Starve the Beast

[KensPen]

Are our current budget and deficet woes really a Neo Con plan,

is the republican congress and president working to create a deficit so bad that many programs will be cut as a neccessity?

[sherifffruitfly]

1. lol

um, duh?

cdj

[newyawker99]

22. Hi sherifffruitfly!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[sherifffruitfly]

25. nice sig.....

..... but what would mean more would be the ability to post......

(lol - mandating and maintaining high barriers to entry are a republican thing par excellance....)

cdj

ps - hello right back at'cha :)

[sherifffruitfly]

26. not fair.....

now that i've had 3 minutes to think about it, i realize that both sides have, historically, reaped benefits from monopolstic high entry barriers.....

back to edwards' 2 americas i guess.... those who can post on DU and those who can't..... :)

or maybe it's those who get to vote (by an oath of party allegiance), and those who don't get to.... whatever... lol

cdj

[ProfessorGAC]

2. Probably Yes

However, if they think the political fallout of gutting social programs en masse is not going to bury them in "has-been" land they are very, very wrong.

The one thing i find so galling about this strategy, is that these folks actually say (and believe) that the New Deal and Great Society programs have damaged business and our ability to grow. But, the U.S. economy grew into the greatest economic power in world history while those programs were in place. So much for basing conclusions on data, huh?
The Professor

[mac56]

5. Hey Prof -

I agree with you, as usual. I've always believed that, rather than damaging business, the New Deal saved business in America.

You'll never get a Republican to admit it, I bet.

[ProfessorGAC]

7. Not In A Billion Years

It did save business, of that there can be no doubt. Without a middle class, NONE of what happened to this economy, in the last 70 years could have come to pass.

Like i said, nothing like ignoring the data that flies in the face of one's preconceived notions.
The Professor

[prodigal_green]

3. Hmmm...

Yes.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. Yes,

Grover Norquist has gone on record as saying he wants to gut our federal programs.

Bush did this very thing while he was Governor -- when he left office he left Texas in a dire position. They were broke, had were cutting programs (the few they have) and were finally forced to raise taxes to fix the mess.

[Skidmore]

6. Bombs or food and housing.

Feed the war machine.

[Cary]

8. It's either that, or they are working very hard. . .

to enrich themselves while they have opportunity. I've lost all respect for AARP, which stands to gain a ton by selling lousy insurance policies under the Medicaid drug benefit. Look at Haliburton and Bechtel.

Pick 'em. The whole deal stinks.

[shance]

9. Of course. If you starve a dog, he will follow you everywhere...

Same thing they are doing in Iraq. Different setting.

Same outcome. (they hope*)

[teach1st]

10. Bush's budget problem, by Allen Schick

Paper prepared for Conference on the George W. Bush Presidency
Princeton University
April 25, 2003

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/bushconf/SchickPaper.pdf

Yet miscalculation does not fit this calculating president who, in contrast to his father, knows how to use the power of the office. This is a president who has not fought for a lot of things he professes to want—Medicare prescription drug coverage, abortion restrictions, and social security reform to name some of his most prominent aims—but he has twice fought to get big tax cuts. This is a president whose eyes are wide open to the short and long-term fiscal and policy implications of the revenue losses he has imposed on the federal government. Even as he has truncated the budget horizon from 10 to 5 years, he is aware of the doomsday projections that if current policy continues, a generation from now, social security and Medicare will claim almost all of the federal revenue, leaving very little for the rest of government. He wants to strip the government of future revenue, not in spite of these dire scenarios but because of them. He sees revenue privation as the only or best weapon to change the course of budgetary history, a history that for him probably began with Reagan’s victory in 1980. Bush is an avid student of recent political failures, in particular his father’s failed presidency and the failure of both Reagan and his father to halt the expansion of government. George W. Bush wants a smaller government, and he’s willing to pay the budgetary price to get it. In contrast to Reagan, he has not launched a rhetorical challenge to big government, preferring instead to let budgetary realities do the job for him. In contrast to his father, George W. Bush is not willing to let adverse budgetary numbers get in the way of his determination to purge the government of revenue. The elder Bush said, “read my lips, no new taxes” and signed a large tax increase into law. The younger Bush does not want to repeat his father’s backpedaling. In contrast to both Reagan and his father, Bush had a Republican Congress through most of his first term, making it much easier to muscle his tax cuts through the House and Senate.

[Skidmore]

12. The people need to choose this GE...

what are OUR priorities. Will we continue to sanction unending war and corporate greed? I think the R's overplayed their hand badly.

[Taeger]

11. Who's Beast

The "Beast" was a Democratic program. The Democrats controlled the house of reps for a political lifetime.

It was not entirely altruistic. Democrats used there power of the purse to help their cronies as well as help their constituents. The Republicans always hated this because Dems used federal spending to keep themselves in office.

Now the Beast is on the other foot. The Republicans have controlled the Beast for 10 years. And it has been DEMOCRATS who have tried to control it. The Republicans use the beast to divvy up every form up pork.

