In, "The Republican’s Big Lies About Jobs (And Why Obama Must Repudiate Them)," Robert Reich calls for President Obama to more agressively refute the incredible lies the GOP repeatedly spews before the public, and the media reports, as if they were true. If we don't, before long these lies become conventional wisdom: "truths" so obvious we don't even stop to think if any evidence exists to back them up.
http://robertreich.org/
And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became the truth.
– George Orwell, 1984 (published in 1949)
Reich's list of the big lies Republicans repeat so often, many people beleive are true should be required reading for all.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was in town yesterday (specifically, at Stanford’s Hoover Institute where he could surround himself with sympathetic Republicans) to tell this whopper: “Cutting the federal deficit will create jobs.”
It’s not true. Cutting the deficit will creates fewer jobs. Less government spending reduces overall demand. This is particularly worrisome when, as now, consumers and businesses are still holding back. Fewer government workers have paychecks to buy stuff from other Americans, some of whom in turn will lose their jobs without enough customers.
Has anyone here heard even one major traditional media report, pause to note this outrageous lie contradicts every bit of macroeconomics courses every business school, and economics student learns in Economics 101? And, what about the GOP's lies about the Social Security Trust Fund being in crisis?
Unless we stop and counter every one of these lies, every time they are told, with the big-picture truths, we unconsciously buy into those assumptions, and then start fighting with each other over whether we should should balance budgets with cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
But, back to Reich for a moment, before I focus on GOP lies about Social Security causing our current budget crisis.
What worries me almost as much as the Republican’s repeated big lies about jobs is the silence of President Obama and Democratic leaders in the face of them. Obama has the bully pulpit. Republicans don’t. But if he doesn’t use it the Republican’s big lies gain credibility.
Limited to fair use, let me just mention the titles of Reich's sub-section discussions, which I recommend we all study carefully, and memorize for daily use.
1. “Cutting taxes on the rich creates jobs.” Nope. Trickle-down economics has been tried for thirty years and hasn’t worked. After George W. Bush cut taxes on the rich, far fewer jobs were created than after Bill Clinton raised them in the 1990s.
2. “Cutting corporate income taxes creates jobs.” Baloney. American corporations don’t need tax cuts. They’re sitting on over $1.5 trillion of cash right now. ... They won’t invest it in additional capacity or jobs because they don’t see enough customers out there with enough money in their pockets to buy what the additional capacity would produce.
3. “Cuts in wages and benefits create jobs," ... But it’s dead wrong. Meager wages and benefits are reducing the spending power of tens of millions of American workers, which is prolonging the jobs recession. ... President Obama and Democratic leaders should be standing up for the wages and benefits of ordinary Americans, standing up for unions, and decrying the lie that wage and benefit concessions are necessary to create jobs.
4. “Regulations kill jobs.” Congressional Republicans are using this whopper to justify their attempts to defund regulatory agencies. Regulations whose costs to business exceed their benefits to the public are unwarranted, of course, but reasonable regulation is necessary to avoid everything from nuclear meltdowns to oil spills to mine disasters to food contamination – all of which we’ve sadly witnessed. Here again, we’re hearing little from the President or Democratic leaders.
What other lies are we being duped with? How about the great Social Security Crisis?
How many realize that the Social Security Trust Fund is well funded through the mid 2030's. Let me repeat that in case it went by to fast. We have no crisis now in the Social Security Trust Fund, and it is a completely separate issue than the budget crisis.
Please visit Bruce Webb's Social Security Defender's blogsite, to see extensive documentation of the true story about the Social Security Trust Fund. I am unable to get the link function to attach to these better orange words, to work. So, please accept this straggleing http link, until I can learn how to do this better.
http://socialsecuritydefender.blogspot.com/
And, to balance the budget, we should be first examining the defense budget, and taxation policy.
I think of these lies, and all of our other collective assumptions as gigantic, distributive, concentric "conceptual bubbles." And one of the biggest Republican lies goes all the way back to Ronald Reagan's intentional strategy of crashing the budget into huge deficits with tax cuts, and defense spending expenditures. Then using the uncontrolled debt to force the Democrats on the defense unable to carry out our destiny and committment to expand the highly effective New Deal, and Great Society programs.
Let's wake up folks. Our current best strategy is to hold the line on any Social Security benefit cuts. This includes increases in the retirement age to 69, then 70, then 80s. Can we not see this is Republican plan to eliminate Social Secuirty, in 8% increments.
Democrats need to stop being duped, and playing into the GOP's biggest lie of all. President Clinton handed the Bush administration a government budget in surplus, and a thriving economy. Bush followed the Ronald Reagan strategy and intentionally destroyed this with massive increased to the defense budget, and unfunded tax cuts for the richest 2%. Reich notes that the $80 billion the GOP is looking for now in their "Grand Compromise Budget" is about the same as the amount the rich get this year in their tax cuts we agreed to.
So is the new strategy of the Democratic Party to carry out Ronald Reagan's big lie to eliminate our achievements with the New Deal and Great Society?
We must renounce this betrayal of our traditional Democratic Party values and stand with the majority of American working class people to defend and expand the common good of the people of our country and the world.