American Economy Destroying America

[darkbeaver]

February 16, 2006
"Even Jobs at McDonald's Aren't Safe"
Their Own Economic Reality

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Who can forget the neocons’ claim that under their leadership America creates its own reality? Remember the neocons’ Iraq reality--a “cakewalk” war? After three years of combat, thousands of casualties, and cost estimated at over $1 trillion, real reality must still compete with the White House spin machine.

One might think that the Iraq experience would restore sober judgement to policymakers. Alas, neocon reality has spread everywhere. It has infected the media and the new Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who just gave Congress an upbeat report on the economy. The robust economy, he declared, could soon lead to inflation and higher interest rates.

Consumers deeper in debt and fresh from their first negative savings rate since the Great Depression show high consumer confidence. It is as if the entire country is on an acid trip or a cocaine trip or whatever it is that lets people create realities for themselves that bear no relation to real reality.

How can the upbeat views be reconciled with the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ payroll jobs data, the extraordinary red ink, and exploding trade deficit? Perhaps the answer is that every economic development, no matter how detrimental, is spun as if it were good news. For example, the worsening US trade deficit is spun as evidence of the fast growth of the US economy: the economy is growing so fast it can’t meet its needs and must rely on imports. Declining household income is spun as an inflation fighter that keeps mortgage interest rates low. Federal budget deficits are spun as letting taxpayers keep and spend more of their own money. Massive layoffs are spun as evidence that change is so rapid that the work force must constantly upgrade skills and re-educate itself.

The denial of economic reality has become an art form. Except for Lou Dobbs, no accurate economic reporting is available in the “mainstream media.”

Occasionally, real information escapes the spin machine. The National Association of Manufacturers, one of outsourcing’s greatest boosters, has just released a report, “US Manufacturing Innovation at Risk,” by economists Joel Popkin and Kathryn Kobe. The economists find that US industry’s investment in research and development is not languishing after all. It just appears to be languishing, because it is rapidly being shifted overseas: “Funds provided for foreign- performed R&D have grown by almost 73 percent between 1999 and 2003, with a 36 percent increase in the number of firms funding foreign R&D.”

US industry is still investing in R&D after all; it is just not hiring Americans to do the R&D. US manufacturers still make things, only less and less in America with American labor. US manufacturers still hire engineers, only they are foreign ones, not American ones.

In other words, everything is fine for US manufacturers. It is just their former American work force that is in the doldrums. As these Americans happen to be customers for US manufacturers, US brand names will gradually lose their US market. US household median income has fallen for the past five years. Consumer demand has been kept alive by consumers’ spending their savings and home equity and going deeper into debt. It is not possible for debt to forever rise faster than income.

When manufacturing moves abroad, engineering follows. R&D follows engineering, and innovation follows R&D. The entire economy drains away. This is why the “new economy” has not materialized to take the place of the lost “old economy.”

The latest technologies go into the newest plants, and those plants are abroad. Innovations take place in new plants as new processes are developed to optimize the efficiency of the new technologies. The skills required to operate new processes call forth investment in education and training. As US manufacturing and R&D move abroad, Indian and Chinese engineering enrollments rise, and US enrollments decline.

The process is a unified whole. It is not possible for a country to lose parts of the process and hold on to other parts. That is why the “new economy” was a hoax from the beginning. As Popkin and Kobe note, new technologies, new manufacturing processes, and new designs take place where things are made. The notion that the US can lose everything else but hold on to innovation is absurd.

Someone needs to tell Congress before they waste yet more borrowed money. In an adjoining column to the NAM report on innovation, the February 6 Manufacturing & Technology News reports that “the US Senate is jumping on board the competitiveness issue.” The Bush regime and the doormat Congress have come together in the belief that the US can keep its edge in science and technology if the federal government spends $9 billion a year to “fund innovative, big-payoff ideas that have the potential to transform the US economy.”

