, the $300 billion of toxic investments by one group, Robert Rubin’s bank, Citigroup. He went, after he left the administration, to be a top bigshot at Citigroup, made possible by the reversal of Glass-Steagall. And, you know, $300 billion. So compare that to the $50 billion they’re going to do for infrastructure for the whole nation.

And I think the sad thing about Obama -- you know, obviously, I supported him. I wrote columns thinking he was going to be great. An enormous disappointment. Somebody -- no one can explain to me -- I haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation. But in my book, I reprint the speech that Obama gave in the spring of '08, when he was a candidate. And it came three months after Robert Rubin had given a speech at Cooper Union saying we had no financial problem, we had no crisis. Three months later, Obama, at that same Cooper Union, said, you know, this is all due to reversal of Glass-Steagall, all due to reckless, radical deregulation. He spelled it out. And then, you know, mysteriously -- maybe not so mysteriously when you think that Wall Street became his biggest, financial community became his biggest campaign contributor -- he turned to the disciples of Robert Rubin -- the Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, the very people that had, with Rubin, created this mess -- and said, "OK, you guys, fix it all." And they haven't fixed it. They’ve taken care of Wall Street. And as my subtitle in my book said, they mugged Main Street.

Goodman: Robert, you said this is what President Obama should have done. For example, a moratorium on all bankruptcies. What should he do now? Why "should have"? What could he do starting today?

Scheer: Oh, immediately he should push for bankruptcy courts to have the power to force the banks to readjust these mortgages. You know, we picked up their bad paper. Why don’t they help people now who are stuck? You know, the basic idea of the New Deal was that these were not innocent victims of Wall Street scams. So we have—this is why you have all this anger in the tea party and everything else. It’s very legitimate.

I’m not one of—and by the way, you mentioned Feingold in your—it would be a tragedy to lose Feingold. If there’s one person in the United States Congress that has called this correctly, that has stood up for the interest of ordinary people, it’s Russ Feingold. I mean, I can’t think—you know, maybe Bernie Sanders, but Russ Feingold has been at it longer in the Senate. I mean, he just has been right on this stuff from day one. And the idea that rage about what’s happened to the economy is now going to take its toll on him, the one guy who—one of the few who got it right, is really frightening. But that’s what happens when you have an economic breakdown. We saw it in Germany, for God’s sake. You know, you look—the demagogues scapegoat all the people. You know, they scapegoat immigrants. And what you have now is a lot of money, a lot of money, from the big banks and everyone else, going into lunatics’ camp—the campaign of lunatics. But why? Because, "Oh, get government off our back. You know, big government," ignoring the fact that, you know, this government did not get big and the debt did not rise because we’re trying to help firemen or school teachers keep their jobs. It happened because we have, literally, through the Fed and through the federal government, spent, you know, what? Three, four—committed three, four trillion dollars to make the banks whole.

So when you say what we should do right now, Obama could call for a moratorium. A moratorium, what? Two, three years on mortgage foreclosures. You know, that’s what you do when you’re facing a crisis. He could call for and push through a regulation, as well as legislation, saying the bankruptcy courts—remember, we had the change in bankruptcy law to hurt consumers, make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy. Well, they could push for new regulation, new laws, say, no, we’re not going to leave it voluntarily, as he’s now doing with the banks to somehow make readjustments of which there have been very few, has not dealt with the problem. They should say, no, this is the ball game right now. The ball game is keeping people in their homes. The ball game is preventing all those boarded-up buildings in suburbs of South Florida, Riverside, California.

I mean, if you travel in this country, there’s enormous pain, because people’s life savings, their sense of their worth, their piece of the American Dream, were tied up in their family. When you lose that home or when you’re suffering or you’re facing foreclosure, you lose not only your pride, you lose your ability to retire, to send your kids to school. I mean, the dreams of Americans are wrapped up in their home. And I don’t know why we’re talking about anything else right now. If we want to get the economy going again, if we want to get people back to work, if we want to get consumption up, what you’ve got to do is help people with that nest and that nest egg, which is their home. And there’s very little, precious little in Obama’s speeches, and certainly almost nothing in his actions, to help those homeowners.

Goodman: And how do you help people who don’t have a home?

Scheer: Well, you know, I know—there’s lots of things to do to help people home. But let me tell you, this is not a division between haves and have-nots when it comes to home owning. And one of my anger with some of the liberals around in the Democratic Party who supported this deregulation, they said this was going to help minority people get homes. You know, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were as rapacious as any—as Citigroup or Goldman Sachs. And the so-called liberal—this is dealt with in great detail in my book, which takes very few prisoners on either side, in either party. But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with the support of people like Barney Frank and even many in the Black Caucus, said, "No, no, don’t touch Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They’ll help poor people get into their homes." Sure, a lot of minorities got into homes. They lost their savings. They’re now hurting. They can’t hold on to their homes. They’re being foreclosed. So, you know, the dream of American housing was not a have/have-not thing. It was supposed to be emancipation of Americans. It was supposed to be of them a piece of the pie.

So, first thing is, if we do this thing of keeping people in homes, we’re helping a lot of working people and poorer people. This is not something to benefit the rich. The rich make out like bandits in this kind of market. But secondly, if we can’t put a floor on housing foreclosures, if we can’t stem this bleeding right now, we’re not going to get consumption back, you know, and if we don’t get consumption back, because people were consuming based on their sense of what they’re worth, we’re not going to get the jobs back—jobs in construction, but jobs generally. And so, I would not divide the interest of homeowners and keeping them in their homes from the rest of the population.

Goodman: Robert Scheer, your last chapter, "Sucking Up to the Bankers: Crisis Handoff from Bush to Obama" -- has Obama done anything different about the economy than Bush, do you feel?

Scheer: No. Obama has been a disaster. And I say this as someone who was suckered into contributing to his campaign financially. You know, my wife maxed out in her contributions, pushing those buttons every time. I still get emails from the Obama campaign telling "We’re winning here, we’re winning there." But it’s been a disaster. Now, maybe, you know, if he could appoint Elizabeth Warren, you know, to the consumer agency, there will be a little bit of value in this deregulation—in this new regulation.

Goodman: What about that?

Scheer: Russ Feingold was absolutely right to vote against it. Hello?

Goodman: But what about Elizabeth Warren, seen as the frontrunner for this job, but seen as a—there’s a quiet campaign in the White House, or perhaps not so quiet, among people like Rahm Emanuel, who supposedly, rumor has it, are opposing her?

Scheer: Yeah, well, look, come on. You can’t look to the Democratic Party, you know, hacks, for leadership on this. First of all, most of these people are veterans of the Clinton administration. They’re the same people who destroyed Brooksley Born. Brooksley Born was one of the most competent lawyers in this country, dealing -- she represented banks. She understood more about these derivatives than anyone around, actually, when she was appointed to what was supposed to be a lesser agency, you know, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. And she spotted this problem. You know, seventeen times in testimony before congressional committees, Brooksley Born sounded the alarm that there was going to be a housing meltdown, that this thing had gone wild, that we had enabled Wall Street graft. She knew the inside outside. It was people like Summers, who’s now in this administration, I think, who don’t want Elizabeth Warren—Timothy Geithner, and there are plenty of others. There are many Goldman Sachs veterans and other big Wall Street veterans in this administration, as well. And they destroyed Brooksley Born. And they’re threatened by Elizabeth Warren, because Elizabeth Warren represents consumers. She’s a brilliant legal mind, and just as Brooksley Born is. And Elizabeth Warren said, "Wait a minute. You know, what kind of, you know, government is this, when you’re caring about Wall Street and you’re ignoring the pain out there?"

And I have to stress this, Amy. This is not some abstract—you know, I studied economics in graduate school, and I could do some mathematical modeling and all that stuff. This is not a game. It’s not a political game. It’s not a mathematics game. They’re real human beings who invest their whole life putting shelter over their family, caring about their family. And when you go out in these communities—and I’ve done some of that—you know, it’s so depressing. You know, I mean, I talked to people in Riverside who cleaned office buildings, you know, in Long Beach and commuted to Riverside so their kids could live in a better neighborhood. And they bought this house, and they made the payments. They made the payments. They did everything they were supposed to do. And the neighborhood went into the toilet, and they lose everything. They lose everything. And that story is repeated millions of times in America.

