My ongoing citizen's watch of the Neo-Con's machine and their maniacal ravings.
"Economic crisis? What Economic crisis?", so said the average Neo-Con Job Artist some as recently as 6 months ago and now, all of the sudden, not only are they willing to acknowledge the existence of said economic crisis but they somehow have all kinds of solutions for it. Well actually, they have no real new solutions but they have all kinds of feigned righteous indignation toward those who have the audacity to actually offer solutions that do not involve yet more tax cuts for the rich which seemingly worked so well for the economy under the Bush administration, right? Except that those tax cuts didn't work no matter how much the likes of Rush "I Hope America Fails" Limbaugh and John "The Fundamentals of the Economy Are Strong" McCain try to claim that they did or how hard they push to expand them under this new "stimulus" bill.
The first thing we need to discuss when regarding the "stimulus" bill is that far from being simply a "stimulus" bill it also serves as a rudimentary budget for the services that the government already provides and even an expansion of services that have been woefully underfunded, if not outright ignored, under the Bush administration. This is also the typical time of year that a president presents his budget for the year. Not only is it the job of this bill to create jobs, but it also must sustain jobs that already exist and expand projects already created. It is important to note that, although joblessness is a significant factor in this crisis, a greater fear is that of those who already have jobs who believe that they might lose them. It is necessary to convince those with employment that they are secure in that employment. But still, immediate job creation will be necessary. And it would be grand to just start a bunch of WPA-style shovel-ready projects (even though the same Neo-Con Job Artist who complain that enough money is going toward said projects are the exact same ones who spend a great deal of wasted energy engaging in revisionist history theories about the "failure" of the New Deal). Well, unfortunately for these Neo-Con Job Artists who want to, all of the sudden, re-invest in America's infrastructure after spending the better part of a decade more concerned with Iraq's infrastructure while forsaking America's, there are very few shovel-ready projects on deck. What, between the Republicans historic number of filibusters and Bush's vetoes, many of those projects have been put on hold. And, according to the Neo-Con Job Artists, these "shovel-ready" projects are doomed to failure anyway because they look dangerously too much like the New Deal and we just cannot sustain another New Deal, now can we?
Well, it's up to debate whether a "New New Deal" will work for America as a whole but one question is not disputable: a "New New Deal" will NOT work for the GOP. This stimulus package will not work for the Republican Party because they have yet to successfully fully counter the first New Deal yet and, after all, that has been the reactionary role of the Republican Party for the better part of seven decades. Yet, it seems that the New New Deal has brought the conservatives and the Neo-Cons together after a contentious (for the party) election campaign. They are once again united in their on-going reactionary stances against the politically successful Liberal economic policies of the New Deal and the similarly populist social programs of the Great Society. It is here that it is important to make a distinction between traditional conservatives and Neo-Cons (and the Neo-Con Job Artist that the movement wrought). It could be said that traditional conservatives got the first modern-day mobilization as a counter movement to FDR's New Deal. The tendencies of the "traditional conservative" is of those that believe in "fiscal responsibility" and government deregulation and, in contemporary terms, support fully the notion of the Free Market.
On the other hand, the Neo-Con movement got it's early boost from once liberals like Irving Kristol who actually supported the ideas of the New Deal but were disconcerned over the the intrusion of government not on economic policy but on the social agenda of America through the policies enforced with LBJ's Great Society. Many early Neo-Cons were, often, white males who felt threatened by the politicization of the Civil Rights, Women's and, eventually Gay Rights movement and who were led to believe that to share power was to, somehow, lose power. So, even though the Neo-Cons and the Neo-Con Job Artist who promote their talking point agenda like to appropriate the rhetoric of traditional conservatives and pair it with their own rhetoric against "affirmative action" and abortion or gay marriage, Neo-Con leaders like both Reagan and GW Bush have had no qualms about actually expanding government and it's programs in order to invoke their own policies contrary to traditional conservative ideology. In other words, even though Neo-Con Job Artist like to claim to be all for "fiscal responsibility" and "personal accountability" the leaders they support and, even, the rhetoricians they listen to (eg. drug addicts like Rush Limbaugh, sexual harassers like Bill O'Reilly, alcoholics like Glenn Beck, and voter fraudsters like Ann Coulter) are the furthest thing from "traditional conservatives".
