- The Dems are going after Bush the wrong way on the economy.
Instead of blathering on about repealing tax breaks, hereís what
they should be talking about.
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- Three short years ago, the U.S. economy seemed to be
a model of growth: The stock market went up every day, pension and 401(k)
plans exploded in value, and interest rates, aided by a shrinking federal
deficit, marched inexorably down. Every first of the month, the Labor secretary
would come on television and talk about the hundreds of thousands of new
jobs that were being created. The Treasury secretary, Hamilton-like, strode
among the world's leaders, offering lessons in how to fix economies the
American way.
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- Now jobs get lost monthly, the stock market seems stuck
in the mud, mortgage rates just went up eight times in three weeks, and
your pension or 401(k) is insolvent or vastly depleted. To make matters
worse, the price of oil is sky-high and rising by the moment. The Labor
secretary seems bewildered by the job losses; the Treasury secretary can
barely be heard among the grim din of a worldwide economic slump.
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- Yet somehow, despite the silver platter of gloom, the
Democrats have had limited luck in denting this president's remarkable
popularity.
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- Is that because things aren't as bad as we think? No,
it is because the Democrats have forgotten everything that President Clinton
and Bob Rubin taught them. They spend all their time talking about repealing
the tax breaks we just got and none of their time talking about fairness.
They offer nothing for job creation, and less for growth in general.
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- What should the Democrats be screaming about instead
of raising your taxes, a gambit that failed for Walter Mondale and for
George Bush Sr.?
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- Here's my multi-point plan to unseat President Bush in
a way that makes the economy the issue in 2004:
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- First, the greatest single issue for baby-boomers is
the utter demolition of retirement savings that has gone on in the past
three years. Americans believe in fairness; they hate it when top dogs
get millions and the pension plans get raided. The flagrant airline-industry-exec
packages, the embarrassing IBM and Xerox skims, the new "assumptions"
that allow executives to cut pension benefits to boost earnings - can't
any Democrat see this stuff and get as enraged about it as I am? How about
the rape of the 401(k)? Many of the plans in the country are beholden to
a few really horrible "aggressive growth" managers who kick back
fees to the companies themselves for sticking with limited menu offerings.
This cozy corroded capitalism has forced millions of classic white-collar
workers into working for many more years simply because the government
refuses to force the mutual funds to reveal their fee structures - which
include the kickbacks. How can the Democrats not see this?
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- Then there is corporate corruption. The head of the Justice
Department's Corporate Fraud Task Force, Larry Thompson, says that no fraud
is too small to go after. But the biggest fraud of all, the $12 billion
MCI-WorldCom fraud, gets fast-tracked out of bankruptcy, with no criminal
indictments and no scrutiny, even though many of the bad guys still work
there and the systems that corrupted things are still in place. Bernie
Ebbers, the man who ran the biggest fraud? Not even indicted. (Nor has
Jeff Skilling, the man who ran the second-biggest fraud ever, Enron, been
indicted. What a travesty!)
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- To make matters worse, by keeping MCI in the game, the
Feds are ensuring the destruction of what was once the single biggest creator
of jobs: the telecom industry. But if MCI is allowed out of bankruptcy
with almost no debt, you can kiss good-bye those jobs they are fighting
for so desperately at Verizon. Doesn't anyone see that either?
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- Most Americans think, after the debacle of the past few
years, that the stock market is rigged. They think legal casino gambling
is better-regulated. The only politician to see this is Eliot Spitzer,
who got more votes than the wildly popular George Pataki last time around
in his attorney general's race. Spitzer's been outspoken in trying to clean
up the game. But when the brokerage interests tried to snuff him last month,
did any Democratic pol come to his side, even though he represents the
key to the votes of those 55 million self-directed pensioners? Nah, another
missed boat.
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- Speaking of spurned silver platters, has anyone from
the Democratic Party read exñCIA agent Robert Baer's Sleeping With
the Devil? This credible source postulates that the coddled Republican-Saudi
relationship is based on the love of high oil prices, the GOP's embrace
of opec, and, alas, the dealings of the Republican-controlled Carlyle Group,
a defense protectorate of retired GOP bigwigs that takes Saudi money and
looks the other way at Saudi terrorism. Why not take up Baer's challenge
and link the GOP to higher energy prices and a coddling of Wahhabism in
the name of big profits in the back end from defense contracts and oil
profits? Shoot, I bet that one resonates with the Fox News Network, MSNBC,
and CNN!
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- With the radical rise in mortgage rates, plus the beginning
of the giant government-bond auctions, why can't one of the Democratic
candidates reach out to Bob Rubin and Larry Summers for some explanation
of how the Republicans are going to cause your home to lose value if they
don't do something to rein in government spending? That's the only linkage
to the ballooning deficit voters understand. Rubin tamed the deficit, which
let rates drop; now we are going in the other direction because Bush refuses
to veto any spending whatsoever. What a great opportunity for a Democrat
to say, "If elected, I will retire Alan Greenspan, put Bob Rubin in
as Fed chairman, and restore the Clinton legacy of ever-lower deficits
and ever-lower rates." And instead of obsessing about repealing the
tax cuts, the Democrats should focus on boosting the capital-gains tax
to its older, higher levels.
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- Somehow I picture Karl Rove laughing his head off in
the West Wing, saying to his cohorts, "They should be killing usóinstead
theyíre making us look good!"
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- You know what? He's right. The Democrats are beyond pathetic.
I guess that's why this lifelong Democrat and Democratic Party fund-raiser
just might be forced to abstain from voting next year.
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- Author E-mail: jjcletters@thestreet.com
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- Copyright © 2002, New York Metro, Llc. All rights
reserved.
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- http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/columns/bottomline/n_9118/
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