Turning Back the Tax Revolt

The end of the tax revolt means an opportunity to fund progressive priorities,

End of the revolt? Hardly. Any “funding” will be done at the expense of the middle class. Picking the pockets of hard working Americans to fund ill conceived progressive agendas that only serve the bottom 10 percent of citizens will only exacerbate the pain felt by all. The revolt has not begun.  Wait until the average middle class tax bill doubles . If progressives want to help the working man stay the hell out of his wallet.

The end of the tax revolt means more progressive reform?
If that wasn’t so foolish, I’d be marginally amused.
If I knew with certainty that my taxes were going to be used for my benefit and the benefit of The People (remember them? ---the ones who put Democrats back on the political map?), I’d gladly pay my taxes. I would be assured that my money would be put to work for the benefit of The People and not the political elite. No, I agree with the previous posting; the Tax Revolt has not even begun.
Do something worthy with the billions we all pay each day in taxes (especially on April 15th) and you might convince me and many others that our revolt should be discontinued.

Until then, prepare for battle.

Texas Independant, you are far more Texas than Independant!!

It is all to easy to forget that the bottom 10% has never much benefited from US progressive federal programs and never were able to do so. AFDC is gone. Social Security should be saved as people worked hard for years for low wages and also put into the system. A far greater amount of federal subsidies go to the working and middle classes. These programs entail, but are not limited to, educational loans, small business loans, farm subsidies, subsidized mortgages, the GI bill, and tax deferred retirement accounts.  These are all middle class subsidies and they far outnumber anything given to the hard core poor in dollar terms or number of programs. They also keep the economy going. But they cost money in taxes. This is not a reason to shun these programs. The money spent repays the middle class many times over so long as the economy continues to grow.

First let me make it quite clear I have compassion and give both of my time and money to various charitable causes. I understand poverty and hunger and have suffered both. However our welfare system as it exists is an enormous waste of money. It would be cheaper to simply hire the 4 million recipients as federal employees.

Loaning our money back to us hardly qualifies as a benefit. Subsidized mortgages are “free” unless a default occurs. The GI bill is EARNED not given. Tax deferred accounts are not federal money and provide the only salvation from the horrors of SSI . The entire agriculture budget is less than 1 percent of the federal budget. Education is less than three percent.  The totals for Medicaid, Unemployment, and Welfare is only 643.4 billion dollars. Social Security and Medicare are a paltry 980 billion dollars.

It doesn’t matter what liberal spin you guys put on these numbers 58 percent of our federal tax dollars are spent on social programs that benefit the elderly and poor and have no real benefit to the working middle class except to ease white liberal guilt. And you need more? I realize progressives have good intentions but a harsh dose of reality would help us all out.

Sweden touted as a model to admire and emulate has a tax rate from 30 to 55 percent on individual income with 25 percent to local government.. Thats direct from the Swedish government. Is that the progressive goal? To tax us into submission?

The highest federal tax bracket in the US is 35 percent. Most working families pay state tax ( except Texas and eight other states) the highest is Vermont at 9.5 percent ( what a surprise).  The vast majority of that money is coming direct from middle class paychecks. Even if you taxed the “rich” at a ridiculous rate as progressives love to yammer about, the middle class would still carry the largest burden. I propose a simple solution. That silly tenth amendment. Crush the Federal monster down to a small managable size and direct it onto providing a common defense and ensuring justice and let the powers not specified in the Constitution ( almost every government department) revert to the people or the states as the founders intended. I can provide for my own welfare once I get your hands out of my wallet. 

I am tired of taxation without representation. Let the revolt begin!

Texas,

In the first place you claim that the US federal budget is 58% committed to programs for the poor and elderly. That would mean nearly 1.5 trillion are committed to these programs which is not true. Social Security payouts are about half a trillion annually and don’t come out of the federal budget but from a separate fund.  TANF blockgrants have averaged around $16 to $17 billion annually since the law was passed in 1996. In the years since the law was passed the TANF participation rate nation wide has slid from 67% in 1996 to 48% in 2001 and 2002. Still fewer that half the eligible population collect benefits under the terms of TANF. Most states use less than $400 million in TANF disbursements and many states disburse even less that $100 million. Most TANF recipients get less than they would have received under the old AFDC program. Programs for the poor don’t amount to anything any longer. They’re all but gone. The middle class once received a lot more for their tax contributions.

As far as Social Security is concerned, tax deferments cost the federal government nearly $115 billion in taxes or about a fourth of the annual payout in transfer payments of the entire program. Despite this fact fewer and fewer people have retirement savings and the income recovery rate, or rate of monthly retirement income received as a percentage of monthly income in the final year of employment, is declining for both Social Security recipients and defined contribution recipients. These folks get between 30% and 67% of their working income well below the recommended 70%. As income becomes more skewed and the equities market less stable retirement income will become lower and lower for most retirees.  Wall Street may be getting rich off private retirement accounts but they’re not taking care of the retirees who save. Most people with such accounts receive less than $100,000 at retirement in a lump sum and less than that after taxes to live out the remaining 20 or so average years of retirement. It’s not much today. The median retirement account pays very small annuities. And despite so much savings committed to retirement accounts less than 60% of Americans will receive anything other than SS for retirement.

The idea that the poor and elderly and even the middle and working classes are getting the benefit of the federal budget is nonsense. The American people are the lowest taxed people in the industrialized world. Top bracket for the very rich is now 35%. Local and state taxes are increasing as are property taxes and sales taxes. The working and middle classes are paying these on behalf of the richest 1% of the country who got much of their tax payments rebated by our fearless leader. Inequality is growing and it is not because of taxes. Wages and income are down and the benefits the middle and working class received as part of the social safty net are gone. Most people can’t get decent housing, health care, or education for their families the cost of which is going up at a rate faster that the median national income. There is no more talk or white liberal guilt tex but we as a working society are burdened with the stupid consequences of your displaced white male rage.  Taxes aren’t what’s harming the lower 80% of society, it’s social inequality. Even if most people below the median paid no taxes at all, they’ld still be up shits creek. Think about it Tex.

Taxation is theft, no matter how you rationalize it; no matter how noble the intent.  That’s why people are so in love with government - it allows them to do things that would be considered a crime if done in the private sector.  For example, if I stole money from my next door neighbor and gave it to charity, I would be arrested and taken to jail.  Yet, when government agencies do the same exact thing (ex. taxation to fund social programs), they are lauded as ‘compassionate’ and “caring”. 