And the guys who did it to us, they weren’t those vicious right-wingers. And, you know, it wasn’t all the people that we liberals like to attack. It was our friends. Let’s get that straight, you know? When I call this the Clinton bubble, you know, I mean it very seriously. It was our friends. It was people, you know, like the heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who claim to be liberal Democrats. But they were being rewarded with enormous bonuses. You know, enormous bonuses. They made out just as well as the people running Citigroup. These were not government agencies. These were actually traded on the stock market, but posing as government-supported agencies. And the fact of the matter is that the damage that was done to us was done by people who talk a very good game. You know, Robert Rubin contributed money to the Harlem dance group, you know? Jesse Jackson even supported the reversal of Glass-Steagall. There’s a whole chapter in my book, you know? The people who acted in a very bad way, in this book, were people who we would probably be more comfortable talking to, you know, over a drink somewhere than the others. So, you know, my book, you know, it’s called "How Reagan Democrats—Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street and Mugged Main Street." And the Clinton Democrats, who now control the Obama administration, are—you know, this is turning the henhouse over to the foxes. And I would say the record of Obama on this has been abysmal. He has been a frontman for Wall Street, and it is shocking.

Goodman: Robert Scheer, I want to thank you very much for being with us, longtime journalist based in California, worked for the Los Angeles Times for some thirty years, editor at Truthdig.com, author of many books. The latest, just out today in paperback, is The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program, Democracy Now!.

Robert Scheer is Editor in Chief of Truthdig, where he publishes a weekly column, and author of a new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.

GOP Politician Confirms

What Was Long Suspected:

Republicans Intentionally

Feed the Racism, Anger, and

Paranoia of the Far Right

By David Corn

Mother Jones Online, August 4, 2010,

via Progressive America Rising

It was the middle of a tough primary contest, and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) had convened a small meeting with donors who had contributed thousands of dollars to his previous campaigns. But this year, as Inglis faced a challenge from tea party-backed Republican candidates claiming Inglis wasn't sufficiently conservative, these donors hadn't ponied up. Inglis' task: Get them back on the team. "They were upset with me," Inglis recalls. "They are all Glenn Beck watchers." About 90 minutes into the meeting, as he remembers it, "They say, 'Bob, what don't you get? Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist who wants to destroy the American economy so he can take over as dictator. Health care is part of that. And he wants to open up the Mexican border and turn [the US] into a Muslim nation.'" Inglis didn't know how to respond.

[Boehner] said, "I would have told them that it's not quite that bad. We disagree with him on the issues." I said, "Hold on Boehner, that doesn't work. Let me tell you, I tried that and it did not work." I said [to Boehner], "If you're going to lead these people and the fearful stampede to the cliff that they're heading to, you have to turn around and say over your shoulder, 'Hey, you don't know the half of it.'"

I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.

The word is designed to have emotional charge to it. Throughout my primary, there were people insisting that I use the word. They would ask me if he was a socialist, and I would always find some other word. I'd say, "President Obama wants a very large government that I don't think will work and that spends too much and it's inefficient and it compromises freedom and it's not the way we want to go." They would listen for the word, wait to see if I used the s-word, and when I didn't, you could see the disappointment.

I refused to use the word because I have this view that the Ninth Commandment must mean something. I remember one year Bill Clinton -- the guy I was out to get [when serving on the House judiciary committee in the 1990s] -- at the National Prayer Breakfast said something that was one of the most profound things I've ever heard from anybody at a gathering like that. He said, "The most violated commandment in Washington, DC" -- everybody leaned in; do tell, Mr. President -- "is, 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'" I thought, "He's right. That is the most violated commandment in Washington." For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I'm conservative. We disagree...But I don't need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

I hated Bill Clinton. I wanted to destroy him. Then I had six years out [after leaving Congress in 1999] to look back on that, and now I would confess it as a sin. It is just wrong to want to destroy another human being and to spend so much time and effort trying to destroy Bill Clinton -- some of it with really suspect information. We went on and on about Whitewater. We had talked about the strange things about Vince Foster's death. The drug dealing at Mena airport. So in the six years I was out, I looked back and realized, "Oh what a waste."

© 2010 Mother Jones Online All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147732/

Keith Olbermann's White Blindspot

by Clay Claiborne

Agent Orange, the toxic defoliate which America dumped on Vietnam to kill the growth of plants that were used as cover by the Vietcong. 19 million gallons of defoliates were sprayed on Vietnam, mostly Agent Orange, near Vietnam's borders north of Saigon and near the Mangroves lining Saigon's shipping channels, meaning it was not just killing trees, it was being breathed in by American soldiers who did not know exposure could later lead to potentially fatal conditions such as Hodgkin's disease, soft tissue cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

So said Keith Olbermann in Segment #4 GOP Vets "Not Helping" of last night's Countdown. This story focused on the effects on humans of Agent Orange and the need of many of our Vietnam veterans for treatment and compensation.  It was a good segment as far as it went. The problem I had with it was that it didn't go far enough. Keith, Agent Orange was sprayed on the Vietnamese too, and you neglected to mention that. Even today, Vietnam has to care for about 3 million victims of Agent Orange. They range from their now aging war vets to the deformed babies still in the womb. What are they Keith? Chopped liver? Here's a scene from Vietnam: American Holocaust This is rough cut when I narrate. Martin Sheen narrates the DVD.

In Tuesday's diary about Glenn Beck's Tea party on the mall, I said it was a characteristic of that crowd to ignore the victims of our war policies. I said it stemmed from the insipid racism that saw these people of color as not even worth an 'honorable' mention, but Keith, I expect better from you. How do you justify your continuing participation in a media conspiracy of silence with regards to the effect of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese? If my "conspiracy theory" is wrong here, please point me to all the MSM coverage of the effects of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese that I have missed. Effects that are today suffered by Vietnamese vets that fought on both sides of the conflict. Effects that are well known in Vietnam and recognized around the world but never reported here. And if you are not a participate in this conspiracy of silence, please explain your silence about the suffering of the Vietnamese last night since you were talking about Agent Orange anyway.

Not just our veterans but also our victims must be compensated for the crime of unleashing Agent Orange on humanity. America must recognize what we have done to the Vietnamese and start making it right by helping to clean up the toxic sites we left behind, for example. These sites will continue to add to the number of children killed by the U.S. in the Vietnam War until they are clean. Beck's show was a sham and a farce, but fixing this really is a question of restoring honor.

Resources on Agent Orange effects on Americans and Vietnamese:

Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign

This project is supported by Veterans for Peace, here is a speech by VFP member David Cline who died in 2007:

Agent Orange - A Continuing Legacy of the US War in Vietnam

Beck's Rally: Onward Christian Soldiers

By Clay Claiborne

Progressive America Rising via Daily KOS

To hear Glenn Beck tell it, America is on a mission from the Christian God. He should know because not only does he talk to God, they have conversations. God even sent him $600,000 [miraculously appeared after pray] to help with the rally expenses. Now God wants you to do your part!

According to Beck, the country was founded by Pilgrims that were motivated by a love of liberty and a search for religious freedom. They didn't really want to come here but God made them do it. No other motivation for the founding of the new world could be considered. The search for gold, the desire for other people's lands, a suitable place to employ slave labor, etc., played no role in his historical narrative. George Washington wanted no more than to be a simple farmer [who owned slaves, I would add.] before he was called by Christ to led the army and then the country. So often during this three hour Glenn Beck fundraiser, he reminded me of Father Merrin in the Exorcist: "The power of Christ compels you, The power of Christ compels you." We simply have no choice in these matters. It is our duty to God. In this modern day version of Manifest Destiny, America is not just entitled to rule the world, it is compelled by Christ to do so. It is the 'white man's burden' for the post racial era.

