MIKE,

Hello old friend, 

            Well, I think I understand your frustration.  Only those of us who love the nation truly care about what seems to be happening around us, yet I do think you are looking in the wrong direction, and I’m going to try to tell you why I feel that way.

            The WSB-TV piece is a very clever exploitation of facts. It’s what in journalism school would be called perfect disinformation; in other words, it uses actual facts removed from context to convey a different meaning. This, incidentally, has become something of a hallmark of that particular Atlanta TV station.

            There is nothing new at all in the fact that U.S. aid is delivered through the state department to Muslim nations, especially Egypt.  We have been doing this since immediately after WWII and the expenditures have been approved by congressional votes of both parties. The concept is the same as it has always been; that is, to use U.S. aid to gain a foothold in the given area and to maintain it, which can and often is part of the behind-the-scenes groundwork that allows us to have military bases in areas that would otherwise be inaccessible, and in other instances to afford us leverage with the ruling authorities in nations that might otherwise line up solidly against us.

            So what the WSB-TV piece did is a further example of the current right-wing propaganda that we are enduring. The idea behind this piece is clear: to try to imply that Barack Hussein Obama is somehow suddenly spending our money to rehabilitate mosques in nations that clearly wish to do us harm. That’s not the case! These programs have been in place for decades, including when some of the most conservative Republicans held power.

            Similarly, the right is now criticizing Michelle Obama for taking trips around the globe, sometimes with her children, to some of the poorest nations. What the so-called ‘conservatives’ are not acknowledging is that the public relations value of these trips, which are covered well by the international press as well as our own media, far outweighs whatever expense is accrued out of the executive branch travel budget. Interestingly, in recent history only two ‘first ladies’ have been able to master such public relations victories – Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama – and of course they are both well educated professionals in their own right. 

            But let’s get to the heart of the problem: the so-called debate over solving our national debt and the Republicans refusal to allow the Bush Tax Cuts to expire, as they were supposed to do by the original legislation. In other words, all of the Republican shouting about Democratic “tax hikes” is just more disinformation because all the Dems are trying to do is let the top tier tax rate return to 38.6% from the 35% that was part of the ‘temporary’ cut G.W. Bush managed to get through Congress. There is no ‘Tax Hike,’ but only a return to a very modest tax on those with massive, top tier incomes.

            The GOP, through its control and domination of the American media, has managed to make many Americans believe the opposite of what is true regarding the nation’s income tax. Here are some facts that I’m sure you’ll find fascinating. Remember, this is current information.

          General Electric, through accounting strategies and divisional losses,, reported nearly zero tax liability for last year, prompting Newt Gingrich to declare it was a clever and rational response to the nation’s high tax rates. General Electric reported global profits last year of $14.2 billion, including $5.1 billion from U.S. operations.

            Gingrich, another announced GOP presidential candidate, made his remarks to economic conservatives in Washington. He praised the ‘Laffer Curve,’ the infamous and now pernicious theory that unless taxes are kept low, individuals and corporations will invest less and will strive to avoid paying taxes. George W. Bush and his allies used these arguments as they kept slashing taxes on the wealthy, but from 2002-2008 – the years of the Bush Administration – the nation lost over 2,000,000 jobs, when according to the Bush/GOP theory, the tax cuts for the wealthy should have been producing jobs. Clearly tax cuts for the wealthy do only one thing; that is, make the rich richer.

            Recently Gingrich incredibly asserted that GE and other corporations would pay more in taxes if the rate was cut to 12.5 percent, since they would consider it fair and rational.

            Gingrich, a man with a great deal of very unsavory political baggage, is unlikely to become the GOP presidential candidate, but the fact he is in the Republican fold with such public remarks should be a wake-up call, especially since Americans are enduring the residue of a near Depression brought about by Republican policies under G.W. Bush, a Depression that was barely avoided through the actions of Barack Obama and the Democrats.

            It might be well to consider the words of another president who also struggled against the aftermath of GOP policies and greed. “Here is my principle: taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay,” declared Franklin D. Roosevelt. “That is the only American principle.”

            It is well to recall such lessons of The Great Depression, which were not lost on Americans of both parties for many decades! In the 1950’s, during the Republican presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower the tax rate on those with the ‘top marginal income’ was in fact 91%.

            But even more striking is the fact that when Republican Warren G. Harding was elected in 1920, the upper income tax level inherited from his Democratic predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, was 73%, but by 1922 it was 56% and the Roaring Twenties – not entirely unlike the free for all of the George W. Bush years – were underway. By the time Calvin Coolidge, the understated Republican, was in charge during the late 1920’s, the top tier tax rate dropped first to 25% and then, in 1929, just before The Crash, to 24%.