This is why progressive and conservative ideologies are fundamentally immoral and corrupt - and why there is truly little difference between them.  Both rely upon the coercive use of force by the State to achieve their goals, and neither respects the individual’s right to live as he chooses, peacefully and in voluntary cooperation with others in society. 

The average American family pays about 40% of their TOTAL annual income in taxes (direct and hidden) - more than they pay for food, clothing AND shelter COMBINED.  Additionally, many of the ‘crises’ that exist today - high health care costs, high housing costs - were created by the very policies of the governments who claimed that their actions would ‘solve’ these problems. 

As government imposes ever more rules, regulations, taxes, subsidies, tariffs, and restrictions on businesses, employees, and consumers, it reduces the incentive to provide goods and services that are needed for a ‘free’ society to prosper. 

Government control of the monetary system allows the politicians to inflate the money supply (by printing dollars at will) to pay for needless overseas wars, never-ending military spending, and the inefficient welfare state, thus creating inflation and making every hard-earned dollar worth less. 

This is another great example of the State performing an act that is considered a crime in the private sector.  If a private individual prints dollars on a printing press in his home, he is jailed as a counterfeiter.  Yet, when the government prints money at will (backed by nothing of intrinsic value), it is called “adding liquidity”.

Those who advocate government intervention, whether economic or social, rarely consider the harmful, unintended consequences their actions may cause.  This is just as true with conservatives as it is with progressives.  The reality is that the more that government intervenes in the economic and personal lives of the citizenry, the poorer and less safe they will be.

Lancer -

You were doing very well down until your fifth paragraph:

Government control of the monetary system allows the politicians to inflate the money supply (by printing dollars at will) to pay for needless overseas wars, never-ending military spending, and the inefficient welfare state, thus creating inflation and making every hard-earned dollar worth less.

In practice, President Reagan passed tax cuts and tax reform and eliminated the hyperinflation he inherited from LBJ’s mismanagement of the Vietnam War and the Great Society, and Carter’s disastrous policies.  The seventeen years between LBJ and Jimmi Carter were marked by low growth and no growth, much like what Europe and Japan are experiencing for the last twenty years. 

With inflation and interest rates in double digits, and unemployment stuck at 7.5%, Carter actually claimed, in his “malaise” speech, that the American system had reached an end point and things would not get better.  Carter advocated reaching an accommodation with the Soviet Union, which he viewed as an acceptable alternative to Western democracy and freedom, in spite of the horrific Soviet human rights (mass murder) record.  But, of course, the economic problems and the Communist problems went away rapidly when intelligent solutions were applied.

The Reagan tax cuts and tax reforms have resulted in steady growth and minimal inflation and interest rates from that day to this, interrupted only by the near disaster of the Clinton dot.com Bubba Bubble.  Bush 43 eliminated the Clinton tax increases and the Bubba Bubble eliminated itself, as bubbles always do, but only after the Bubba Recession.

So, your worry about inflation has not been valid for twenty-five years, and will not be valid unless the Democrats succeed in screwing up the economy again.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad recently wrote an eighteen-page letter to President Bush inviting Bush to embrace justice, Muslim style, and to declare allegiance and belief in Allah.  That had no effect, so now Ahmedinejad has written a five-page letter to the American people reiterating the same points.  There are long and well-founded historical precedents for these letters; typically, Muslims send these letters to enemies they are going to declare war upon, in accordance with Mohammed’s interpretation of the will of Allah, as contained in the Koran.  This would be a cosmic joke if Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan were not actively engaged in building and trafficking in nuclear weapons. 

So you may believe that there are “needless overseas wars, never-ending military spending”, but I do not.  We deliberately deceived ourselves in 1938 that there could be “Peace in our time”, but that peace lasted only until 1939, while Hitler continued his military build up and aggression, and twenty million people died in WWII. 

We again deliberately deceived ourselves in 1972 that there could be “Peace with honor” in SE Asia, and two million died in Vietnam and two million died in Cambodia (one-third of the Cambodian population), after the new Democrats in Congress sold out the South Vietnamese.

The Democrats whine interminably about the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars, and I appreciate the cost in American lives and American dollars.  But the cost of the effort in the Middle East is miniscule compared to, say, Vietnam, which cost an order of magnitude more.  And of course, Vietnam had extremely bad results, and the current dust up has every promise of achieving lasting, positive results if the Democrats are not allowed to sell us out again. 

The terrorists are going to try to kill us until we surrender, or until they become dead or disabused of their weird religious ideas.  There is no alternative.  Live with it.  If you want to become Muslim, or if you want to die at terrorist hands, you are on you own, boy.  I am not with you.

Cabdriver
I am not white sorry. And the budget for social programs including buildings, staff salaries, costs, ect eats up 58 percent of the Federal budget. Check the figures for yourself. Its printed on the back of your 1040 booklet, avaliable on the web, printed with tax dollars and distributed en masse. If you add the programs together( SSI, Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, and Unemployment yes about 1.5 trillion dollars. Ridiculous isn’t it!  How much of that actually makes it into a check to the recipient? My problem with “progressives” is not political it’s financial. If you want to improve the social system we have to fix the programs we have now not come up with new ones requiring more government employees and buildings and billions of dollars.

Even if most people below the median paid no taxes at all, they’ld still be up shits creek. Think about it Tex.

Most people don’t pay taxes in on April 15th but the money is drawn out of everyones paycheck and kept interest free. People cannot thrive in our economy because they make poor financial and personal descisions Cabdriver not due to not paying enough taxes. I realize that the terms hard work, self sacrifice, and self discipline are curse words to progressives but its the only way. If a poor Mexican kid from the Valley can succeed anyone can.

First of all SS and unemployment are insurence programs that involve payment to the federal government but are not purely out of federal taxes but specially earmarked contributions. Secondly, it is a fact that Americans pay less taxes for what they get than anyone else in the industrial world. It has been shown time and again that the post and pre tax income distribution structures in the US are about the same. Taxation in the US hasn’t been redistributive since the top bracket went from 91% during FDR to 70% in the 1950s. The stratication patterns remain the same. Taxes are not theft. They stabilize the society and provide needed infrastructure of all kinds so people can do business and society can function. I am one progressive that personally hates the idea of welfare. But I don’t falsely attribute to it a drain on society. The wars and the military budget are doing more to drain society of needed revenue. Half the money spent on the wars which accomplished nothing could have been spent on a national health insurence plan, expanded health care AND the job market at home, and stimulated much more economic growth and local tax base from the money being spent here than abroad on war and corrupt contractors that don’t funnel their earning back through the US economy the way a National Health Plan would. Who’s the real patriot?

