by Benjamin T. Moore, Jr.

EVERYTHING THE TEA PARTY AND THE GOP ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT… Were in full swing for 8 years under George Bush. Odd we heard not a peep from them then isn’t it? Wonder what’s changed???

How do you bring down the United States? It is easy!

Destroying America In 3 Easy Steps

STEP ONE: Get rid of the Glass-Steagall act.

This was a firewall between retail banking and investment banking. Investors want a certain amount of risk. Taking risks can lead to windfall profits. Yes, you can lose your shirt, but heretofore, people who played in the investment markets, were the wealthy and only played with money that they could afford to lose.

With Glass-Steagall out of the way, suddenly people’s mortgages became investment instruments. Retirements became pension funds tied to the success or failure of your corporation. The middle class was built on home ownership. The majority of people’s wealth was in their homes. These homes were then passed down to their children giving them a leg up into the middle class.

For God’s sake! Don’t pass that wealth on to your children!!!

I can remember when ARMs – Adjustable Rate Mortgages – became all the rage. People were encouraged to re-finance their homes, take their equity out and spend it. Now they’re pushing “Reverse Mortgages,” Can’t have the “middle class” passing their wealth to the next generation. They might actually become really wealthy! You surely don’t think the collapse of the housing market was accidental do you?

STEP TWO: Cut the tax revenue coming into the United States

Click for full size.

The Bush era tax cuts, which the Republicans made permanent, are what has caused our national debt to sky rocket. Under Bill Clinton, we balanced our budget and had begun paying down our debt such that had we followed through, our entire national debt would have been paid off by the year 2010. Our nation would have been debt free! Once debt free, we could kiss the Federal Reserve goodbye! However, as I recall, the GOP simply hated Bill Clinton. Matter of fact, they impeached him! If the future of their grandchildren were truly as important as they’d like to pretend… They would have embraced Bill Clinton’s policies and remained on track to America becoming debt free. Bill Clinton left George Bush a $1.9 trillion dollar budget surplus.

STEP THREE: Burn through the national savings account.

George Bush went on a spending spree along with the congressional Republicans that would make a drunken sailor blush. Yes, we were attacked on September 11, 2001. I won’t go into the plethora of facts that make the official story absolute nonsense, but let us examine our response.

First, “Terror” is not a person. It is not a nation State. It is not an organization such as Al’Qaeda. Terror is a TACTIC. You cannot wage war on a tactic. Of course, caught up in the fervor of blood lust with our thirst for revenge, very little critical thinking was going on back then. We went into Afghanistan – which made sense – but, when we had the chance to capture Osama Bin Laden and decapitate the head of Al’Qaeda, we let him escape in order to rush into Iraq which had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on the United States. Al’Qaeda wasn’t even in Iraq until they followed us there.

Remember how we effectively cut our income by giving tax cuts to the top 1%? By launching two wars simultaneously, we were burning through billions of dollars a day and there was no revenue stream incoming to replace our outgo. Thus we simply threw everything on the national credit card. In point of fact, George Bush didn’t even include the costs of these wars as a budget item. What could possibly go wrong???

He is a better painter than he was a President… And his paintings suck!

The only thing that did go wrong was George Bush’s timing. I am firmly convinced that the plan was to mortally wound the United States and then let a Black President preside over its demise and of course take the blame. Things came to a pimple just a bit sooner than Bush had planned thus the TARP bailout was on his watch. Yes, that’s right. It was George Bush who signed the TARP bailout, Republicans rail against. If only things had taken a few more weeks to come together, George would have been back in Crawford Texas painting his water colors and acrylics, pretending no involvement.

The media propaganda has been working hammer and tong to rewrite history such that even now, most Republicans and TEA Party nit wits will argue vociferously that President Obama was responsible for the TARP, Of course, history – and spelling – were never really their strong suits.

We Are In Much Better Hands Than We Should Be

Let Detroit Go Bankrupt!

So, here we are. What they never counted on was President Obama being as competent as he is. Remember Mitt Romney’s article, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt?” Can you imagine having a President who would so cavalierly recommend the total destruction of an industry? Let us forget for a moment the human impacts of his advice. We all know that Mitt was born without a soul. Think for a moment what it would mean to the safety and security of these United States if we lost our manufacturing base.

If we have to have our weapons of war, manufactured and shipped to us, this creates a logistics problem and a critical supply line that could be cut by an enemy we were at war with. No need to bomb over here. Just bomb the factories that are producing our tanks, planes and other weapons of war in the various nations we’d be forced to buy them from. Think having a shotgun for home defense, but storing it at your neighbor’s house.

During WWI and WWII, it was our automotive manufacturing facilities that were tooled up and re-purposed to produce the Tanks, Jeeps, Half-Tracks, Heavy Trucks and fighter planes that helped us to win the war. The big foundries that were producing engine blocks began producing armor plating, hull sections for ships and submarines, and a host of other items we don’t even think about. Our automotive industries and their manufacturing capabilities are crucial to the safety and survival of this nation. Any person who doesn’t know this, shouldn’t be President.

Other than the Bush tax cuts, the next biggest drain on our budget is health care costs. I don’t want to live in a 3rd World Nation where people are left to die on the side of the roads. I want people around me to be healthy. My health and well being depend on it. So do yours. However, equally important is the fact that our population is greying, getting older. Older people require more and more medical attention. The question is not whether we’re going to pay for this, the question is how do we get the best service while keeping our costs down?

Let me share with you something from my own personal experience. A year or so ago, I had to have vein surgery to correct some varicose veins in both of my legs. Thus I had to have two surgeries. One on each leg. We spaced these about 4 weeks apart.

The bill for each leg was roughly $16,000 dollars or $32,000 for both. Mind you, this is routine outpatient surgery. I did not spend the night in the hospital either time. Of that total $32,000 my surgeon who actually performed the surgery, his two surgical nurses who assisted him and the Anaesthesiologist who put me to sleep and woke me back up, combined they got a total of a little over $5,000 dollars in total for both procedures. Where did the other $27,000 go? The Hospital received that for renting out it’s surgical suite for less than 4 hours.

What did I use in that suite that amounted to $27,000 dollars? Since I saw the inside of the suite twice, I can tell you that the lights were the same each time, the stainless steel table was the same, the monitors and equipment were the same. Nothing had to be replaced between operations. So what exactly cost $27,000 dollars? That’s $6,750 per hour. Just like a gas station attempting to explain why the price of gas jumped 60 cents in 24 hours, the Hospital will try and explain the cost they’re charging those of us who can pay. You know? The ones of us with insurance. Their explanation is, we’re paying for all those people who do not have insurance. The ones who are treated in the Emergency room and never pay their bills.

It is a vicious circle. Insurance Companies raise your premiums because hospital costs keep rising. Hospital cost keep rising because people who’s only option is to use the “Emergency Room,” often cannot pay their bills. So, ultimately who is paying for people not having health insurance? You are. Just because you don’t see it as an itemized figure on your bill, doesn’t mean it is not there.

We need to address this and we’ve known since the 40’s we’ve needed to address the rising cost of health care. When people don’t pay their hospital bills, the hospital corporations write those off as losses on their income tax statements. In essence, they are double dipping. They’re claiming a loss to the federal government, while raising their rates to cover that loss through each paying customer. It is a sweet system… if you’re a hospital.

Saving America

To save America we need to simply reverse what has been done to her. Regulate the banks. Get rid of the Bush tax cuts. The 1% were doing just fine under the Clinton era tax rates and we need to fix health care so that people can protect their income. It is just that simple.