Additionally, the greatest fear of Neo-Con Job Artist is that Obama will not only NOT FAIL but this "stimulus" package (which is actually full of many progressive reforms that might take root) will be the NEW NEW DEAL that they have trying to avert ever since the Original New Deal. Conservatives and Neo-Cons alike are afraid that the holistic approach of Obama's economic, social, and, even, foreign policy plans will be a new stumbling block for a modern conservative movement that has been long on contrarian criticism and obstructionist tactics and short on any equally comprehensive conservative policies to counter those of the major liberal packaged policies like the New Deal and the Great Society that were able to foresee the future economic, social, and political needs of the country. The closest thing that the Republicans have had to offer, spear-headed by the political and social influence of the Neo-Con Job Artists, is the "trickle down theory" of economics which, can be argued, is partially responsible for the crisis we now see ourselves in.
The failures of the conservative and the Neo-con movement alike is that they have tried to use "trickle down" rhetoric to attempt to apply a business model to the running of government. But not just any business model but what has become the prevailing model of the day, one that consists of the CEOs who see their role as not to necessarily improve their product and have long-lasting impact on the market but that of CEOs who try to oversee a company for a short period of time, get as much money (including bonuses) as they can and then get the hell out of Dodge (yeah, I'm talking about you, future ex-CEO of Chrysler Robert Nardelli). Gone are the days of the Sam Waltons or even Henry Fords who (bastards that some of them were) were still in it for the long run. Their idea of investment had to do with the long-term needs of the company if only because they dared to lend their very own names to those companies. These days the average CEO might have a five-year run as a company's leader and they might jump around from business to business often with little or no workable knowledge of the products they sell (not forgetting the fact that so many mergers have occurred over the last 30 years that those product lines can be everything from a oil company to a media empire to a string of fast food joints all rolled into one). The old business model that once encouraged extensive thought about long-term goals and market expansion now has become one that regards only the next quarterly reports as the end all be all and amounts to the short-sighted myopia that now accounts for too much of the corporate world.
Now, far be it for me to argue against the get-rich schemes disguised as sound business policy that drives much of the modern American business culture but when Neo-Con Job politicians try to impose that shifty agenda with all its shady connotations upon the running of our federal government, then more than a few people are going to have some things to say about it. Because, you see, the Bush administration has shown us what happens when the government worries more about the next quarterly report than the next several decades of our government's commitment to it's people. The Iraq War is just the most obvious example of this kind of thinking. Forget that it was sold to us like an iPhone, as if it were the next big gadget, the fact that it was subsidized not rationally through the collection of tax funds (as each and every war in American history thus far had been) but by a shell game of loans from foreign sources and our own future debts should tell us all we need to know about the doomed prospects of government ran as business. GW Bush ran the country like an enfant terrible CEO waiting to cash out after taking his daddy's firm out for a ride for a few years.
And that's just the problem, corporations can run their companies anyway they want (unless they fail then they fail and die off like the theory of capitalism suggests they should or they abide by government oversight because they require that same government to lend them a safety net). But, whereas JP Morgan and General Motors has the US federal government to turn to in their hour need, the US federal government has no one to turn to when they go under. Our government's only logical bailout plan is an investment in the future competitiveness of our nation. And that competitiveness includes investment in everything from a new fleet of government smart cars to increased federal school funding to condoms. A corporation can, for a time, get away with ignoring the needs of their employees and customers and even, investors, but a nation like the United States cannot afford to be so forgetful and flippant about the needs of our "employees" (ie. the American worker), our customers (ie. our consumers), and our "investors" (ie. tax payers and foreign business partners).
So now again, we have the Neo-Con Job Artists who failed to condemn the lack of fiscal responsibility of the last 8 years (because to do so would be to admit to the failure of their precious "trickle-down" philosophy) and even showed little distress over the failure of Bush to properly oversee the administration's own sorry attempt at a stimulus in the name of the TARP reform in the midst of yet another well-orchestrated hissy fit. But as these same Neo-Con Job Artists are all in tizzy about millions for smart cars and condoms they conveniently ignored hundreds of billions for illegal wars and bonuses for bankers. So, for the crimes of fake moral outrage regarding minute details in the stimulus bill, false equivalencies for declaring these minute details a return to "Big Government" spending (even though Bush has expanded the government more than any US leader ever), and willful ignorance for complaining about the lack of "shovel-ready" projects and failing to acknowledge that their own obstructionism over the last 2 years is much of the reason for the lack of "shovel-readiness" of these projects, I nominate John McCain and the Congressional and Senate Republicans as the NEO-CON JOB ARTISTS of the Week. Savor the last few remaining weeks of your relevancy Republicans. You had your chance to have a reasonable voice in the formation of the coming New New Deal. You decided that you would rather take your ball and go home than to cooperate, if not for the sake of your country, then for the sake of your parties future political pertinence.