Vol.2 No. 87 March 28, 2008
The Bogus Economist
I liked Ike
There's good news and bad news. The bad news is more people lost their homes so far this year than at any comparable period in the last twelve years. The good news is Exxon-Mobil made over forty billion dollars in 2007, the highest yearly profit for any corporation in United States history. Whether or not you're cheering depends on how you view the opinions of a famous Republican president.
Last year, the papers were full of the hot debate in the House of Representatives about whether to turn off the ten-billion-plus-dollars-a-year spigot in taxpayer-financed tax breaks for Exxon and other energy companies. Some argued that this would be grossly unfair to Exxon shareholders and could put a crimp in our nation's oil supply. Others pointed out making Exxon a target would be alarming since our generous government provides over a hundred billion dollars in corporate tax breaks and if it fenced off one section of the trough, it would be a threat to the other diners.
While we were able to listen to the hard-driving, albeit short-lived, campaign of John Edwards, we heard the theme: “Why is the government in the business of wet-nursing corporations when millions of individuals are in deep trouble?” That's an interesting question.
In choosing between government and free-market solutions, Republican candidates, to a man, invoke the spirit of Ronald Reagan to justify the opinion that the government is not the answer, but the problem. These people favor the “invisible hand” of the market to make things right. Conspicuously absent are the words of another Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower: “As we peer into society's future," he said, “we must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."
I voted for Mr. Eisenhower in 1952, largely in support of ideas like these. I wore an “I Like Ike” button. This was the guy who was offered the nomination for President by both parties. He was the general who led allied troops to victory in World War II. Sixty-three years later, we might still want to pay attention.
Would Ike would be cheering the news about Exxon? I suspect, in normal circumstances, he would. Good Republicans cheer successful companies as they cheer successful people. Whether he would cheer so loudly if he knew Exxon's profits were due in no small part to the taxes of people who could be losing their homes is another question. Although businesses were a lot smaller in his day, Eisenhower knew the dangers of allowing either commerce or the military to assume too much of a role in America's future. In his most famous speech, he called this danger “the military-industrial complex.”
Today, the role of government versus private industry is more in the front of our presidential campaign than ever. It might be a good idea to examine the thoughts of a man who had the support of everybody from General Motors to the guy fixing bicycles: “I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”
Putting our requirements and desires in order isn't an easy job. For instance, everyone agrees that private companies are generally more efficient than government agencies, mostly because private companies can pick whom they serve while government agencies can't. How do we want to choose?
As an example, we're getting to the point where we're going to have to make some tough decisions on health care, mostly about who gets what. There will be considerable argument about costs, especially considering the War on Terror. Well, General Eisenhower had something to say about our priorities, too: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Was Ike a “liberal?” Try this one: “In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?” Sounds like common sense to me.
But maybe what he said about the basis on which we should pick our leaders is my favorite: “The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”
I liked Ike.
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Note: To all those who follow this column, I regret telling you this is my last one for the News-Times. Thank you for the more than 150 letters and e-mails and for your encouragement and support. It's been fun and I'll miss it.
Dick Brandlon
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The Bogus Economist © 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Monday, March 03, 2008
Pants on Fire
Vol. 2 No. 84 Feb. 29, 2008
The Bogus Economist
Pants on Fire
It's been over a month since we first heard the report of 935 false statements by the Bush Administration in the two years after 9/11 and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Administration didn't talk much about it, which can be understood, but neither did the Loyal Opposition, which seems to be more loyal than opposition. Charging an Administration with lying a country into a war doesn't seem to be minor news. Of course, the report could have been just another load of horse puckey, in which case it deserved to be ignored, but being dropped didn't kill it.
Like a seed, the thing went dormant for a couple of weeks, sent down tiny roots and, by the end of February, stuck its first little shoot above ground, where an alert Bogus Economist spotted it and, like any good investigator, submitted it to an interview.
“Good morning, Mister or Miss Shoot,” I said, “What brings you to our fair land?” The shoot consulted its notes and replied in a distinctly Eastern accent that since it couldn't get a hearing on TV, it was taking its case directly to the people.
“I've got a list of almost a thousand fibbies scattered by the White House in the two years after 9/11,” said the shoot, “including 532 statements linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or saying that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These statements left no room for argument. They were definite. Over two hundred fifty of them were made by the President.”
“But that means Mr. Bush led the country into war under false pretenses,” I gasped.
“Right,” agreed the shoot, “Now excuse me, I've got to continue growing.”
Naturally, I was taken aback by this information since the shoot was correct in saying his/her charges had not been widely broadcast by the media. Could the shoot be part of a smear campaign against Mr. Bush to balance the ones Karl Rove used so effectively against the Democrats and even against John McCain? Where did the story start? Maybe it was in the left corner of somebody's basement. I went to Google.
I found the authors of the study were Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith and that it had been published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity. Was this a fly-by-night outfit? Back to Google. Well, it seems Mr. Lewis started the Center in 1989 after an eleven year career in television journalism, including a job as a producer for “60 Minutes.” The Center has published over 250 investigative reports, fourteen books, including “The Buying of the President ,“(1996) (2000) (2004) and “The Buying of Congress.” Concerning its accuracy, it had won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Foundation and several others. The Center might be tilted a bit left, but it had solid credentials.
