The Bush-Cheney-Rove Legacy - the gift that keeps giving.

To the credit of Great Wealth, we are on the eve of a "close" mid-term election. We are also witnessing the end of representative republican democracy (a poor means of conducting government, but which is superior to all alternative forms).

Unprecedented amounts of money (during a depression!) are pouring into this mid-term election. Because of a Supreme Court appointment by the previous administration, by one Judge's vote, we now have a system which permits corporations, and unidentified "persons", to electioneer. We have no idea who is funding the political ads, and MOST of them are factually misleading.

This de-regulation and privatization of public elections will live in infamy along other Bush era catastrophes:

(1) Appointing inexperienced and "political" judges.

(2) Tax cuts to the Super Rich - with ZERO economic benefit for anyone else.  The fact that the rich are richer while the middle class has collapsed, is the single achievement of the neo-Conservative take-over.

(3) Changing the laws so that "investment bankers" could destroy banking system. Glass-Steagal Act passed in the 1930's prevented banks from taking savings and putting money into investments with risk. The "new" (actually resurrected 1920's products) mortgage-backed securities, negative default swaps, and fraudulent investment "products" (literally toxic), destroyed the financial system.

(4) Oct 2008 tax payer bail-out for Wall Street -- unprecedented transfer of the risks to the public, providing yet another splurge of billion-dollar commissions to the bankers who had destroyed their institutions.

(5) Selling WMD to Iraq, then ignoring the UN inspection and attacking Iraq without a plan, leaving us with an un-winnable war, and the spectacle of rising religious intolerance and mass migration of refugees.

(6) Ignoring bin Laden in Afghanistan - repeatedly, and in spite of his large family, known relationships, and his control of a network of
(7) Ignoring terrorism until after 9/11,
(8) Ignoring deterioration of infrastructure with results such as the Katrina disaster,
(9) denying Global warming,
(10) destroying the civil justice system,
(11) making our schools the most expensive and least effective among nations,
(12) making our health care the most expensive and least effective among nations.
(13) starting with an income surplus, creating the biggest debt in history.

(14) Creating a hostility to independent journalists: Is it coincidence that in the Bush decade, journalists were increasingly singled out and killed by organized crime?  This global rise of tyranny reached its apex in 2009, with the murder of 76 journalists killed in connection with their jobs. Organized crime and right-wing militias became the biggest threats. After Obama took over, the murder rate plummeted. In 2010, the death toll was down 25% to 57.  Reporters without Borders, annual report from Paris.


(15) destroying the military - exhausting the Forces, and crippling the National Guard concept by pulling the citizen-soldiers out of their civilian employment for year-long war duty tours.

(16) privatizing the military and support services - Halliburton black no-bid "contracts" which guarantee huge profits to short-term fortunes while soldiers facing more risks have less to gain.

(17) Indifference to infrastructure - what utilities were not "sold" with corrupt discounts to private enterprises which promptly raised rates, were left languishing without maintenance and repair. Bridges, dams, highways, parks, water and power are all collapsing and deteriorating.
 
For the past couple years, many people have been working on this large hole which the Bush-Cheney-Rove Enron Halliburton cabal placed us into. 

Sabotage and Terrorism

Suppose a terrorist decides to blow something up. Say a bridge, or a building that took years to build. And he blows it up and people get injured. He would be culpable. We would not hesitate to hunt him down and hold him responsible.

Suppose a terrorist runs for Congress. And he gets elected by promising to reduce taxes and the size of Government. However, instead of reducing the size of Government, he actually reduces its regulatory functions but increases its budget. He votes so as to cut funding for the repair and maintenance of a bridge, or a building. But he increases taxes and redirects tax money into the coffers of a "capitalist" company to do nothing at great public expense. (I have to put quotation marks around ANY "private enterprise" company which is set up to take money from the Government, because any company that takes public money while pretending to be engaged in private enterprise, is a scam.)

For example, say the company operated as a "power broker" like Enron--whose "service" did nothing but increase the cost of electricity without providing any other value or producing any product whatsoever. Or like one of VP Cheney's multi-national corporations. Halliburton buys fuel oil in Iraq and sells it to the US military for more than twice as much as fuel oil costs anyone else in Iraq--another company that actually offers no service and produces no product except to expense the Government.

Anyway, your terrorist Congressman, dismantles the infrastructure of this country, each Government Department at a time, by defunding the regulators. No one inspects the bridge, no one repairs the bridge....and because of Entropy, and because earthquakes, floods and droughts occasionally do occur, pretty soon the bridge just collapses. Or buildings burn down, or for lack of Air conditioning or plumbing repairs, it just becomes unusable.

Now, are we going to hunt down this terrorist? Hold him responsible for his deliberate acts? Can we fix blame and responsibility for his Votes, his grip on our Public Purse Strings? Hunt him down and hold him responsible. Hold his "leaders" responsible. Hold his voting machines responsible?

One after another of the Bush appointees have been found to be incompetent at best, and deliberately predatory in benefiting themselves at public expense. The fact that Kenneth Lay was not only the founder of Enron but a long-time family friend of the Bushes reveals the complicity of Bush in terrorism. Another one of President Bush's relationships is with a billionaire Saudi Prince. These relationship reveal the scale of Bush's complicity with predators. It is true that the Saudi royals and the Lays are not "suicide bombers", but they are effectively WORSE in terms of the billion-dollar damage they have caused.