The Republicans gradually took over the government between 1980 and 2008 primarily, on the political level, by offering what they branded as the alternative to “tax and spend” Liberalism and Big Government.

Had they been honest about their intentions and methods, this might have been a good thing. However, what they replaced it with was “BORROW and spend” Big Government. They pretended to be frugal and fiscally sound, and were able to pull it off because they didn’t do the hard thing: cut spending.

Instead, theirs was a philosophy of basic fiscal cowardice, led by the likes of Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney. And by leading from the top down, these geniuses encouraged the orgy of personal borrowing that floated our jive consumer economy for the past decades.

Well, the Chickens of “Never Pay For Anything” are here to roost, and poop all over us. And they brought their cousins, “Don’t Manufacture Things” and “Create Bogus Wealth by Pushing Mortgages Around.” It’s gonna be a manure-riffic 2009!

As much as I would like to blame Washington for my credit card debt, that would be caving into the Democratic tendancy to avoid personal responsibility. It would be disingenuous to suggest that our problems are not bipartisan in creation.

The US manufactures more now that it ever has, but don’t let the facts get in the way of your point.

Bubbles happen.

Okay. This country is teetering on the precipice of the long downhill slide into mediocrity and living on the accomplishments of our past. This economic “crisis” (or, who stole the loot) has been building since Vietnam. We need to “judo” the negative energy of this moment, use this as an opportunity to take some big risks, but we’ve been (at least up until now) a nation who leads rather than follows. I think if we half-ass our way forward, we’re bound to keep sinking. We need to make some tough decisions and lead the world. One idea: use our existing electrical grid, build beau coup generation IV or V new safe nuke plants (gumball nukes–read about them)… instead of massive meltdowns and steam explosions and years of custom design and building, these new ones, for instance, are modular (quickly set up) One of them generates more juice than a zillion windmills. The power is constant. And you immediately “quit burning stuff”. Since the caveman days through the industrial revolution, we keep “burning stuff” and it’s killing us in so many ways. Now every technology presents its up side and its down. But if we literally go totally electric…. cars, trains, the whole works… and have clean safe new-generation nuclear plants (have a show on that!… read about it… it’s fascinating)… our nation would clean up it’s air (think of a smog-free L.A. or Houston!) We’d be immediately reducing the CO2 and carbon sulfur and NOT be burning stuff. Look here, I am a proud “progressive” or liberal or whatever you call us these days (non troglodytes). And I was against nuclear power “in the day” when it was these huge concrete monstrosities with water cooled systems–dangerous as hell if you loose coolant… I was against them. totally. But because of the miracle of educating myself and asking the question, IS there a safer nuclear way of generating our energy…. well, I did some research and I found out, yes! Right now, these new generation “gumball” nukes are being test built in, I believe, Germany and China. I mean, China has GOT to stop burning coal, or the only ice we’ll see on this planet anymore will be cubes in our refrigerators! So… Mr. Obama is in a unique position. the opposition is weak. The American people took an extraordinary leap of growth and faith by electing this man. We should encourage a massive plan of building, in ten years, new, safe nukes all over…. and then say to Detroit… okay… here’s the deal. This country is going electric… all the way. The grid is there. And you’ve got ten years to develope and have–on the freak’n road–totally electric, easily rechargeable cars, and we are going to keep the private sector involved (more efficient), but!!! to get the big bucks to develop the new charging and battery technology we’ll need (from you!), you HAVE to go this direction. It’s our way or the …highway? We know you’ve got some bright “Henry (and Henrietta) Ford engineers in the mid-levels of your spreadsheet-run companies, so turn’m loose–and guess what…. you ARE our moon project, like Kennedy did. All electric transportation, and all of us have a ten year time frame. So, we’ll give you some funny money (Fed printed and nice and green), and get busy. And I would have the government start a system of intercontinental electric trains (mag lev, whatever) to augment flying (and bigger seats PLEASE!), and let’s……. get……. cranking. And when the naysayers (some of my very liberal friends) say no no no no! Where will we put the waste. I will say…. the “waste” is not the same as from the old plants. you can’t make bombs from it. You take the old “gumballs” that are milked dry of their fissionability, encase them in epoxy cubes, drive’m, train’m to one big mountain that we’ve dug out…. and stack’m and pack’m and forget’m. Much better than huge coal slag heaps and strip mines and ………… caveman technology… burning stuff….. Let’s make the 21st century the start of humankind’s new clean way of surviving and prospering without choking ourselves to death….. by burning stuff. Let’s do it NOW! Barrack has the momentum. Even the Chicago conservative non-Kensyan economists believe we desperately need massive stimulus, so……….. nows’ the time, kids. Like Thomas Friedman said, and, boy, he is right on…. either we, in the U.S. take the lead on all this (and the risk–it takes balls to do this), but we lead and show the world how in a short time we can clean up our atmosphere, quit melting the polar bears homes, and have clean, quiet reliable transport for our citizens….. and guess what….. we already have the infrastructure to do this……. the electric grid. Do it. Barrack. for my kids. For your girls. For the world. Let’s quite stinking up the caves with smoke, and get our technological shit together! Amen. Hallelujah. And Pass the gumballs! (and by the way, when a “gumball” plant shuts down, it doesn’t go critical…. it just…. stops…. reacting… goes cold…. no messy dangerous meltdowns–do a show on it).