And just as the profit motive had nothing to do with the founding of the United States, so it has nothing to do with our wars. All have been fought for altruistic motives and on the side of the angels. The millions that have died at the hands of American arms in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere play no role in this narrative. Other than as the objects of our gifts of Freedom and Democracy... no that's not quite right ... shall we say our conveyance of the Almighty's universal gifts of Freedom & Democracy, they don't exist. The Tea Party was at the Reflecting Pool to honor the warrior not fret over his victim.

Sarah Palin, "the proud mother of a combat vet" led off by telling us that the "warrior's stories are America's story." "Just a mom" Sarah Palin had the honor of introducing three heroes from America's Wars. As she introduced them, each of these heroes was brought out on stage amidst much applause and flag waving. The first was from Iraq. She told a story about how once his squad didn't kill a group of civilians but should have.

The second was the heroic story of a U.S. Marine in Falluja and how he won the Bronze Star. She neglected to tell us that today doctors in the new American hospital in Falluja, we bombed the old one out of existence, are advising the women of Falluja to just stop having babies because the birth defect rate is off the charts. Anyone familiar with the true history of the [Battle|Liberation|Slaughter] of Falluja, including the liberal use of depleted uranium and white phosphorous on civilians, might assume that that is where America's honor got so lost that it now needs restoring. Just in case you were thinking that, Palin is here to tell you that for these soldiers "Honor was never lost."

The third story was about a Marine pilot shot down while on "a routine mission over Hanoi", a city that saw thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths rained down from American Aircraft. He was captured and became a prisoner along with John McCain at that "living hell" known as the Hanoi Hilton. Palin tells us how he described the torture he endured for five and a half years. "There was nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to write. You had to just sit there in absolute boredom, loneliness, frustration and fear." As Marlon Brando said at the end of Apocalypse Now, "The Horror, the Horror."

Anyone familiar with America's wars, wars that since WW2 have almost exclusively been against people of color in poor countries,knows that they have not been pretty or kind to the children. A special operations warrior is that special breed of soldier who can justify slitting a child's throat in the name of operational security. That is the brutal truth of the matter. I wrote a dairy here at the beginning of the year about the special forces execution of eight schoolchildren between the ages of 12 and 14 in Afghanistan. Some see those killers as terrorists but at the rally the Beck and Palin crowd portray them Rambo style as America's own true superheroes, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way. The sullied truth is they are the U.S. government's ultimate goon squad, hired assassins and mass murderers. They are the people the President sends in secretly when he knows he doesn't have any legal justification for his rampage.

Obstinately, the reason for this rally was to raise money for the Special Operations Warriors Fund. They provide money and tuition for families of special operations soldiers killed or wounded on missions. The founder and president of SOWF is James Carney. He was the SO agent who buried the advanced landing lights in the Iranian desert for Carter's disastrous 1980 special forces hostage rescue mission. Other notables on the board of SOWF include Erik Prince of the firm formerly known as Blackwater. Apparently Glenn Beck's deal with SOWF provides that they don't see penny one until all the expenses of the rally are paid. I would think that they could hope for a little more charity from a guy that earned $18 million last year but instead they had to settle for having faith that contributions would be greater than expenses. One wonders just what those expenses might be and whether they might involve a moose for sister Sarah. But enough about them.

The fund raising was nonstop. One of the early ones was that new trick of texting ten dollars. When Glenn Beck made his dramatic appeal saying "These men and women have died in our name, let's take care of their children, let's do it right now." he could have been channeling Saddam Hussein appealing for contributions to the families of suicide bombers.

Sarah Palin was followed by Negiel Bigpond, a Native American "covenant warrior of God" who counseled us to "never look back at the past" and told us we had to become "a covenant of warriors in Christ." He introduced the Black minister C.L. Jackson, who told us of all his personal accomplishments because "God would not let me stop." You can't fight God's destiny. Perhaps sensing that the crowd didn't want to hear from him, he said "Just let me say this, and then I'll be out of your hair." He then told his story, ending with the plead "even a dog is deserving of crumbs."

There was also Deb Argel-Bastian, a military mom who described how her son decided in the 3rd grade that honor meant never breaking a promise, and then in the 5th grade made a promise he would be the best special forces soldier ever. He died young in a foreign land but he kept the promise of a ten year old and kept his honor. And so it went with speaker after speaker praising Beck, lauding billionaires, promoting this as a Christian nation, as a Warrior nation whose unwilling destiny it was to rule the world, with much fanfare and flag waving and an announcer's voice that sounded like it was from The Running Man. As Glenn Beck himself summed it up in the end, "a global storm is coming and we have to guide the world to safety."

Glenn Beck scheduled his rally to happen on the 47th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a Dream" speech, and at the same place, the Washington Mall. It is often forgotten that that famous civil rights march on Washington on August 28, 1963 was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. And while the Tea Party crowd at the Glenn Beck affair might not have much truck with the civil right aspect of the thing, in this economy, you'd think they would be all in with the demand for jobs, which makes it all the more strange that the demand for jobs was never mentioned. In fact, one of the defining characteristics of this rally was that no demands and no concerns that could possibly make a real difference in the lives of the people there, the demand for jobs, housing, health care or an end to foreign wars for power and profit, would be addressed at all. There were allusions to defending marriage for procreation and protecting our children, even in the womb, but nothing was said about the most vital concerns of the people.

 
The attempt to co-op Dr. King's legacy was obvious. There was much talk about MLK and even a presentation from a niece of Dr. King, and speaking politically, a very distance niece at that. But what kind of Dr. King did they praise? It was Dr. King, the empty icon. Dr. King devoid of any political content. Dr. King completely whitened, completely blanked by them. When I think of Dr. King, I think first of his leadership of the struggle of Black people for civil rights.

To see things that way, you must first acknowledge racial oppression. Instead we are given a man that hoped "God's love will transcend skin color and economic status." Dr. King is also widely regarded for the non-violent methods he advocated in the struggle. These people are here to celebrate warriors. Non-violence didn't get mentioned. Finally, I most honor Dr. King for the giant leap he made near the end of his life by adding our perchance for imperialist wars to his list of causes. Believe me, the Dr. King that called his country the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, was nowhere to be found. MLK Jr., now gutted of any content was hoisted on their petards as another empty icon on the road to world domination. His niece spoke of "soldiers, like Uncle Martin, [that] gave their lives for the freedom of others." It's just what Americans do. We honor God so that He will honor us!

One question that was never clearly addressed at the Restoring Honor rally was just what honor they think was lost and how it had been lost. This was a very slick event mediawise. The Tea Party was told to leave the signs at home, and likewise a lot was understood but unspoken. Great pains were taken to show they weren't racists, in fact there may have been more people of color on the stage than in the crowd. No that's not fair. I couldn't see everyone in the crowd. Still there are these indications that one of their underlying points of unity is opposition to President Obama and all bullcrap aside, they oppose Obama because he is Black. Maybe the Take America Back 2010 t-shirts give a clue. Was America lost as well as her honor when Obama was elected President?

Not that any in the Tea Party oppose him because he is Black. It's not that! We're post-racial. It's all those other things. President Obama spoke to that himself this weekend when Brian Williams asked him what he could do about the poll that showed a fifth of the people falsely think he's a Muslim. He said he couldn't spend all his time with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead. He was saying that the real problem was not his religion or his place of birth, it was something else.

It took me a while to understand the Tea Party's passion for the birther thing. I mean it is so ridiculous, and so completely disproved and yet they still cling to it. There are so many other grounds on which to say someone is not fit to be president, but those won't do for the birthers. They need a reason to say that Obama can't be president by birth, and they can't say what they really feel, maybe even subconsciously, which is that he can't be president because he was born Black, so they cling to this absurd metaphor that he can't be president because he wasn't born here. And while they fiddle, the Empire burns...

 
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Hot Issues and Progressive Politics

by DemFromCT

DailyKOS

Young Americans are the linchpin of a new progressive era in American politics. So why aren't Democrats paying more attention to them?

