The worship of laissez faire capitalism, corporate culture, cheap labor and greed as the motivator par excellance is the hallmark of modern Conservativism or Republicanism.
The primative, notion that "what's good for Henry Ford is good for America" is still tacitly in play. Corporations are viewed as intrinsically patriotic, and infallable. CEO's are worshipped as demigods.
Government is in place to facilitate and cater to business, and in Republicanism, what would be consider a tragic flaw in personal character for a Democrat (influence peddling), becomes the guiding principle for an entire political philosophy and framework. ENRON perhaps "bought off" some politicians in the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party IS ENRON. The value system is entirely internalized, and insomuch as greed has become a virtue, so too the profit motive has become legitimized as a moral frame of reference.
What is not understood by the American People, is that the disease of Republicanism is progressive and insidious. In the 1970's corporations were shipping their manufacturing infrastructure overseas for cheap labor. There was no sense of citizenship or moral obligation to the United States.
America was to become a "service-based" economy, producing nothing but services, while consuming manufactured goods produced abroad by "American" companies.
Now what happens when the high-end of the "service" economy is shipped offshore?
The truth is that Corporations are not "patriots". They do not have any sense of a "greater good" or loyalty to this "land of the free". The truth is, Corporations will sell America down the drain for a buck. And when America has sold off all its jewels, and spent its last dime at the alter of consumerism, its workforce will once again be exploited for cheap labor like a third world country.
Republicanism is a disease. Here is another stage of its progress:
"For decades, Americans watched as manufacturing plants set up shop overseas to capitalize on cheap labor. Ross Perot immortalized the anger many workers felt, vividly terming the potential exodus of jobs to Mexico that "giant sucking sound."
Now a growing number of US firms are sending coveted high-tech and service jobs "offshore" in a move that's reviving a debate about the future of the American workforce."
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Saturday that his tax cuts, derided by Democrats as unfair and irresponsible, were starting to show results and predicted faster growth in the coming months."
By JOHN M. BERRY The Washington Post A recent Commerce Department report said that half the gain in the weak 1.4 percent annual rate the gross domestic product grew in the fourth quarter was due to federal spending, two-thirds of which was for defense.
And the Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday that President Bush's fiscal 2004 budget proposals would raise spending over the next five years by $348 billion - not counting the $75 billion supplemental request to fund the war in Iraq - nearly as much as the $454 billion the plan would reduce revenue by cutting taxes.
With the federal budget deficit soaring, many members of Congress have shied away from touting any stimulative effect from added spending, according to staffers on the House and Senate Budget committees.
Some of the biggest supporters of the Bush administration's budget, including its proposed tax cuts, "have been saying over the past few months that deficits caused by spending increases are the only ones that matter," Stanley Collender, managing director of federal budget consulting at Fleishman-Hillard Inc., noted this week.
The added spending has not been as noticeable as the large tax cuts Congress has enacted.
"Congress has approved at least 10 spending initiatives since the summer of 2001," Glassman said. "First, the tax-cut agreement of 2001 also boosted spending by increasing the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. A couple of weeks later, before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2001 Supplemental Appropriations Act boosted discretionary spending, principally for defense. After the terrorist attacks, Congress passed an emergency spending measure and boosted discretionary spending for both defense and nondefense programs."
Last spring, an economic stimulus plan "raised spending by about $50 billion annually for three years," he continued. "Other measures approved last year, related to trade, farm aid, terrorism risk insurance, unemployment insurance and defense, also ... resulting in higher spending this year." And the final fiscal 2003 appropriations bill passed last month added about $5 billion more, he noted.
Glassman's analysis was based on an approach that eliminates the impact of economic fluctuations on the budget, such as changes in unemployment. It concluded that fiscal policy has swung in the direction of stimulus over the past two years by an amount equal to roughly 4 percent of the gross domestic product. Economists generally regard a change equal to about 1 percent of GDP as likely to have a measurable impact on economic activity.
Some other economists, such as Charles Schultze, of the Brookings Institution, who estimate the amount of stimulus from discretionary spending somewhat differently, think it will be under 1 percent of GDP in the current fiscal year.
The irony is that the Republicans cast themselves (going back to Reagan, who lied about all this too) as "anti-big government" and "fiscally responsible". In actuality, to the degree that the economy is getting any boost, it is from massive Federal spending (tax cuts are Federal spending also, simply undirected).
However, the whole thing is kinda liked making yourself look more economically healthy by using a massive credit card.
