DETROIT -- The "slow motion recession" for the rest of the nation is going at breakneck speeds in Detroit. The grim economic news points to more hardship for working-class Americans and the failure of the Bush administration to address the fundamental problems fostering the spreading misery.
President George W. Bush, his enablers in Congress and the right-wing shout chorus in the media have done monumental damage to the nation's economic health, some of it irreparable. Even under the best of circumstances, much of the harm will take years to repair or undo.
Bush has focused his presidency on protecting his base -- the Bush family base, the base of his wealthiest supporters and benefactors. It is the base of oil and energy companies, military contractors and other narrow corporate interests. Bush's base thrives, while an increasing number of Americans and sectors of the economy not included for special protection suffer and struggle. In June, 62,000 jobs vanished, the sixth consecutive month of job losses. In May, the jobless rate shot up half a percentage point -- "the sharpest one-month spike in 22 years," The New York Times reports.
Most signs indicate more jobs will be lost through the end of 2009, when Goldman Sachs projects an unemployment rate of 6.4 percent. The number will not include people who have been jobless for so long they are no longer trying to find work and are no longer counted in unemployment rolls. This week, as Bush is at his farewell Group of Eight economic summit in Tokyo, Japan, he can say goodbye to the other leaders of the big industrialized nations with the distinction of seeing the U.S. dollar plunge 41 percent against the euro since his first appearance at a G-8 gathering.
Speaking of the trip last week, Bush mouthed meaningless words unconnected to the reality-based community: "We're strong-dollar people in this administration and have always been for the strong dollar."
That ranks right up there with Bush's claims that "we are doing everything we can to avoid war with Iraq" and "war is my last choice, my last option" -- meaningless words he peddled months after a British intelligence leader wrote in a memo after a meeting with Bush that "military action was now seen as inevitable."
The staggering debt Bush has created -- from $5.7 trillion when the U.S. Supreme Court selected him as president to $9.5 trillion today -- is driving down the value of the currency and pushing up the price of oil. Toss in the subprime lending scam, and you have an economic mess worthy of the old Soviet state planners.
They used to come up with five- and 10-year plans for economic rot and chaos. Bush's eight-year plan is right on track to please the base and screw working-class people who get the bills. Sen. John McCain has now drunk deeply from the Bushevik Kool-Aid jug and he's accepting their views on economic and fiscal policies. His election would mean another four years of madness.
McCain's commitment to continue Bush's imperial designs on the world and reckless military spending presents a frightening prospect. Beyond the continuation of a disastrous foreign policy, the spending for an American empire is stifling for the domestic economy.
"Military Keynesianism" is how Chalmers Johnson -- an author, political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego -- describes the Pentagon's destructive grip on our economy.
In a penetrating article in Le Monde Diplomatique, Johnson exposes the folly of "the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption."
How to pay for global domination and the projected $2 trillion bill for the war in Iraq has never been a concern for the neoconservatives who were hell-bent to try out their colonial experiments, regardless of the consequences.
They didn't care about the terrible loss of life, the enmity of the world and the boost to terrorist recruitment programs. Why would they care about domestic economic damage? Since so many of the warmongers are charter members of Bush's base and on the payrolls of military contractors, they benefit directly from the fiscal irresponsibility.
Chalmers Johnson argues using massive military spending to try to offset job losses to foreign competitors is rooted in "the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent war, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true."
In 2008, the United States will spend $623 billion on the military establishment, more than all the other nations of the world combined. Much of that money is spent, as Johnson notes, on "projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S."
Spending so much for the benefit of military adventures means other things are not done and we fail to invest in our physical and social infrastructure.
"Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly," Johnson writes. "We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world's number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing."
But while the American auto industry and other basic manufacturing industries struggle and jobs disappear, the war machine is humming. We are the largest single seller of arms, military equipment and munitions in the world.
John McCain wants to inherit, nurture and sustain Bush's base. He wants to create more debt to do that and he won't dare ask the wealthiest Americans to pay more taxes to lessen the burden on working-class Americans.
We cannot sustain the crippling debt that slows economic growth and destroys jobs. McCain once said he didn't understand economics "as well as he should." It's showing.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 8 2008 |