Since Bush took office in January 2001, over two million jobs have evaporated. Today, there are nearly 9,500,000 people looking for a job, the highest number in over 10 years. Moreover, the unemployment rate has risen to 6.4% the highest in over 9 years. Herbert Hoover would be well pleased.
The Bush/Cheney junta's promise that giving massive tax cuts to the already super-rich Americans, in the top 5% income bracket, would spur the economy is reminiscent of the failed "trickle-down" economics of the Reagan era which resulted in massive unemployment. It's not "voodoo economics"-- It's scarier and more sinister than that: It's a 21st century Feudal system, which the country's neo-Lieges are delighted to reign over, and are more determined than at anytime since pre-Depression days to install across the fruited plains (and worldwide).
The "top-dogs" & "fat-cats" at Bush/Cheney American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the neo-fascist "think-tank" run by people like Cheney's wife, cheered for the massive "tax cut for the rich", and got their court jesters (George Will, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, etc.) to "sell" this snake oil to the public, although the majority of respected economists (e.g. Paul Krugman-- read his articles in the NY Times) warned of its damage to the country, and the average wage earner.
Once the "tax cuts for the rich" were rammed through a puppet-Congress, these high-flyers running the AEI dumped their stocks so fast, it gives one whip-flash just observing the difference between their hypocritical Rhetoric & Actions.
Instead of investing these tens/hundreds of thousands/millions of additional dollars (from tax cuts created by slashing badly needed services-- like public education, environmental protection, homeland security, health care, unemployment aid, etc.), over-and-above their already fat incomes, to create jobs, as promised by Bush... instead, these Feudal lords & ladies ([i]sic[/i]) can be seen this summer in France and across "old Europe", dining at the top restaurants and staying at the 5-star hotels. Apparently, Bush's promise that the "investment class" would use that money to spur new business & thus create jobs, is like his promise to "leave no child behind": it only applies to the RICH.
The lives of those whose jobs were stolen and pension plans raided by these corporate thieves (ala Kenny-boy (Enron) Lay, Fastow, Skilling) are becoming increasingly hard, and in many cases, desperate. But then the neo-facists of the Bush/Cheney Feudal system regard those who aren't rich as Un-American and "Traitors" and of course, must be suffering as well from "class-envy".
The eminent historian Barbara W. Tuchman, wrote a vivid account of life under the feudal system in 14th century France in "A Distant Mirror", and of the horrific social and economic consequences of great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, while the many toil in filthy and dangerous conditions without respite. The Bush Domestic Doctrine is inexorably moving us in that direction, as the very richest Americans are becoming obscenely richer, while many are suffering, and the burden is upon the middle-class to bear the brunt of the "back-breaking" (and heart-breaking) promiscuous debt & deficit, to payoff Bush's unnecessary wars abroad, & la Belle Epoque at home for the wealthiest 5% now exempt from shouldering responsibility to this society.
Without our country's "rule of law", security, infrastructure (safe water & food), and hard working people; those prosperous folks whom, either are ambitious, smart, or, lucky (e.g. inheritance babies) couldn't enjoy the fruits of all-of-our-labors. FDR's New Deal recognized this fact, which spurred the unprecedented prosperity of the late 1940s through the 1960s. ("No man is an island"-- and those rich folks like Warren Buffet & Bill Gates Sr, acknowledge the debt they, and those who have "made it to the top", owe to society. Even a genius couldn't prosper in Bangladesh, Afghanistan & Iraq, where the lawlessness & mafia pirates terrorize people, and they lack sanitary conditions for healthy living.)
Ms. Tuchman said in "The March of Folly": "The power to command frequently causes failure to think"-- and, indeed, we are witnessing an inept, corrupt foreign policy enacted in Bush's "Pre-Emptive" Doctrine which enforces his arrogant will upon other nations. Moreover, we are witnessing the phenomena of power superceding reason enacted in Bush's domestic Doctrine for the Rich, leading us towards a failed socio-economic system of Feudalism, which should by now be considered as anachronistic and immoral as slavery.
These Bush Doctrines are not what the founding fathers had in mind for "We the People".