The utter stupidity of the “Protecting America’s Competitive Edge Act” (PACE) is obvious. The tremendous labor cost advantage of doing things abroad will equally apply to any new “big-payoff ideas” as it does to the goods and services currently outsourced. Moreover, US research is open-sourced. It is available to anyone. As the Cox Commission Report made clear, there are a large number of Chinese front companies in the US for the sole purpose of collecting technology. PACE will simply be another US taxpayer subsidy to the rising Asian economies.

The assertion that we hear every day that America is falling behind because it doesn’t produce enough science, mathematics and engineering graduates is a bald-faced lie. The problem is always brought back to education failures in K-12, that is, to more education subsidies. When CEOs say they can’t find American engineers, they mean they cannot find Americans who will work for Chinese or Indian wages. That is what the so-called “shortage” is all about.

I receive a constant stream of emails from unemployed and underemployed engineers with many years of experience and advanced degrees. Many have been out of work for years. They describe the movement of their jobs offshore or their replacement by foreigners brought in on work visas. Many no longer even know American engineers who are employed in the profession. Some are now working in sawmills, others in Home Depot, and others are attempting to eke out a living as consultants. Many describe lost homes, broken marriages, even imprisonment for inability to make child support payments.

Many ask me how economists can be so blind to reality. Here is my answer: Many economists are bought and paid for by outsourcers. Most of the studies claiming to prove that Americans benefit from outsourcing are done by economic consulting firms hired by outsourcers. Or they are done by think tanks or university professors dependent on corporate donors. Or they reflect the ideology of “free market economists” who are committed to the belief that “freedom” is good and always produces good results. Since outsourcing is merely the freedom of property to act in its interest, and since this self-interest is always guided by an invisible hand to the greater welfare of everyone, outsourcing, ipso facto, is good for America. Anyone who doesn’t think so is a fascist who wants to take away the rights of property. Seriously, this is what passes for analysis among “free market economists.”
Economists’ commitment to their “reality” is destroying the ladders of upward mobility that made America the land of opportunity. It is just as destructive as the neocons’ commitment to their “reality” that is driving the US deeper into war in the Middle East.

Fact and analysis no longer play a role. The spun reality in which Americans live is insulated against intelligent perception.

American “manufacturers” are becoming merely marketers of foreign made goods. The CEOs and shareholders have too short a time horizon to understand that once foreigners control the manufacture-design- innovation process, they will bypass American brand names. US companies will simply cease to exist.

Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, says that even McDonald's jobs are no longer safe. Why pay an error-prone order-taker the minimum wage when McDonald's can have the order transmitted via satellite to a central location and from there to the person preparing the order. McDonald’s experiment with this system to date has cut its error rate by 50% and increased its throughput by 20 percent. Technology lets the orders be taken in India or China at costs below the minimum wage and without the liabilities of US employees.

Americans are giving up their civil liberties because they fear terrorist attacks. All of the terrorists in the world cannot do America the damage it has already suffered from offshore outsourcing.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. :lol:
Edited to removed caps in thread title. Cosmo

 

[Jay]

Re: AMERICAN ECONOMY DESTROYING AMERICA

http://www.dol.gov/_sec/media/speeches/20050810_heritage.htm


Remarks Prepared for Delivery
by U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao
Conference on Challenges Facing the 21st Century Workforce
The Heritage Foundation
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, August 4, 2005

Thank you, Ed [Fuelner]. I want to commend you for your leadership and for making the Heritage Foundation one of the most sought-after sources of thoughtful policy analysis in the nation's capital. And it's good to see Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the former Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor.

The topic of this conference, the Challenges Facing the 21st Century Workforce, couldn't be more timely. In my travels around the country and around the world, it's clear that the importance of maintaining a skilled, competitive workforce is one of the most important challenges facing our country.

Today, the world is much different than even a decade ago. Global competition and information technology have increased both the rate and intensity of change. The economic strategies of the past, which have tended to emphasize building a competitive advantage in one specific area, are obsolete. Successful economic strategies of the 21st century will focus on the ability to constantly evolve and adapt to change.

Throughout its history, that has been a singular strength of the American experience. As one columnist has observed, Americans have always shown a willingness to adapt to change.