After the charges were made, Presidential Press Secretary Dana Perino was indignant. “I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including, I mean, they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.” I see. That makes it O.K. Thanks, Ms Perino, I feel a lot better.
Whoever is right, we're certainly entitled to know if the guy who won the presidency not once, but twice, told us a stack of whoppers. The Center's judgment was harsh: “The Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.” This is strong stuff and deserves our attention. After all, deliberately lying to advance a political cause that causes damage to Americans isn't in the same league as jaywalking.
Heaven knows lying isn't new. Politicians have been lying since the time of Federalists and Whigs, although words like “spin” were invented lately to make it sound friendlier. In recent times, I can think of Reagan fibbing about arms sales to Iran, George H.W. Bush's forked-tongue pledge on taxes, Clinton's fairy tales about you-know-what and our present president's myth about his military service. A good percentage of people believe they can tell a politician is lying because his lips are moving. However, while a lie is one thing; nearly a thousand of them in two years by one administration is another. These are big time Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire numbers.
The American way of settling things isn't to fight about whether or not Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney “spun” us into war, but rather to find somebody who can look into the whole matter fairly, render a decision and, if the Center (and the shoot) are right, have a trial to determine the extent of the deception. If they were wrong, we should raise hell and demand a public retraction and a very public apology, complete with front page headlines. It's simple as pie. People a lot smarter than we are have already told us how it should be done. You can find it in the Constitution. If you don't remember how it works, ask Bill Clinton.
-30-
The Bogus Economist © 2008
The Bogus Economist
Pants on Fire
It's been over a month since we first heard the report of 935 false statements by the Bush Administration in the two years after 9/11 and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Administration didn't talk much about it, which can be understood, but neither did the Loyal Opposition, which seems to be more loyal than opposition. Charging an Administration with lying a country into a war doesn't seem to be minor news. Of course, the report could have been just another load of horse puckey, in which case it deserved to be ignored, but being dropped didn't kill it.
Like a seed, the thing went dormant for a couple of weeks, sent down tiny roots and, by the end of February, stuck its first little shoot above ground, where an alert Bogus Economist spotted it and, like any good investigator, submitted it to an interview.
“Good morning, Mister or Miss Shoot,” I said, “What brings you to our fair land?” The shoot consulted its notes and replied in a distinctly Eastern accent that since it couldn't get a hearing on TV, it was taking its case directly to the people.
“I've got a list of almost a thousand fibbies scattered by the White House in the two years after 9/11,” said the shoot, “including 532 statements linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or saying that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These statements left no room for argument. They were definite. Over two hundred fifty of them were made by the President.”
“But that means Mr. Bush led the country into war under false pretenses,” I gasped.
“Right,” agreed the shoot, “Now excuse me, I've got to continue growing.”
Naturally, I was taken aback by this information since the shoot was correct in saying his/her charges had not been widely broadcast by the media. Could the shoot be part of a smear campaign against Mr. Bush to balance the ones Karl Rove used so effectively against the Democrats and even against John McCain? Where did the story start? Maybe it was in the left corner of somebody's basement. I went to Google.
I found the authors of the study were Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith and that it had been published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity. Was this a fly-by-night outfit? Back to Google. Well, it seems Mr. Lewis started the Center in 1989 after an eleven year career in television journalism, including a job as a producer for “60 Minutes.” The Center has published over 250 investigative reports, fourteen books, including “The Buying of the President ,“(1996) (2000) (2004) and “The Buying of Congress.” Concerning its accuracy, it had won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Foundation and several others. The Center might be tilted a bit left, but it had solid credentials.
After the charges were made, Presidential Press Secretary Dana Perino was indignant. “I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including, I mean, they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.” I see. That makes it O.K. Thanks, Ms Perino, I feel a lot better.
Whoever is right, we're certainly entitled to know if the guy who won the presidency not once, but twice, told us a stack of whoppers. The Center's judgment was harsh: “The Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.” This is strong stuff and deserves our attention. After all, deliberately lying to advance a political cause that causes damage to Americans isn't in the same league as jaywalking.
Heaven knows lying isn't new. Politicians have been lying since the time of Federalists and Whigs, although words like “spin” were invented lately to make it sound friendlier. In recent times, I can think of Reagan fibbing about arms sales to Iran, George H.W. Bush's forked-tongue pledge on taxes, Clinton's fairy tales about you-know-what and our present president's myth about his military service. A good percentage of people believe they can tell a politician is lying because his lips are moving. However, while a lie is one thing; nearly a thousand of them in two years by one administration is another. These are big time Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire numbers.
The American way of settling things isn't to fight about whether or not Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney “spun” us into war, but rather to find somebody who can look into the whole matter fairly, render a decision and, if the Center (and the shoot) are right, have a trial to determine the extent of the deception. If they were wrong, we should raise hell and demand a public retraction and a very public apology, complete with front page headlines. It's simple as pie. People a lot smarter than we are have already told us how it should be done. You can find it in the Constitution. If you don't remember how it works, ask Bill Clinton.
-30-
The Bogus Economist © 2008
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