archived: 30 Jan - 5 Feb, 2005         Back                 Next

UPDATED:  FEBRUARY 3, 2005 

                        “A DIFFERENT KIND OF JESUS JUICE” 

Behind the Republican “image” lies the growing cancer of racism.  That conclusion is not that of TPJ, but Republican Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. 

Republican legislators in Arkansas are moving to deny State benefits to illegal aliens.  The bill would also require State employees to report suspected illegal aliens or face criminal charges themselves.  A copy of the bill can be found here: -- Senate Bill 206 

Gov. Huckabee responded admitted that the bill is:  

"inflammatory ... race-baiting and demagoguery." He said it is also "anti-life" because, he says, it would deny pre-natal benefits to illegal-alien mothers and therefore harm their newborns, who would be American citizens. The bill, Hackabee said, "inflames those who are racist and bigots and makes them think there's a real problem. But there's not."

A Baptist minister, Huckabee singled out Holt, also a Christian. Said the governor: "I drink a different kind of Jesus juice."  -- World Daily Net  

The radical racist Republican legislation is not the misdirected adventure of rouge Republican legislators.  Republicans in Arizona were successful in putting such a measure to a referendum that passed.  It has survived a constitutional challenge in that State. -- World Daily Net

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UPDATED: February 1, 2004  

                        UNTYING THE AMERICAN BONDS 

Democrats are naturally focusing on Bush’s proposal to abolish (“privatize”) Social Security.  Social Security is one of three linchpins that form the fundamental social contract between all Americans; free and appropriate pubic education and basic health care comprising the other two contracts between all Americans.   

Bush’s concept of an “ownership society” is nothing more than the antithesis of the American social contract that emerged from the New Deal and progressive Democrat policies.  The Republican concept is simply that every individual is more capable of providing for their basic retirement needs, education and health care through the private enterprise (corporate) system without government involvement. The Republican catch phrases; “personal retirement accounts,” “school vouchers,” and “private health care accounts” denote the Republican trilogy. 

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame has let the Republican “cat out of the bag” on the issue of health care.  In a recent speech, Gates explained the “success” of China’s new “capitalism:” 

Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates said China has created a brand-new form of capitalism that benefits consumers more than anything has in the past

"It is a brand-new form of capitalism, and as a consumer its the best thing that ever happened," Gates told an informal meeting late Friday at the World Economic Forum here

He characterized the Chinese model in terms of "willingness to work hard and not having quite the same medical overhead or legal overhead" – FXStreet (emphasis added) 

The Republican concept: 

[T]the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers — instead of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible "catastrophic" insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP confidence that the political balance of power has changed.

With Democratic strength reduced, President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) are pushing for action.

Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of Bush's "ownership society," say workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills. Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.

"My view is that this is absolutely the next big thing," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose consulting firm focuses on healthcare. "You are going to see a continued move to trying to get people involved in the process by owning their own health accounts." – LA Times  

Imagine what quality of health care average Americans, much less those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, can expect.  Already pressed by a reduction in real wages, how many Americans will truly be able to “own” (save) for their own health care. 

Sidney Blumenthal is starting to write on the subject in the context of Social Security “privatization.”  He cogently notes: 

Since the New Deal, the American social contract has been built upon acceptance of its reforms. When Dwight Eisenhower became the first Republican president after Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, he never challenged the New Deal, solidifying the political consensus that has prevailed for decades. Not even Ronald Reagan, who, after all, began as a fervent New Deal Democrat, attempted to overturn it. But now Bush has launched an assault on the social contract in earnest, seeking to blast away at its cornerstone, Social Security, which disburses pensions to the elderly and payments to the disabled.  . . .

Behind the pomp and circumstance of the inauguration, the display of might and rhetoric of right, lie the fear and trembling of the Republican Party. If the defeated, scourged and disheartened Democrats can maintain a modicum of discipline, the Republicans will alone be forced to defend Bush's Social Security proposal. And enough of them realize that attacking the fundament of the social contract may loose political furies against them. Already the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Thomas, has called Bush's plan "a dead horse."