When the United States was founded, for example, nearly our entire workforce was employed in agriculture. Today, only about 2 percent of American workers are in agriculture. Yet, we produce enough food to feed much of the world. This positive correlation between change and increased productivity has been a powerful historical advantage. And it is critical, not only to our success as a nation, but to the higher incomes and standards of living that American workers enjoy today.

To give you an idea of the dynamism and flexibility of the American economy, consider this. Over the past 12 months ending in May, 52 million workers left their jobs and 55.3 million found new jobs. That means about one-third of our entire workforce of 149 million persons turned over. The fact that our society can tolerate this level and pace of change is a tribute to the strength of our economy and the resiliency of our workforce.

And it is remarkable that despite high oil prices, the war on terrorism and the economic weakness of many trading partners, the American economy continues to strengthen and create new jobs. We've seen 25 straight months of job growth, for a total of 3.7 million new jobs created since May 2003. And the majority of new jobs being created, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, pay above average wages. In fact, it is interesting to note that real earnings—adjusted for inflation—have gone up since the recession that began in March of 2001. If the majority of new jobs created were low wage, then real wages would be falling.

All this has been possible because President George W. Bush is committed to reducing the excessive taxation, over regulation and abusive litigation that hampers growth and job creation. And he has favored economic policies that create the climate for steady, consistent growth. Today's unemployment rate of 5 percent is lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Compare that with Germany and France, where the permanent unemployment rate is above 10 percent. More Americans are working than ever before. And last year, the United States had the highest growth rate—4 percent—of the major industrialized nations known as the G-8.

A major factor is the favorable balance the United States has achieved between worker protections and labor market flexibility. Preserving this balance is critical to our long-term future. It means that American workers can find new jobs faster. For example, 34 percent of unemployed workers in France and 50 percent of unemployed workers in Germany remain jobless for a year or longer, compared with 12 percent in the United States.

We all recognize that change brings disruption, especially for older industries and those experiencing rapid technological change. And sometimes, that can mean difficult challenges for workers. But America is a compassionate nation. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the generous assistance offered to workers whose jobs have been displaced by trade. They can access 104 weeks of income support, job training and supportive services such as child care, transportation and many more. And the government helps to pay 65 percent of qualified health insurance premiums for these workers. And if a qualified displaced worker is over 55, and gets a new job that pays less than their old one, the government will pay 50 percent of the difference up to $10,000. But we all recognize that the most important assistance a displaced worker can receive is a solid pathway to a new career.

Workers today are finding that many of the new jobs being created require more education and higher skills than in the past. More than 3.5 million jobs go unfilled in this country on any given day. I often hear from employers who say they cannot find workers with the right skills for the jobs they have available. The problem is the skills gap. This Administration has a comprehensive strategy to address the skills gap and help workers thrive in the 21st century.

First, the President introduced No Child Left Behind, the most comprehensive reform of the nation's public education system in 50 years. The goal is to ensure that each and every child has a strong foundation of basic knowledge and skills. It's impossible to overstate how critically important this is to our nation's workers, especially extending these reforms to high school.

Second, the President has proposed comprehensive reforms to bring the $10.5 billion, publicly funded workforce training system into the 21st century. Currently, this system is a collection of heavily regulated programs that are micro-managed by Washington. They are disconnected from the economy and the workers they are supposed to serve. The Administration proposal will:

1. Give states and local communities maximum flexibility and authority to customize the system to meet their needs;
2. Reduce overhead costs, including the layers of bureaucracy, complicated rules and regulatory loopholes that are wasting approximately $300 million annually;
3. Enhance individual choice; and
4. Streamline and eliminate where possible, duplicative programs to better serve workers.
And in exchange for greater flexibility, this Administration will demand greater accountability and real, measurable outcomes for workers.

Third, the President's High Growth Job Training Initiative identifies sectors of the economy that are growing rapidly and helps workers get the skills required to access these new jobs. And the President also launched a $250 million community college initiative, to tap into the resources of local job training providers to meet the skill demands of the future.

