DETROIT -- What is the greatest threat America faces? Why, of course, it's international terrorism. That "truth" dominates our national life. George W. Bush, our Lord High Protector, often reminds us -- with the assurance of Moses reading from the tablets of the Ten Commandants, the words wrought with God's own hand -- he knows his anointed mission is to protect us from this pervasive "evil."
Everything -- from obscene tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, to allowing filthy utilities to spew more deadly mercury emissions into the air, to slashing Medicaid benefits for the poor -- is justified under the broad umbrella of keeping our nation strong and protecting us from the evildoers who hate us because of our freedom.
Our safety, security, economic strength and our very way of life depend on accepting George W. Bush's paternal judgments on how we, his children, are best protected. When he declares there is a problem and we need protecting, it's time to follow the will of our commander in chief and our duty is to accept his divinely inspired guidance.
The Republican Congress goes along with almost anything the protector wants and even, at times, exceeds his messianic madness -- a difficult task. They're ready to borrow billions more than even the White House wants for an already bloated Pentagon budget.
They will waste more of our children's money to buy obsolete weapons and aircraft to keep unneeded bases open and assure us we'll be safer as a result. The loony lawmakers tell this lie and take no responsibility for the consequences of adding more to the monstrous and increasingly dangerous current account deficit.
When not saving the world from terrorism and spreading violence-induced democracy in the Middle East, our leader is busy protecting young Americans from the prospect of a Social Security fund doomed to fail unless his medicine is swallowed.
Bush is taking his hyperbole-hound-and-mangy-mule show on the road every week, trying to sell his plan to privatize Social Security accounts. On one recent road trip to Florida, Bush told the handpicked peanut gallery, "I'm going to keep talking about it until something gets done. I'm going to keep traveling the country saying to people, we've got a problem."
Bush promised his plan would lead Social Security into the promised land of eternal solvency and he was willing to work with Congress because he knew "the people of this country are tired of partisan bickering on big issues." Then he assured the invited faithful, "You have nothing to fear."
I guess we can all relax now.
The president brought his mother, 80-year-old Barbara Bush, along as a prop to show his connection to the needs of older Americans. While her husband, George H.W. Bush, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Babs ate her pabulum with a golden one. She, too, grew up in privilege, and the very notion that any Bush would ever need to worry about Social Security is an absurd fantasy.
But reality-based life has never been a strong suit in the Bush dynasty, and family members shun unpleasantness, especially the suffering of others.
Recall, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Babs told ABC's "Good Morning America" she would avoid the sights and sounds her boy's war would bring. "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" the former first lady and present first mamma said testily.
More than 1,500 American families are feeling the tragic relevance of the forbidden images Pentagon censors have spared Barbara Bush and all Americans from seeing. The families of 100,000 Iraqis don't share those protections and their beautiful eyes get to see their dead loved ones in the flesh, often in TV images.
Selling Bush's privatized Social Security accounts is such a must-do for the regime that even Vice President Dick Cheney left his bunker for a few days to help huckster the folly.
Perched like a pale Cheshire Cat, Cheney repeated his lines in solemn incantations right out of a T.S. Eliot verse. He warned his invitation-only audiences that the Social Security fund will run out in 15 years and big trouble lies ahead for those born in 1950 and beyond. "They'll be the ones whose benefits are in jeopardy if we don't address this problem long-term," Cheney warned in tones he usually reserves for claims that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and bin Laden was his sidekick.
The Bushevik plan requires the government to borrow trillions of dollars to provide the front-end funding for private accounts, essentially socializing -- let me shout it from the gulag: Stalinizing -- the state-run experiment in free-market investments.
This nonsense does nothing to deal with the real problem that Social Security will come up short about $4 trillion over the next 75 years unless something is done. But the prudent way to handle that gap is to raise taxes and cut benefits, or some of both. Doing that gradually, over a period of years, will assure the fund will be strong and reliable. But such action requires a conversion to honesty, which is rarely found in Bushworld.
One top hand in the administration stumbled into the world of truth and, mark my words, his days are now numbered. Treasury Secretary John Snow said that we have "a serious structural deficit problem that has created "the number one domestic economic policy issue we face." Heresy! Mutiny! How dare he!