People do make poor financial and personal decisions. I confess to being one of them!!  But the real problem is the system and the inequality it generates. This is not a society that prioritizes most of its citizens. We need change and it’s got to involve more than promoting GDP growth through tax cuts for the rich. This has failed as the post recession rate of job growth has been the lowest in post-WWII history. We also have to understand that GDP growth no longer creates jobs in the way it used to because the employment threshold of the US economy is higher due to globalization and technological streamlining of production. Redistribution is necessary. So is a policy to insure fair trade. Labor productivity is high and wages low. Profits are at an all time high. And unemployment has not gone down enough.  We are still at an over 4.5% unemployment rate which is higher than the 3.9% during the Clinton years. Everyone knows that the official statistics are not the real ones anyhow. The real problem is that we can no longer afford the ultra rich in this society.

scorp -

Reagan preached the limited government line, but he didn’t practice it.  In eight years as pres, the US went from the greatest creditor nation to the greatest debtor nation.  Reagan never vetoed a single federal budget presented by the Democratic Congress.  Annual fed spending when Reagan took office: $600 Billion.  Annual fed spending when he left office: over $1 trillion. 

Yes, he cut taxes in a big way (hooray!).  But federal govt did not slow down spending; in fact, it increased spending dramatically.  Tax cuts are virtually irrelevant if they are not accomodated by an equivalent reduction in spending. 

More government debt is simply an additional tax passed on to future generations.  Conservatives are hardly champions of limited government.  In fact, Clinton makes Bush II look like a freaking conservative.

The fact is that Democrats and Republicans are both to blame for the dire financial straits that the country is in.  They both deserve the blame for the warfare/welfare state that exists today.  Federal debt, when considering future debt obligations to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as well as the “official debt” - is estimated at between $50 and $75 TRILLION!  Your kids and grandkids are on the hook for the sins of todays and yesterdays politicians.  And they will reap what their forebearers sowed in the form of runaway inflation and a lower standard of living. 

Politicians are the problem, not the solution.

I meant to say Bush II makes Clinton look like a freaking conservative. Sorry.

CDC –

You seem fairly well read for a cab driver.  Let me guess.  You went to college, studied all that liberal nonsense, and THEN discovered that there was no market for little dumb shits that can only think in terms of socialism.  Am I close?

We are still at an over 4.5% unemployment rate which is higher than the 3.9% during the Clinton years.

Well, no.  Did they teach you to lie with statistics in college?  There was a mild recession at the end of Bush 41’s term, caused by the Fed raising interest rates.  The Fed was fearful of reviving the Carter Catastrophe, when interest rates and inflation went into double digits, and when, during Carter’s entire term, unemployment never went below 5.6%, and sometimes was above 8%.

Consequent to the rise in interest rates, the unemployment rate was 7.3% in the month President Clinton took office, and rose to 7.8% five months later, in June 1992.  The unemployment rate then gradually fell and stabilized in 1995-1996 in a narrow band between 5.4% and 5.8%.

In 1996, Chairman Greenspan expressed alarm at the “irrational exuberance” of the markets (the Dow was at 6000), but neither Greenspan nor Clinton did anything to alleviate this irrational behavior of the markets.  At that point the unemployment rate began to fall to an historically low level, the lowest level since the Kennedy tax cuts in the mid-1960s. 

But the low Clinton unemployment rates were not due to tax cuts; Clinton had raised taxes.  Fortunately, the defense dividend from when President Reagan promoted the collapse of the Soviet Union kicked in, and unfortunately the Dow irrationally doubled in four years, to 12,000; this was the dot.com Bubba Bubble.  All this money created incomes, jobs, tax receipts, and false growth.  The false growth became evident in Clinton’s last year, when the NASDAQ plunged over 50%, from over 5000 to about 2300, and hundreds of new internet companies went out of business.

The last four complete months of the Clinton Administration saw your 3.9% unemployment, but the month Clinton left office, the downward trend was abruptly broken, and unemployment jumped 0.3%; this was the start of the Clinton Recession, a direct result of the collapse of the Bubba Bubble.

Unemployment under the Bush Administration is again approaching historically low levels, without the false impetus from an economic bubble. 

The real problem is that we can no longer afford the ultra rich in this society.

Speak for yourself, boy.  I once calculated that my contribution to Bill Gates personal fortune was about $100 per year.  In the years that I have been using Microsoft products, my income has increased by about $60,000 annually, and much of the increase is directly traceable to computers.  Computers have made us faster and more efficient, and have greatly reduced costs of manufacturing, logistics, and information processing.  Of course, you are not engaged in any of this, you drive a cab.  No wonder you don’t understand how the real world works.  Why don’t you go back to school and qualify for a real job?

Of course there were the ultra rich that were the subjects of the scandals a few years back: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom.  You are right, we can’t afford them.  But these crimes were committed during the Clinton-Reno years, and Clinton and Reno did absolutely nothing about detecting or prosecuting the biggest criminal scandals in the world before the UN’s Oil-for-Food program.  Not to worry; George Bush and AGAG are putting Clinton’s and Reno’s criminals in jail.  I hope they nail that fucking Kofi Annan, but I doubt if they will.

Consequent to the rise in interest rates, the unemployment rate was 7.3% in the month President Clinton took office, and rose to 7.8% five months later, in June 1992.  The unemployment rate then gradually fell and stabilized in 1995-1996 in a narrow band between 5.4% and 5.8%.

In 1996, Chairman Greenspan expressed alarm at the �irrational exuberance� of the markets (the Dow was at 6000), but neither Greenspan nor Clinton did anything to alleviate this irrational behavior of the markets.  At that point the unemployment rate began to fall to an historically low level, the lowest level since the Kennedy tax cuts in the mid-1960s. 

But the low Clinton unemployment rates were not due to tax cuts; Clinton had raised taxes.  Fortunately, the defense dividend from when President Reagan promoted the collapse of the Soviet Union kicked in, and unfortunately the Dow irrationally doubled in four years, to 12,000; this was the dot.com Bubba Bubble.  All this money created incomes, jobs, tax receipts, and false growth.  The false growth became evident in Clinton�s last year, when the NASDAQ plunged over 50%, from over 5000 to about 2300.

The last four complete months of the Clinton Administration saw your 3.9% unemployment, but the month Clinton left office, the downward trend was abruptly broken, and unemployment jumped 0.3%; this was the start of the Clinton Recession, a direct result of the collapse of the Bubba Bubble.

Unemployment under the Bush Administration is again approaching historically low levels, without the false impetus from an economic bubble. 

The real problem is that we can no longer afford the ultra rich in this society.