And fourth, the President will continue to pursue free and fair trade agreements, like CAFTA, to create more good paying jobs here at home. He recognizes that export-related jobs, for example, pay 13-18 percent more than the national average.

The key to sustaining a competitive workforce in the 21st century lies in successfully meeting these and other challenges, which many of your panelists have touched upon.

They include:

1. Maintaining a skilled and flexible workforce;
2. Ensuring a strong education system that provides opportunities for workers to continually upgrade their skills; and
3. Reducing the regulatory and economic barriers to risk taking and innovation, especially tort reform.
The Labor Department is doing its part to foster a climate for growth and job creation by continually updating and refining its regulatory agenda. Many of you are familiar with some of the Department's major regulatory reforms over the past four years.

They include:

a. Updating the white-collar overtime rules, which haven't been updated since Elvis was a teenager;
b. Reducing the Department's regulatory agenda from approximately 145-just before this Administration took office-to 85 in the spring of 2005. The goal is to give the regulated community an honest appraisal of the number of regulations that are actually in the pipeline and are likely to be completed; and
c. Updating the financial reporting requirements for labor unions, which haven't been updated since 1959, to empower rank-and-file union members.
But it is also important to recognize that, when it comes to fostering the conditions necessary for growth, economics is not the only force at work. Culture and political environment are also important. As an immigrant to America, I am especially sensitive to these factors. Open societies that reward individual initiative, foster transparency and accountability, and protect individual rights will continue to have an advantage over those that do not. That is the most important competitive advantage of the United States. When you combine our nation's cultural bias in favor of individual achievement with freedom-including free markets-transparent institutions and the rule of law, the result is the world's most powerful engine for growth and job creation.

Nurturing these values is the best way to preserve our nation's unique competitive advantage in the world and to ensure a high standard of living for our workers.

Thank you. In closing, we at the Department of Labor will continue to promote America's core values and to create and support policies that ensure a bright future for America's workers.

 

[darkbeaver]

Re: AMERICAN ECONOMY DESTROYING AMERICA

All Eyes on Khuzestan
A U.S. War Plan?

By CARL G. ESTABROOK

There's now a serious possibility that the Republicans could lose control of the House of Representatives this fall, and at least a statistical possibility that they could lose the Senate.

Meanwhile, approval of the administration's foreign policy, principally in regard to Iraq, has fallen well below 50% and continues to decline, while the Medicare drug fiasco has driven approval of their domestic policy, never high, to new lows. Moreover, the legal difficulties of the administration's Gauleiters, notably Libby and Rove, are serious, and the bottom could fall out of the ramshackle structure that supports the administration's felonious wiretapping (with some people thinking that there are further revelations to come about that curious episode: why did they bypass FISA, after all?). And it's SRO in the closet for all the Abramoff skeletons.

Cornered rats proverbially fight, however, and if things really get bad as 2006 goes on, with mid-term elections looming, the administration always has their ace in the hole: an emergency, preferably violent. (Imagine where the Bush administration would be, had there been no 9/11/01 attack.) Bush this week produced a suspect account of an almost-emergency, a putative foiled attack on Los Angeles in '02. (Again, the question: why mention it now? Why didn't they prosecute the conspirators at the time?)

Andrew Cockburn has demonstrated in these pages why a full-scale attack on Iran (four times the size of Iraq and not defenseless, as Iraq was) is out of the question. But, acting on the advice of the Truman-era senator who observed that "You can do anything you want with the American people if you scare them enough," the administration has been making headway among Americans with its scare campaign about Iran -- despite the uncomfortable resemblance to the campaign for the Iraq invasion (madmen armed with nuclear weapons, etc.) As our boy emperor himself once memorably put it, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me -- you can't get fooled again." Perhaps not, but the administration is surely trying...

But the administration may have choices other than a full-scale attack on Iran or an increasingly less credible viewing-with-alarm. If things get desperate enough that they need a military emergency to rally support for a beleaguered Bush and Co, there are things that they could do, short of all-out war. (In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh has described military intrusions -- "special operations" -- by the U.S. and Israel that have been underway in Iran for some time; the administration's new budget, just submitted to Congress, calls for a substantial increase in money for "special ops and psy-ops.")