That was the lead to an essay by E.J. Dionne in February as part of a series of articles he wrote outlining a huge problem. The younger voters (millennials, aka Gen Y, Gen Next, echo boomers, etc) are more liberal, less white and more accepting than their elders, but there's a catch, as EJ outlines:

For Democrats looking ahead to this fall's election, the Pew study has some disturbing news.

It's true that Millennials are the most Democratic age group in the electorate -- they voted for Barack Obama by 2 to 1. Their turnout rate relative to older voters was higher in 2008 than in any election since 1972, the first presidential contest in which 18-year-olds could vote.

But Pew notes that since 2008, the Millennials' "enthusiasms" have "cooled" -- "for Obama and his message of change, for the Democratic Party and, quite possibly, for politics itself."

^{graphic source}

We see that ourselves in a look at the R2K polling found here: the 18-29 vote (graphics below the fold) consistently supports Obama and Congressional Democrats more than any other age demographic.

In an earlier article, E.J. quoted Celinda Lake on the conventional wisdom:

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, offered a straightforward formula: "When Republican voters and older voters get angry, they vote," she said. "When younger voters get angry, they stay home." Thomas Bates, vice president for civic engagement at Rock the Vote, a group that mobilizes young Americans to go to the polls, shares Lake's worries. "For people who were energized in 2008, it was a time of hope and optimism," he said. "And when you get to the brass tacks of governing, the atmosphere in the process of legislating has become poisonous.

Well, there are some issues that are likely to motivate millennials if we can get that message out. And like in 2004:

The 2004 elections saw an unprecedented level of youth turnout. U.S. Census data analysis by The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) found that:

— Among 18-24 year olds, turnout was up 11 points to 47 percent.
— Among 18-29 year olds, turnout was up 9 points to 49 percent.
— More than 20 million votes were cast by 18-29 year olds, and 11.6 million were cast by 18-24 year olds, both up sharply from 2000.

there's always the chance of upending conventional wisdom.

What are the issues that could do spark more activism and higher voter turnout? Here are some suggested ones, supported by quotes from Center for American Progress's New Progressive America: The Millennial Generation survey and Pew's Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next:

The environment

CAP:

When the Gerstein-Agne Generation We survey asked Millennials whether their generation was more likely or less likely than earlier generations of Americans to be characterized by its concern about environmental protection, 67 percent said more likely, compared to 13 percent less likely, for a net score of +54, the second-highest level of support for any item tested. Millennials also tend to believe that they need to do their part in addressing environmental concerns. According to a study conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates, 79 percent of Millennials agree that it is "my responsibility to improve the environment."

Add to that the Gulf oil spill,  and this is a huge issue for this age group in particular to become invested in. It's not automatic, though. The Pew poll notes that Millennials are actually less likely to "go green" with recycling, organic food purchases, etc. than their elders (which

attitudes on government

may be a matter of where they are in the life cycle and what they can afford.) More data needed here, but I suspect the oil spill will be a game changer in the longer term.

Health reform

CAP:

Millennials are particularly resolute on the need for universal health care and, more than older generations, they want to see bold, decisive action toward this goal. Seventy-one percent agree that the federal government should guarantee health care coverage for all Americans. Millennials are also supportive of efforts to ensure that workers get their fair share of economic growth, such as labor unions, the minimum wage, and progressive taxation.

Pew:

While these young adults are, as a group, healthier than older Americans, Millennials are also the least likely of any generation to say they are covered by health insurance (61% vs. 82% for those 30 and older).

NY Times:

The White House issued rules on Monday allowing young adults to remain covered by their parents’ health insurance policies up to age 26.

The promise of such coverage has attracted great interest. Employers and insurers say they have been flooded with inquiries.

attitudes on regulation

Regulation

Why regulation? Check this out from CAP:

When asked in the 2008 National Election Study whether we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems or whether the free market can handle these problems without government’s involvement, Millennials demonstrated an overwhelming preference for strong government by a margin of 78 to 22 percent.

Jobs and the economy

Pew:

In key ways, adults ages 18 to 29 have always been more vulnerable to economic swings than older Americans. The Millennial generation is no exception. Relatively few young people have accumulated enough assets or personal wealth to carry them through bad times. They are the least likely of any generation to own their own home (22% vs. 71% for adults ages 30 and older) and, like most Americans, a majority worry that they aren’t saving as much as they should.

CAP:

Millennials, more so than other generations, want a stronger government to make the economy work better, help those in need, and provide more services. They decisively reject the conservative viewpoint that government is the problem, and that free markets always produce the best results for society; instead they support a more balanced approach to the economy.

Next Steps

Every one of these areas that Democrats have moved the ball down the field on needs to be highlighted. In order to get the Millennials out to the polls, it needs to be clear that the political process (and the Democratic party) is, at least, trying to do something for them. Back to E.J.:

And what will Democrats do about it? Politicians have a bad habit in midterm elections: They concentrate on older folks, assuming younger voters will stay home on Election Day. This may be rational most of the time, but it is a foolish bet for Democrats and liberals this year. The young helped them rise to power and can just as easily usher them to early retirements. Obama cannot afford to break their hearts.

Millennials' hearts and minds are in the right place. But how do you get their butts to the polls? The next steps are up to Democrats, and up to us so that we can continue to benefit and learn from Millennial attitudes.

Fallout of Hate Is Spreading

Across America from 9/11 Site

By Joshua Holland

Progressive America Rising via AlterNet August 21, 2010,

Scientists building the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos referred to the coordinates where a test device was detonated as “point zero.” When the horror of nuclear warfare was unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the term “Ground Zero” entered our lexicon. The expression has come to mean the epicenter of a catastrophic event, be it a nuclear detonation, a disease epidemic or an earthquake. It is the point from which damage spreads, whether it’s radioactive fallout or a deadly contagion.

That the site of the World Trade Center has come to be known as Ground Zero illustrates how the American public has come to fetishize the attacks of 9/11. It’s not an apt analog for the physical destruction that resulted from the attacks on the World Trade Center. But it is an appropriate metaphor for the virulent and socially acceptable bigotry against Muslim Americans that has radiated out from Ground Zero and spread across the United States.

One thing is clear: the feverish discourse about Muslims’ role in American society is not about the proposal to build an Islamic community center a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site. Park 51, as it’s being called, merely let an ugly genie out of the bottle. The dark stain of Islamophobia had spread far and wide long before the controversy erupted.

In May, a man walked into the Jacksonville Islamic Center in Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated a pipebomb. Fortunately, there were no injuries. (If the man had been Muslim and the House of worship a Christian church, the incident would have garnered wall-to-wall coverage, but while the story got plenty of local press it was ignored by CBS News, Fox, CNN and MSNBC.)

It was the most serious of a series of incidents in which mosques far from the supposedly hallowed earth of Ground Zero have been targeted. A mosque in Miami, Florida, was sprayed with gunfire last year. Mosques have been vandalized or set aflame in Brownstown, Michigan; Nashville, Tennessee; Arlington, Texas (where the mosque was first vandalized and then later targeted by arsonists); Taylor, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Eugene, Oregon; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Tempe, Arizona; and in both Northern and Southern California. A mosque in a suburb of Chicago has been vandalized four times in recent years.

In May, an Arab man was brutally beaten in broad daylight in New York by four young men. According to the victim’s nephew, "They used the bad word. 'The mother bleeping Muslim, go back to your country.' They started beating him and after that he don't know what happened.” A Muslim woman in Chicago was assaulted by another woman who took offense at her headscarf. A Muslim teacher in Florida was sent a white powdery substance in the mail. In San Diego, a man in his 50s became so incensed by the sight of an American of Afghan descent praying that he assaulted him after screaming, “You idiot, you mother f**ker, go back to where you came from."

The perpetrators of these hate crimes are clearly unhinged, but they’re not operating in a vacuum. They’re being whipped into a frenzy by cynical fearmongers on the Right. Writing for Tablet magazine, Daniel Luban astutely calls the dark spread of Islamophobia, “the new Anti-Semitism.”