Speak for yourself, boy.  I once calculated that my contribution to Bill Gates personal fortune was about $100 per year.  In the years that I have been using Microsoft products, my income has increased by about $60,000 annually, and much of the increase is directly traceable to computers.  Computers have made us faster and more efficient, and have greatly reduced costs of manufacturing, logistics, and information processing.  Of course, you are not engaged in any of this, you drive a cab.  No wonder you don�t understand how the real world works.  Why don�t you go back to school and qualify for a real job?

Of course there were the ultra rich that were the subjects of the scandals a few years back: Enron, Tyco, WorldCom.  You are right, we can�t afford them.  But these crimes were committed during the Clinton-Reno years, and Clinton and Reno did absolutely nothing about detecting or prosecuting the biggest criminal scandals in the world before the UN�s Oil-for-Food program.  Not to worry; George Bush and AGAG are putting Clinton�s and Reno�s criminals in jail.  I hope they nail that fucking Kofi Annan, but I doubt if they will.

Scorp, George Bush 1 was President in June 1992, NOT Clinton. You
can’t even get the most elementary facts correct.
We don’t need to listen to fake figures on what your income is, we all
have our own lives. Bill Gates took a much better, more user friendly
Apple system and ruined it. I’ve heard nothing but complaints about
his products. That they sell shakes my faith in the market, much of it must be composed of idiots as you suggest.
Your figures on Clinton are a lie. The unemployment rate went steadily
up for the first three years of Bush 2’ s Administration. When he ran for
reelection in 2004 he was the first President since Herbert Hoover to have no net gain in job creation.
That “mild recession’” in THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE
WAS THE WORST SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT REACHED DOUBLE FIGURES IN ALL THE INDUSTRIAL STATES, 12% HERE IN CALIFORNIA, 15% IN MICHIGAN,
13% IN ALABAMA AND THE SAME IN PENNSYLVANIA. ONE OF THE FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO HIS LOSS IN FALL 1992.
If you call the official rate of just under 5% low, you are crazy but everyone knows that rate is wrong because it doesn’t count people
who have given up looking for work or whose unemployment has run out and only one third of those eligible for unemployment are on it
here in California and that’s probably true elsewhere. And the millions
in the military ARE counted !
Enron was even more of a Bush crime and Bush was his personal pet,
he referred to Lay as “Kenny Boy.” And that’s just one of the many major GOP big biz scandals since 9-11.
Who are you trying to fool with this GOP shit smells like perfume nonsense ?  Did Clinton cut off your welfare check to your trailer ?
Get a life, sad little guy. Even much of the GOP is giving up these
talking points lies.

Koffi Annan is great!! He didn’t steal nearly as much as US contractors. Over 9 billion unaccounted for at the end of the War!! Also Scorp, I meant the Walmarts of the world who pay nothing and import everything taking down our whole economy and the whole middle class with it!!

Chicago, the trouble with debating an idiot ideologue like Scorp is that
after a while people might not be to tell the difference.
Thanks for making your usual good points but this guy is hopeless.

Mike -

Of course, 1992 was the election year and Clinton took office in January 1993.  Apologize for that one.  While we are in correction mode, you have not yet acknowledged or apologized for your gross misstatement of President Reagan’s educational qualifications.  Or are you left-wind moonbats too good or too important to bother with correcting yourselves when you make a mistake?

And speaking of mistakes, or lies, or whatever you are calling it these days, where did you come up with this crap:

That “mild recession” in THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE WAS THE WORST SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION. OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT REACHED DOUBLE FIGURES IN ALL THE INDUSTRIAL STATES, 12% HERE IN CALIFORNIA, 15% IN MICHIGAN, 13% IN ALABAMA AND THE SAME IN PENNSYLVANIA. ONE OF THE FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO HIS LOSS IN FALL 1992.

At no time did the unemployment rates approach your figures during “THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE”.  And if you disagree that “the official (unemployment) rate of just under 5% (is) low”, you must be terribly disappointed with Jimmi Carter, during whose Administration the unemployment rate never got below 5.6%.  You may have confused “THE LAST TWO YEARS OF BUSH 1’S TENURE” with the data from the Carter years and the first years of the Reagan Administration.  That is an easy mistake to make, I suppose.

Now, this is what happens in real life.  Economic phenomena are caused.  Bad policies make the economy worse.  Good policies lead to stability and growth.  Socialism is a bad policy, and is too dumb to comment on if we are discussing the real world.

At the time of the Roaring Twenties, no one understood that we were in a bubble, and that bubbles always burst.  Serious people thought that we were into permanent good times in the 1920s, just as serious people thought that the computer revolution (dot.com) had created permanent good times in the 1990s.  When things went bad in 1929, we found out just how bad the collapse of a bubble could be.  Actions taken to improve the economy served to make the economy worse, particularly raising taxes and restricting international trade.  Eight years of FDR, whom I admire greatly for leadership and perseverance, still left the economy in dire straits.  We simply did not understand the economy then as well as we do now.

When there is a car wreck, the damage must be repaired and and repairs are expensive. 

The Democrats have wrecked the economy twice in your lifetime.  LBJ started it by trying to have guns and butter in the Vietnam War and the Great Society, with no plans on how to pay for them.  This led to seventeen years of stagnation, capped off when Carter made it worse with high unemployment, high interest rates, and high inflation: the worst of all worlds.  Reagan recognized the problem, squeezed the inflation and interest rates, restored employment and growth, and the economy went on a substantial upswing.  It was expensive, but it worked.  So, whom do the Democrats blame?  Reagan, of course, for repairing the Democratic wreck. 

Then Clinton raised taxes and allowed the dot.com Bubba Bubble to develop, wasting billions of dollars on unsustainable internet projects that had no payoff.  It was fun while it lasted, but in Clinton"s last year the NASDAQ crashed, the Dow started down, and unemployment jumped 0.3% the month Clinton left office.  This was a potential disaster on the scale of the Great Depression, but President Bush took corrective actions.  The unemployment rate went up to 6.3% in June 2003 and has since fallen to 4.4%.  So what could have been a terrible outcome became a fairly minor recession.  It was expensive, but it worked.  So, whom do the Democrats blame?  Bush, of course, for repairing the Democratic wreck.

The Republican repairs to the economy are not nearly as expensive as the Democratic wrecks.  You are incapable of understanding this, I’m sure.  The Democrats just took Congress, and are already talking about raising taxes again.

