$413,954,825,362.17

The Inexplicable Enrichment Of
Bush Cronies

By Evelyn Pringle
20 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org

EXCERPT...

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll showed that 70% of Americans opposed sending more troops, but Bush went right ahead and did it anyways. And then to make matters worse, this month he announces the plan to extend the 12-month tours to 15-months to allow his 30,000-troop buildup in Baghdad to stay for another year.

This war is going to bankrupt the US. A January 2007 study by Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes, estimated that the total costs of the Iraq war could be more than $2 trillion when the long-term medical costs for the soldiers injured so far are factored in.

SNIP...

Those statements were proven false when financial disclosure forms showed that Cheney had received a deferred salary from Halliburton of $205,298 in 2001, $262,392 in 2002, $278,437 in 2003, and $294,852 in 2004.

In 2005, an analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), reported that Cheney continued to hold over 300,000 Halliburton stock options and said their value had risen 3,281% over the previous year, from $241,498 to more than $8 million.

SNIP...

For instance, there was the Undersecretary of Defense, Doug Feith, largely credited for fabricating the tales that got the US into the war to begin with, along with his fellow neocons and best buddy, Ahmed Chalabi.

Feith was a partner with Marc Zell, in the Feith & Zell, DC law firm before joining the administration. After he left for the White House, Zell renamed the firm, Zell, Goldberg & Co, and teamed up with Salem Chalabi, Ahmed nephew, to solicit contracts for clients in Iraq. This scam operated under the name, "Iraqi International Law Group."

At the time, the National Journal quoted Salem as saying that Marc Zell was the firm's "marketing consultant" and had been contacting law firms in Washington and New York to ask if they had clients interested in doing business in Iraq.

According to its web site back then, the IILG was made up of lawyers and businessmen who "dared to take the lead in bringing private sector investment and experience" to the war-torn country and offered to "be your Professional Gateway to the New Iraq."

"The simple fact is," the site stated, "you cannot adequately advise about Iraq unless you are here day in and day out, working closely with officials at the CPA, the newly constituted governing council and the few functioning civilian ministries ."

It is highly likely that the preceding statement was absolutely true when made because Feith helped set up the Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2003, with its leader Paul Bremer, and Feith's office and the CPA were in charge of awarding reconstruction contracts with Iraqi money.

CONTINUED...

http://www.countercurrents.org/pringle200407.htm

Crumbs From the Democrats
Why Inequality Matters

By ANN ROBERTSON and BILL LEUMER
CounterPunch
January 3, 2011

The U.S. social and economic landscape is rapidly changing. Inequalities in wealth, which began an upward ascent back in the 1980s, accelerated in the 1990s. Now they are flying off the charts, thanks first to the tax cuts ushered in by Bush II and second to Obama's recent continuation of those tax cuts, plus more, which have the effect of taking from the working class and poor in order to give to the rich.

Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times provides these grim statistics: "C.E.O.'s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent." (November 6, 2010).

Obama's continuation of Bush's tax cuts amount to an additional massive transfer of wealth from working people to the rich. For example, at least one-quarter of the benefits of these tax cuts go to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, thereby increasing the inequalities in wealth. Most working people will only see a slight drop in their taxes, but the stunning provision is that families that make less than $40,000 will actually suffer a tax increase. If they could only lobby the politicians like the bankers do, they wouldn't be in this predicament.

SNIP...

But aside from Social Security, virtually all social programs, including public education, are facing mounting threats. Because the Obama tax cuts will further increase the deficit, as they did under Bush, the surging deficit will provide the semblance of a rationale for the claim that the government is overspending and must cut back on Medicare, Medicaid, and public education. And these programs for the most part are vital to working people and the poor, not the very rich. In other words, the appearance that working people will benefit from some tax relief is deceptive; much more will be taken from them than given to them in this transaction.

And all the bad medicine contained in the extension of the tax cuts will be compounded if the recommendations of the co-chairmen of the Deficit Reduction Commission are implemented. They too have launched an attack on Social Security. In particular, they want to cut benefits by raising the retirement age to 69, which will amount to torture for many who do physical labor. But as if that wasn't enough, in a moment of breathtaking arrogance, they are recommending even further tax cuts for the rich while increasing taxes on working people. Paul Krugman of The New York Times has observed that their proposals amount to "a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans." (November 11, 2010).

