GOP Destroyed U.S. Economy

by Paul B. Farrell - August 10th, 2010 - Yahoo! Finance

"How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

Stockman is generally right. Though he takes a couple of meaningless cheap shots at his old nemesis, Milton Friedman, and totally fails to understand the threat of Islamo fascism, the essence of his belief Republicans have failed to live up to their principles is true.

Free enterprise has died because Republicans keep supporting one so-called business element even though that element has long abandoned the Republican Party. I am talking of course about Wall Street. Dedicated to mergers and acquisitions to create monopolies without violating monopoly laws, the result of Wall Street actions is destruction of the key component of free enterprise called competition. Wall Street today is an enemy of free enterprise. Wall Street embraces crony capitalism that allows them to extort trillions from the American economy. Wall Street loves burdensome regulations that destroy their main enemy, small business. That is one reason that Wall Street gives 75% of its campaign contributions to Democrats and liberal Republicans. Republican voters still embrace free enterprise as it was meant to be. Republican leadership does not. They have embraced this crony capitalism that really is nothing but corporate socialism.

A secondary indictment of Republicans is the knee jerk proclamation that tax cuts are the essence of fiscal responsibility. Of course the exemption of all so-called poor from paying any taxes at all - results in many in the middle class accepting this anti-tax campaign as a fair way to reduce their own over burdened support of the welfare state. To continue to fianance welfare for both rich and poor, Republican leadership has accepted the inter generational destroying process of borrowing against our children's future. George W. Bush did both. He reduced taxes on everyone in order to buy support for tax reductions aimed at his country club buddies. He borrowed trillions to finance his big government goals.

In the process he fought a war that needed to be fought. Patriots applaud him for that. However it is questionable whether he fought it intelligently or not. It is also questionable whether the money spent got us what we paid for. Both Iraq and Afghanistan stole tens of billions of dollars on Bush's watch.

The belief that America is heading for a meltdown of historic proportions is the underlying reason so many are starting to look to secession and revolution as rational expectations for the near future. It is clear that Obama and his regime of socialists and Marxists expect the American people to simply accept their fundamental transformation. Stockman talks about a "black swan" event. That is an unexpected event. For sure Obama does not expect another economic meltdown like the one that happened in 2008. Nor does he expect that next time people will rebel before they allow government to bail out the super rich of Wall Street.

Stockman blames this coming meltdown on the failure of Republicans to live up to their own beliefs. He is harder on Republicans since the Democrats are not failing to live up to their beliefs but are embracing the beliefs they have always espoused even if they are wrong. Whether Stockman's view is fair is irrelevant. The only important question is whether we can survive the coming collapse as a single nation or not. For in either event what happens outside our borders could trigger the most disastrous war in history. When the nuclear bombs start exploding a lot of Americans are going to die.