John Pilger notes that, while the Pentagon cannot seriously plan to occupy Iran, it may be that "it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. 'The first step taken by an invading force,' reported Beirut's Daily Star, 'would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply.' On 28 January the Iranian government said that it had evidence of British undercover attacks in Khuzestan, including bombings, over the past year." Last year, the Iranian government announced that it would build the country's second nuclear reactor in Khuzestan...

A U.S. attack by land, sea, and/or air would of course be an act of desperation, driven as much or more by failing domestic politics as by America's long-term policy to control Middle East energy resources. But given that the U.S. has malgre lui constructed a vast self-conscious Shi'ite region (Iran, Iraq, and the oil-producing parts of Saudi Arabia) that is at once in possession of most of the world's oil and hostile to the U.S., a further attempt to control it in this fashion may recommend itself.

Remember that the U.S. doesn't need Mideast oil for its own consumption (one reason that Bush's comments on it in the SOTU speech were so odd), but has for decades insisted on control of it as a way to control its major economic rivals, Europe and northeast Asia. The U.S. will not easily give up control of the spigot. And Khuzestan may be the handle of the spigot.

Carl G. Estabrook is a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois.

 

[Jay]

RE: AMERICAN ECONOMY DESTROYING AMERICA

I'm not sure what the last post has to do with the thread title, but I can say this looks like good news....


"John Pilger notes that, while the Pentagon cannot seriously plan to occupy Iran, it may be that "it has in its sights a strip of land that runs along the border with Iraq. This is Khuzestan, home to 90 per cent of Iran's oil. 'The first step taken by an invading force,' reported Beirut's Daily Star, 'would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply.' "

 

[darkbeaver]

Re: AMERICAN ECONOMY DESTROYING AMERICA

Forget Iran, Americans Should be Hysterical About This
Nuking the Economy

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-benchmarked the payroll jobs data back to 2000. Thanks to Charles McMillion of MBG Information Services, I have the adjusted data from January 2001 through January 2006. If you are worried about terrorists, you don’t know what worry is.

Job growth over the last five years is the weakest on record. The US economy came up more than 7 million jobs short of keeping up with population growth. That’s one good reason for controlling immigration. An economy that cannot keep up with population growth should not be boosting population with heavy rates of legal and illegal immigration.

Over the past five years the US economy experienced a net job loss in goods producing activities. The entire job growth was in service-providing activities--primarily credit intermediation, health care and social assistance, waiters, waitresses and bartenders, and state and local government.

US manufacturing lost 2.9 million jobs, almost 17% of the manufacturing work force. The wipeout is across the board. Not a single manufacturing payroll classification created a single new job.

The declines in some manufacturing sectors have more in common with a country undergoing saturation bombing during war than with a super-economy that is “the envy of the world.” Communications equipment lost 43% of its workforce. Semiconductors and electronic components lost 37% of its workforce. The workforce in computers and electronic products declined 30%. Electrical equipment and appliances lost 25% of its employees. The workforce in motor vehicles and parts declined 12%. Furniture and related products lost 17% of its jobs. Apparel manufacturers lost almost half of the work force. Employment in textile mills declined 43%. Paper and paper products lost one-fifth of its jobs. The work force in plastics and rubber products declined by 15%. Even manufacturers of beverages and tobacco products experienced a 7% shrinkage in jobs.

The knowledge jobs that were supposed to take the place of lost manufacturing jobs in the globalized “new economy” never appeared. The information sector lost 17% of its jobs, with the telecommunications work force declining by 25%. Even wholesale and retail trade lost jobs. Despite massive new accounting burdens imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley, accounting and bookkeeping employment shrank by 4%. Computer systems design and related lost 9% of its jobs. Today there are 209,000 fewer managerial and supervisory jobs than 5 years ago.

