- The many victims of the collapse of the I-35 Bridge in
Minnesota on Wednesday can join the growing numbers of us who are troubled
by America's decaying infrastructure in the solace of knowing that our
nation's super-rich have never been happier.
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- Only a couple of weeks after a steam conduit exploded
beneath Manahattan prompting a CNN reporter to write, "With a blast
that made skyscrapers tremble, an 83-year-old steam pipe sent a powerful
message that the miles of tubes, wires and iron beneath New York and other
U.S. cities are getting older and could become dangerously unstable"
we added the Minnesota tragedy to the list of infrastructure problems coming
to the fore.
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- Yesterday, a Reuters news story exclaimed, "U.S.
politicians on Thursday treated the collapse of a highway bridge that killed
or injured dozens of people as a jarring wake-up call to fix the nation's
aging roads and bridges, but experts have been sounding the alarm for
years with limited success."
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- They went on to state that, "A 2005 report by the
American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country's infrastructure
an unacceptable D grade -- almost failing. The group estimated the United
States needed to spend $1.6 trillion over five years to put its infrastructure
into good shape.
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- But where will the money come from to repair and replace
that infrastructure? With an economy destined to decline, in part due
to the subprime financing scheme that is now beginning to filter through
the entire economic system, combined with massive war funding, tax cuts
for the wealthy and a dollar that finds itself sitting at the doorstep
of collapse, we find it increasingly impossible to afford appropriate
funding for any large public needs. So, what happened to the world's
richest nation that now leaves us in an impending state of permanent disrepair?
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- In January of 2001, a group of aggressive looters and
class warmongers came to power led by Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush. Their
goal was to promote the PNAC agenda and enrich themselves and their constituency
along the way. In fact, the very goal of the PNAC as promoted in their
literature is U.S. global domination -- which is another way of saying
that the U.S. wealthy elite have ultimate control of key markets and a
first claim to the subsequent riches those markets produce. But this group
isn't just content on raping the rest of the world. No, they have no qualms
about looting their fellow countrymen as well.
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- The PNAC agenda required firing up the "military
industrial complex" and going to war in the Middle East to secure
and control key energy reserves and establish world geopolitical dominance.
This, of course, would be a costly venture; but those costs would be borne
by the American public while the profits would go to the wealthy elite.
For this group of looters, when it comes to spending the public's money
for their own benefit, money is no object. There seems to be no amount
of our money that they aren't willing to spend in pursuit of their own
personal financial desires.
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- But spending the publics money on themselves isn't the
only goal of the looters. Their other goal is the looting of the treasury
by awarding themselves tax cuts even as they are increasing public spending
on projects beneficial to themselves.
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- Economists William G. Gale and Peter R. Orszag wrote
in the Minneapolis Star in September 2004 that, "Making the tax cuts
permanent would generate large, backloaded revenue losses over the next
10 years. Combined with a minimal but necessary fix to the government's
Alternative Minimum Tax, making the tax cuts permanent would reduce federal
revenues by almost $1.8 trillion over 10 years - and that's in addition
to the $1.7 trillion of revenue losses already locked into law."
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- A story in CNNMoney in April 2006 reported that, "Bush's
tax cuts for investment income have significantly lowered the tax burden
on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10
million by an average of about $500,000 . . . The newspaper's tax cut
analysis showed that more than 70 percent of the tax savings on investment
income went to the top 2 percent (of taxpayers)."
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- Tom Turnipseed, in an article titled, "Dick Cheney:
War Profiteer" points out that, "Just two years after he was
Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking
the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton.
Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney's privatization efforts
for our military's logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million
for five year's work with them before he slipped back through the revolving
door of war profiteering to become Vice- President of the United States."
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- Turnipseed goes on to report what we all now know is
true that, "The Bush administration has dished out lucrative reconstruction
contracts in Iraq to favored U.S. based corporations including Halliburton."
and that, "Under Cheney's leadership Halliburton out did Enron in
using offshore subsidiaries as tax shelters to hide profits to bilk U.S.
taxpayers." Prior to the Iraq war looting, Cheney's stock options
were worth $241,498 but are now valued at more than $8 million-- for an
increase of 3,281%
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- Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz produced
a study a few years ago suggesting the Iraq war costs would exceed $2
trillion. Additionally, we find that the super-rich have awarded themselves
more than $1.7 trillion in tax cuts.
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- On the other hand, the American Society of Civil Engineers
estimated that $1.6 trillion would put the nation's infrastructure back
into good shape. It seems that the choice is that we can either kill
Iraqis and destroy their infrastructure, greatly enriching the looters
who run our nation and their constituency along the way, or we can promote
our own societal needs.
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- Bush/Cheney Is Not Government - It Is A Form Of Looting
- Comment
- Dick Eastman
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- "American Society of Civil Engineers estimated
that $1.6 trillion would put the nation's infrastructure back into good
shape. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz produced a study
a few years ago suggesting the Iraq war costs would exceed $2 trillion.
Additionally, we find that the super-rich have awarded themselves more
than $1.7 trillion in tax cuts. ... 2001 Nobel economics laureate George
Akerlof called the Bush administration, "the worst government the
US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history, 'This is not normal
government policy. What we have here is a form of looting.' "
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