Reagan had no educational qualifications, he went to some cow college in the sticks.
The GOP has wrecked the economy under Ike 1958-60 recession,
Nixon 1972-74 recession, Ford 1975-76 recession, Reagan 1981-83
recession, Bush 1990-92 depression and Bush 2 2001-2004 major
recession. That’s FIVE times in my lifetime.
Clinton only slightly raised taxes on the very richest back to Reagan Era
levels in 1993 and the economy boomed as never before. For the first time since 1973 some of the middle class actually gained ground. Part of it was the internet which is still thriving, Goggle’s a 185 BILLION dollar
company.
The Repubs were in power THROUGHOUT THE 20s, A MAJOR REPUB DEPRESSION.  They understood bubbles in the 19th century, see Murray Rothbard’s The Panic of 1819.
I got the figues from the US Dept of Labor for Bush 1. And all the states
EDD’s verified them.
Take your Holocaust didn’t happen BS and stick it up your ass.
Tired of rebutting the same lying crap from you.
Bush 1 depression greatly exceeded in intensity and duration the
Carter recession. Carter never approached the double digit unemployment figures of Bush 1. Nowhere close. Carter DID have
doubledigit inflation which Reagan cured by an old fashioned depression. Again, see “Reagan:An Autopsy” by Murray N. Rothbard
on the RIGHTWING Lew Rockwell website.
Under FDR the economy did pick up greatly in the mid-30s, went down
again in 37 and then started booming bigtime in 1939 as he schemed
us into WW2. Your statement that it remained static for 8 straight years
is an out and out lie.
Capitalism is a disaster unless regulated by the state, which it always has been, pro-business under the Repugs and somewhat more pro-labor under the Dems though Clinton was a rightwinger economically.
Bush’s corrective actions left Clinton’s strong economy in tatters for
his WHOLE FIRST TERM AND HE WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT SINCE HOOVER TO HAVE NO NET EMPLOYMENT GAIN.
END OF DEBATE.

CDC -

Koffi Annan is great!! He didn�t steal nearly as much as US contractors. Over 9 billion unaccounted for at the end of the War!!

Well, that certainly is a ringing endorsement for good old Kofi.  “He didn�t steal nearly as much as US contractors.” But the Oil-for-Food criminal enterprise was documented at $21.3 billion in 2004, making it the largest bribery/kickback/extortion/graft/corruption scandal in history, and a chunk went to UN officials. 

About two years ago there were allegations that Halliburton had some financial irregularities in Iraq.  I went back and found every scandal I could on Halliburton (there were several, including one in Africa) and concluded that misappropriated money in Halliburton was much less than 1% of revenue.  The US Post Office should do so well. 

If you can document contrary information, I would like to consider it.  Otherwise, quit whining, you sound like a Democratic talking point.

And Wal-Mart?  That is simple.  Just quit going to Wal-Mart.  If everyone quits going to Wal-Mart, they will close their doors in a hurry.  And people will pay more some place else for the same goods.

There was $8.9 billion in the escrow account for the oil for food program that was immediately transfered illegally to the federal reserve and was never accounted for to congress or any oversite body.  And it was illegal because according to the UNSC resolutions that established the program and all resolutions pursuant to the goals and administration of the program the money was supposed to be in a special UN escrow account not at the FED.

The real scandle was that the war was a showcase for neo-liberal capitalist development by US corporations which took over the Iraqi economy. The $50 billion is close to 60% of the Iraqi GDP. Aside from the Petrolium sector more than half the Iraqi economy was in private hands under Saddam. The state helped encourage Iraqi business. Iraq’s economy was quite modern with locally owned steel industries that were newer and more efficient than the US steel facilities. The Iraqi middle class and upper middle class was wiped out by US imperialism. Even the farmers were threatened by US encroachment. Beginning in the 1980s subsidized US grain was dumped on the Iraqi market in order to run small and medium sized Iraqi farmers out of business.  By the late 1980s, over 80% of the diverse Iraqi grain market was dominated by US exports.

Later, Bremer Order 81 prevented Iraqi farmers from saving seeds for the next sowing and harvest in order to allow US corporations to patent them and claim the seed varieties as US corporate intellectual property. This required Iraqi farmers to pay royalties to the US firms or purchase their seeds from the patent holding US firms. 

The Bremer Orders eased the foreign takeover of the Iraqi economy by disallowing tariffs and capital controls, allowing 100% profit repatriation, and allowing 100% foreign ownership of local banks. Iraqi law may not discriminate (as does US law) against foreign capital and must enforce equal conditions for both foreign and domestic capital.  This hardly exists anywhere.

The new federal income tax structure with a top bracket of 35% makes the effective rate of taxation (the actual proportion of gross income paid in federal income by most people) very near the ten percent flat tax touted by the far right.  Anyone at or below the $61,000 gross income bracket will, if filing a joint return with a spouse, enjoy a new 12% effective rate of taxation especially when deductions are factored in. This bracket used to be between 15 and 25%. Most of those in the top bracket will probably not pay much over 15% of their income in federal taxes after deductions and filing a joint return. These calculations are based on the figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office. Steve Forbes has essentially accomplished his goal without passing the flat tax.

I agree that those families below $75,000 annual income, about 80% of all US households, need a tax break but the super rich pay far to little. The 35% top bracket for those making over a quarter million annually is absurd. It means the effective rate of taxation on millionaires is less than one third and less than a fourth or even a fifth of total income once deductions and joint filings are accounted for at tax time. The country can ill afford this. We have a huge deficit, a war, a costly military machine, and vast unmet social needs of the WORKING POOR because the rich get away with paying very little wages, illegally making many employees “independant contractors” to evade paying unemployment compensation and social security, and paying no benefits. Often the US federal government takes up the slack with a highly regressive taxation system increasingly comprised of local taxes and users fees. This is what I meant by not being able to afford the very rich.

Mike -

I got the figues from the US Dept of Labor for Bush 1. And all the states EDD’s verified them.

Can you be a little more specific, with a verifiable reference?  BLS has nothing close to the numbers you have provided for Alabama, California, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, either SA or NSA, during Bush 1’s term.

And you are contradicting yourself again.  First you said:

Ronald Reagan WAS NOT A COLLEGE GRADUATE, HE WAS NOT AN ECONOMIST OF ANY SORT AND HE PRODUCED THE MOST MASSIVE DEFICITS IN US HISTORY PRIOR TO THE CURRENT IMBECILE.

Then you said:

Reagan had no educational qualifications, he went to some cow college in the sticks.

No educational qualifications?  A degree in economics from a distinguished small college is no educational qualifications to you?  Eureka does not mint many dumb-ass socialists, but why are you so contemptuous of your betters?  A little jealousy, perhaps.