from a dangerously messianic listener, Big Steve Smith, Iowa City (you ever notice how many callers/listeners you get from I. City? Ask me, and I’ll tell you why you do.)

A SWAP FOR OUR TIME

The major leagues of baseball do it,
Give guys a second chance,
So why not Wall Street and the pols
Who make Chicago dance?

Let’s see a trade of faded stars
That could bedazzle once more,
With Chicago and the Street exchanging
Players who’ve known the score.

Bernie Madoff, the magician
Adored by all his clients
Who begged him to accept their millions
And placed him among the giants.

And Gov. Rod Blagojevich,
A real maverick,
The master of going it alone
And making statecraft tick.

Bern for Rod and Rod for Bern,
A trade to rock the clocks–
A smile to brighten the grayish Loop
And a swagger to lift all stocks.

Hey Leon, don’t give up your day job. That poem was really lame.

Japan attempted to resuscitate it economy in the 1990s by making large (>5% GDP) infrastructure investments and reducing short-term interest rates to zero.

If it didn’t work for them, but produced the “lost decade” in Japan, why will it work for the U.S.?

Japan attempted to resuscitate it economy in the 1990s by making large (>5% GDP) infrastructure investments and reducing short-term interest rates to zero.

If it didn’t work for them, but produced the “lost decade” in Japan, why will it work for the U.S.?
Posted by Mike H., on January 2nd, 2009 at 9:51 pm EST

Good question.

I remember early 90s in the former Soviet Union. The country fell apart, the economy was in shambles, terrible inflation, people were loosing life savings overnight, nothing working. Western countries at that time insisted that in order to get out of that unpleasant situation we had to privatize the means of production, cut costs, lay off work force and stop government subsidies to failing enterprises. That, they said, was the only way to join the free market and the world community. I hear that Westerners had the same prescription for the South Asians after their 1998 crisis.

Fast forward to 2008 in the USA. What are we doing? Giving government subsidies left and right to failing or failed companies, bend over backwards to keep redundant workers where they are, transfer private liabilites to the public, and generally increase frantic government spending. Borrowers bit too much to chew? Gotta bail them out. Banks? Too big to fail. Smarty pants. It is the same as with the constitutional rights and democracy. The US keeps preaching one thing, but squeeze them a little and they quickly abandon their most basic principles. A bunch of two-faced @#$%^’s.

YOST LEARS

Have you done it yet, gone and written

Two thousand nine now it’s due?

Then you’re miles and years ahead of me–

I’m still writing two thousand two.

Dear On Point, I am a regular listener in New England and I heard this show lauding Noah Feldman, someone who advised on Iraq’s ‘constitution’ drafted under the CPA, Coalition Provisional Authority.

I hope all those who listened to this broadcast will also look for other sources to learn more about what the CPA did and what this ‘constitution’ really was. In fact, these rules for Iraqis paved the way for a humanitarian nightmare and protracted war.

Feldman admits the US made mistakes in Iraq, cites economic complexities, but what about his own personal role in this disaster? The very idea of drafting a constitution for Iraqis was contrary to the Bush administration’s arguments that it arrived to unseat a dictator and bring democracy. Obviously, a national constitution for Iraqis to live under should have been drafted by Iraqis.

In fact, the CPA rules were more to benefit the US and all of the corporations it arrived with including the world’s biggest oil companies. The CPA rules were clearly divisive, they placed militia leaders into powerful roles, carried out policies like Bush’s ‘de-Baathification’ fostering repression against the Sunni and leading to the separation of ethnic Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, by neighborhood, often with bodies lining the streets.

