Monday, August 30, 2010

Garrett: Connecting Dots, Krugman: Witch-Hunt Season

From: Lila Garrett

Opening commentary on Connect the Dots

August 30. 2010 7 AM, on KPFK 90.7 fm
Host: Lila Garrett
Guests: Winslow Wheeler…. Center for Defense Info.
Congressman Bob Filner…Dem. from San Diego
Ann Fagan Ginger..Head of Mieklejohn Inst.

Good Monday morning. Welcome to CONNECT THE DOTS. I'm your host Lila
Garrett wondering what the Republicans are going to hit us with next . Last
week they seem determined to shred the fabric of our democracy down to the
last thread. They're no longer even pretending that they're in business to
serve the people. As we watch our insurance companies lower our health care
benefits while they raise their rates, we also watch the shadow of
privatization loom over every program that belongs to the people.
Schools turn from public to charter, which in turn are taken over by
special interest groups like corporations churches and the military.

Libraries are being either closed or run by private companies. They decide
what you read and for how much. And the privatization of Social Security
seems closer than ever. Obama made the mistake of creating yet another
committee to "study" the most solid program in the our history. He is the
4th President to do so. But the right wing still insists that SS is ailing.
It needs the fine claw of Corporations to take it over.

And since our President just can't say no to the barracudas of the right he
created another "bi-partisan" commission with Republican attack dog, former
Senator Alan Simpson as co-Chair. Simpson has called those who depend on
SS "lesser people". . The fact that those "lesser people" paid into SS all
their working lives is apparently irrelevant. How can those lesser people
be properly punished? Why, by privatizing social security of course. Here
are Alan Simpson's exact words.

If you have some better suggestions about how to stabilize Social Security
instead of just babbling into the vapors, let me know. And yes, I've made
some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the
last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America.
We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits!
Call when you get honest work!

Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming remembered for his
disgraceful attack on Anita Hill when she tried to tell ugly truths about
Clarence Thomas during his confirmation for the Supreme Ct. brought out of
moth balls by the President of the United States. Why he did this it another
of those Obama mysteries. Simpson is known for his biases, his tendency to
distort and mislead, and his ideological extremism. Put this threat to
Social Security together with last weeks's sudden halting of government
funding for stem cell research by a Federal judge, couple that with the
constant pounding by John Boehner, minority leader of the House to maintain
the tax break for the rich and what have you got? The Republican
leadership, gloves off, knives out, ready to slash every last vestige of
support for the people.

The excuse is the deficit. The Republicans, having created the greatest
deficit in our history under Bush are pretending to be panicked because it
costs money to keep we-the-people in food, clothing and shelter. Meanwhile
impending universal poverty is enough out of the closet for the whole
country to see it, so the Government has to come up with something.

Sec. of Defense Robert Gates to the rescue! He has volunteered to cut the
Defense Budget by 120 billion.. Since the Defense budget is almost a
trillion they'll never miss it, especially if it's a lie. Is it a lie?
If so what are they planning to do with that money? Winslow Wheeler, of
the center for Defense Info. joins us to analyze the new defense budget.
Prepare to be very angry.

And Congressman Bob Filner of San Diego, Chair of the House Committee on
Veterans Affairs has reason to be concerned. Veterans who continue to get
the short end of the defense money don't even begin to have their needs
covered this time. Filner wants 15% of the budget to go to them. What are
their chances of getting it? Filner comes on strong.

And somewhere in this shameful demolition of decent behavior, there may be a
ray of hope. Where does it come from? The California Legislature of all
places. They just passed a Bill which demands that our country stands up
for human rights. And according to Ann Fagan Ginger, head of the Meiklejohn
Civil Rights Institute of Berkeley this Bill doesn't need the governor's
signature. Sometimes we get lucky. Ann Ginger will join us.
But let's begin with the new Defense Budget Proposal. With us now is
Winslow Wheeler…


***

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30krugman.html?th&emc=th

It's Witch-Hunt Season

By Paul Krugman
NY Times Op-Ed: August 30, 2010

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch
hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill
and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once
Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton
administration to unrelenting harassment - at one point taking 140 hours of
sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its
Christmas card list.

Now it's happening again - except that this time it's even worse. Let's turn
the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: "Imam Hussein Obama," he recently declared,
is "probably the best anti-American president we've ever had."

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk
like this, bear in mind that he's an utterly mainstream figure within the
Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the
political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of
Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to
America?

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the
current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that
a significant number of Americans just don't consider government by
liberals - even very moderate liberals - legitimate. Mr. Obama's election
would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact
that he isn't, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

By the way, I'm not talking about the rage of the excluded and the
dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier
these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama
with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of
the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end
tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer's new
article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war
against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer
herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like
Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the
1990s, Mr. Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably
the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince
Foster. Now, as we've just seen, he's doing his best to insinuate that Mr.
Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there's an extra level of craziness this
time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame
compared with Glenn Beck.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will
stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

To take a prime example: the hysteria over the proposed Islamic center in
lower Manhattan almost makes one long for the days when former President
George W. Bush tried to soothe religious hatred, declaring Islam a religion
of peace. There were good reasons for his position: there are a billion
Muslims in the world, and America can't afford to make all of them its
enemies.

But here's the thing: Mr. Bush is still around, as are many of his former
officials. Where are the statements, from the former president or those in
his inner circle, preaching tolerance and denouncing anti-Islam hysteria? On
this issue, as on many others, the G.O.P. establishment is offering a nearly
uniform profile in cowardice.

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House?
We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they're gearing up
for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a "wave of committee
investigations" - several of them over supposed scandals that we already
know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the
federal budget, too; I'd put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown
sometime over the next couple of years.

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a
time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular,
we're
still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the
1930s, and we can't afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an
opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that's what
we're likely to get.

If I were President Obama, I'd be doing all I could to head off this
prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in
particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that
the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.

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