You are conflicted by facts and sources that do not fit your ideology, people who are smarter than you, people who make more money than you, and people who accomplish more than you.  What is your problem?

And the biggest deficits in our history were during WWII, when the national debt hit 120% of GDP.  Try to keep your facts straight.

The debt as a proportion of GDP game is misleading. Sure current account deficits under FDR were large but the depression made the US GDP quite small. We were still an industrializing nation at that point. FDR’s deficits to run the New Deal and the War were also the reason we came out of the depression. So it is misleading to talk about deficits as a proportion of the economy without mentioning the incredible spurt in economic growth. Average growth rates under FDR exceeded 5.6% while those under Reagan’s “Seven Fat Years” were only 3.7%. A middle class grew under FDR and Truman afterward while it shrank under Reagan. The United States became a great power because of FDR’s leadership while we became an net debtor and importer of capital under Reagan’s leadership.

It is worsening now under Bush. Many of my friends back at the UW-Madison would say this reflected less the nature of the US political leadership than the specific stage of late capitalism in which each of these leaders controlled the state. Certainly the age of national Keynesean Welfare State capitalism is more egalitarian by nature than that of the globalization phase which breaks down national barriers in order to concentrate wealth on a global scale.  Even the IMF, no bastion of socialism in their effort to “force open” third world economies to US trade and investment, reported that in 1989, over 82% of the worlds wealth was controlled by the top 20% of the world’s people!! This seems like heavy concentration to me and we are then only beginning to recast the global division of labor by concentrating global investment and productive assets. Even before the 1929 depression, the top 200 US corporations controlled over half of US industry. Today the concentration is much greater after several waves of mergers that have occured in the wake of the dozen recessions following the end of WWII. Today the top 1% of households control about half the nation’s wealth and close to a fifth of the national income. Reagan was voted into power by an American middle class fed rage producing images of Welfare queens and free spending democrats while the welfare rolls were rapidly declining and the rate of federal spending as a proportion of the GNP was slowing. What the middle class got was a huge national debt, cuts in the very programs and labor legislation that created them, high paying jobs shipped overseas, and an overall threat to their very existance.  And many of them still haven’t learned. They keep voting for Republicans!! Go figure. I guess that’s why they invented nationalism.

BLS does issue the monthly unemployment stats, they gather them from the EDD’s around the country. I got the figures from BLS and they were widely reported at the time, it was the highest double digit official figures since the GOP Great Depression.
Eureka College is nothing. If Reagan didn’t have a cue card, he had nothing to say, he couldn’t tell you the difference between the Austrian
and Chicago Schools to save his life or the Keynesian School or the
Institutionalists or the Marxists. He said he was a free trader and imposed the highest tariffs since the 30s. Read “Reagan: An Autopsy”
by Murray N. Rothbard, you can download all 12 pages legally from the lew rockwell.com website.
The biggest ABSOLUTE deficits were under Reagan and now Bush 2,
proportionately it’s less but then under FDR we were in WW2. No such
excuses for the GOP bums.

Scorp, when it comes to people who confuse their ideology with facts,
you are the Champ !

CDC -

I’ll bet you made really good grades in college.  You could really soak up whatever the left-wind professors were pouring into your cranium, and regurgitate on demand.  Unfortunately, socialist theory has nothing to do with the way the real world operates (witness the universal failures of socialism, wherever applied).  And the object of an education is to learn to think, NOT to spout socialist propaganda.

Your last two posts are literate, well constructed, understandable, and silly, to the point of being absurd.  All these “facts” you have assembled: did you stop and read any of the source material?  Do you actually understand the issues you have addressed?  Do you understand the implications of the actions you advocate?  Hell, no, you do not have a clue.  Some left-wind idiot (not you) came up with this stuff, and you repeat as if it were holy writ, because this was the way you were taught.

Take Bremer Order 81:

Bremer Order 81 prevented Iraqi farmers from saving seeds for the next sowing and harvest in order to allow US corporations to patent them and claim the seed varieties as US corporate intellectual property. 

Why, sure.  We had 150,000 Coalition troops and 300,000 agricultural inspectors going around making sure that farmers did not plant their own seeds.  Sounds about right. 

Your statement of Bremer Order 81 is utterly incomprehensible in terms of what 81 actually says.  Do you know what the source document for Order 81 was?  No, you do not, so I will tell you.  The source document was the Iraqi patent law, The Patent and Industrial Designs Laws and Regulations Number 65, dated 1970. 

So, why did Bremer, working with the Iraqi Council, put out Order 81, based on Laws and Regulations Number 65?  Order 81, which you did not read, states clearly that 81 was written to protect intellectual property, and that changes to the old Iraqi law were made to assure that Iraqi law in future would be consonant with internationally accepted trade standards.  There is nothing in Order 81 that is not in all international trade rules. 

And there is nothing in Order 81 that prevents an Iraqi farmer for keeping and planting his own seeds.  It is only patented varieties that are are protected, in accordance with well-established international law.  And Order 81 does not address patenting Iraqi seeds at all, but if there is anything of value among the Iraqi seed varieties, someone sure as hell ought to identify it and patent it and put it to good use.  If they do so, they are protected by the new Iraqi law. 

If you would read Norman Borlaug instead of Karl Marx, you would find that the Green Revolution, invented in the United States, has fed more people and saved more lives than were killed by Stalin and Mao and Kim pere and Kim fils and Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara and Pol Pot and Saddam and Idi Amin and the Hutus and Infidel Castro put together.  So, what is it about this murderous socialist ideology that you personally find so attractive?

And why are you so intellectually uncurious and sloppy that you can’t think things through for yourself?