The US evidently thought the Iraqi militants who agreed to accept us money could be controlled. Well US forces originally air lifted in some 150,000 soldiers who were supposed to install Ahmed Chalabi. Remember, that was the guy who was supposed to impose the ‘constitution’ drafted for the CPA to pass on. Chalabi, curveball? The spy who was a bank robber and working for various sides?

This tactic of setting up the CPA under Bremmer also involved the shipment of truck loads of hundred dollar bills from the US Treasury to Iraq, much of which was stolen by the leaders of ministries set up under the CPA.

The US and various intelligence agencies abroad have used these same tactics time and time again, trying to buy war lords and other unsavory types in order to have influence, but these proxy forces usually wind up using the weapons given to them by the USA to attack US forces. That’s what they did, and all along the Bush administration and US Military refused to negotiate a solution that would have saved US and Iraqi lives.

Ultimately, the US turned to militia heads in Iraq to work with them in imposing brutal and repressive rules for Iraqis to live under. Iraqis were asked to ignore crimes committed by individuals working for the Blackwater corporation, they arrived in communities with guns blazing killing people in the way of the convoys they were ‘protecting’. They are presently being tried, but the book Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill tells the whole sad story of their role under the CPA.

The CPA, the ‘constitution’ drafted by people like Noah Feldman and imposed under the neoconservative Paul Bremmer, generated hostilities between Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. It enforced rules for contractors working in Iraq that ran counter to international legal standards, and it set up a sense of hopelessness amongst Iraqis that they would never again be free of US control over their government.

If there is a coup in Iraq as Feldman predicts, the major players could be some of the militants who were originally empowered by the USA with Feldman’s help.

Journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, writes that the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order Number 27, created the ‘FPS’ or Facilities Protection Service, established on April 10, 2003, the day after the fall of Baghdad, which became a highly powerful death squad.

Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail write in Inter Press Service news, 2006, ‘The Facilities Protection Service (FPS) created after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 has become the principal set of death squads in Iraq, senior leaders say.’

Iraqi General Harith al-Fahad of the former Iraqi army told al-Fadhily and Jamail: ‘All the forces formed were actually militias, not organized forces, because they were formed according to rations given to each party in power.’

The General said politicians, ‘brought their followers into the so-called security forces. Others took bribes of 500 to 700 dollars from each applicant to be accepted regardless of standard regulations.’

See this link: http://dahrjamailiraq.com/protecting-neither-facilities-nor-people

The year 2009 can mean an end to fake news out of Iraq, and an opening for real journalism. More Iraqis will be willing to speak out about what occurred in their country under the Bush administration, and I hope NPR and On Point can broaden their guest list accordingly.

Americans must now abandon the ‘thinkers’ who brought us into the Iraq War tragedy, cast aside those who helped create America’s worst economic disaster, and turn in new directions for better ideas.

We don’t need ‘continuity’ as Mr. Feldman indicates. We need to hear from people whose minds are not clouded by old fashioned bias in favor of American empire building. We need to hear from those who understand concepts like power sharing, racial and religious equality, and intellectual freedom.

If we don’t change we condemn ourselves and future generations to endless resource wars.

When we can face the truth about America’s role in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world, we might find our way back to our own path toward democracy.

I hope for 2009 On Point will include a wider cross section of voices, starting with US journalist Dahr Jamail, a former mountain rescue guide from Alaska who went to Iraq as a fully independent reporter. He was right time and time again in what he documented, and he was mostly ignored by NPR despite his stories documenting torture in US run prisons in Iraq well before the CBS story broke, and on US Military heavy handedness and brutal house arrests that began in 2003. This process of breaking into the homes of thousands of Iraqi men in the middle of the night, placing hoods over their heads, and ‘preemptively’ arresting them, often dragging them into the streets while kicking them and punching them in front of their wives and kids, was one of the primary reasons for growing support for the Iraqi resistance.

Best wishes for a more peaceful 2009!

Dori Smith, Talk Nation Radio
Produced at WHUS FM 91.7 in CT

Another Clinton-retread in the Obama white house, change has a very familiar look to it.

Plus a political guy as head of intelligence; sounds like more of the same as well.

GREAT DEPRESSION II MESSAGE

Spend, spend for all you’re worth–
Save the economy of the earth.

Save, save, that’s the best bet–
Pennies saved reduce the debt.

If the right hand smacks the left,
Tie both down and and jump in the cleft.