All of this is to say that the main engine fueling the rising inequalities in wealth lies not in any claims about the superior intelligence, industriousness, or good luck of the rich. Rather, the playing field has been tilted in their direction. Bob Herbert, again from The New York Times, reported that a recent study concluded that

…the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich. Those changes were the result of increasingly sophisticated, well-financed and well-organized efforts by the corporate and financial sectors to tilt government policies in their favor, and thus in favor of the very wealthy. From tax laws to deregulation to corporate governance to safety net issues, government action was deliberately shaped to allow those who were already very wealthy to amass an ever increasing share of the nation's economic benefits. (November 1, 2010).

SNIP...

Public education, which is vital to the economy, deteriorates when wealth is monopolized by a few. Because of the low tax rates on the rich, governments lack the resources to properly fund education so more students are turned away or attend overcrowded classes with overworked teachers.

Vast inequalities in wealth undermine democracy. When the rich monopolize most of the wealth, they use some of their money to lobby government officials and influence government policy, as the Bob Herbert quote above testifies. The banks spend the most money on lobbying, and so there should be little surprise that most legislation goes in their favor, despite the fact that it is often contrary to the good of society as a whole. And this practice unleashes a vicious cycle: the rich get more money by lobbying politicians; then they use some of that money to mount an even more expansive lobbying campaign.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/robertson01032011.html

The Big Lie

by Robert Reich
Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Republicans are telling Americans a Big Lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.

The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity. Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can’t borrow as before, and must save for retirement.

The short-term solution is for government to counteract this shortfall by spending more, not less. The long-term solution is to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely (for example, through a more progressive income tax, a larger EITC, an exemption on the first $20K of income from payroll taxes and application of payroll taxes to incomes over $250K, stronger unions, and more and better investments in education and infrastructure.)

But instead of telling the truth, Obama has legitimized the Big Lie by freezing non-defense discretionary spending, freezing federal pay, touting his deficit commission co-chairs’ recommended $3 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase, and agreeing to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/04-11

Republicans, Democrats, National Debt, and Fiscal Responsibility

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Megan

I was born in Texas and raised in Oklahoma in a very conservative, Republican household. I was raised believing that Republicans are for small government and low taxes. I was raised to believe that only the Republicans shared my Christian values and they had the safety of our country well in hand. Democrats, by contrast, wanted the government to fix everything, wanted to raise everyone’s taxes, were pro-abortion, and would do nothing to protect our country.
SNIP...

Now let’s take a look at the facts. We’ll start with national debt and raw numbers. In 2000, when Bill Clinton left office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion. Today, after seven years of George W. Bush, it is $9.6 trillion. Bush has almost doubled our national debt in eight short years.

But let’s go further back and take a look at the average increases in national debt by president. It is most useful to look at the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). GDP is the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time (usually a calendar year). Since 1945, there have been seven presidential terms held by Democrats and nine held by Republicans. During every term held by a Democratic president since this time, that president has reduced the national debt as a percentage of GDP. The Roosevelt/Truman administration made the greatest dent with a 24.3% reduction. By contrast, only three terms held by a Republican president since 1945 showed a reduction in the national debt as a percentage of GDP. Further, Eisenhower made the most significant reduction for Republicans at a 10.8% decline between 1953 and 1957. This is less than half the decline made by the Democrats Roosevelt/Truman. Even further, every single Republican president since 1973 (beginning with Nixon/Ford) has increased the national debt as a percentage of GDP. Let’s summarize: Since 1946, Democratic presidents increased the national debt an average of only 3.2% per year. The Republican presidents increased the national debt by an average of 9.7% per year. Republican presidents out-borrowed and out-spent Democratic presidents by a three-to-one ratio. Putting that in very real terms, for every dollar a Democratic president has raised the national debt in the past 59 years, Republican presidents have raised the debt by $2.99.

Looking further at federal spending, we find that between 1978 and 2005, Democrats increased federal spending by 9.9% while Republicans increased federal spending by 12.1%. Further, in the same period, Democrats increased the national debt by 4.2% whereas the Republicans increased it by 36.4%. It is true that the Republicans held 4 terms during this time while Democrats only held 3. However, looking at each president since 1978, we see that Reagan increased the national debt by a whopping 89.2% during his two terms. You read that right, Reagan nearly doubled the national debt in 8 years.

Now, you might say, “Well, but productivity increased more during that spending.” Using GDP as a measure of productivity (which is standard procedure), you’d be dead wrong. During the years 1978 – 2005, the Democrats increased the GDP by 12.6% while the Republicans only increased it by 10.7%. The president responsible for the largest increase in GDP, or the productivity of our country, during this time was Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who increased the GDP by 28.4% during his eight years in office.

CONTINUED...

http://bunkinthewest.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/republican-democrats-national-debt-and-fiscal-responsibility/