Treasongate. I was thinking more of the 1920s, when the fat cats and Robber Barons of those days destroyed the U.S. economy (crash of '29) through sheer, unadulterated greed, and nothing was done through two successive, do-nothing Republican regimes, with half the country unemployed and starving. When FDR was elected, and began to implement his New Deal programs--to provide humanitarian aid, and to re-start the economy by direct employment of millions of Americans in government works projects (the WPA, the CCC, etc.)--the major obstacle that he faced was the Supreme Court, filled with dinosauric, pro-rich, pro-business appointees of the previous Republican regimes who had destroyed the country. FDR had to battle those "Justices" throughout his presidency.
I see something similar here. The massively greedy Bushites have looted the federal government, and created a projected trillion dollar deficit, and have pursued many highly irresponsible policies to make the rich much richer, and the poor much poorer--just as in the 1920s. Somewhat different methods of enrichment and impoverishment, but the same result. Profligate spending on the rich, in the form of enormous tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, and billions and billions of dollars in military and other porkbarrel spending benefiting only a few; starvation of programs for the poor and for the common good (for instance, the New Orleans levees). The utter unbalance of their actions, and their attitude, is very similar to the 1920s.
If we have learned nothing else from the Crash of '29 and the Great Depression, it is that a great divide between the rich and the poor is a symptom of extreme peril and ill health in the country. The Bushites seem to be deliberately re-creating that condition. They took a prosperous economy and decent-minded government and quite destroyed them--meanwhile permitting oil companies and others to profligately jack up prices and profiteer from various disasters and distresses, adding to the burdens of the poor and middle class. And as a final coupe de grace, they changed the bankruptcy laws to harm the poor, and actually began killing the poor--by withholding and blockading aid to poor people in the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
It is the 1920s writ large, with global corporate predators as the drivers, rather than the mere "big businesses" and Robber Barons and irresponsible market speculators of the '20s.
The attitude is startlingly similar. In the late '20s, just before the Crash, the super-rich held a "Beggars' Ball" in the Waldorf-Astoria, where they all come dressed up like street people and the homeless (called "tramps" and "hobos")--and danced and feasted the night away under the glittering chandeliers.
How is this different from Bush Jr. eating birthday cake, while New Orleans was blown off the map and thousands of poor Americans were dying, or Barbara Bush saying that the dead and dying huddled in the Superdome were better off than they had been in their hovels in New Orleans? Better off dying in their own filth, than being alive in their homes, albeit humble ones? Better off starving to death, or suffering the horrors of dehydration, than eating their humble meals in their humble homes?
And what OF their poverty--which made them so vulnerable to the withholding and blockading of disaster aid? Think of that poverty, and Bush Jr.'s address to the fat cats in white ties and tails, gathered for a sumptuous dinner, to hear the President of the United States describe those before him--the "have's"--as "his base."
Or Dick Cheney off buying himself an estate, while the poor perished from neglect in the New Orleans disaster? Or Condi Rice buying thousand dollar shoes?
There is one critical difference between the 1920s and today. The bad guys of the 1920s had nothing like electronic voting with SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, to twiddle elections in their favor. There were many ways of corrupting elections in those days--and political machines of both parties employed them--but nothing like the swift, sure, undetectable vote stealing that became possible in the 2002-2004 period, by the $4 billion porkbarrel funding of Bushite electronic voting companies, aided by the corruption or collusion of Democratic election officials and other Democratic leaders.
This is not incompetence, or stupidity, or a few bad guy robber barons and speculators spoiling things for everybody, because Republicans wouldn't regulate them. This feels more as if our democracy were committing suicide.
But, in any case, here we are again--with the rich cleaning our clocks, almost frantically, grabbing every tax break and goody they can ram through--with the opportunity that Diebold and ES&S have given them--nobody minding the store, the government headed off the cliff into bankruptcy, thousands of Americans dying of dehydration, starvation and neglect in a major disaster (reminiscent of the Dust Bowl), and their chief concern is to lock their pro-rich, rightwing , fascist appointees into Supreme Court, as insurance against any serious government reform in the future.
What the New Deal demonstrated is that democracy could right itself, could correct a serious imbalance in political power, and could change course if the country was headed for, or in the middle of, disaster.
The ravages and exploitations of the rich had gone way too far. The New Deal--an expression of the will of the majority in great distress--introduced socialist and regulatory elements into our system that were vitally needed balances against the excesses and greed of the rich. Emergency programs employed people. Long term programs like Social Security put a net under people, in cash the rich looted and destroyed their savings once again.
We have no such corrective mechanism now. We have lost our right to vote. (You think Diebold and ES&S would let an FDR into the White House?) We still have a chance to recover our right to vote, with election reform at the state/local level. But not much time.
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We need...
Paper ballots hand-counted at the precinct level (--Canada does it in one day, although speed should not even be a consideration, just accuracy and verifiability)
or, at the least...
Paper ballot (not "paper trail") backup of all electronic voting, a 10% automatic recount, very strict security, and NO SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code! (...jeez!).
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If we do NOT get this done, we will be in very big trouble--whoever Diebold and ES&S decide to install in the White House. Could be a War Democrat for four years, to get a Draft, and to make way for Jeb. You can be damned sure it won't be an FDR, who had the vision to balance predatory capitalism with limited socialism. And whoever it is will be facing both a Diebold/ES&S elected Congress and a Bush Cartel Supreme Court.
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As for Treasongate, who knows? The criminals involved have become so powerful that they have probably already bought their way out, one way or another. With all the goods they have on their puppet Bush, presidential pardons should be easy to extort. And Bush himself will not likely be held accountable, since WE THE PEOPLE no longer have the power of the vote to hold ANYONE accountable.
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Here's a brief primer on the Great Depression. It'll send chills down your spine.
http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture18.htmlThe quotes by the NYT, and by John Jacob Raskob (Chief Executive of General Motors and head of the Democratic National Committee!) are especially disturbing. (Both quotes are just below the pix of Herbert Hoover.)
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