Ah, the things we forget.
This was then: Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan greenlighted the Bush tax cuts, saying that Clinton was paying down the country's debt too fast as a result of modest taxes on the wealthy. So the Bush tax cuts for the rich passed, which immediately brought us the huge, huge deficits. Bush called the deficits "Incredibly positive news" because they would force a debt crisis.
In the 80's Alan Greenspan's Social Security Commission raised taxes and cut benefits on working people, providing a huge amount of revenue which was then handed out as tax cuts for the rich. And now, rather than pay back that money borrowed from Social Security from where it went, our elites are insisting that Social Security must be cut back, we must all work until 70, etc.
Decades earlier Alan Greenspan was smack in the center of the Ayn Rand* cult that called the non-wealthy "parasites,"
Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand's inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. . . . Mr. Greenspan wrote: " 'Atlas Shrugged' is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should."
This is now: Greenspan Calls for Congress to Let All Bush Tax Cuts Expire
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose backing of George W. Bush's 2001 tax cuts helped persuade Congress to pass them, said lawmakers should allow the reductions to expire at the end of this year. "They should follow the law and let them lapse," Greenspan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Conversations with Judy Woodruff," citing a need for the tax revenue to reduce the federal budget deficit.
... a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending."Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief," he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Alan Greenspan is in his 80s. He forgets -- or at least wants us to forget. Don't let anyone forget.
The debt crisis was the plan, right there for everyone to see:
So don't forget.
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* One more thing not to forget. I mentioned Ayn Rand. Rand's work is very popular among conservatives now. It forms a core justification for their "on your own" philosophy praising the wealthy and discarding the rest. So it is useful to explore the formation and core of this philosophy. Early in her writings Rand became fascinated with a serial killer named William Hickman. Rand wrote that the serial killer was an "ideal man," a superior form of human because he didn't let society impose their morals on him. He didn't worry about what others thought and just did as he pleased.
"Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," Rand wrote. Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'" She considered these to be good qualities! And so does her cult.
This is the foundation of the modern "tea party" conservative thinking. So when you look at the modern capitalism that has grown up around Rand's philosophy and the big corporations that are chewing up the planet to enrich a very few at the expense of the rest of us, and think it seems sort of psychopathic, maybe that's because it literally is.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Shouldn't we make them give up their check if the fail us? Right now, if one of us go to prison our Social Security stop. None of the Greenspan types go to jail. ever. so we need to have a way to keep from paying them a government pension.
George Bush is drawing almost a half a million dollars a year presidential pension. Let's cut that back.
We must also recognize that the U. S. has too much unnecessary government that is incredibly effective at transferring money form people of modest means to the wealthy. The government indeed must shrink because it is the greatest wealth concentrator that has ever existed. We need to stop making direct payments to individuals and companies that are for other than services rendered. We also need to shrink government employees wages to bring them into line with those in the private sector. A needs based deductible for Medicare and Medicaid expenses would go a long way toward discouraging over medication and reduce government expenses.
What he should have said, if he had any character, was "The deficits I advocated for are going to be a far bigger problem than anybody imagines. Now it is time for the Democrats to reduce the federal spending I was in favor of when the Republicans were in power. Now is the time for the Democrats to eliminate the tax cuts I was in favor of when the Republicans were in power.
You see, to me economic principles sway in the wind depending on who is in power. That is all I really know about economics. How you made me Fed Chairman for 17 years is beyond human understanding."
What they don't tell us is that it only works that way for a little while and then the jobs go away and workers then must scramble while business can live off their greater profits.
Best place to live, think again!
I am not a Tea Party advocate, but they are a significant political force who could swing the next election. They are mostly middle class people who do not benefit from tax cuts for the wealthy, a preponderance are elderly people concerned about losing modest savings and the modest Medicare benefits. They have the same concerns as most Democrats.
You participate in a variety of forums, you have the means to reach out to those people with patience and energy. Instead you are here burning straw men for the edification of the already persuaded.
I left Miss Rand decades ago. Having read some thousands of pages of her writing, I am not aware of anything that supports your more negative examples and characterizations. The point is, she is "popular" as are Sarah and Rush and a whole rogue's gallery, in large part because you and other liberals continually promote them -- "See what awful people these are".
There is a large crowd out there that is, granted, extremely ugly because they are frightened for many of the same reasons that concern the rest of us. Where the alternative to Fox News?
You have a bully pulpit, Mr. Johnson. Instead of knocking Tea Party people, if you respect their fundamental concerns and were willing to engage them without patronizing, you and others could possibly swing an election.
The one thing that scared the 19th century Southern elite more than anything were suggestions that blacks and poor whites might have common cause and they did everything they could to set poor whites against blacks to maintain their power.
Except that now it is more generic. A power elite pulls all of our strings by playing us off against one another with a variety of "us vs them" ploys, and race is just one of several tools-- us vs Sarah or Fox, Republicans or whoever. And then the reverse, people who "love" Sarah because she drives "them" crazy -- liberals, Northerners, "socialists" -- the particular tag means little.
So some of us are brighter, more enlightened, better in some way than "them"? Because we are color-blind, therefore we are free of narrow-mindedness, smugness, insular feelings that we are better than some group or another even if this or that group is not racial? In other words, are we hyper-educated, pampered, middle-class "liberal" people really free of bigotry? I think we can all benefit from taking a breath and being more humble.
Because, or not even because, it is the right thing to do to our fellow man, but because otherwise we are all going to drown together with equality.
This sociapathic Randian ultra-capitalist, let-the-poor-just-die ideology has as its foundations the idea that a serial killer is a positive role model. That is why it comes across as a dehumanizing, cold, cruel thing.
The same critic did note that she was very young when she wrote the journal entries quoted, and they were after all personal musings.
That does raise a very important wider issue about private thoughts and public statement. Would any of us like a computer "dump" of our own private thoughts for everyone to see? Likely, we all would be labeled sociopaths. My metaphor comes close to being a frightening reality in this computer age. Can we really be human if we had to anticipate and censor within our own heads?
Also her critic included comments. One quoted later material from Miss Rand that revised and clarified with a shrewd and searing description of the mind of a sociopath.
I am not her acolyte for a lot of reasons, some cited by the same writer, but I don't think it likely that she will inspire any serial killers. Again, sincere thanks.
If you walk into any mental health clinic and say you are having problems the first thing they will ask you is, 'Are you in danger of harming yourself or others?' Say yes and BAM you get a mandatory 36 hr stay.
Interesting how we see blatant examples of behavior that is overtly harmful to the vast majority of our citizenry (ie harming others) portrayed in a different light. Interesting and depressing.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts' of men?
We are primates. Our automatic system recognizes two main social categories: us as opposed to them.
Ayn Rand, Leo Strauss, the KKK, the Nazis of WWII, and plenty of other proponents of unfairness have one thing in common. They provide wordy excuses for an elite to call other people "outsiders" and short change them.
In early Scandinavian and English Common Law an outlaw was outside the law (social order) and could be killed with impunity.
This is in direct contrast to the great religions such as Mayahana Buddhism, which stress that we are all in the same boat.
The top 10% of wealthy is active and busy getting more of our money and fighting taxes on themselves. The poor have less every year and their taxes are incresed. The rich may pay taxes but have more every year, alot of that money actually comes from the government. It isn't only that they don't want to give they don't want to return money.
Stimulous, Afghanistan, farm subsidies, balouts , much of it went to the top 10%