In five years the US economy only created 70,000 jobs in architecture and engineering, many of which are clerical. Little wonder engineering enrollments are shrinking. There are no jobs for graduates. The talk about engineering shortages is absolute ignorance. There are several hundred thousand American engineers who are unemployed and have been for years. No student wants a degree that is nothing but a ticket to a soup line. Many engineers have written to me that they cannot even get Wal-Mart jobs because their education makes them over-qualified.

Offshore outsourcing and offshore production have left the US awash with unemployment among the highly educated. The low measured rate of unemployment does not include discouraged workers. Labor arbitrage has made the unemployment rate less and less a meaningful indicator. In the past unemployment resulted mainly from turnover in the labor force and recession. Recoveries pulled people back into jobs.

Unemployment benefits were intended to help people over the down time in the cycle when workers were laid off. Today the unemployment is permanent as entire occupations and industries are wiped out by labor arbitrage as corporations replace their American employees with foreign ones.

Economists who look beyond political press releases estimate the US unemployment rate to be between 7% and 8.5%. There are now hundreds of thousands of Americans who will never recover their investment in their university education.

Unless the BLS is falsifying the data or businesses are reporting the opposite of the facts, the US is experiencing a job depression. Most economists refuse to acknowledge the facts, because they endorsed globalization. It was a win-win situation, they said.

They were wrong.

At a time when America desperately needs the voices of educated people as a counterweight to the disinformation that emanates from the Bush administration and its supporters, economists have discredited themselves. This is especially true for “free market economists” who foolishly assumed that international labor arbitrage was an example of free trade that was benefitting Americans. Where is the benefit when employment in US export industries and import-competitive industries is shrinking? After decades of struggle to regain credibility, free market economics is on the verge of another wipeout.

No sane economist can possibly maintain that a deplorable record of merely 1,054,000 net new private sector jobs over five years is an indication of a healthy economy. The total number of private sector jobs created over the five year period is 500,000 jobs less than one year’s legal and illegal immigration! (In a December 2005 Center for Immigration Studies report based on the Census Bureau’s March 2005 Current Population Survey, Steven Camarota writes that there were 7,9 million new immigrants between January 2000 and March 2005.)

The economics profession has failed America. It touts a meaningless number while joblessness soars. Lazy journalists at the New York Times simply rewrite the Bush administration’s press releases.

On February 10 the Commerce Department released a record US trade deficit in goods and services for 2005--$726 billion. The US deficit in Advanced Technology Products reached a new high. Offshore production for home markets and jobs outsourcing has made the US highly dependent on foreign provided goods and services, while simultaneously reducing the export capability of the US economy. It is possible that there might be no exchange rate at which the US can balance its trade.

Polls indicate that the Bush administration is succeeding in whipping up fear and hysteria about Iran. The secretary of defense is promising Americans decades-long war. Is death in battle Bush’s solution to the job depression? Will Asians finance a decades-long war for a bankrupt country?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. :lol:

 

[I think not]

Re: AMERICAN ECONOMY DESTROYING AMERICA

Your laugh darkbeaver is indicative of wishful thinking, sorry to dissapoint you, we'll be around for alot longer than you think.

 

[darkbeaver]

RE: American Economy Dest

You will be arround for a long time but it won,t be the same as it is now. Relax get on a plane take the family to Disney World.

 

[I think not]

I'm all Disneyed out, I'm sick of the place, next trip is Spain!!

 

[darkbeaver]

"The Only Road to Peace is Justice"

Riding High with Hugo Chavez

By MIKE WHITNEY

Hugo Chavez’s meteoric rise on the world stage has as much to do with his defiance of Washington as it does with his leadership of a hemispheric revolution. At great personal risk, Chavez has consistently lashed out against his witless-nemesis, George Bush, and the coterie of sycophants who do his bidding.

Yesterday, it was Bush’s poodle, Tony Blair, who entered the Chavez crosshairs. Blair has been Bush’s main ally in the illegal occupation of Iraq and the ongoing war of terror. In Parliament this week, Blair admonished Chavez that he should “respect the rules of the international community”, ignoring his own gross violations of the UN Charter and the Nuremburg Tribunal. Chavez responded to Blair with a hearty salvo:

“Don’t be shameless, Mr. Blair. Don’t be immoral, Mr. Blair, that you are one of those who have no morals. You are not one that has the right to criticize anyone about the rules of the international community”…You are an “imperialist pawn” who attempts to curry favor with “Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet.”