But Bush appears determined to have regime change at home. In his first term, he promised "compassionate conservatism." In his second term, he pledges casino conservatism, the restoration of boom and bust, which he calls "the ownership society." He has gambled his presidency on it. – Salon  

Yet, even Blumenthal does not appreciate the magnitude of the Republican ideology.  Bush’s ownership society rests on dismantling not only social security, but public education and the basic right of American health care in favor of eliminating every “burden” on corporations and the richest corporate executives while leaving middle and lower class Americans to fend (“own”) for themselves. Republicans are simply about dismantling the commitments that Americans have made to each other. 

The Republicans are leading a radical movement to return America to the age of corporate dominance in America that existed before the New Deal.  The corporate magnates of Bill Gates’ ilk longingly look for a workforce that will accept “not quite the same medical overhead” in order to lift their profits and immolate the Chinese.  The Republican Party is their instrument to lead the political revolution.

Junkie Editor Michael Carmichael views the importance associated with the impeding selection of a Chairman of the DNC in the context of the philosophical war being waged between the Democrats and Republicans.  His lucid offering today is entitled “D-Day For The DNC.” It is a clarion call for a Democratic Party leadership that can envision the philosophical war that is being waged.  Carmichael’s sage analysis strikes at the heart of TPJ’s mantra: 

THERE IS A REASON WE ARE DEMOCRATS 

Do not miss Carmichael’s offering today!

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                        NO LONGER STABLE 

"The U.S. dollar is no longer - in our opinion is no longer - (seen) as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan said, speaking in English.  . . . Now people understand the U.S. dollar will not stop devaluating." – Tallahassee                        

Readers should commit Fan’s quote to memory.  Fan Gang is director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation and he made this statement at the World Economic Forum last week. 

It is not just the Chinese who are issuing the warnings.   

"There's nobody home on economic policy in America right now," said Stephen Roach, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley. The twin burdens of household and public debt in the United States, he said, are unsustainable. He described American consumers as "an accident waiting to happen."

With the dollar trading above $1.30 to the euro, near its economically tenable limit for Europe, Roach said, the United States could not rely on currency markets to right the imbalance with the Asian countries that finance American deficits by buying Treasury bills.

The answer, he said, was in the hands of the Federal Reserve, which he said would have to raise rates aggressively to curb the spending binge. Whether it could do that without triggering a recession is an open question, especially given the impending retirement of its chairman, Alan Greenspan. – International Herald Tribune (emphasis added) 

Simply stated, Bush is sacrificing US Dollars position as the leading currency in the world and Americans will pay the price – in higher interest rates for everything Americans buy on credit. But there are profound political implications as well. 

Clyde Prestoqitz, Reagan’s senior trade negotiator and currently with the Economic Strategy Institute gives a hypothetical demonstrating the duel dangers of Bush’s economic policies that threaten the security of the United States: 

In a future crisis involving the tense China-Taiwan relationship, the Chinese ambassador suggests to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that maybe the United States would like to move its warships 500 miles away from Taiwan. Rice demurs. The next day, the Bank of China sells a few --just a very few to get our attention -- US Treasury securities. Money markets reel.

Would the Chinese play such a risky game? They have their own interests, geopolitical as well as economic. They are certainly not an American pawn, less so with every passing year. Miscalculations have happened in world economic relations before, and with calamitous results.

The Federal Reserve, meanwhile, is increasingly worried about inflation, largely of the imported variety due to the weak dollar. The Fed is steadily raising interest rates. With every quarter-point hike, consumers pay more for mortgage and credit card loans, investors in stocks become more wary, and the air goes out of the economy. Alan Greenspan kept rates very low long enough to get George W. Bush reelected. Now he is reverting to type. – Boston Globe  

From a macro perspective, Bush is leading America into a decline from its preeminence as the leading power in the world.  The National Intelligence Council, a center of strategic thinking within the US Government, reporting to the Director of Central Intelligence and providing the President and senior policymakers with analyses of foreign policy issues that have been reviewed and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community, has produced a report predicting that America, while remaining a central power in the world, will not be alone. These are some of the highlights from the report: 

The likely emergence of China and India, as well as others, as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape, with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries. In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the “American Century,” the 21st century may be seen as the time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own. A combination of sustained high economic growth, expanding military capabilities, and large populations will be at the root of the expected rapid rise in economic and political power for both countries.  . . .

