Even Worse; W's Second Term... - Robert Reich

[reprehensor]

http://www.prospect.org/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=7507

By Robert B. Reich
Issue Date: 04.01.04

...The second term's defense team will be even harder line than the current one. Colin Powell will go. Condoleezza Rice will take over at the State Department. Rumsfeld will consolidate power as the president's national-security adviser. Paul Wolfowitz will run the Defense Department...

...Justice Sandra Day O'Connor will surely step down from the Supreme Court, possibly joined by at least one other jurist, opening the way for the White House to nominate a series of right-wing justices, a list that could easily include Charles Pickering Sr. and William Pryor Jr. After Chief Justice William Rehnquist resigns, Bush may well nominate Antonin Scalia for the top slot -- opening the way for Scalia and Clarence Thomas to dominate the Court. Such a court will curtail abortion rights, whittle down the Fourth and Fifth amendments, end all affirmative action, and eliminate much of what's left of the barrier between church and state...

...Finally, the Federal Communications Commission will allow three or four giant media empires -- all tightly connected to the Republican Party -- to consolidate their ownership over all television and radio broadcasting.

...Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have...

-----------------------

Also by Robert Reich
The 10 Trillion Dollar Balloon Clause
http://www.robertreich.org/reich/20040204.asp

[gristy]

1. Well you seem to have caught some people's attention

with this post. Took me three times to get through on the link. Reading now...

on edit: Well that article pretty much sums up where we may be headed. If indeed we do end up there (with 4 more years/wars), we (collective, as in the entire US population) will then get what we deserve. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[reprehensor]

2. The $10 Trillion link is even better as a 'persuader'...

...for fence sitters.

TEN TRILLION DOLLARS.

[ablbodyed]

3. But do WE deserve it?....

The nitwits who vote for the slug Repubs 'think' that they will be exempt from the great flushing that will SURELY happen. But they won't. Unfortunately most are so stupid that they may never know what they have lost.

[BootinUp]

4. scary isn't it. -eom-

[dae]

5. Didn't need to read it to know a second term would be devastating.

[unblock]

6. 2nd terms are usually filled with corruption

beyond not having a 're'election to worry about, people are established well enough to know how to, uh, grease the wheels as it were.

but how much corruption can you add to an administration that's based on the elevation of corruption to philosophy?

[MissMarple]

7. George could tip us into Chaos.

If Pickering and Pryor make the Supreme Court, Wolfowitz is at Defense, and oh God give me patience, Rumsfeld is national security adviser and can't manage her way out of a paper bag (apologies to all capable women) Condoleeza Rice is at State... I think we will have our work cut out for us. I was going to say screwed, but no, we can overcome chaos.

"Think, think, think.", Pooh Bear.


When I did the spell check Wolfowitz's alternate spelling was halfwits and Rumsfelds was misfield. Now that is a sad state of affairs.

[necso]

8. Pretty much exactly on the mark.

However Syria is definitively on the short list of countries to be invaded.

I also doubt that even with Wall Street's help that these criminals can keep interest rates down long term. (Wall Street isn't buying up the debt... it's a lousy investment.) Sooner or later debt financing will become a problem with rates held artificially low. Cutting spending will likely mean a drop in tax revenues which will be exacerbated by future tax cuts targeted at the wealthy so the deficit will remain. (Of course these creeps will try to use the threat of higher rates as a way of getting people to go along with their plans.) So taxes must go up along with interest rates. And go up they will for those who can least afford it, whether through a flat tax, increases in Social Security taxes, obscure "reforms" in the Alternative Minimum Tax which most people will never be able to understand or other tax law changes of the kind that make people's eyes glaze over.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. O'Connor, Rehnquist and Stevens are likely to leave, imo.

[RedEarth]

10. I just can't imagine what four more years would be like....makes me

sick to even think about it.