My position has always been that the government spending issue (specifically, the Republican claims that they don't "spend as much") is a bunch of baloney. The issue was never whether or not they would spend, but "on what" they would spend.
Also, this sorta begs the question. When the economic engine fails, isn't it good to have the Federal Government around to kinda "jump start" the economy when it sputters. Maybe the Republicans ought to just give it up and embrace FDR's "NEW DEAL". He kinda had the same approach.
This article is too good. I'm going to post the whole thing! The mainstream media has become decidedly unagressive when it comes to Republicanism and this Republican administration.
"This summer, many journalists seem to be in hot pursuit of the Bush administration. But they have an enormous amount of ground to cover. After routinely lagging behind and detouring around key information, major American news outlets are now playing catch-up.
The default position of U.S. media coverage gave the White House the benefit of doubts. In stark contrast, the British press has been far more vigorous in exposing deceptions about Iraq. Consider the work of two publicly subsidized broadcasters: The BBC News has broken very important stories to boost public knowledge of governmental duplicities; the same can hardly be said for NPR News in the United States.
One of the main problems with American reporting has been reflexive deference toward pivotal administration players like Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Chronic overreliance on official sources worsened for a long time after 9/11, with journalists failing to scrutinize contradictions, false statements and leaps of illogic.
Powell's watershed speech to the United Nations Security Council in February was so effective at home because journalists swooned rather than drawing on basic debunking information that was readily available at the time. To a great extent, reporters on this side of the Atlantic provided stenography for top U.S. officials, while editorial writers and pundits lavished praise.
The most deferential coverage has been devoted to the president himself, with news outlets treating countless potential firestorms as minor sparks or one-day brush fires. Even now, George W. Bush is benefitting from presumptions of best intentions and essential honesty - a present-day "Teflonization" of the man in the Oval Office.
Midway through July - even while Time's latest cover was asking "Untruth & Consequences: How Flawed Was the Case for Going to War Against Saddam?" - the president told reporters: "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power." Bush's assertion about Hussein and the inspectors - that he "wouldn't let them in" - wasn't true. Some gingerly noted that the statement was false. But the media response was mild. The president openly uttering significant falsehoods was no big deal.
Meanwhile, reporting on the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq has been understated. Editor & Publisher online pointed out that while press accounts were saying 33 American soldiers had died between the start of May and July 17, "actually the numbers are much worse - and rarely reported by the media." During that period, according to official military records, 85 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq. "This includes a staggering number of non-combat deaths ... Nearly all of these people would still be alive if they were back in the States."
In a follow-up, editor Greg Mitchell reported that his news analysis had caused "the heaviest e-mail response of any article from E&P in the nearly four years I have worked for the magazine." He added, "These weren't the usual media junkies or political activists, but an apparent cross-section of backgrounds and beliefs." Some of the letters were from relatives and friends of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The strong reactions indicate that American deaths are apt to be politically explosive for the 2004 presidential campaign.
Contradictions have become more glaring at a time when the war's rising death toll already includes thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of Americans. Many U.S. news organizations are beginning to piece together a grim picture of deceit in Washington and lethal consequences in Iraq. The combination foreshadows a difficult media gauntlet for Bush.
Another key political vulnerability that remains underreported is the economy. Its woes persist in the context of a huge gap between the wealthy and most other Americans - a gap that is set to widen still further due to the latest round of White House tax changes and spending priorities. Ironically, this summer's resurgence of Iraq-related coverage could partly overshadow dire economic news in the coming months. It's deja vu, with a big difference.
Last summer, the Bush team successfully moved the media focus from economic problems to an uproar about launching a war on Iraq. That was a politically advantageous shift that endured through Election Day. Now, with concerns about Iraq and the economy again dominating front pages, it remains to be seen whether news outlets will accelerate the search for truth or slam on the brakes."
A subtle but significant shift in the discourse to shape and lower expectations:
"On Wednesday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, chided White House officials for what he sees as a retreat from their original assessment of the Iraqi threat by pointing to evidence of weapons programs, rather than to actual weapons. (This change in position was also apparent in Mr. Bush's press conference on Thursday, when he said he was confident that evidence of Iraq's weapons "program" would be found, but said nothing about the actual weapons themselves.)
"Programs don't do it. Programs cannot be fired, programs don't get somewhere in 45 minutes, programs are not weaponized, and it was weapons that we were told about," Mr. Rockefeller said. And after the hearing on Thursday, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, said "It's looking more and more like a case of mass deception. There was no imminent danger, and we should never have gone to war."
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