Many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism have been revived and given new force on the American right. Once again jingoistic politicians and commentators posit a religious conspiracy breeding within Western society, pledging allegiance to an alien power, conspiring with allies at the highest levels of government to overturn the existing order. Because the propagators of these conspiracy theories are not anti-Semitic but militantly pro-Israel, and because their targets are not Jews but Muslims, the ADL and other Jewish groups have had little to say about them. But since the election of President Barack Obama, this Islamophobic discourse has rapidly intensified.

In Tennessee, an elected official, Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, suggested that Muslims shouldn’t be accorded the freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment. “Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it," he said. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, the House’s second-ranking Republican, said of the Ground Zero controversy, “America's built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on.” (Reporter Eric Kleefeld wrote that Cantor was invoking the "’come on’ exception to America's freedom of religion.”)

An Oklahoma lawmaker is pushing a ballot measure “that would prohibit courts from considering international or sharia law when deciding cases.” He said it was a "preemptive strike" against "liberal judges" who want to "undermine those founding principles" of America. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich compared the organizers of the Park 51 project in downtown Manhattan (including the imam who was sent by none other than George W. Bush to represent the United States in its outreach to the Muslim world) with the Nazis. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, a prominent figure within the religious Right, argued that “permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America” because “each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.” Just weeks after the mosque bombing in Florida, right-wing talk-radio host Michael Berry told his audience, “If you do build a mosque, I hope somebody blows it up. … I hope the mosque isn’t built, and if it is, I hope it’s blown up. And I mean that.” He added: “It’s right-wing radicals like me that are going to keep this country safe for you and everyone else.”

The results of these incessant smears are predictable. According to a poll commissioned by Time magazine, one in three Americans believes that Muslims should be barred from running for president; a similar number said they’d oppose the construction of a mosque in their own neighborhood, and almost three in 10 said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court.

According to the New York Times, “Opposition to new mosques has become almost commonplace.” During a public hearing with Muslim leaders to discuss a proposed mosque on Staten Island, miles from Manhattan, “the tenor of the inquiry became so fraught that the meeting eventually collapsed in shouting around 11pm, prompting the police and security guards to ask everyone to leave.” The Times’ account of what happened before the cops broke up the fracas is telling. “The meeting’s single moment of hushed silence” came when a Marine who had served two tours in Afghanistan working as a mediator with local tribes took the microphone.

After the sustained standing ovation that followed his introduction, he turned to the Muslims on the panel: “My question to you is, will you work to form a cohesive bond with the people of this community?” The men said yes.

Then he turned to the crowd. “And will you work to form a cohesive bond with these people — your new neighbors?”

The crowd erupted in boos. “No!” someone shouted. 

It’s ugly, and it can only get worse as Republicans seek to “nationalize” the issue in time for the midterm elections. (According to The Hill, John Cornyn, R-Texas, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee “believes the mosque set to be built near Ground Zero in New York City will be a campaign issue this fall.”) Right-wingers have started referring to the Park 51 project as “the Obamosque.” They see fear and loathing of Islam as a potent social issue in an era when overtly racist messages invite a political backlash and gay-bashing is gaining less traction among voters. And with prominent Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada caving in to the hateful rhetoric, bigotry against American Muslims is becoming an acceptable and bipartisan affair.

It’s an extraordinarily dangerous game, not only for the American Muslim community but for U.S. national security as well. Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent who has interrogated several dangerous terrorists, wrote this week that “when demagogues appear to be equating Islam with terrorism” it reinforces “the message that radicalizers are selling: That the war is against Islam, and Muslims are not welcome in America.” He added: “from a national security perspective, our leaders need to understand that no one is likely to be happier with the opposition to building a mosque than Osama Bin Laden. His next video script has just written itself.”

Fortunately, the hysteria over the Islamic center in downtown Manhattan has produced no fatal attacks to date. But as the rhetoric continues to get hotter, good people -- those who embrace American values of pluralism and religious liberty -- need to stand up to the hate and confront these views before we have a body count on our hands, not after.

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. Drop him an email or Follow him on Twitter.

© 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147920/

Gore calls for major protests

on climate change inaction

By Russell Berman

The Hill

08/17/10 - Former Vice President Gore is calling for major rallies to protest congressional inaction on climate change.

In a post on his personal blog headlined “The Movement We Need,” Gore linked to and quoted from an Australian wire service report that “tens of thousands of protesters … have taken to the streets across Australia to urge the major political parties to take action on climate change.”

“Across the world, when politicians fail to take action to solve the climate crisis, people are taking action,” Gore wrote.

He added after excerpting the news report: “It is my hope we see activism like this here in the United States.”

Gore noted he trained activists in Australia to deliver the slideshow that formed the basis for the documentary film that won him an Academy Award. A representative of Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection addressed the rally in Sydney.

Gore has in recent weeks stepped up his criticism of the Senate for its inability to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill that would put a price on carbon. In a conference call with environmental activists last week, he reportedly said “the United States government in its entirety, largely because of the opposition in the United States Senate to taking action on clean energy and a solution to the climate crisis, has failed us.”

Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/114717-al-gore-calls-for-us-protests-on-climate-change-inaction

Defeat the Right Wing in Three Minutes With

Truth in Labeling and the 'Cheap Labor' Frame

By Conceptual Guerilla

Have you got three minutes. Because that's all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you'll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.

It's really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn't that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots" that I call "corporate feudalism". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

But you have to do more than defeat the ideology. You have to defeat the "drum beat". You have to defeat the "propaganda machine", that brainwashes people with their slogans and catch-phrases. You've heard those slogans."Less government", "personal responsibility" and lots of flag waving. They are "shorthand" for an entire worldview, and the right has been pounding their slogans out into the public domain for getting on forty years.

So you need a really good slogan – a "counter-slogan" really, to "deprogram" the brainwashed. You need a "magic bullet" that quickly and efficiently destroys the effectiveness of their "drum beat". You need your own "drum beat" that sums up the right's position. Only your "drum beat" exposes the ugly reality of right-wing philosophy – the reality their slogans are meant to hide. Our slogan contains the governing concept that explains the entire right-wing agenda. That's why it works. You can see it in every policy, and virtually all of Republican rhetoric. And it's so easy to remember, and captures the essence of the Republican Right so well, we can pin it on them like a "scarlet letter".

Is there really a catch phrase – a "magic bullet" – that sums up the Republican Right in such a nice easy-to-grasp package. You better believe it, and it's downright elegant in its simplicity.

You want to know what that "magic bullet" is, don't you. Read on. You've still got two minutes.

Right-Wing Ideology in a Nutshell

When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just "dime-store economics" – intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don't really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don't. It all gets down to two simple words.

"Cheap labor". That's their whole philosophy in a nutshell – which gives you a short and pithy "catch phrase" that describes them perfectly. You've heard of "big-government liberals". Well they're "cheap-labor conservatives".

"Cheap-labor conservative" is a moniker they will never shake, and never live down. Because it's exactly what they are. You see, cheap-labor conservatives are defenders of corporate America – whose fortunes depend on labor. The larger the labor supply, the cheaper it is. The more desperately you need a job, the cheaper you'll work, and the more power those "corporate lords" have over you. If you are a wealthy elite – or a "wannabe" like most dittoheads – your wealth, power and privilege is enhanced by a labor pool, forced to work cheap.

Don't believe me. Well, let's apply this principle, and see how many right-wing positions become instantly understandable.

• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like social spending or our "safety net". Why. Because when you're unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like – which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you "over a barrel" and in a position to "work cheap or starve".
• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions. Why. These reforms undo all of their efforts to keep you "over a barrel".
• Cheap-labor conservatives like "free trade", NAFTA, GATT, etc. Why. Because there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who are "over a barrel", and will work cheap.
• Cheap-labor conservatives oppose a woman's right to choose. Why. Unwanted children are an economic burden that put poor women "over a barrel", forcing them to work cheap.
• Cheap-labor conservatives don't like unions. Why. Because when labor "sticks together", wages go up. That's why workers unionize. Seems workers don't like being "over a barrel".
• Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about "morality", "virtue", "respect for authority", "hard work" and other "values". Why. So they can blame your being "over a barrel" on your own "immorality", lack of "values" and "poor choices".
• Cheap-labor conservatives encourage racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry. Why? Bigotry among wage earners distracts them, and keeps them from recognizing their common interests as wage earners.

