Mission Accomplished! Thank You Mr. President…
I first stumbled across this over at Nashville Is Talking, and found it so compelling I just had to share with my audience — both of you. The video is brief and revealing, with key points summarized below.
Under Bush’s leadership as President:
- Over 5 million Americans have fallen into poverty
- Nearly 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance
- Median household income has gone down by nearly $1300
- 3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost
- 3 million American workers have lost their pensions
- Home foreclosures are now the highest on record
- The rate of personal savings is now below zero — first time since the Great Depression
- Earnings of college graduates has gone down 5%
- Entry level wages for highschool grads have fallen by over 3%
- Wages are now at their lowest share of GDP since 1929
- The growing gap between the rich and poor in American is the widest in the industrialized world
Thank you Mr. President, for educating us on the real advantages of being crooked enough to become filthy rich so that we too can enjoy multi-million dollar tax-free incomes. Following the fine examples set by your closest desciples, while sipping cool drinks at one of several of our favorite country clubs, we will snub our noses at those poor grimy bastards down in the trenches running what’s left of our country’s productive capacity, before that too gets shipped off to China. Just as you have… I am so excited at the prospect of becoming one of the elite…
12 Comments so far
[...] Contact the Webmaster Link to Article youtube Mission Accomplished! Thank You Mr. President… » Posted at nobody [...]
What is amazing is with all of this graft, total dismantling of our previous freedoms, sending kids off to war for reasons nobody can explain except 9/11 when Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, wrecking our budget, our economy, our environment, and on and on but what gets me even more is how few in this country really care. What has gone wrong?
I find it fascinating that he has been so damaging, and yet, he is still in office. There is no outcry for his impeachment. There is no one with power standing up to him. It is as if we all have just resigned ourselves to live with him till his 8 years are over.
I read this and almost cried. I am one of the statistics in more than a few categories. I have been really disturbed by the “Let them eat cake” attitude so prevalent in this country for quite some time. Let me tell you from experience: Poverty sucks!
And Winston? Check out my August 2nd post — I think you will be surprised!
Bernie Sanders? The first self-described socialist to be elected to the U.S. Senate? He’s one of the last people I would consult for an honest appraisal of the Bush economy. Why not ask Hugo Chavez?
The truth of the matter is that the economy is amazingly strong and resilient, despite the fact that we’ve had to recover from the dot-com bust, the aftermath of 9-11, numerous corporate scandals and, hopefully, one day we may even be able to recover from the constant negative hammering by the MSM.
Bernie Sanders’ real mission is to take down Jim Nussle, Bush’s nominee for White House budget director, a nomination which would have been unanimously confirmed this past week were it not for Comrade Sanders, who said he would hold up the nomination before the full Senate. The final vote was 22-1.
The last thing Sanders wants, being a socialist and an avowed Bush-hater, is a powerful and effective advocate for Bush’s economic policies in the run-up to the 2008 election. Believe what you want to believe, but things are not always as they appear at first glance.
22-1. Pathetic.
Mick, I know nothing of Sanders, at least nothing compared to what you obviously know. I will accept that you are correct about him. But the statistics he cited have been reported far and wide. Just because he cited them does not mean they are all false. And if you really want to drink the company kool-ade and believe the economy is “amazingly strong and resilient” that is your prerogative. However, that does not jive with those of us down in the trenches who are being hit harder every passing day.
Millions of jobs have been lost and not replaced. A strong stock market does not make a strong economy. People across the board are far worse off than they were 6 years ago. Bush’s programs and plans have not worked. And it is still getting worse. Costs up, profits down, wages down, taxes up, many local and state governments tottering on the edge of bankruptcy and having to cut costs, programs, payrolls in an attempt to stay afloat.
On a personal level, I too am struggling. Tell me again how all this adds up to “amazingly strong and resilient.”
If I make the assumptioin that the stats you quote are accurate, that is a damned dismal record. Let me preface any further comment by saying that in my judgment President Bush ranks right alongside President Nixon as the worst presidents in my lifetime. So, that said, I think presidential administrations are too often blamed for bad stuff and too often credited for good stuff. The tides of history influence things more than passing administrations in my judgment. So, I clearly hold out no brief for Mr. Bush, but I don’t blame him for everything.
Interestingly, the environment has not been mentioned here. As far as I’m concerned, this administration has an abysmal record on the environment, and that’s not due to the tides of history.
Well, Winston, I’m not an economist, and I didn’t sleep at a Holiday Inn last night, so I can just give you my opinion, enhanced with a dash of statistics. I have no idea where Sanders got his, but they don’t seem to fit with the ones I’ve read.
For one thing, the economy is in an unprecedented state of transition due to globalization; the cost of energy is highly sensitive to events in the Middle East due to our failure to develop our own energy resources and increase our energy efficiency; the divide between the rich and the poor is largely due to the rising level of education, especially in fields related to technology; poverty is relative, fluid, and complex - the very definition is still debatable, let alone the causes; certainly those who are considered poor in America would be considered rich elsewhere, and those living in poverty today are far better off than those in poverty just thirty or forty years ago.
In addition, most economic indicators tend to differ with the Sanders laundry list. The economy grew at an estimated 3.5 percent annual rate last year, compared with an average over the past two decades of 3.1 percent. The U.S. also created more than 2 million new jobs during the same period, driving the unemployment rate down to 4.6, the lowest in more than four years; personal income grew 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2007, up from 1.4 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2006.
Statistics are weird, aren’t they? Almost like a rorschach test. By the way, how can the personal savings rate dip below zero?
Mick asked: “…how can the personal savings rate dip below zero?”
Simple. Net personal debt (borrowing) was greater than net personal savings. Too many folks living on plastic and drawing down previous savings and not saving anything new.
Painful! To watch, to listen to…and to swallow…..excruciatingly painful.
People who are investors, who depend on the stock market for their pensions staying high are more likely to think well of the economy than those who have to earn a living by their own sweat (not to say the investors didn’t at one time but talking now), who have small businesses. It’s booming for the rich, for those who are in the right professions to profit from it. We are becoming a nation of have and have nots. Is that the goal of capitalism– not that we have capitalism with all the pork the government throws out to keep the pigs happy. We have a system that is mostly intended to benefit the corporate interests and theoretically was supposed to trickle down only not much is doing that unless you consider gardeners, maids, cooks, service people at minimum wage (which this crowd screamed at the idea those wages would be raised) are to where it trickles.
and if you want to get really upset, try sites like this one [http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41083/] and there are many more out there just like it with facts and figures– not many though in our so-called liberal media. The patriotic-first crew have been making a mint off this war which had nothing to do with terrorism… And this doesn’t even count the lost money in Iraq which is in the billions for which apparently nobody has to account. It’s not hard to understand why Bush still has support. Some have directly made money, some profited through their investments (from which they keep their fingers clean by not knowing where it was invested *wink wink*), and some of course are the religious right who forgot Jesus said anything about greed while they worry about gays getting married. Ack, you got a rant here