Beating Our Economy to Death

The Neoconpoops are at it again, wanting you to believe that President Obama is beating the economy to death with his “socialist” ideas, based on the fact that the Dow Jones average has been on the decline for the last two months since he took the oath of office. But let’s take a step back and look at the FACTS, okay? I realize that, to neonconpoops, facts are anathema. Rupert Murdoch, one of their heroes (and CEO of F-word News Network) disdains what he calls “Fact-based journalism”. So let’s look at some of these facts, shall we?

First off, the so-called “socialism” of Barack Obama.

He has been accused of socialism because he wants to increase taxes on the rich and decrease taxes on the poor and middle-class. I have heard a lot about redistribution of wealth from these morons in connection with President Obama. The fact is that in America’s so-called Golden Age, the 1950’s, corporations provided around 55% of our operating costs, with taxes on the middle class and foreign investment and loan accounting for the other 45%. Today, the corporate contribution is less than 5%! The remaining 95% of our operational income comes from taxes on you and I and money from foreign countries, most noticeably China. In a time when our national security is of prime interest to us, we are deeply in debt to foreign countries, many of whom have proven themselves hostile in the past.

And if you want to talk about redistribution of wealth, let’s talk about the redistribution that’s happened over the last eight years. With all of the tax cuts and loopholes opened for corporations and the wealthy, we have seen the largest redistribution of wealth in human history – FROM the poor and middle-class TO the rich. In other words, Mr. Bush proved himself to be Dooh Nibor (Robin Hood in reverse). And yet, amazingly, no one cried SOCIALISM! Perhaps that’s because the ones in whose favor it worked didn’t want to bring attention to it, and the rest of us were just too damned busy watching Survivor Tuscaloosa. I guess that if you were going to call this something, it would be RE-redistribution of wealth.

Another argument for President Obama’s so-called socialism is that he is using socialist tools, such as using tax dollars to put Americans to work, in an attempt to jump-start our failing economy. This is not socialism, this is long-term economic stimulus. And calling him a socialist because he’s using these tools is like saying that if you use an engine tool, like a socket wrench, to fix something in your house that you’re trying to turn your house into a car. It’s simply not the case. I say let him use whatever tools he can in his attempt to rescue our economy from this Bush-inflicted depression.

As far as the stock-market goes…

Let me explain the concept of “trends” in the stock market. If you look at a chart of the stock market, make a straight line from point to point, you have what’s called a trend. You can do this with any chart, by the way, not just the stock market. I did it with a chart of my blood pressure one time to show the downward trend to the doctor, and he loved it. I explain that so that I can tell you that the trend of the stock market from the end of 2007 until now has been downward. There have been some spikes, but mostly it was down, down and down.

Losing money, in other words.

To be more specific…

From the end of January 2009 until the closing bell today, the stock market has lost 1282 points. So that’s a terrible loss over about a month and a half? Then to be fair, let’s point out that in ONE month, October, 2008, under the watchful eye of Mr. Bush, whom these “newsmen” apparently considered terrific for the economy, the stock market lost TWICE THAT MUCH. So if Mr. Obama is terrible for our economy for losing 1282 points in about fifty days, what does that make Mr. Bush for losing 2483 points in thirty days?

Peace.

Randal