The Cheap-Labor Conservative "Dirty Secret" : They Don't Really Like Prosperity

Maybe you don't believe that cheap-labor conservatives like unemployment, poverty and "cheap labor". Consider these facts.

Unemployment was 23 percent when FDR took office in 1933. It dropped to 2.5 percent by time the next Republican was in the White House in 1953. It climbed back to 6.5 percent by the end of the Eisenhower administration. It dropped to 3.5 percent by the time LBJ left office. It climbed over 5 percent shortly after Nixon took office, and stayed there for 27 years, until Clinton brought it down to 4.5 percent early in his second term.

That same period – especially from the late forties into the early seventies – was the "golden age" of the United States. We sent men to the moon. We built our Interstate Highway system. We ended segregation in the South and established Medicare. In those days, a single wage earner could support an entire family on his wages. I grew up then, and I will tell you that life was good – at least for the many Americans insulated from the tragedy in Vietnam, as I was.

These facts provide a nice background to evaluate cheap-labor conservative claims like "liberals are destroying America." In fact, cheap-labor conservatives have howled with outrage and indignation against New Deal liberalism from its inception in the 1930's all the way to the present. You can go to "Free Republic" or Hannity's forum right now, and find a cheap-labor conservative comparing New Deal Liberalism to "Stalinism".

• Cheap-labor conservatives opposed virtually all of the New Deal, including every improvement in wages and working conditions.
• Cheap-labor conservatives have a long and sorry history of opposing virtually every advancement in this country's development going right back to the American revolution.
• Cheap-labor conservatives have hated Social Security and Medicare since their inception.
• Many cheap-labor conservatives are hostile to public education. They think it should be privatized. But why are we surprised. Cheap-labor conservatives opposed universal public education in its early days. School vouchers are just a backdoor method to "resegregate" the public schools.
• Cheap-labor conservatives hate the progressive income tax like the devil hates holy water.
• Cheap-labor conservatives like budget deficits and a huge national debt for two reasons. A bankrupt government has a harder time doing any "social spending" – which cheap-labor conservatives oppose, and . . .
• Wealthy cheap-labor conservatives like say, George W. Bush, buy the bonds and then earn tax free interest on the money they lend the government.[Check out Dubya's financial disclosures. The son of a bitch is a big holder of the T-bills that finance the deficit he is helping to expand.] The deficit created by cheap-labor conservatives while they posture as being "fiscally conservative" – may count as the biggest con job in American history.
• "Free Trade", globalization, NAFTA and especially GATT are intended to create a world-wide "corporate playground" where national governments serve the interests of corporations – which means "cheap labor".

The ugly truth is that cheap-labor conservatives just don't like working people. They don't like "bottom up" prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. lords have a harder time kicking them around. Once you understand this about the cheap-labor conservatives, the real motivation for their policies makes perfect sense. Remember, cheap-labor conservatives believe in social hierarchy and privilege, so the only prosperity they want is limited to them. They want to see absolutely nothing that benefits the guy – or more often the woman – who works for an hourly wage.

So there you have it, in one easy-to-remember phrase. See how easy it is to understand these cheap-labor conservatives. The more ignorant and destitute people there are – desperate for any job they can get – the cheaper the cheap-labor conservatives can get them to work.

Try it. Every time you respond to a cheap-labor conservative in letters to the editor, or an online discussion forum, look for the "cheap labor" angle. Trust me, you'll find it. I can even show you the "cheap labor" angle in things like the "war on drugs", and the absurd conservative opposition to alternative energy.

Next, make that moniker – cheap-labor conservatives – your "standard reference" to the other side. One of the last revisions I made to this article was to find every reference to "conservatives", "Republicans", "right-wingers", and "righties", and replace it with "cheap-labor conservatives". In fact, if you're a cheap-labor conservative reading this, you should be getting sick of that phrase right about now. Exxxxcellent.

If enough people will "get with the program", it won't be long before you can't look at an editorial page, listen to the radio, turn on the TV, or log onto your favorite message board without seeing the phrase "cheap labor conservatives" – and have plenty of examples to reinforce the message. By election day of 2004, every politically sentient American should understand exactly what a "cheap labor conservative" is, and what he stands for.

Now if you stop right here, you will have enough ammunition to hold your own with a cheap-labor conservative, in any public debate. You have your catch phrase, and you have some of the facts and history to give that phrase meaning.

But if you really want to rip the heart out of cheap-labor conservative ideology, you may want to invest just a little bit more effort. It still isn't all that complicated, though it is a bit more detailed than what we have covered so far.

To explore that detail, just click one of the links below.

Less Government and Cheap Labor.

The Public Sector and Private Fortunes.

Personal Responsibility and Wages.

For more detailed theoretical understanding, check out The Mythology of Wealth, or just browse through some of the articles in the sidebar.

Now go find some cheap labor conservatives, and pin that scarlet moniker on them.

LESS GOVERNMENT AND CHEAP LABOR

“Less Government” is the central defining right-wing slogan. And yes, it’s all about “cheap labor”.

Included within the slogan “less government” is the whole conservative set of assumptions about the nature of the “free market” and government’s role in that market.. In fact, the whole “public sector/private sector” distinction is an invention of the cheap-labor conservatives. They say that the “private sector” exists outside and independently of the “public sector”. The public sector, according to cheap-labor ideology, can only “interfere” with the “private sector”, and that such “interference” is “inefficient” and “unprincipled”

Using this ideology, the cheap-labor ideologue paints himself as a defender of “freedom” against “big government tyranny”. In fact, the whole idea that the “private sector” is independent of the public sector is totally bogus. In fact, “the market” is created by public laws, public institutions and public infrastructure.

But the cheap-labor conservative isn’t really interested in “freedom”. What the he wants is the “privatized tyranny” of industrial serfdom, the main characteristic of which is – you guessed it – “cheap labor”.

For proof, you need only look at exactly what constitutes “big government tyranny” and what doesn’t. It turns out that cheap-labor conservatives are BIG supporters of the most oppressive and heavy handed actions the government takes.

• Cheap-labor conservatives are consistent supporters of the generous use of capital punishment. They say that “government can’t do anything right” – except apparently, kill people. Indeed, they exhibit classic conservative unconcern for the very possibility that the government might make a mistake and execute the wrong man.
• Cheap-labor conservatives complain about the “Warren Court” “handcuffing the police” and giving “rights to criminals”. It never occurs to them, that our criminal justice system is set up to protect innocent citizens from abuses or just plain mistakes by government officials – you know, the one’s who can’t do anything right.
• Cheap-labor conservatives support the “get tough” and “lock ‘em up” approach to virtually every social problem in the spectrum. In fact, it’s the only approach they support. As for the 2,000,000 people we have in jail today – a higher percentage of our population than any other nation on earth – they say our justice system is “too lenient”.
• Cheap-labor conservative – you know, the ones who believe in “freedom” – say our crime problem is because – get this – we’re too “permissive”. How exactly do you set up a “free” society that isn’t “permissive”?
• Cheap-labor conservatives want all the military force we can stand to pay for and never saw a weapons system they didn’t like.
• Cheap-labor conservatives support every right-wing authoritarian hoodlum in the third world.
• Cheap-labor conservatives support foreign assassinations, covert intervention in foreign countries, and every other “black bag” operation the CIA can dream up, even against constitutional governments, elected by the people of those countries.
• Cheap-labor conservatives support “domestic surveillance” against “subversives” – where “subversive” means “everybody but them”.
• Cheap-labor believers in “freedom” think it’s the government’s business if you smoke a joint or sleep with somebody of your own gender.
• Cheap-labor conservatives support our new concentration camp down at Guantanamo Bay. They also support these “secret tribunals” with “secret evidence” and virtually no judicial review of the trials and sentences. Then they say that liberals are “Stalinists”.
• And let’s not forget this perennial item on the agenda. Cheap-labor conservatives want to “protect our national symbol” from “desecration”. They also support legislation to make the Pledge of Allegiance required by law. Of course, it is they who desecrate the flag every time they wave it to support their cheap-labor agenda. [Ouch! That was one of those “hits” you can hear up in the “nosebleed” seats.]