            If this sounds familiar, as though history has been re-created by the very same political party that paved the way for The Great Depression, that’s because that’s what’s happened. It’s a tribute to how lessons learned can be forgotten and history overlooked. Wall Street greed and GOP plutocratic ambitions are once again center stage.

            Even when the bottom dropped out in 1929, Republican Herbert Hoover held the upper income tax rate at 25%. It remained there until FDR took office in 1932, when the top tier rate became 63%, then moved to 79% in 1936 and 81% in 1940.

            The top tier tax rate went to 91% at the end of the Truman Administration and stayed there, as already noted, through Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. In fact it remained at 91% until after JFK was murdered in 1963. It dropped to 70% in 1964 under LBJ, but went up again in 1968 (at the heart of the Vietnam War) to 77%, dropped to 71% during the Nixon Administration and remained stable there until Ronald Reagan took office; Reagan was the first virulently anti-tax GOP president. Under Reagan it dropped to 50% in 1982 and remained there until George H.W. Bush took office, when it dropped to 38.5% and then to 28%.

            Under Bill Clinton the top tier rate went up again to a modest 39.6%, and what happened after G.W. Bush became president has already been indicated.

            Newt Gingrich is unlikely to stand a chance in the upcoming GOP battles, but his low tax argument will be upheld by the current radical majority in the U.S. House. The test facing the nation is false conservatism, a philosophy that claims to want to protect American values while promoting exclusiveness and the autocratic rights of those with the most money and power.

            But let’s take a minute and talk about the man who put us in the cellar, George W. Bush.

            History will not fail to note that this man was questionably elected – both times – since the Supreme Court assured his first election and now issues have been revealed about Ohio and corruption with the electronic voting machines in the 2004 election; this issue is in federal court.

But in eight years George W. Bush effectively drove the greatest and most respected nation in the world into the gutter. *

            A simple, yet incomplete, listing of Mr. Bush’s ‘accomplishments’ will suffice to illustrate why there is no hope in history for this terrible president.

1)  G.W. Bush inherited a huge budget surplus from outgoing Democrat William Clinton of some $127 billion and turned it into a $455 billion deficit, which has now magnified into trillions. Simultaneously, he made the U.S. the world’s largest debtor nation, with China as one of its principal bankers, holding a mortgage grip on the nation and its future.

2)  Mr. Bush and his partner, Richard Cheney, created a right-wing litmus test to assure that only ideologues were appointed to all the government’s regulatory agencies, not to conservatively administer such all important bureaucracies, but with the clear intent of undermining their regulatory mission and dismantling them wherever possible.

a) This is what happened to the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), FCC (Federal Communications Commission), SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and many others. Bush and Cheney also filled the Justice Department with such individuals and used that department to provide legal justification for decisions of the executive department that involved violations of the Geneva Convention; for the first time America was seen by the world as willing to torture prisoners, becoming no different than the worst of fascist, communist and totalitarian regimes elsewhere.

b) The Bush/Cheney administration used its investigative and prosecutorial power politically to bring charges against Democrats, prominent and otherwise, in an ongoing effort to assure GOP long-term dominance in the hopes of making America a one-party state. They used the same tactics in the Defense Department, effectively silencing dissent and ultimately pushing aside or into retirement any officers who disagreed with them.

3)  George Bush set himself up as an imperial president who was not only above the  law, but was a law unto himself. He used ‘signing statements’ as a principal tool, distorting that process so that he could declare various legislation developed by Congress null and void as it applied to him. But he also made unilateral decisions in contradiction to long standing precedent and sometimes in defiance of the Constitution, then used the Attorney General and the Justice Department to develop a legal rationale.

 4)  Mr. Bush pursued a personal agenda in initiating war with Iraq, which has cost nearly 4,500 soldiers their lives to date, and an official tally of well over 30,000 wounded; the latter number is generally considered soft and it is believed many more men and women in the armed services should be included in that number. In all events, many of the wounded are severely crippled, and these numbers are small compared to the deaths and injuries incurred among the Iraqi’s, who Mr. Bush continues to declare he rescued. The Bush/Cheney administration tried to hide the American casualties by bringing bodies home at night, etc., and showed callous disregard for the U.S. wounded until the scandals at Walter Reed forced them to do otherwise.

5)  The actual perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks largely escaped under Mr. Bush, due to Mr. Bush’s decision to curtail efforts in Afghanistan in favor of attacking Iraq. It should also be recalled how many times Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney lied publicly to the American people and to the world at large about Iraq, and how many times Mr. Bush stated that he “no longer thinks about Osama bin Laden,” indicating Bin Laden was no longer relevant.

