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The Short of TPP (Original Post) Octafish May 2015 OP
Truth. 840high May 2015 #1
The Gippet and the Incredible Hoax of Voodoo Economics Octafish May 2015 #6
They are laughing all the way JEB May 2015 #2
Gah! grasswire May 2015 #4
They've got an escape plan for when the tumbrils come rolling in. Octafish May 2015 #8
I was just thinking about that President today. C Moon May 2015 #3
When you blame Reagan (rightfully) FlatBaroque May 2015 #5
Reagan talked the talk of 'free trade' but tariffs rose under him and his only 2 'free trade deals' pampango May 2015 #7

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
6. The Gippet and the Incredible Hoax of Voodoo Economics
Fri May 22, 2015, 08:36 AM
May 2015

As in: "Win one for the Gippet," which Pruneface misread from the Teleprompter at Lord Poppy's nominating hatecon.



The Incredible Hoax of Reaganomics

David Stockman 1/3

By NomadicPolitics
Tuesday, October 2, 2012

For some time now, every GOP candidate wants to find some way, any way, to make a linkage to Ronald Reagan. It goes way beyond an illegitimate comparison into the offensive and idiotic. During the campaign in an interview with CNN, for example, Newt Gingrich had audacity to say,

"I think a big mistake on my part was to try to bring in conventional consultants. Because I am much like Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, I'm such an unconventional political figure that you really need to design a unique campaign that fits the way I operate and what I'm trying to do."


As if by invoking the name of the 40th president- like some enchanted spell- it will bring them political magic or a cloak of invisibility to hide their shameful ideological nakedness.

Trickle-Down is Reaganomics

Many have objected to Obama’s call for a fair tax system, in which the super wealthy will pay their rightful share. Taxing the “job creators” is, they bewail, out of the question. Where on earth do you expect jobs to come from if you punish success? they moan. Of course, anybody familiar with history will recognize that line of thinking as the trickle-down theory, which was a key feature of Reagan’s economic plan.

So much has been written on both sides about the supposed successes and supposed failures of Reagan’s economic policies. These policies go by many names, supply-side economics and the trickle-down theory and even as George Bush, Sr. once called them “voodoo economics.” Usually the opinions on his domestic programs fall along partisan lines.

When one adds the limitless esoteric terms of economists and career politicians, all hope of learning the truth about Reaganomics becomes pretty much a lost cause. Statistics and graphs appear like flowers from a magician's sleeve but to no avail because as all of us have seen, that kind of evidence can be made to prove just about any claim.

Some experts have made the claim that our present economic woes are a direct result of the reliance on the same policy, particularly tax cuts for the rich, deregulation and the free market philosophy. In order to give both sides a fair hearing, I thought I would investigate the background of Reaganomics.

CONTINUED with Voodo Economic Links...

http://nomadicpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-incredible-hoax-of-reaganomics.html



Like BizzaroWorld. The rightwing nutjob who almost destroyed California rose to become the amiable dunce who ushered about the destruction of the United States of America.
 

JEB

(4,748 posts)
2. They are laughing all the way
Fri May 22, 2015, 12:28 AM
May 2015

to the bank. Still laughing when they launch their yachts. Us workers are left to buy our chinese vaseline for the treatment we are going to get. I am done supporting Senator Wyden.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
8. They've got an escape plan for when the tumbrils come rolling in.
Fri May 22, 2015, 09:06 AM
May 2015

Frank 'Carlyle Group's Man in the Congo until Lumumba Was Gone' Carlucci is gonna make a buck off it. For floating luxury lifeboat berts starting at a modest $4 million, VIPs and their favorite mistresses who want to live after the Mad Max times come, Frank's the guy to see...



The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

The stinking rich are planning billion-dollar luxury liners that keep the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.

AlterNet / By Mark Ames
June 1, 2010

What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?

The first such floating castle has been christened the " Utopia"--the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale- -which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot "estates." The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.

SNIP...

Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.

SNIP...

While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank&quot is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.

I'll get into Carlucci's partners in the Frontier Group in a moment, but first, let's reacquaint ourselves with Frank Carlucci. From an early age, Carlucci learned the importance of getting to know the right people in the right places. He studied at Princeton in the mid-1950s, where as luck should have it, Carlucci roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. Both Carlucci and Rumsfeld shared a passion for Greco-Roman wrestling at Princeton, and both went on to serve in the Navy after Princeton. Their paths would split and merge several times over the next few decades, even as they remained close personal friends throughout their lives. In the late 1950s, Carlucci briefly served as an executive at a lingerie manufacturer, Jantzen (the Victoria's Secret of its day), but quickly left to join the State Department.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles



Most importantly: Seeing Wyden carry water in the spirit of Buy Partisanship for the plutocrats is most disappointing.

C Moon

(12,188 posts)
3. I was just thinking about that President today.
Fri May 22, 2015, 01:54 AM
May 2015

I wonder if he ever regretted what he was doing: taking the American flag and waving it to get the middle class to give everything to the rich; or if he actually believed the crap he was selling to the US citizens.

I blame Reagan heavily for what the middle class has been reduced to—and years later, NAFTA was the nail in the coffin.

FlatBaroque

(3,160 posts)
5. When you blame Reagan (rightfully)
Fri May 22, 2015, 08:32 AM
May 2015

it is appropriate to place as much, if not more, blame on Bill Clinton. Clinton finished the job that Reagan started. That was what the DLC was all about.

pampango

(24,692 posts)
7. Reagan talked the talk of 'free trade' but tariffs rose under him and his only 2 'free trade deals'
Fri May 22, 2015, 09:02 AM
May 2015

were with Israel (1985) and Canada (1988), neither of which is much mentioned or criticized today. Tariffs had declined under Carter and later did under Bush I and Clinton. But his talk did set the stage for later, more controversial trade agreements.
The modern decline in tariffs began with FDR and Truman. Tariffs rose significantly under Eisenhower then declined again under Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon/Ford and Carter before rising again under Reagan.

The only 2 administrations which saw an increase in tariffs since Herbert Hoover in 1930 were Eisenhower and Reagan. And Eisenhower never talked about 'free trade' like Reagan did. He was certainly more hypocritical about it than Ike was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history

I blame Reagan heavily for what the middle class has been reduced to ...

Agreed. He smashed unions, cut taxes for the rich and pushed deregulation and 'trickle down economics', all of which devastated the middle class. All those are policies that FDR and modern progressive countries avoid in favor of empowering unions, taxing the rich, regulating corporations and 'bottom-up' economics. Manufacturing employment and wages plunged during Reagan's 8 years. He deserves the blame.
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