Sounds to me like the cheap-labor conservatives have a peculiar definition of “freedom”. I mean, just what do these guys consider to be “tyranny”.

That’s easy. Take a look.

• “Social spending” otherwise known as “redistribution”. While they don’t mind tax dollars being used for killing people, using their taxes to feed people is “stealing”.
• Minimum wage laws.
• Every piece of legislation ever proposed to improve working conditions, including the eight hour day, OSHA regulations, and even Child Labor laws.
• Labor unions, who “extort” employers by collectively bargaining.
• Environmental regulations and the EPA.
• Federal support and federal standards for public education.
• Civil rights legislation. There are still cheap-labor conservatives today, who were staunch defenders of “Jim Crow” – including conspicuously Buckley’s “National Review”. Apparently, federal laws ending segregation were “tyranny”, but segregation itself was not.
• Public broadcasting – which is virtually the only source for classical music, opera, traditional theatre, traditional American music, oh yes, and Buckley’s “Firing Line”. This from the people constantly braying about the decay of “the culture”. The average cost of Public Television for each American is a whopping one dollar a year. “Its tyranny I tell you. Enough’s enough!”

See the pattern? Cheap-labor conservatives support every coercive and oppressive function of government, but call it “tyranny” if government does something for you – using their money, for Chrissake. Even here, cheap-labor conservatives are complete hypocrites. Consider the following expenditures:

• 150 billion dollars a year for corporate subsidies.
• 300 billion dollars a year for interest payments on the national debt – payments that are a direct transfer to wealthy bond holders, and buy us absolutely nothing.
• Who knows how many billions will be paid to American companies to rebuild Iraq – which didn’t need rebuilding three months ago.
• That’s all in addition to the Defense budget – large chunks of which go to corporate defense contractors.

Is the pattern becoming clearer? These cheap-labor Republicans have no problem at all opening the public purse for corporate interests. It’s “social spending” on people who actually need assistance that they just “can’t tolerate”.

And now you know why. Destitute people work cheaper, while a harsh police state keeps them suitably terrorized.

[This is a blogpost from January 2006, but still very relevant]

Shameless Schemers Like Sarah Palin,

the Tea Partiers and Right-Wing Christians

Start a New Religious War Against Muslims

By David Rosen

Progressive America Rising via CounterPunch

Aug 15, 2010 - The building of a Muslim community center in an abandoned building two blocks from the site of New York’s former World Trade Center has become the latest controversy in America’s long fought religious wars. The construction of the center, often referred to as a mosque, has become the latest rallying issue for the Christian right, Tea Party proponents and Republican operatives in their war to impose moralistic and corporatist values on America.

It is too early to know how the Muslim center issue will be resolved, but it is clear that the rantings of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Abe Foxman (of the Anti-Defamation League) and others have played an important role pushing a local issue into the center-stage of national politics. Since the horrendous attacks of 9/11, Muslims in general and American Muslims in particular have been the targets of an undeclared religious war promoted by Christian fundamentalists and self-serving Republicans. For some among these religious zealots, Islam is a threat to their belief that the U.S. is a white Protestant nation. Over the last four centuries, Quakers, Mormons, Catholics, Jews and many others have been targets of religious persecution, often the victims of imprisonments, hangings, lynchings and other acts of violence.

Rightwing ranters might well not know the history of religious intolerance in America, but they are surely aware that they are fueling a deep-seated rage among a certain scary segment of the Christian populous. This round in the ongoing religious culture wars has yet to explode into the ugly violence that took place in the aftermath of 9/11, and one can only hope that the current controversy will not lead to attacks on Muslims.

Sadly, like the attacks the followed 9/11, rightwing ranters like Palin and Gingrich will act “shocked” by the violence if it occurs and will claim innocence as to their roles fomenting it. With a knowing sneer, they will wash their hands of the blood they have caused and seek out other innocent victims.

* * *

In an excellent article on Tomdispatch, Stephen Salisbury details the current Manhattan Muslim center controversy and the spreading anti-Muslim hysteria being whipped up around the country over the opening of new local mosques. As Salisbury opines, “The angry ‘debate’ over whether the building should exist has a kind of glitch-in-the-Matrix feel to it, leaving in its wake an aura of something-very-bad-about-to-happen.” [tomdispatch.com, August 11, 2010]

Salisbury discusses the ongoing protests against mosques also taking place in New York’s Brooklyn and Staten Island as well as in California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Wisconsin. He connects these controversies to the headline-grabbing opportunist comments by Palin (in true Palin-speak, “peaceful Muslims” need to “refudiate” the center) and Gingrich (who calls on Saudi Arabia to open churches and synagogues).

He also draws attention to the pernicious role played by Rick Lazio, New York State Republican gubernatorial candidate, who assails the center as subverting the right of New Yorkers “to feel safe and be safe.” Because New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Attorney General (and likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate) Andrew Cuomo have come out in support of the Muslim center, it will like be a major issue in the November election.

Most importantly, Salisbury provides an invaluable overview of the anti-Muslim campaign that arose in the wake of 9/11, reminding readers just how alarmingly vicious good-old Christian love can be.

* * *

Part of the “glitch-in-the-Matrix feel” that Salisbury notes is the absence of a recognition that the current Muslin center controversy is part of a long history of religious intolerance in America.

In the days following the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush, a born-again Christian, in a spontaneous and unscripted statement blurted out the unspoken truth that guided the U.S.’s initial military counter-attack campaign in Afghanistan: "This crusade," he said, "this war on terrorism." While Bush’s admission was later repudiated and disappeared from the public discourse, it define the unstated goal of the ultra-reactionary Christians who were his core-constituency and knew full well what he meant.

At the heart of Bush’s crusade agenda was an invocation of the "shock and awe" tradition that defined religious wars since the grand crusades of the Middle Ages and an acknowledgement that they needed to be applied in Afghanistan. The grand crusades waged by the Roman Church were against Muslims and Jews to capture and hold ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Lands, and to defeat Orthodox or Eastern Christianity. Many perished. Similar, crusaders were waged against Christian heretics, including early Protestants, and done so in the name of their absolutist god.

This tradition was brought over to the New World with the Pilgrims and other early British settlers. The worst and most sustained form of religious war in America has been waged against the Native people. For all the annual whitewashing that takes place at Thanksgiving Day parades, early Puritans fought the Pequot Indians in Eastern Connecticut until 1637 when the General Courts of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Colony launched a war of extermination against them. (Native people found that the Pilgrims stunk, literally; Europeans rarely bathed, believing it unhealthy, and seldom were naked, believing it immoral.) The white Christian race and religious crusade against Native North American people persisted for centuries.

Pilgrims also imposed religious intolerance on themselves. Early Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers were aligned with the Church of England and looked badly upon those who contested their orthodoxy. Those challenging Calvinist dogma were subject to banishment, whipping, branding, ear-lobbing and even hanging. Early leaders like Thomas Hooker, Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were banished. Early Quaker settlers in Plymouth were also banished and four were hung publicly.

Over the subsequent centuries, Americans have witnessed repeated bouts of religious intolerance. Not surprisingly, these episodes were often accompanied by the same shrill rhetoric we find shouted today by those opposing the Muslim center.

The Know Nothing movement grew out of the Second Great Awakening or the Great Revival of the 1830s and became the American Party that flourished during the late-‘40s and early-‘50s. It got its name when members where asked the party’s positions and simply said, "I know nothing." It drew together Protestants who felt threatened by the rapid increase in European immigrants and, most especially, Catholics, flooding the cities. It felt that Catholics, as followers of the Pope, were not loyal Americans and were going to take over the country. It had strong support in the North that witnessed large-scale Irish immigration after 1848. The American Party captured the Massachusetts legislature in 1854 and, in 1856, backed Millard Fillmore for president, who secured nearly 1 million votes, a quarter of all votes cast.