6) The international goodwill given to America after the 9/11 attacks was fully squandered by the Bush Administration, which conducted business in the manner of an arrogant, imperial and autocratic nation. What was a justified attack against Afghanistan was abandoned, unfinished, and now the Democratic president that the GOP currently reviles is the one who has moved that war toward something of a victory, including the go-ahead to take out Bin Laden.

7) The Bush Administration sought to undermine American freedoms and individual rights in ways large and small, beginning with the opportunistically fast development of the so-called Patriot Act, which makes a mockery of our Constitution is many ways. They sold this legislative travesty by promulgating fear, asserting that this nation, which has been known for being proud and brave, was so timid that when confronted it needed to give up its cherished and fought for rights and principles. Bush and Cheney followed up by making right-wing judicial appointments and behind-the-scenes efforts everywhere to limit traditional freedoms while monitoring phone calls and spying on citizens.

8) Mr. Bush pushed forward oil drilling and coal mining in some of the most beautiful parts of the nation, including segments of the national park system, while distracting Americans by his war efforts and simultaneously providing war contracts to Halliburton and other favored corporations.

9) Mr. Bush sought various ways to break the protective wall separating church and state, and always on the behalf of intolerant, right-wing Christian theology.

10) Mr. Bush and his administration turned a blind eye toward – and through its policies often encouraged – the plundering of the American treasury and the U.S. economy. Wall Street, bankers and mortgage lenders of all types were tacitly and sometimes overtly encouraged to exploit a bizarre free market zone, the U.S. economy. Also, Private contractors were given a green light to take over tasks that were normally the province of the Defense and State Departments, and to do so with little or no oversight or concern for costs.        

There is no doubt that the reason the nation and now the world is currently in a severe ‘Recession’ is because of Bush Administration actions and policies. In fact, if it weren’t for the billions that the Democrats used to prop up banks and other institutions, this would clearly already be a second Great Depression.

As it is, the history of this crisis is a remarkable mirror image of the Republican laissez faire policies of the 1920’s that led to The Great Depression. It’s not surprising that the evidence seems to lead toward the Bush/Cheney Administration having purposefully set out to economically wreck the nation, therefore leading it into the situation we now face and calling into question the expense for our long-standing social safety nets, which have long been a target of the right-wing.

The current GOP seeks to forget its role in how we got here and instead declare that they have the answer; simply cut all the social structure that has made our nation the envy of the world.

            Much, much more detail could be provided, but it’s unnecessary here. Historians will gladly take up that task, and the result will be devastating for the GOP, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who have escaped impeachment but cannot escape the verdict of history.

            But beyond that future reality, we are now watching a revolution from within; we are witnessing the extremely rich and powerful orchestrate the media and one entire political party, the GOP, in order to drive forward what appears to be one simple goal: taking control over the country and turning the nation into a one-party system, an oligarchy where the rich set the rules, there is virtually no middle-class, and everyone else simply works at their command.

 “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step over the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us! It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

       Abraham Lincoln, 1838

            So you have my deep answer to your question. I believe we’re in trouble as we have never been before and if there is anything I would criticize “my president” for it is his obvious inability to become a street fighter like the Republicans he is facing.

Pres. Obama speaks to us as adults, which is as he should if so many of us were not being bombarded 24/7 by right-wing propaganda into behaving like spoiled children who want everything without being responsible for anything. The propaganda emanates from ‘think tanks’ and similar outlets that are financed by people like the Koch brothers and the heirs to the Mellon fortune, among so many others.

Average people don’t understand that The Heritage Foundation, the Koch Family Foundation, the Scaife Family (Mellon) Foundation, The Olin Family Foundation and many others sink millions of dollars annually into funding the work of professional media experts, people whose only role, whose only full-time job is to provide so-called free-market propaganda and ‘advanced’ government concepts.

These outfits very often work according to ‘black ops’ standards and they are far and away more efficient than anything that could counter them, especially since the public media itself is no longer owned by people even vaguely associated with journalism or news.

            Remember, ABC news is owned by Disney Enterprises, which includes ESPN among other properties. General Electric owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo and others. Westinghouse owns CBS, Viacom and many other outlets.

            And of course Fox news is tied to Rupert Murdoch, who has spent a lifetime seeking to corrupt Western culture and values while promoting right-wing philosophy.

            So, I have tried to answer your question about “my president” in a way that will give you an idea of the facts of our situation as I see them. I believe we are in trouble, and that the trouble is being brought to us by people who could not possibly care less about any of us or the good of the country, which to them is simply a platform from which to work;  they are interested in power and money and are only looking toward the short-term.

Yours always,  

Mike

* Neo-con spokesmen from some of the think tanks were quoted publicly declaring that the idea was simple; bankrupt the nation and there would be no choice but to dismantle the social safety net.

October, 2011