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Vertaal:
              De onderneming die de eerste republiek van Amerika vernietigde
Maandag, 6 Oktober, 2008 Door SAM Smith | Van vele zonden van George Bush, is men onopgemerkt gebleven. Hij en zijn assistenten zijn zo absurd inept hoogstens van wat zij doen dat zij aandacht van het feit hebben afgeleid dat de instorting van Amerika goed alvorens Bush kwam in bureau en onder zijn bevel met aanzienlijke hulp en comfort van de is verdergegaan meest geëerbiedigdez, gevierde goed betaalde subculturen van onze maatschappij begon. Uiteindelijk, is Bush slechts een pijnlijke karikatuur van een veel diepere werkelijkheid, een deel waarvan dat is als wij niet reeds in een staat van culturele, politieke en intellectuele desintegratie waren geweest, hij nooit zou verkozen zijn in de eerste plaats. Enkel één jaar in het regime van Bush, sprak ik bij een punkoverleg en bood zowat dertig voorbeelden van burgerlijke vrijheden aan die tijdens het leven van iedereen slechts 25 jaar oud hadden geërodeerdc. Ik merkte ook op dat de inkomens van iedereen onder 25 - zwart, wit, latino, mannelijk en wijfje - in de loop van afgelopen twintig jaar, ongeveer 5% grotendeels - met de inkomens van zwart-witte mannetjes onder 25 onderaan 17 tot 21% waren gedaald. Een typisch jong wit mannetje verdiende minder $97 een week in echte dollars dan twee vroeger decennia. En dit was allen alvorens Bush zijn handen op het land kreeg. Het is gemakkelijk en pret geworden om het allen op Bush te beschuldigen - en zeker heeft hij meer dan zijn aandeel tot de problemen van de natie bijgedragen - maar aangezien wij kunnen ontdekken wanneer hij weggaat, heeft hij overvloed van voorgangers evenals vele medeplichtigen gehad die in macht zullen blijven. Een eerlijk oordeel zou zijn dat Amerika begon uiteenvallend ongeveer met twintig jaar alvorens Bush bureau nam. De verantwoordelijke man tegelijkertijd was Ronald Reagan, dat twee eeuwen van Amerikaanse geschiedenis nam en het in cornycowboymovie veranderde die hij kon begrijpen maar weinig verhouding aan werkelijkheid had. Maar toch als Bush, kon hij niet het alleen gedaan hebben. Het beweerde beste en het helderst verteld ons het waren waar. En zij hebben om ons de waarheid over de jaren nog te vertellen Reagan die de dodelijke filosofie dat de hebzucht goed is kuit schoten, groot moet niets worden geregeld en de markt zal ons allen bewaren. It is useful - if a bit tardy - to review the Reagan facts rather than the legend, for it shows how the most mundanely accurate analysis might have led us in a different direction. For example, a study published in the Congressional Record in March 1984 looked at the first three years of the Regan administration and compared to the three that preceded it. The study found - Real GNP growth down 59% Also during the Reagan years: - Four members of the Reagan cabinet came under criminal investigation - The Reagan administration had secret plans for an unconstitutional takeover of the federal government under an ill-defined national emergency. Members of the government created by the coup were selected and included Richard Cheney. - Reagan’s policies led to the greatest financial scandal in American history up to that point: the Savings & Loan debacle which cost taxpayers billions of dollars. “” - Reagan made major cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and school lunch programs. Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers in a devastating blow to government union members from which the labor movement never recovered. - “”The AIDS crisis exploded (with 20,000 deaths) before Reagan could even bring himself to address the issue six years later. In his authorized biography he is quoted as saying that “maybe the Lord brought down this plague,” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.” - Reported the Washington Post: “The administration in 1984 secretly sold arms to Iran — which the United States considered a supporter of terrorism — to raise cash for Nicaraguan contra rebels, despite a congressional ban on support for the Latin American insurgency. An independent investigation concluded that the arms sales to Iran operations “were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan [and] Vice President George Bush,” and that “large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials.” - “”"”"”After a major tax cut, there was a long recession and unemployment that hit ten percent. This was the foundation upon which the present disaster has been built - policy drawing upon fantasy, theological rigidity, fiscal myth and a faith in “free markets” actually created by hidden subsidies, thousands of lobbyists, runaway Pentagon purchases and manipulation of the law to favor banks and corporations rather than ordinary Americans. By the time the truth was too painful to ignore - nearly three decades later - the myth had recruited major media from Fox and the Wall Street Journal to NPR and the Washington Post. It had been given the blessing of innumerable academics who developed complex justifications for primitive, simplistic and false assumptions. And even Democrats - from Clinton to Obama - paid regular homage to economic principles whose only true beneficiaries were the very few at the very top. It became the core ideology of an American establishment that would turn out to be the worst and the dumbest. As Harold Meyerson pointed out recently, even the robber barons of the 19th century used European capital to build American industry such as railroads and steel. The contemporary establishment has taken American assets and turned them into a massive liability. Yet a Rasmussen poll taken after the start of the Bush financial crash found that 59% of voters still agreed with Reagan’s inaugural declaration that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Even 49% of Democrats agree with only 34% demurring. This is not Karl Rove’s fault. This is the result of nearly three decades of indoctrination in anti-social, anti-democratic and economically fallacious absurdities by almost every major instructional institution in the country including Harvard, and the PBS News Hour. Listening to the post crash coverage I heard words I had not found in the media for years, words like FDR, New Deal, government intervention and Keynes. Where had these phrases been all this time? Why was it only now respectable to mention Franklin Roosevelt again? And why has the media and academia given so much encouragement to the myth of free markets while ignoring real things that have gotten worse since Reagan took office? Things like: - Minimum wage as % of average wage Four years before the Bush crash, Michelle Singletary wrote in the Washington Post: “Authors Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi conclude that earning two incomes doesn’t guarantee financial security: In the past 25 years, the number of families in bankruptcy has increased 400 percent, and housing foreclosures are up 350 percent.” You can find these stories if you look hard enough; what you can’t find is these stories being told in more than one or two places at a time during which those in the worst and dumbest establishment continued to peddle the wonders of the free market. The self-defined best minds of our society have engaged in an act of such reckless negligence that it would have produced a criminal indictment if they had been behind the wheel of a car. But because they were only driving the politics and economy of a few hundred million citizens, they get to keep their jobs, their op ed pieces and their preferred place in society. In the 1960s, a large number of Americans declined to permit such a fraud to continue, choosing instead to not only rebel against those who had done the damage but to remove their podiums, undermine their status, knock down their pedestals, discredit their reputations and hold them in ridicule. And for awhile America gained breathing room to make things better; for a while we could dream, smile and get things done. But it’s far more than just a matter of rounding up the usual suspects. If we settle for justice against Paulsen and Bush, for example, then we’ll be no better off than we were in Iraq after getting rid of Saddam. For any rebellion to succeed, for America to rebuild itself, it must shatter the immunity of the status quo in all its vicious dimensions. We have three decades of false teaching, journalistic myth and political corruption to disassemble. And we need something to take its place just as the civil rights movement needed freedom schools to replace generations of lies about blacks and whites. America has been deceived, defrauded and defeated by the worst and the dumbest. The first step in recovery is to let them know in every way that the party’s over. FURTHER READING THE CORPORATE CURSE How business culture dragged America down with it Have Your Say: The establishment that destroyed America’s first republic Please read our posting guidelines before posting. Alternatively you can discuss this report here. Related News
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