Voodoo Economics and the Crisis in Thinking

A Brand New Sleigh Ride

Polar extremes should exist between the two candidates in the US presidential race, but they don’t. So, a longed for curtailing of the failed policies that dominated the last seven-and-a-half years must suffice. The American public wants some distance between it and the GOP’s neo-conservative movement.

What world do those people dwell in who want eight more years of the same loud mouth, lackluster kno-nothings. If you make less than millions or your stock is down, the reasons for backing the GOP probably have dwindled considerably. That goes a thousand times over for working class people. Unless the assumption of white supremacy really clouds some folks’ heads that bad.

This election only needs to be about partisanship, when even old line conservatives cannot support the GOP anymore. They must cross over because of the failed policies of the last eight years and their desire to have history remember them kindly.

That's right. Few real issues need to be addressed when everything separating the Dems from the GOP has been burnt in the electorate’s mind. Americans need something fresh, like an Easter outfit. Its that simple. Not saying the Dems are the salvation or Obama is so great. Nope! It's just that the GOP has steered full speed into a clustermuck.

After all, the Dems lag behind the GOP in so many ways, they have to catch up for eight years of tailing the Republicans. The Democrats didnt fight hard enuf to keep those worms out of govt. Even now, the Dems continue to collaborate with the GOP on the Telecom Bill, letting the communications companies off the hook for consenting to illegal government wiretaps.

The Dems have too much fraternizing across the aisles to ever really be effective. Only two stellar black women, Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee, stand out from that count. Otherwise, the Democratic Party never separated itself from the neo-con Voodoo economists.

Of economics and budgets, how interesting the nations roads, bridges, water and sanitary systems have fallen into disrepair. The levee system along the Mississippi, particularly in Louisiana as evidenced following Hurricane Katrina, has suffered badly. A levee in Cedar Rapids, Iowa recently failed because of heavy storm waters. The decay of these systems poses a direct -- if undetected or ignored -- threat to the health and safety of Americans in many places.

Thru such contradictions the basic idiocy of capitalism confronts the puppet-mouth hacks themselves. Neo-con stooges sling around slogans like family values by muttering utter nonsense, encapsulated in presidential statements like, “Catsup is a vegetable.” The very things needed to help families they have undermined.

Yet Americans allow these same crumbs to browbeat them into submission over what is American, patriotic and good.

Now, during the gas crisis, they want to open drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. But this is capitalism. CAPITALISM. You don’t own an oil rig. So you don’t get to make decisions when and where oil rigs go to work. Supply-side economics for all you half-baked Voodoo economists out there. Go back to your sixth grade civics books and learn what the Great Communicator told you. America is a capitalist country and capitalism doesn’t operate on the public dole.

Meanwhile the Fed gives massive liquidity injections to failing banks thru overnight grants because of the subprime mortgage scandal. Having made countless loans based on speculative interest rates (ARMs), many people lost their homes due to foreclosure. Businesses with balloon payments also folded. Nobody bailed out either of these two groups. Yet the banks represent the highest level of business organization in America under the capitalist system. Giving them emergency grants during this period strongly suggests that capitalism is a failure.

Using public funds to assist private business contradicts Maynard Keynes model of the welfare state. Keynes’ theories led FDR to carve out the programs of the New Deal. The Marshall Plan extended Keynes macroeconomic government policy model, whereby the US rebuilt its European allies following WW2. One way their debt was settled, England and France relinquished their colonies so the US could move transnational companies into fresh territory. Such a relationship sealed America's economic domination for fifty years.

Posing a foil, the Chicago School elucidated on the short life and limited the usages of capital. Milton Friedman taught that government exists to liberate public assets for bourgeois enrichment. His theories on how to rapaciously exploit government power and wealth to line capitalist pockets defines the neo-conservative movement. Out of this school comes the Reaganesque “voodoo economics” that Bush 43s Administration has taken to a whole new low.

Yet public monies and assets are produced by millions of hard working people who should be entitled to them, rather than denied as under the GOP model. Until people understand the dynamics of public policy and what goes on beyond the rhetoric, we will be stuck with a “Crisis in Thinking” as I call it, which makes choices between political parties a Pavlovian nightmare. That time looms ahead when US economic domination bites the dust and Americans get a real wake up call from their leaders.