The Green Revolution has been a disaster throughout the third world
and along with the IMF-World Bank-WTO policies killed more people
than the dictators listed above. Go to the Fifty (50) Years Is Enough website or Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch.org.
The whole fascist Bremer “constitution” was an attempt to loot Iraq
for the benefit of Halliburton and other US-UK multinationals.
And those farmers for the first time are being charged for their own seeds, this is happening all over the developing world and causing
great misery, poverty, serfdom and starvation. Noam Chomsky has
exposed this at great length.
Scorp, you are the most completely stupid liar I’ve ever come across.
You spread the same lies that you heard earlier in the day from Rush,
who is an impotent, lying dope addict.
The US public repudiated your GOP talking points big time. They
will turn you goofballs out of the White House in 08.
Another big Bush bomb to the economy coming down the road is the
incredible shrinking US dollar related to Bush’s astronomical trade
deficits. This moron has not only cost us ONE THIRD OF OUR INDUSTRIAL PLANT but is now wreaking havoc on the US dollar with his goofy free (for whom ?) trade policies. Go to The American Prospect website and see the December 4, 2006 piece by the editor, Robert Kuttner, titled “Another Quagmire.” This Bush clown is doing an Iraq number on the US dollar which will adversely affect the US economy.
Poo Poo Pants Scorp likes to throw around “socialism” but no one
here has advocated the nationalization of the means of production
in either major party at any times in the last 150 years. By socialism
this trailer park hound means welfare, job safety, civil rights laws
guaranteeing access to public accomodations, jobs and housing,
minimum wage, child labor, zoning, conservation, social security
and everything else that cuts into the rapacious, unearned profits
of the richest 1%. All of Europe has this kind of “socialism” and all
have a higher living standard with safer streets than we do.
We have a mixed economy and at this point we might require diversion
of taxes from Pentagon Corporate wasted welfare to our infrastructure.
The many good things owned by us for WE are the government, roads,
streets, highways, freeways, TVA, public schools, public airwaves,
lighthouses, libraries and parks just to name some.
The Conservaturd Tide has now ebbed and we can finish off the pathetic apologists like Scorp if that is the best that they now have.

I’m hearing that several of the rightwing talk show hatemeisters are now
running out of steam, Fox News’ viewers are down 40%. The National
Review and other rightist sites are running out of anything to spout.
No one cares about the fetus or prayer in schools or even gay marriage.
No one except Bush thinks we can “win” in Iraq or even knows what that MEANS. With the dismal GOP economic record under both Bushes
and the first half of Reagan, conservatives can’t talk about that.
When a “Scorp” pops up the progressives are all over him like a dog on
doo doo. Which analogy is appropriate to “Scorp.”
Fascist Bolton retired ! HOORAY !
Someone ought to yank that tobacco and whisky flavored mustache
off his face.
Offhand “scorp” says he’s doing great............................Sorry Billy Balls
cut off his welfare check and screwed his wife.
He’s just a better man than you, “scorp.”

Why do I bother with this minutia?
How did it ever get thsi bad?This boring?
Can someone point me the way out of here..

Cabdriver
Your post on redistribution of wealth left me with a comment and a question. In Daniel Pipes Property and Freedom Pipes makes the argument that starting with the Magna Carta as property rights increased the idea of liberty grew stronger. In contrast the Russian peasant suffered the absence of property in land this deprived Russians of all those levers by means of which the English succeeded in limiting the power of their kings. The only two rights that check government power are the right to bear arms and the legal precedent regarding property rights. The idea of wealth redistribution is a violation not only of the Constution but also 791 years of English Common Law. I have always believed that progressives are the single greatest threat to Civil Liberties. I hate to say it but Joe McCarthy was right.

My question would be:....Who would decide what constituted “ultra rich”

Scorp,

In fact #81 prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving and reusing seeds of “new” plant varieties registered under the law. The law is an amendment of an old Iraqi patent law from 1970 except that it expands on it so much as to make it an entirely new law. Never in Iraqi history was it legal to patent life forms. For over 10,000 years in Mesopotamia, long a breadbasket of the region until US dumping and now, Order 81, farmers saved and bred seeds and developed a rich biodiversity in edible grains. Now all this is threatened with the Bremer Orders After years of famine, drought, war, a new and biologically narrow seed market controlled by transnational agribusiness firms is emerging. Soon traditional farmers will have to purchase new seed varieties every season from the big TNCs who will dominate the market. The farmers will NOT be able to patent their traditional seed varieties as they do not meet the four requirements of the Swiss UPOV convention on Plant Variety Protection requiring protected varieties to be New, Stable, Uniform, and distinct. Traditional seeds are genetically diverse and do not meet the requirements for patenting. Hence only the TNC controlled varieties will be protected locking tens of thousands of Iraqi farmers into their seed market.  The patent protection of new plant varieties is a novelty in Iraqi law which previously banned the monopolization of organic material.

Now plant breeders have exclusive rights over the breeding, production, reproduction, sale, import and export, and storing of new patented varieties of field crop seeds.  Monopoly rights for the patent is 20 years for field crop varieties and 25 years for viniculture and trees. This is longer than many patent life spans for US organic products before they must become public domain. Any private use of the product is banned without agreement and compensation to the patent holder. This deprives farmers of the right to replant protected seed varieties.

This opens the door to corporate domination of the Iraqi seed market and the abuse of power to make Iraq dependant on foreign produced seeds while attempting to obliterate from the market the genetically diverse traditional variety of seeds. The New seeds are being promoted toward larger farmers with deep corporate connections who will produce mostly for export and making Iraq dependant on imports of cheap US grains whose price will increase once poorer local farmers are put out of business.  Iraq will become a base for growing genetically modified food for lucreative export markets to enrich large corporations while the local population remains food insecure and dependant on foreign imports. Millions are being spent in USAID reconstruction contracts to promote export oriented cash cropping of GM foods promoting linkages of local farmers to TNCs with agreements to purchase seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides for years. The bulk of the earnings will go to the TNCs while Iraqi farmers will deplete their soils requiring the further purchase of highly expensive inputs from the TNCs.

Scorp, I would like you to know that what I write is from my own research. No one writes anything for me and I don’t steal material. I have an MA in Political Science from the UW-Madison and I don’t need others to write for me. I quote sources more than you ever do. The above critique of Order 81 is based on the research and a press release from Focus on the Global South, an organization concerned with the impact of economic globalization on the third world.

Mike -

BLS does issue the monthly unemployment stats, they gather them from the EDD’s around the country. I got the figures from BLS and they were widely reported at the time, it was the highest double digit official figures since the GOP Great Depression.

Well, that’s nice.  I guess.  But why are your BLS unemployment rates so much greater than my BLS unemployment rates for Bush 1’s term?

Maximum Alabama unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 - 7.1%

Maximum California unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 - 9.9%

Maximum Michigan unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 - 9.7%

Maximum Pennsylvania unemployment rate, 1989 - 1992 - 7.8%

Data is from BLS Alabama site listed below, search for other states from this page:

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.al.htm

So, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

You really think Reagan was stupid?  So, how is it that Reagan was able to win an election over brilliant Jimmi Carter?  The two biggest problems in the USA in 1981 were the economy domestically and the threat from the Soviet Union internationally.  During Reagan’s Administration, both problems had been of long duration and both went away.  To what do you attribute these magnificent results?  Luck?  Accident?  And don’t give me any crap about the deficit.  Increasing the deficit was the cost of correcting the Democratic mistakes, and it was the only thing that could have restored the economy.  The important thing was to restore economic activity and eliminate the murdering Soviets.  Reagan understood this.  To this day you do not understand this, making you pretty damn dumb.  End of discussion. 

