Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Suddenly with the high tech market crash beginning to generate impact, Republicans gained power in 2001, when George Bush became the new White House resident after a one vote Supreme Court majority endowed him with power.  

Time in its March 31 edition ran an article entitled "Wheel of Blame," telling who bears responsibility for the 2008 economic debacle the U.S. now faces.  The article had this to say about Bush's accountability:

"President Bush's belief is absolute in the administration and regulation of financial firms, a mishmash to begin with, was essentially hands-off at a time when megamoney was slushing around new places like over-leveraged hedge funds."

Overleveraged means not enough assets to back up these shaky funds.  The wheel of blame circle in Time pointed to none other than that old time fanatical optimist who would tell the U.S. citizenry that inflation had almost been completely conquered as everything we bought skyrocketed in cost:

"Alan Greenspan, the king of easy money and little oversight kept the economy greased with low-interest rates, but now the former Fed chairman is answerable for having made lending answerable for having made lending available to people who really couldn't afford to borrow."    

Don't worry about Greenspan's economic future.  Penguin Press gave Greenspan $8.5 million for "Turbulent Times," a book revolving around his career.  With 2.5 million homeowners facing foreclosure it looks like a Great Depression rerun.

With a couple wars costing billions a month, infrastructure in the U.S.A. demanding repairs so more bridges won't collapse and a national debt around $10 trillion, will Bush tap dance now?  This national debt is greater than all other national debts combined since the U.S.A. was founded.  

When Bush did the sword dance while visiting the Saudis, was he doing the dance to generate goodwill so the Saudis would keep funding/subsidizing the U.S. debt by buying U.S. bonds?

As a kept nation, Bush should also do a dance in China, as we need their bond buying to keep the U.S. subsidized.

The Republican media propaganda brigade at Fox TV likes to say when anyone complains about the wars raging on in Iraq and Afghanistan, "If you don't like the U.S.A. why don't you go to another country?"

Those who dare to demand change are often quickly labeled unpatriotic as the pundits groan on with, "We are at war!"

President Franklin D. Roosevelt fought valiantly for Social Security to provide sustenance for U.S. citizens who hadn't had wealth handed down to them from generation to generation, or had no pensions.  Republicans called Social Security "Socialism."  Medicare for seniors or Medicaid for the young and poor were for the record opposed by a large majority of Republicans.  

John F. Kennedy said in 1960 that 90% of Republicans opposed Medicare and that the same number had opposed Roosevelt's Social Security legislation.  It would be interesting to see the response of taking away Medicare from senior citizens today who so strongly opposed Medicare previously.

If decent, humanitarian Americans had left the country when the people who always say, "If you don't like it in the U.S.A. - go somewhere else" had actually fled the U.S.A.

We would still have slavery, they would still be burning "witches" in Salem, and we would have no child labor laws.  And, of course, women would not be able to vote.  

The courageous men and women who fought for these changes transformed the U.S.A. from slavery, witch burning, child labor, 10 hour work days, and not letting women vote for 144 years after the nation was created.

Now it is time to change from a nation rushing into wars without any provable reason, and having some supervision and controls over Wall Street and bankers bent on exploitation and cheating.  

Changes in the U.S.A. are desperately needed now!