Everyone in this administration knows the rules: Cheney decides, Karl Rove writes the script, Bush stumbles over the lines, and everyone else repeats the talking points. Snow will melt in political hell for his sins, soon to follow his predecessor Paul O'Neill, whose damnation came after he dared to tell Bush his tax cuts were unnecessary and would do serious harm to the economy.
Snow made his remarks to Jim Lehrer last week in an interview on PBS's "News Hour." The program is one of those rare places on television where you can find intelligent, informative conversation instead of the O'Reillyan rants now heard almost everywhere else.
All the other Busheviks generally deal with the deficit issue with "Oh, yeah, that's a problem too." Snow's assessment of the red-river budgets was stark and dire. "What we foresee in the future is clearly a non-sustainable situation that imperils, imperils, and I use that word advisedly, the very success of this great economy of ours because of the crushing burden it will visit on the economy either in the form of much higher tax rates or much higher borrowing rates, either of which is very damaging to the performance of the economy," Snow told Lehrer.
My God, how can this be? The protector told us we could have tax cuts, an unfunded war, more tax cuts, an unfunded prescription drug plan, more farm subsidies, whatever the Pentagon wants, all the pork Congress lards onto everything, and things would be just fine. Now we have the treasury secretary telling us terrible things will result from the borrow-and-spend fiscal recklessness his boss and the Republican Congress have practiced for the last five years.
One of Rove's henchman must have been in the studio and immediately hit Snow with a blow dart dipped in mendacity. In a flash, Snow abandoned his flirtation with the truth and returned to his programmed talking points. Snow started babbling that the president is trying to address the structural deficit problem with his Social Security reforms. Since Bush's privatization plan involves only adding more to the deficit, how the hell does that make any sense?
Review your notes on Bushspeak. Terrorism is the greatest threat to the economy. But when you're not worrying about that, think Social Security. The fund is going to fail unless we have private accounts, which will add to the already unsustainable deficit. The treasury secretary says the structural deficit is our No. 1 economic problem, but the way to deal with it is to follow George W. Bush's plan to borrow more for Social Security.
A recent under-reported poll shows evidence that some corporate insiders are consciously rejecting Bush's crap. Members of the National Association of Business Economics now believe that the federal budget deficit is a greater danger to the economy than terrorism. Last August, 40 percent of the economists cited terrorism as the No. 1 threat and 23 percent named the budget deficit. Maybe the big-bucks guys know something we don't. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told PBS television host Charlie Rose he finds the Bush deficit "a bit scary" and worries that the United States is in "uncharted territory fiscally" when the world's reserve currency has so much outstanding debt.
Gates has been unloading American dollars and buying foreign currencies, as has investor Warren Buffett. The People's Bank of China is also dumping the weak and debt-battered dollar. The leaders of the world's fastest-growing major economy are losing faith in Bush's economic stewardship, as are other nations.
Foreign investors are pumping $2 billion a day into U.S. bonds to finance the deficit. When the dollar ruled the world, international investors had little choice but to oblige our import-and-borrow style of consumption. But that reliable cash flow is being diverted toward a stronger and more stable currency -- the Euro.
T.R. Reid, a Washington Post reporter and former London bureau chief, has written a wonderful and insightful new book, "The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy."
Reid describes the rapid emergence of the European Union and the remarkable success of its currency. He sees the day when the U.S. Treasury will be forced to raise interest rates for bonds to lure foreign loans. With trade deficits and current account deficits, the United States may be forced to borrow even more money at higher rates to finance those deficits.
"To put it simply, the success of Europe's common currency could bring America's house of cards tumbling down," Reid writes. The result could lead to economic cataclysm and Reid fears that "the dollar could lose much more value on international markets; foreign investors could pull out of American markets, sending stock market indexes steeply downwards; the U.S. government could be forced to raise taxes to make up for the bonds it can no longer sell around the world. If all that happened, Americans would wake up to the revolution in Europe in the most painful way."
Americans will soon wake up to the reality that the greatest threat to our economy is our great protector, George W. Bush. Beyond his horrible unprovoked war, Bush will be remembered in American history as The Great Debtor, whose fiscal madness brought us misery.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 29 2005 |