“Go straight to hell, Mr. Blair,” Chavez roared.

What Chavez lacks in discretion, he makes up for in candor.

While the feckless US Congress quivers at every edict issued from the White House, the barrel-chested Venezuelan fires off another round of grapeshot at the fraudster-and-chief:
“Bush is the world’s greatest terrorist”…”a madman”… (who) “thinks he owns the world and now is making plans to invade Iran, and plans to invade Venezuela, too…The American people are going to have to tie him down one of these days, because if they don’t he’s capable of destroying half the world.”

Chavez is the polar opposite of his arch-rival, George Bush. Raised in a dirt-floor shack, Chavez worked his way up through the ranks of the elite paratrooper-corps dreaming of becoming of becoming a baseball player and moving to the United States.

Bush, on the other hand, is a patrician slacker, who drank his way through high school and college, went “missing” during his tour with the Champagne Unit of the Texas National Guard, and ran three companies (Spectrum, Arbusto, and Harken) into the ground. He finally, found his niche in politics when he realized he could translate his family name and connections into political capital. Since then, he has faithfully served the corporate interests that catapulted him to the presidency; providing lavish subsidies to industry giants, tax cuts to the wealthy, and deregulation to nearly every area of commerce.
The divisions between Chavez and Bush are more than just personal. Chavez imagines a world where government is deeply involved in the health and welfare of its citizens and where certain guarantees of security are provided under the rule of law. He has worked tirelessly to actualize a modern Bolivarian Revolution, loosening the centuries-long grip of colonial rule and binding the continent together in a shared vision of peace and cooperation.

He’s become the bane of the petro-oligarchs who see his efforts to redistribute some of Venezuela’s vast oil wealth into social programs as a direct challenge to their authority. (Ironically, Chavez’s attempts to share oil profits are not nearly as extreme as the many programs initiated by FDR under the New Deal. Even into the 1950s the highest tax rate for anyone making over $200,000 was 92%. This “socialistic” redistribution of wealth explains the explosive growth of America’s middle class following the Second World War)

Chavez has provided clinics and schools in every barrio in Caracas; ensuring that even the neediest citizens will enjoy federally funded health care, literacy programs, and a minimal standard of living. His vision of social justice is sharply contrasted to that of Bush who has consistently hacked away at education, public television, Medicaid, student loans, and the crumbling social safety-net that provides vital resources for the destitute. In Bush-world, the solitary function of government is to enhance the wealth of America’s “privileged few”.

While Chavez is working to create a nationally-owned web of oil and gas pipelines that will knit the continent together, Bush is pursuing a global resource war that has destroyed much of Iraq and killed tens of thousands of innocent people. The Chavez approach requires partnership and cooperation, whereas the Bush strategy is merely a continuation of smash-and-grab imperialism.

Chavez is correct to dismiss Bush’s wars as an expression of “savage capitalism”, the likes of which Latin Americans have endured for more than a century.

Starting in the “lost decade” of the 1980s, the policies which sprouted from the “Washington consensus” have increased poverty and despair throughout the continent on an incalculable scale. The IMF and World Bank forced austerity measures, deregulation, privatization of public services and resources, as well as painful cuts to social programs and education. The “free market” policies have curbed hyperinflation, but left 128 million Latin Americans living on less that $2 a day.

Chavez’s political fortunes are due in large part to the widespread rejection of the exploitative neoliberal policies and market-oriented reforms that have failed to reduce poverty. His ascendancy has breathed life into a vision of socialism that is essentially non-ideological, but deals with the immediate needs of the people and the obligation of government to meet those needs.

Chavez’s new-found wealth and celebrity presents a serious challenge to Washington. The Pentagon issued a report 2 years ago that warned of the dangers of “radical populism” spreading through Latin America. The Bush administration is concerned that real democracy will take root in the region and undermine the dominant role of US industry.

