America in Decline: the Real-World Costs of Conservative Ideology

[niceypoo]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/America-in-Decline-the-Re-by-George-Baikal-101215-682.html

By George Baikal

How has the Right been so effective in its messaging, when all empirical evidence contradicts the messages? Our power on the world stage has been diminished. Our economy, ravaged. The War on Terror is at a dreadful and costly stalemate. The "War on Drugs", a complete and total failure. Yet we continue, blindly marching in the same direction. Rich guys will always bank their money first, then decide at a later date what to do with it. -Unemployed folks will always immediately spend their checks on diapers and food and bills, for a stimulative effect that is at least five to six times more effective that any tax cut. -Sadly, that doesn't matter. -We're gonna freeze or shrink benefits, while ripping a fresh $ 1 Trillion hole in our federal budget. -A fresh Trillion for tax cuts that will be stashed directly, to quote Larry Gatlin, "in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills, in somebody else's name".

...


We're going to keep giving tax breaks to mega-churches and multi-billionaires, and subsidies to farmers to grow crops we don't need. We're going to continue corporate welfare, even as impoverished working people are physically removed en masse from their homes. We're gonna spend $1.35 Trillion on world-wide defense next year. -And more the year after that. -And the year after that, and the year after that.

...

[Crazy Dave]

1. We're also giving American corporations hundreds of millions to open factories overseas

Under the guise of "Promoting and selling American goods abroad"

Pepsi, Coke, GM, you name any corporation that does business overseas and do some homework and find out that the US government gives them EACH hundreds of millions in tax credits and subsidies every year to expand and advertise in other countries.

[niceypoo]

4. For corporations and the GOP America is a piñata filled with all the goodies they can grab

To the rest of us it's 'austerity'.

[Crazy Dave]

10. The GOP hasn't done it all by themselves n/t

[Newest Reality]

2. When you think of resource decline,

environmental degradation and climate change, it makes perfect sense to not negotiate the "American way of life", but to end it.

Hell, if I were the deadbeat rich, I wouldn't wait for hope to change things so that my wealth would not only remain ascendant, but might allow me to live on a planet free of so many useless eaters. Its only practical.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. The word "freefall" comes to mind.

[supertruck97]

5. False Numbers

"A fresh Trillion for tax cuts that will be stashed directly, to quote Larry Gatlin, "in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills, in somebody else's name"."

This is the height of journalistic malfeasance. Of the "trillion" or so in tax cuts, only around 1/4 of that is to the "Wealthy". To state otherwise is false and does NOTHING to move the argument forward.

[tblue37]

6. Well, the super-wealthy also own most of the vehicles for

mass dissemination of propaganda, so it is easy for them to convince American voters that black is white and up is down, especially since American voters, for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is being frazzled from working too many hours at exhausting, low-paying jobs), don't pay close enough attention to what is going on publicly and politically to have the ability to see through the lies.

[kctim]

7. Its the message, NOT the "messaging"

[BrklynLiberal]

8. It was predictable.,..and warnings were ignored.

[progressoid]

9. Nuh uh. It's teh Libruls that are causing the decline of America.

I read it in the newspaper.

So it's true.