Response to Sanjay Sanghoee's blog on HuffPo

The current class war began January 20, 1981, the day that Ronald Reagan took office. He and Nancy made it a point to undo the populism that Jimmy Carter had brought to the White House, with Nancy infamously holding $5M cocktail parties while the country went through 3 separate recessions, all caused by what his former-opponent-cum-Vice-President George HW Bush had labeled 'Voodoo Economics' or what came to be known as 'Trickle-Down Economics'. 

Reagan was a strong proponent of privatization and of limited government. You have to ask yourself why. Why do the wealthy want limited government? Is it just because they want lower taxes? No, that's not all. Limited government means limited power to oversee things like predatory lending, byzantine derivatives, shoddy work at top-tier prices, sub-standard materials in things like roads and bridges, and on and on. If they can get by on the cheap, they pocket the difference. If they can get by without that pesky guy from the Labor Bureau looking over their records, they can pay people whatever they want and pretend they only worked half as many hours, thereby pocketing the tax difference.

Take every "white collar" crime you've heard of from Martha Stewart's insider information to defense contractors underbidding and overcharging. Make 10,000 copies of each crime, then mix them all up and scatter them piecemeal all over your list of corporations. That's what privatization will lead to, but it will conveniently skip that annoying indictment and prosecution process and won't lead to jail, but to a new cabana in the USVI.

Privatization is the glue that binds class warfare as well as the engine that powers it. If the wealthy own it, the government can't very easily control it, and when they own every-damned-thing, the government will be a toothless tiger. 

Remember what the poet John Donne said, and think about it in a privatization context: "If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were." 

When we allow a single piece of public property that should remain in public holding to pass to privatization, America will be the less.

Our Republic Can't Stand Another Conservative President

The bulk of human progress has been made in times of liberal thought. Consider the past few centuries alone and you'll find the Age of Reason, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and more.

The President has clearly been saying in his campaign speechs that WE are the government and that WE are responsible for building our republic, not corporations, not even the small business down the street. The President has been elucidating the reality that a power greater than any company can wield, a benevolent power used to help build up our industries, our infrastructure, our educational system, and everything that it takes to create a society can be used for good, for the common weal, and to insure that we recover from the disastrous conservative policies that go back as far as Richard Nixon and continued unabated through the Ford, Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 presidencies. The only progress made in the past 20 years has been made in the Clinton and Obama administrations. 

The two unimpeachable sources you should consult are the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office. If you do so, you'll find that under Republican rule, our nation took a step backward educationally, financially, and scientifically while those same three metrics improved under Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama, even considering the conservative-created debacles that all three inherited. 

The fact is that Republicans have set our republic back decades and it has taken Democrats to fix it.

Romney should do his own research

Response to Daily Beast article at the link here.


The fact is that Carter's necessary austerity measures brought the nation out of the deep recession brought about by 12 years of Republican rule - Nixon and Ford. Reagan capitalized on Carter's successes and unlike former presidents, refused to acknowledge that those successes belonged to his predecessor. While that happens to a varying degree in every presidency, it has never happened as much as it did with Reagan. Carter's programs were still in effect and working as far along as Reagan's second term. Carter also got more productive legislation passed in his 4 years than Reagan did in 8. That was not due to Reagan's reticence in growing the government, it was due to his personal inability to lead legislators despite the fact that so many defected from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. 

The Reagan myth lives on, just as do the lies that Reagan's PR team created about Carter. Also, Carter served as a line officer in the US Navy serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, whereas Reagan served in the US Army's First Motion Picture Unit and never left the States during his service. Carter lead the US nuclear disaster team after Canada's Chalk River Laboratory's accident. Carter, along with other members of his team, spent time inside the highly radioactive reactor disassembling it for shutdown. Reagan had no such leadership time nor service involving potential personal injury.

For Romney to attempt to disabuse President Carter is further proof of his 1%-er, bullying, elitist behavior.

Conservative policy failures and the failure of the two-party system

It has been the agenda of the GOP since Ronald Reagan's administration to broaden the gap between the rich and poor. This serves the purpose of preventing more people from achieving ultra-wealthy status and separates the Haves from the untouchables, the Have Nots. Be objective. Look for yourself. Read everything whether you agree with it or not, and do so with an open mind. I come from a long line of fiscal conservatives, many of whom have since left the Republican party, as I have. Members of our family were in Henry Hudson's expeditionary party, fought in every war from the Revolutionary war on. We have always been conservatives, but for the last 30 years, and even then it has been a slow exodus from the GOP. But you can't call yourself a fiscal conservative and simultaneously believe that the policies of Reagan, Bush 41, & Bush 43, as well as those of the Do Nothing 112th Congress are conservative. They're not. They have created a welfare state, but not one which helps those in need. They've created a welfare state which has served the ultra-wealthy. Trickle-down economics is a myth, such as it's portrayed. Twenty years worth of conservative administrations hasn't created the jobs they boast. It's all been a lie. As for the Democrats, they're not significantly better, either. It's time to abolish the two-party system and urge other parties into the mix. We also need to enact legislation which will force candidates to accept public campaign funding to remove money from the equation, and we need to ban lobbying completely. When wealthy concerns alone have the ears of lawmakers, individual rights get trampled.

Jim's GOP debate summary

Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, AKA Tweedledum and Tweedledumber - I know you are, but what am I?; Michelle Bachman - Look, Mama, I eated all my Obamacare!; Herman Cain - The tax is TOO DAMNED HIGH!; Ron Paul - It'ssss the MANDATESSSS, My Preciousssss!; John Huntsman - 請問這條領帶讓我看中國人?; Newt the Gingrich - Thou shalt not...JESUS CHRIST, look at the T*TS on that chick!; Rick Santorum - *insert Standard Protest #51 and prayer*