Got a question for you....given a choice between a 40 year old Edsel and a 2011 hybrid Explorer, which car would you drive? Or to put it another way, if you were asked to give up your I-pad computer and required to work on an Apple IIe, in order to do your job, would you be happy to make the change?
For most, the answer to both questions is a resounding "no!" No Edsel and no Apple IIe.
The Edsel was a lousy car, conceived by an ego driven business mogul paying homage to his son of the same name, that thankfully didn't last very long. Nobody would buy it and those who did, complained about its inefficiency and bad ride. The old Apple computer was great for its time, back in the day. However it is vastly outclassed by 21st century computing machines. Completely inefficient by today's standards.
New and modern with better ease of use has always ruled the day and pushed humans further into the future. Progress is a good one word description.
Yet, with the American love for the shiny and new, why do we still embrace a 40 year old economic theory that has never worked? Talking about voodoo economics, now called the GOP plan for job creation, that Speaker of the House John Boehner will unveil today during another rotary club speech in Middletown.
The complete plan is on Boehner's website. You can read it here.
To sum it up it is heavy on more tax cuts for the wealthy, budget reductions for all social programs including killing medicare and social security, as well as a massive elimination of regulations designed to protect the middle class from predatory corporations. It is pretty much a rewrite of Congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan, which is a rewrite of the plan put forth by Bush the younger, which was a rewrite of the Contract on America, which was a rewrite on Bush the Elder's plan, which was inherited from Ronald Reagan's voodoo economics, spiced up by the fictional free market philosophies created by writer Ayn Rand.
SOPDD...same old plan, different day.
Nothing new dating all the way back to the day Ronald Reagan came up with the plan to screw the middle class into oblivion. Bush the elder, an old school Republican, actually coined the phrase "voodoo economics" recognizing the falacies of the logic. Then he promptly sold his soul to the devil and became Reagan's VP effectively signing onto and thereby validating the lie that is trickle down economics.
If Bush had stood firm, voodoo economics might have gone the way of the Edsel. Instead it continues to hang around today, 40 years later, helping more conservative right wing zealots nail down the lid on the coffin of middle America.
Reagan promised to balance the budget in 4 years...he didn't. Then he promised to balance the budget in 4 more years...he didn't. Bush the Elder found himself in the unenviable position of attempting to balance the budget while promising not to raise taxes...he couldn't.
Along comes Bill Clinton who stops the trickle down craziness and low and behold the budget balances and son of a gun, there is is even a budget surplus.
Then Bush the younger comes in and promptly reinstates trickle down..slashes taxes...starts two wars illegally...authors a massive social program with no way to pay for it...usurps the civil liberties and freedoms of American citizens. ends most deregulation allowing business to run roughshod and amok and suddenly America is on the brink of collapse.
Come 2008, The American people, tired of the illegal wars, and a tanking economy, wrap this pile of dogstuff into a leaky brown paper bag and hand it to Barack Obama and tell the anointed "magic negro" to dispose of it like a a good boy, quickly, which is of course, impossible.
To make matters worse, they don't give BTMN a full four years to effect change....the American people give him two years instead of four to scrub the congressional hallways clean. They don't give him any help...just tell him to git her done.
Obama has accomplished many wonderful things for the American people...almost everything except create jobs, leaving the American people very unhappy with the situation and still seeking change.
The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting change. Well, that is exactly what the American people keep doing. Unhappy with Obama's apparent timidity and or unwillingness to act more decisively, the midterm elections were used to reinstate the teabag driven GOP, which immediately took it upon itself to declare war on women and children. The destruction of the middle class was returned to the front burner.
Boehner and company ran on the premise that they would create jobs....They have not...In fact...they haven't tried being too busy pushing their outdated, and bigoted social mores onto the rest of the population. From the midterms on, it has been painfully obvious once again, that the only agenda for the GOP is to dismantle the great society, take women out of the workforce and defeat Barack Obama at all costs, even if it means sinking America. Long live trickle down economics.
And it will, unless America breaks the crazy loop in which it is caught and rejects the voodoo creation that is the Ryan/Boehner/GOP's Job Creation plan, once and for all.