But unlike Democrats, the Republicans serve all their pork to folks who don't need it.

The generation of the Great Depression is failing. The Democrats saved the country in that generation. They got work programs going and STUCK IT to the rich. They put in social programs that would gaurantee basic living expenses.

I'm not 100% keen on the Great Society. I don't think that people should be able to live strictly of the government dime. I think work should be a component of ALL such programs.

But the New Deal was the people's contract with the government. Now that contract has been gutted. People have been convinced that the New Deal is evil. They are conned into thinking that Unions are there to STOP them from ascending in social and economic rank.

Oh how wrong they are.

The worm is turning. But I'm not 100% sure that the DLC will give the party back to the people.

It may be necessary to create LOCAL parties to take back the congressional seats and return the power to the people. The corporations are calling most of the shots now. It's wrong. It's the way it was in the 1920s. I sincerely hope that we can keep history from repeating itself.

[Thistle42]

13. Very well said ! n/t

[newyawker99]

23. Hi Thistle42!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Sugarbleus]

29. I ditto that Thistle..well said. n/t

[Merlin]

14. THE BEAST is also a classic, neocon, Straussian term.

Strauss, you may recall, was the philosophy prof at the U of Chi in the 70s under whom many of the neocon prime movers studied, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Kristol, and the author of The Closing Of The American Mind, Alan Bloom.

Strauss taught that the enlightenment was wrong, that democracy doesn't work, that an elite must sieze control and maintain it, that deceit is justified when done in the name of governing the nation by stealth.

He also taught that these ideals were conveyed--albeit in parable form--by the great Greek philosophers, principally Plato. Plato did indeed, in the Republic, teach that a nation needs a class of spies who are permitted to lie (CIA/FBI), a warrior class, a ruler class, etc.

Plato also used the metaphor of The Beast.

The Beast was originally a metaphor used by Plato to illustrate that we are blind to the fact that a judgmental and materialistic energy, that we think of as the system, controls us rather than we control it. In The Republic, Plato depicts us as blindly buying into the system as though it was a privilege when, in actuality, the underlying energy of the system is like an ill tempered beast which lacks real feelings even for those who serve it.
from A History of God, by Karen Armstrong

[Taeger]

17. Sounds like Scientology ...

They also believe that it's right to lie to anyone for any reason as long as it's for "Ronnie".

[Taeger]

18. Didn't Milton Friedman

Didn't Milton Friedman come out of there as well? The Milton Friedman who engineered the annhialiation of Chile's economy with Augusto Pinochet. The same Pinochet who's "dissapearing" strategy seems to be a model for John Ashcroft.

I swear, the University of Chicago has some sick fuckers for professors.

[tabasco]

24. Thanks for the info.

Strauss was a real asshole. The kind of guy that gets beheaded when his ideas get implemented.

[Malva Zebrina]

27. Karen Armstrong is great . I am currently readiung a

History of God. She was once a Catholic nun and is now an atheist as I understand it. Her analysis is wonderful and her intellect superbe-- although her writings are somewhat complicated and difficult to follow. Read in a quiet place.

[Vogon_Glory]

15. Yes, That's What They're Doing

Yes, that's what the George UU Bush White House and the right-wing Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the right-wing Republican-controlled US Senate are doing with their tax cutting and reckless deficit spending. They are trying to so financially hobble the US government that it will be forced, like so many Third World governments already have been, to cut spending.

The current fiscal situation is indeed a right-wing plot. There were articles in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal for years before George Deucey-U Bush was inaugurated bewailing the growth of the federal government and advocated fiscal restraints. It would be just like the Republican cabal to pull such a stunt.

[Killarney]

16. Yes

The only reason I can think of to purposefully created record breaking deficits year after year with no end in site is to end the entitlements. They want to kill social security, medicare, welfare, etc and this is the way they will do it--so that to many it will seem like "it had to be done." When in actuality, we will know the truth... it's part of the plan.

[BillZBubb]

19. No, not part of a plan, just a "happy" consequence

These guys are economic morons. The only way they know how to achieve positive economic growth is by running huge deficits.

Think about it. Reagan/Bush/Bush* all have had pathetic economic growth when adjusted for deficit spending. Bush* is borrowing and spending nearly 5% of GDP this year to achieve about 3.5% growth. None of these guys would have ever had approval ratings above 50% without borrow and spend orgies. Unfortunately, the Democrats have never been able to put this into an easily understandable message.

Someone with average or above intelligence could get nearly 10% growth out of a 5% creation of demand. Not Bush*.

[Karenina]

20. Schon getan.

Guckmal. (Hey Dirk39, wo bist Du denn? Ein Wort oder zwei? ;-))

[Bandit]

21. It is just about Looting the National Treasury

When they have looted all that they can get easily then they will say we need to sell off every asset the government owns to pay off debt and then abscond with all of that Loot also. Crooks plain and simple

[many a good man]

28. Think this might be a good campaign issue?

How many Americans have heard of Grover Norquist? How many Americans like Social Security and Medicare?