The United States, too, will see its relative power position eroded, though it will remain in 2020 the most important single country across all the dimensions of power. – Mapping The Global Future (this reports is some 123 pages long, but is well worth the time to read) 

Democrats must start raising the alarm.  These are the talking points: 

Bush’s federal deficits are threatening the security of the United States and its future as a world power. As foreign governments, particularly the Chinese, loan America ever growing amounts of money they are becoming our bankers.  When an international crisis comes, will America be able to tell its bankers “no?”

Bush is the first US President not to defend the US Dollar against other currencies.

Bush’s weak US Dollar means you are paying more for gas, clothes and every other item people buy from oversees.

Bush’s weak US Dollar is fueling upward pressure on interest rates on everything American’s buy on credit.

The increase in the price of foreign goods and higher interest rates is, even according to Bush’s own Secretary of the Treasury. 

                        BUSH’S LEGACY OF DEBT  

Bush’s budget red ink is growing.  Bush’s budget for this year and the future: 

The White House will project that this year's federal deficit will hit $427 billion, a senior administration official said Tuesday, a record amount partly driven by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  . . .

[T]he number was among a blizzard of figures released Tuesday that illustrated how federal deficits remain a problem that Bush and Congress must reckon with.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that thanks to tax cuts and hurricane aid passed since its last calculations in September, the 10-year deficit had worsened since then by $503 billion, not counting war expenditures.

The congressional analysts projected that this year's deficit would hit $368 billion-- which would be the third highest ever-- excluding war costs. Adding expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan operations would push this year's red ink to about $400 billion, said Congress' nonpartisan budget analyst.

Underscoring budget pressures hounding lawmakers, senior administration officials invited reporters to the White House to outline their upcoming request for an additional $80 billion, or slightly more, to help pay this year's costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  . . .

There is little doubt lawmakers will follow Bush's lead, as they have repeatedly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The latest proposal would bring war spending so far to about $308 billion, including $25 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Congressional Research Service, which provides reports to lawmakers.

Bush plans to send his 2006 budget to Congress on Feb. 7. It will not include a request for more war funds for that year, the officials said, saving that request for later. – Chicago Sun-Times  

This is the fourth straight year in a row that the Federal deficit has grown. There is no realistic end to the red ink during Bush’s second administration.   

                        GONZALES          

Gonzales’ nomination as Attorney General was sent to the full Senate on a straight Party line vote.  Opposition to his nomination continues to grow, yet Democrats are unwilling to fight the nomination with the only tool they have – the filibuster. 

Simply stated, there are simply too many Democrat defections.  These are just two, Sen. Feinstein being the most disappointing:  

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., one of the dwindling number of “red state” Democratic senators and one who is up for re-election in less than two years, told MSNBC.com Wednesday he will vote to confirm Gonzales.   . . .

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who opposed Gonzales in the Judiciary Committee, told reporters, “I do not think there should be a filibuster of a cabinet nominee.” – MSNBC  

Jules Whitcover eloquently wrote of the Democrat failure to challenge the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State: 

If the Democrats are to regroup from the post-election wilderness to be a force again in Congress and at the ballot box, they first need to become a credible opposition voice. There was no place better to start than by voting against the confirmation of a chief architect of the Iraq folly that they profess to loathe.

At the outset of that fiasco, important Democrats such as John Kerry of Massachusetts, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Tom Harkin of Iowa tried to have it both ways by warning against any invasion without broad international support and then voting to authorize President Bush's near-unilateral use of force.

Mr. Kerry spent the 2004 campaign trying to explain away his ambivalence. Had he unqualifiedly made himself the Democratic voice against the war, he would have been in a much better position taking on Mr. Bush on the election's decisive issue.

As has often happened since before the Iraq war, Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia made the hardest-hitting case against the Rice nomination and in defense of the constitutional right to debate it on the Senate floor. Other Democrats could do worse than to seek a backbone transplant from him. – Baltimore Sun   

If Democrats are unwilling to filibuster a nominee who is largely responsible for the torture of thousands of people; where will the Democrats find a backbone? 

NEXT - THEM DEMS

Last Update: 04/23/2006