The Great Satan

Now Folks !!

Below are the words of an ECONOMIST!! He says exactly what the Uke Man has been saying for some time – much of it here and available in the archives!!!

The rabid dogs running this country are worse than "Scrooge,"worse than “zombies” - which Krugman calls them. I don’t believe in Satan, and humanity doesn’t need Satan; but human devils are practicing their craft here on the earth. You can find them in Washington and in the board rooms of pharmaceutical, oil, agricultural, defense, media, and other corporations.

They are insatiable! THEY are the beasts that need to be starved!!

All I want for Christmas is for someone to drag Grover Norquist to his own bathroom and drown the mother-fucker in the tub!

- Uke Man





December 23, 2005

The Tax-Cut Zombies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)

If you want someone to play Scrooge just before
Christmas, Dick Cheney is your man. On Wednesday Mr.
Cheney, acting as president of the Senate, cast the
tie-breaking vote in favor of legislation that
increases the fees charged to Medicaid recipients,
lets states cut Medicaid benefits, reduces enforcement
funds for child support, and more.


For all its cruelty, however, the legislation will
make only a tiny dent in the budget deficit: the cuts
total about $8 billion a year, or one-third of 1
percent of total federal spending.


So ended 2005, the year that killed any remaining
rationale for continuing tax cuts. But the hunger for
tax cuts refuses to die.


Since the 1970's, conservatives have used two theories
to justify cutting taxes. One theory, supply-side
economics, has always been hokum for the yokels.
Conservative insiders adopted the supply-siders as
mascots because they were useful to the cause, but
never took them seriously.


The insiders' theory - what we might call the true
tax-cut theory - was memorably described by David
Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, as
"starving the beast." Proponents of this theory argue
that conservatives should seek tax cuts not because
they won't create budget deficits, but because they
will. Starve-the-beasters believe that budget deficits
will lead to spending cuts that will eventually
achieve their true aim: shrinking the government's
role back to what it was under Calvin Coolidge.


True to form, the insiders aren't buying the
supply-siders' claim that a partial recovery in
federal tax receipts from their plunge between 2000
and 2003 shows that all's well on the fiscal front.
(Revenue remains lower, and the federal budget deeper
in deficit, than anyone expected a few years ago.)
Instead, conservative heavyweights are using the
budget deficit to call for cuts in key government
programs.


For example, in 2001 Alan Greenspan urged Congress to
cut taxes to avoid running an excessively large budget
surplus. Now he issues dire warnings about "fiscal
instability." But rather than urging Congress to
reverse the tax cuts he helped sell, he talks of the
need to cut future Social Security and Medicare
benefits.


Yet at this point starve-the-beast theory looks as
silly as supply-side economics. Although a disciplined
conservative movement has controlled Congress and the
White House for five years - and presided over record
deficits - public opposition has prevented any
significant cuts in the big social-insurance programs
that dominate domestic spending.


In fact, two years ago the Bush administration
actually pushed through a major expansion in Medicare.
True, the prescription drug bill clearly wasn't
written by liberals. To a significant extent it's a
giveaway to drug companies rather than a benefit for
retirees. But all that corporate welfare makes the
program more expensive, not less.


Conservative intellectuals had high hopes that this
year President Bush would make up for this betrayal of
their doctrine by dealing a death blow to Social
Security as we know it. Indeed, he tried. His proposed
"reform" would, over time, have essentially phased out
the program. And he seemed to have everything going
for him: momentum from an election victory, control of
Congress and a highly sympathetic punditocracy. Yet
the drive for privatization quickly degenerated from a
juggernaut into a farce.


Medicaid, whose recipients are less likely to vote
than the average person getting Social Security or
Medicare, is the softest target among major federal
social-insurance programs. But even members of
Congress, it seems, have consciences. (Well, some of
them.) It took intense arm-twisting from the
Republican leadership, and that tie-breaking vote by
Mr. Cheney, to ram through even modest cuts in aid to
the neediest.


In other words, the starve-the-beast theory - like
missile defense - has been tested under the most
favorable possible circumstances, and failed. So there
is no longer any coherent justification for further
tax cuts.


Yet the cuts go on. In fact, even as Congressional
leaders struggled to pass a tiny package of
mean-spirited spending cuts, they pushed forward with
a much larger package of tax cuts. The benefits of
those cuts, as always, will go disproportionately to
the wealthy.


Here's how I see it: Republicans have turned into
tax-cut zombies. They can't remember why they
originally wanted to cut taxes, they can't explain how
they plan to make up for the lost revenue, and they
don't care. Instead, they just keep shambling forward,
always hungry for more.