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Greenspan's Fraud -- Thom Hartmann's "Independent Thinker" Book of the Month

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BuzzFlash - By Thom Hartmann - Jan. 29 (Review) - What do you do when you want to screw only the working people of your nation with the largest tax increase in history and hand those trillions of dollars to your wealthy campaign contributors, yet not have anybody realize you've done it? If you're Ronald Reagan, you call in Alan Greenspan. Through the "golden years of the American middle class" - the 1940s through 1982 - the top income tax rate for the hyper-rich had been between 90 and 70 percent. Ronald Reagan wanted to cut that rate dramatically, to help out his political patrons. He did this with a massive tax cut in the summer of 1981.

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David Harvey's "A Brief History of Neoliberalism"

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BuzzFlash - By Thom Hartmann - Jan. 29 (Review) - Here's the bad news - most Americans don't know what "neoliberalism" is. But the good news is that David Harvey has written the most brilliant, concise, and clear history of neoliberalism I've ever found. It should be required reading in every civics class in high-school and college in America, and everybody who votes or considers themselves informed about politics and economics (and the intersection of the two) should have a dog-eared copy next to their bed or favorite chair for regular re-reading. Harvey begins with the imposition of neoliberalism - a radical economic/political theory that everything will work out optimally if only the power of democratic governments are reduced to virtually nothing and the power of economic elites (known as "the free market") hold most power in society - in Iraq and Chile. Iraq was going to be the Great Example for the neoliberals - they were so convinced of their theory that they didn't have a Plan B for any time after the invasion - and it utterly failed. Which is why you only read about the Iraq experiment in neoliberalism in books written by the few people, like Harvey and Naomi Klein, who have noticed it.

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Bush's legacy will pin Obama from the start

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

BuzzFlash - By P. M. Carpenter - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - After Israel's ghastly disproportionate actions in Gaza, it was hardly shocking to read yesterday in the New York Times that our incorrigible ally was ready, willing and eager to preemptively blast Iran last year. That almost inconceivably nitwitted act appears to have been imminent, for as the Times reported, Israel -- "out of its disbelief and anger at an American intelligence assessment completed in late 2007 that concluded that Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons four years earlier" -- was randy to drop a few of our "bunker-bunking bombs ... on Iran's main nuclear complex." So the Israeli Dr. Strangeloves asked to borrow some. Oh, and by the way, they added, you wouldn't mind if we sort of flew over Iraq to get to Iran, would you?

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