(10AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
It is painfully obvious to any educated observer that the proper role of the US Government in the current economic crisis is to act as the employer of last resort. The Obama administration should act immediately and vigorously to create government-funded jobs for the millions of unemployed engineers, administrators, technicians, and clerks whose jobs have been outsourced by predatory corporations, and whose dwindling incomes are the root cause of the deflationary spiral afflicting our economy. Unfortunately, the potent ideological legacy of Ronald Reagan is proving to be an enormous obstacle to the restoration of common sense and economic equilibrium.
Thus, before sanity and prosperity can return to America, we must De-Reaganize our political culture. Just as the Soviet Union went through the painful process of De-Stalinization by revealing the horrors committed by that miserable dictator, America needs to cure itself of the delusions of Reaganomics. Americans need to learn how Reagan taught our people to hate and distrust our own government. This hatred has spread and flourished to the degree that malevolent corporations are literally destroying our nation – through ecocide, endless war, and relentless exporting of jobs and industries.
Reagan’s militaristic hubris unleashed a torrent of grossly wasteful “defense” spending that continues today, with the grotesque justification of a Forever War against a few thousand ragged rebels hiding in caves. Reagan’s slavish devotion to his corporate patrons led to the support of the most vicious and brutal regimes in Latin America. But the worst mischief of the “Reagan Revolution” was the infection of the America body politic with an autoimmune disease, an intense hatred of its own government, that has led to our current crippled state. Obama cannot act to restore full employment because most of the nation has been brainwashed into believing the government cannot be trusted to manage any significant undertaking.
This means that only corporations can be allowed to rebuild our rail network, transform our energy infrastructure, and create jobs for the millions of long-term unemployed. But the current incentive framework for global corporations operating in America does not motivate them to do any of these things. Their sociopathic managers can assure their bonuses by continuing to hollow out America and squeeze declining industries for more profits.
Without De-Reaganization, America is doomed to a prolonged period of economic decline.
1 comments
Because they’ve full-throatedly taken up Reaganism’s mantle. Wait till January 2011. That’s the 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth. There will a nationwide “celebration” of All Things Reagan. That is, except for inconvenient stuff like our decimated middle class, our skyrocketing poverty rate and our intransigent unemployment. These will not be mentioned. Nauseatingly, Obama will volunteer as MC. The NBC network has already announced they’ll be in it with both feet–and all gazillion TV stations. It promises to be the most maudlin, treacly, nauseating spectacle since, well, since the aftermath of Reagan’s death.