Laura Flanders: Bail Out or Slush Fund?

[marmar]

from The Nation:



Bail Out or Slush Fund?
posted by Laura Flanders on 10/12/2008 @ 08:50am


What do they say about history repeats? With four weeks left before the General Election of 2008, it's important to plan forward, but also to look back.

In the last few weeks of the 2004 campaign, while the Democratic party dithered over whether to pitch to Right or Left, George W. Bush pulled out every stop. For the affluent (and those aspiring to affluence) he promised more deregulation and tax cuts. For single issue theocratic types, he spouted stir-it-up talk about preserving straight white patriarchal elites. To those already drowning in a war economy with no safety net, W offered an appeal to primal instinct. At the level of advertising, tv and talk radio, the presidential race shrank to just one question: Who do you Trust? John Kerry – the flip flopper "girlie" man – or Bush, the-with-me-or-against me wartime president?

In this election like that one, the Right's ground troops were fed plenty of rhetoric. But Rove didn't rely on red meat alone. There was also cash. We've learned a lot about how GOP political operatives led by Rove politicized every tentacle of the federal government from the Defense Department to Justice. So it should come as no surprise to recall that in the weeks before the '04 election, Bush administration officials dispersed a mountain of government largesse in swing states. In the two weeks before Election Day, the administration announced $10 million for a church-based job training scheme in Jacksonville Florida, money for a long-awaited wildlife refuge in Minnesota and a national park in Colorado. Just days before the voting, the Bushies came up with $207 million to clean up drinking water in Columbus, Ohio.

In 2004, a government that was already in overdraft had plenty of money for pre-election favors. This year, there's more than $700 billion to dole out. We've been told the money could start being dispersed at any moment. Call me crazy, but it seems to me, with a bill that's packed with more than $100 billion in corporate and personal tax breaks, for among others the auto racing body NASCAR, there's a whole lot of fungible cash floating around. Pork may be the least of our worries. History suggests we should watch for buying votes.


http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/371588/

[Phred42]

1. Good Point