The Ku Klux Klan was established in 1866 and, during Reconstruction, began a systematic campaign against freed African Americans. However, by the ‘80s, it had lost its way as a racialist organization. It was revitalized in the wake of the Atlanta trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who had been falsely charged and convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old white Christian girl, in 1913. In 1915, after the Georgia governor commuted his sentence, Frank was forcibly removed from the state penitentiary where he was being held by a mob of white Christians and lynched. Subsequently, many of those who participated in Frank’s murder came together to re-launch the Klan.

In the late-‘10s, the Klan aligned with nativists, eugenicists and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) to not only promote temperance but racialist and anti-immigrant policies. As WWI hysteria mounted, ASL’s New York representative, William Anderson, equated being pro-German with being anti-American: German beer, saloons and breweries were the unnamed enemy. He had a deep antipathy toward Catholics, accusing the Church of mounting an “assault on law and order,” of opposing Prohibition because it was promoted by Protestants and accusing it of engaging in “efforts to destroy [the Prohibition] victory and bring back the saloons.” Anti-Catholic antipathy contributed to the defeat of the country’s first Catholic nominee, Al Smith’s, in the 1928 presidential election.

Many other episodes of religious intolerance have taken place since the ‘20s. However, John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential victory marked the moment in American history when anti-Catholic appeals in national election were no longer acceptable. Similarly, the growing acceptance among Christian evangelicals of the notion of the “last days” has lead to a weird embrace of Jews and Israel and may have contributed to a moderation in anti-Semitism.

* * *

In the days before 9/11, most informed people accepted Islam as a variant within the Abrahamic tradition. However, in the aftermath of the attacks, even this claim came under suspicion. Earlier this summer, Ron Ramsey, a Republican candidate for governor of Tennessee, claimed that Islam is a “cult” that did not deserve First Amendment protection: “You can even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, a way of life, or a cult -- whatever you want to call it... .” Challenged by a diverse assortment of Tennesseans, including traditional conservatives, Ramsey has backed off this assertion.

If truth be told, the Manhattan Muslim center is both a real issue and a fictitious spectacle. It is real in the sense that its being built at the designated site on Park Place will be a victory for religious tolerance. America is undergoing a profound economic and cultural realignment. Traditional white society is giving way to a truly multi-cultural America; conventional Protestantism is giving way a significant increase in the Catholic populous (mostly Hispanics) and growing Muslim, Hindu and Sekh communities.

The Muslim center story, like that of Michelle Obama’s holiday in Spain, is a false issue, a spectacle promoting social deception. Since Obama’s victory, the Republican right has implemented a very effective wrecking-ball strategy, attempting to destroy every issue considered. Its guiding principle is simple: Obama and the Democrats can do no right. To realize this goal, it did anything and everything in its power to make sure as little as possible got through Congress, got honestly assessed in the media and got to help ordinary Americans. Sadly, the Christian Republican right is succeeding and the Obama leadership remains clueless.

A century-and-a-half ago white Protestants came to accept Irish immigrants as white. While hard to imagine today, early Irish immigrants, those who came to America in the wake of the 1848 famine, were seen by many traditional Protestants as “niggers,” not really different from African Americans. Faced with the inevitabilities of post-Civil War modernization, old-world Protestants changed. And with it, racism changed.

The challenge that faces today’s Anglo-American Protestant descendents, those who see Muslims as “niggers,” is whether then can change and accept America as a multi-cultural society.

© 2010 CounterPunch All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/147847/

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts.

Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline

By Paul B. Farrell

MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "How 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 recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Jobs recovery could take years

In the wake of Friday's disappointing jobs report, Neal Lipschutz and Phil Izzo discuss new predictions that it could be many years before the nation's unemployment rate reaches pre-recession levels.

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

But why focus on Stockman's message? It's already lost in the 24/7 news cycle. Why? We need some introspection. Ask yourself: How did the great nation of America lose its moral compass and drift so far off course, to where our very survival is threatened?

We've arrived at a historic turning point as a nation that no longer needs outside enemies to destroy us, we are committing suicide. Democracy. Capitalism. The American dream. All dying. Why? Because of the economic decisions of the GOP the past 40 years, says this leading Reagan Republican.

Please listen with an open mind, no matter your party affiliation: This makes for a powerful history lesson, because it exposes how both parties are responsible for destroying the U.S. economy. Listen closely:

Reagan Republican: the GOP should file for bankruptcy

Stockman rushes into the ring swinging like a boxer: "If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation's public debt ... will soon reach $18 trillion." It screams "out for austerity and sacrifice." But instead, the GOP insists "that the nation's wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase."

In the past 40 years Republican ideology has gone from solid principles to hype and slogans. Stockman says: "Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts -- in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses too."

No more. Today there's a "new catechism" that's "little more than money printing and deficit finance, vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes" making a mockery of GOP ideals. Worse, it has resulted in "serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy." Yes, GOP ideals backfired, crippling our economy.

Stockman's indictment warns that the Republican party's "new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one:"

Stage 1. Nixon irresponsible, dumps gold, U.S starts spending binge

Richard Nixon's gold policies get Stockman's first assault, for defaulting "on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world." So for the past 40 years, America's been living "beyond our means as a nation" on "borrowed prosperity on an epic scale ... an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves."

Remember Friedman: "Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct." Friedman was wrong by trillions. And unfortunately "once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors."

And without discipline America was also encouraging "global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve." Yes, the road to the coming apocalypse began with a Republican president listening to a misguided Nobel economist's advice.

Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering

Stockman says "the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970." Who's to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but "from the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Back "in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts," but Stockman makes clear, they had to be "matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration's hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces -- the welfare state and the warfare state -- that drive the federal spending machine."

OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman's indictment of how his Republican party has "destroyed the U.S. economy," you're probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it's having huge negative consequences.

Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says "the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget -- entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans' fiscal religion."

When Fed chief Paul Volcker "crushed inflation" in the '80s we got a "solid economic rebound." But then "the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts." By 2009, they "reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product," lowest since the 1940s. Still today they're irrationally demanding an extension of those "unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing."

Recently Bush made matters far worse by "rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures." Bush also gave in "on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy." Takes two to tango.

Stage 3. Wall Street's deadly 'vast, unproductive expansion'

Stockman continues pounding away: "The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector." He warns that "Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation." Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.

They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street's too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming "American Apocalypse."

Stockman refers to Wall Street's surviving banks as "wards of the state." Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its "unproductive" trading is "extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives." Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and "virtually free money from the Fed's discount window to cover their bad bets."

Stage 4. New American Revolution class-warfare coming soon

Finally, thanks to Republican policies that let us "live beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore," while at home "high-value jobs in goods production ... trade, transportation, information technology and the professions shrunk by 12% to 68 million from 77 million."

As the apocalypse draws near, Stockman sees a class-rebellion, a new revolution, a war against greed and the wealthy. Soon. The trigger will be the growing gap between economic classes: No wonder "that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1% of Americans -- paid mainly from the Wall Street casino -- received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% -- mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy -- got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."

Get it? The decaying fruit of the GOP's bad economic policies is destroying our economy.

His bottom line: "The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing ... it's a pity that the modern Republican party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach -- balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline -- is needed more than ever."

Wrong: There are far bigger things to "pity."

First, that most Americans, 300 million, are helpless, will do nothing, sit in the bleachers passively watching this deadly partisan game like it's just another TV reality show.

Second, that, unfortunately, politicians are so deep-in-the-pockets of the Wall Street conspiracy that controls Washington they are helpless and blind.

And third, there's a depressing sense that Stockman will be dismissed as a traitor, his message lost in the 24/7 news cycle ... until the final apocalyptic event, an unpredictable black swan triggers another, bigger global meltdown, followed by a long Great Depression II and a historic class war.

So be prepared, it will hit soon, when you least expect.