Equally worrisome, is Chavez’s threat to divert vital oil supplies going to the United States to foreign tenders if Washington continues meddling in Venezuelan politics. (Venezuela currently provides 15% of US oil imports.)

Chavez star seems to be rising just as Bush’s is beginning to fizzle. While Bush is mired in scandal and war, Chavez is grabbing headlines by promising to give away $4 billion in aid to his neighbors, provide assistance to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and donate cheap heating fuel to the needy in Massachusetts. His generosity has enhanced his stature as a world leader while America’s moral authority vanished sometime between the carpet-bombing of Falluja and the sadistic treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Chavez’s popularity has only grown with every scathing brickbat he hurls at the Bush claque. The public obviously enjoys seeing David tweak Goliath’s nose while the giant stumbles blindly from one bloody conflict to the next.

“We are happy that the maximum representatives of the assassin and genocide Empire attack us and call us what they like,” Chavez boomed. “If the dogs are barking, Sancho, it’s because we are riding”.

Chavez’s comments elicited a sharp response from Donald Rumsfeld who said, “We’ve see some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries” that is “worrisome”…Chavez “was elected legally- just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally-and then consolidated his power.”

“Adolf Hitler”?

That’s a stretch even by Rumsfeld’s standards.

Never the less, Chavez dismissed the Defense Secretary’s remarks saying, “Let the dogs of imperialism bark…that’s their role, to bark. Our task is to consolidate this century and the real liberation of our people right now.”

In recent months, Chavez has been aggressively trying to buy weapons from Russia anticipating another American coup or (possible) invasion. (He said that he has proof of a US plan code-named Balboa that was worked out under the Bush administration) He has vowed to cut off the flow of oil to the US if the Bush administration makes another attempt on his life and promised a century-long war if the US invades. Never the less, the prospect of hostilities hasn’t intimidated the effusive Chavez or caused him to tone down his rhetoric.

“The imperialist, mass-murdering, fascist attitude of the president of the United States doesn’t have limits”, Chavez said. “I think Hitler could be a nursery-baby next to George W. Bush”.

Ouch.

Chavez undoubtedly grasps the gravity of his situation and the likelihood that Bush will take military action against him sometime following an attack on Iran. As he noted last week when he was awarded the prestigious Jose Marti prize by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization:

“They will forever try to preserve the US Empire by all means, while we do everything possible to shred it.”

Chavez is persisting with his ambitious plans for agrarian reform, public housing, free health care, and redistribution of wealth. He is reshaping Venezuelan politics and influencing the way we think about governments’ obligations to its citizens.

As Chavez said, “The world needs development and peace, and the only road to peace is justice.”



:lol:

If I have another baby I,am going to name her/him/it,
HUGO FIDEL OSAMA DARKBEAVER :lol:

 

[EagleSmack]

Yes I keep hearing of all of these people out of work. What is funny is that I know NONE of them.

NONE!

All of my family, friends, and relatives have jobs and believe me I am not one of the 5% that supposedly holds all of the wealth of the world.

There are plenty of jobs here and good paying ones. My wife works in the medical software field and they cannot hold on to people. Why? Because they are taking other high paying jobs!

Try getting a plumber or electrician or any sort of work done in your house here in the US. If you aren't building a new house or new addition they won't even give you an estimate.

Where the stats get twisted is when there is a drop in unemployment. That is when the Liberals say

"Well that is because their benefits have run out and they have just stopped looking for work. They have given up."

Yeah... that must be what is happening. :roll:

 

[EagleSmack]

Fidel huh.

Oh yes... the model of communism. A Worker's Paradise.

I like how once the Soviets turned the money spiquot off he went whinning for the US Embargo to lift.

 

[Mogz]

RE: American Economy Dest

Try getting a plumber or electrician or any sort of work done in your house here in the US. If you aren't building a new house or new addition they won't even give you an estimate.

Being a trades-person in North American is practically a licence to print money.

 

[I think not]

As of May 2005, IBEW Local #3 electricians in New York cost a company $147,500 annually.