The biggest ABSOLUTE deficits were under Reagan and now Bush 2,

Duh?  Duh!

Your BLS figures are wrong because you are dishonestly averaging them over a four year period. At the depths of the GOP Depression
under Bush 1 there was double digit unemployment here in Calfornia,
Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Oregon, Hawaii and several other
states in 1991-1992. In an earlier posting you even claimed that the BLS
didn’t keep statistics on unemployment ? Now you change your line
or is it lies ? Your a rushlimbaughgoppartylinegoonshittohead, you
make it up as it goes along.
The Soviets were NOT a threat in 1980, their whole society & economy
were collapsing as a result of too much central planning, which nobody
here advocates by the way contrary to your juvenile redbaiting.
A dog could have beaten Carter in 1980 because of inflation, record
interest rates and Iran. BUT Carter did get all the hostages back home
safe & alive UNLIKE Reagan in Lebanon who retreated tail in legs after
243 Marines were killed.  The deficit didn’t correct any mistakes, it
compounded the big spending habits of both parties.
Scorp, I’m getting tired of having to change your excrement filled diapers
every morning. You need to get your lazy behind out of that trash trailer
and seek gainful employment. Recycling Rush’s lies every day is not
going to put food on the table. Please let us know if you require any
gift packages. We progressives are a charitable lot.
By the way, Gorbachev wrote that Reagan’s insane arms race PROLONGED the cold war and the Soviet collapse.
Ronald McDonald Dummy does not get ANY credit for the Soviet
collapse.

CDC -

Scorp, I would like you to know that what I write is from my own research. No one writes anything for me and I don�t steal material.

I am not accusing you of stealing anything, I am accusing you of failure to think, which is much more serious.  Failure to think is worse than a crime, it is a blunder, as Talleyrand phrased it.  You may think you are doing research, but you are not. 

I checked out your Global South site and you gave a fair representation of GS’s position on the matter.  As you reported, according to Global South:

Bremer Order 81 prevented Iraqi farmers from saving seeds for the next sowing and harvest in order to allow US corporations to patent them and claim the seed varieties as US corporate intellectual property. 

But you could have read Order 81 when you read Global South.  If you had done so, you would have realized that what Global South says about Order 81 has nothing to do with what Order 81 actually says.  You did not read Order 81 when you accepted Global South’s highly imaginative interpretation.  I defy you to show me where in Order 81 Iraqi farmers were prevented from running their own business any way they see fit.  I defy you to show me where in Order 81 the Iraqi farmer’s seeds are to be stolen by US Corporations. 

If you have two firing synapses in your neocortex, you must surely realize this is left-wind bullshit.  So, why do you uncritically accept left-wind bullshit?  You may think you are doing research, but you are not.  Critical thinking is required for research, and critical thinking is quite beyond you.  You selectively read and understand some thing, and selectively do not read and do not understand other things. 

According to international law, you cannot take a patented device or process and reproduce it and sell it.  According to international law, you cannot manufacture a watch and put a Rolex or a Timex name on it.  According to international law, you cannot counterfeit luxury goods.  And according to international law, you cannot use proprietary seed grain for your reseeding requirements.  Order 81 brought Iraqi civil law up to date with international requirements.

If an Iraqi farmer wants to use traditional seed grain for planting and for next year�s seed grain, he is free to do so.  If an Iraqi farmer wants to sign a contract to buy proprietary seed grain, he is free to do so.  If he signs a contract, he will agree to sell his harvest for food, and will agree not to use this year�s harvest for next year�s seed grain.  If he signs this contract, this Iraqi farmer will probably make a lot more money than otherwise, because proprietary seed is selected, at some expense, to be high-yield, disease resistant, drought resistant, and/or nutritious. 

If the Iraqi farmer abides by the terms of this contract, the farmer and the seed salesman both make money, and everyone benefits: the seed developer, the seed salesman, the farmer, the bakery, and the baker�s customers.

If the farmer violates the contract and steals the seed for next year�s crop, the farmer comes out marginally ahead, but he is now a thief.  The seed salesman loses money, and there will then be no more improvements to crops.  The Soviet Union died of inefficiency and corruption on this very principle. 

Mike is incapable of understanding stuff like this.  I do not know if you can understand it or not.  The only thing certain is that Global South lied to you, in pursuit of a left-wind ideological agenda.  And you bought it.

Goddam, Mike, you are as dumb as a turnip.

Now tell me which word or words that you do not understand.

Maximum?

Alabama?

unemployment?

rate?

1989 - 1992?

California?

Michigan?

Pennsylvania ?

And where did I say “average”?

Did you read the site I gave you?

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.al.htm

You claim some data from the BLS exists, but it does not show up on the BLS website; entirely different data shows up on the BLS website.  And Greenspan’s interest rate recession in 1991 and 1992 barely showed up as a blip on the GDP graphs, unlike the Bubba Bubble and the Bubba Recession in 1997-2003.  What is your problem?

Scorp,

You have no right to make ad hominem attacks on people you don’t know anything about only because you don’t approve of their politics. This is typical right-wing bullying and intolerance. It is also ignorant beyond belief!! I think a lot deeper than you have by the look of things. I really don’t know who you think you are!!

Global South corrected their mistake about Bremer Order 81 in a recent press release to mean that the Order prohibited Iraqi farmers from saving only patented seeds not traditional ones. The real problem is that given US subsidized grain dumping for the last 20 years, famine, war, and the depletion of the Iraqi naional seed bank only the largest farmers will be in business using corporate patented seeds and the GM seeds will dominate the Iraqi market mostly for planting cash crops for export. The export oriented nature of Iraqi agriculture will spell doom for the majority of urban poor and displaced traditional farmers who once fed the nation with affordable food.  Eventually, increasing food imports will become expensive and the external food dependency will seriously compromise Iraqi sovereignty.

By the Way, Global South never claimed that TNCs could patent the traditional seeds as their own because they don’t meet the UPOV criteria for PVP patenting. They do however raid various seed banks for germplasm in order to breed, patent, store, and market new seeds

You have already been rebutted on the BLS stats. In the years 1991
and 1992 unemployment reached serious double digit proportions
in many states particularly in the industrial north & west but also
states with a mixed ag-industrial base like Alabama.
There was no recession from 1997-2000. They were years of the
greatest US economic growth since WW2, actually in most of our
history. The internet bubble didn’t turn into a general depression until
Bush and AGAIN BUSH WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT SINCE HERBERT HOOVER TO SHOW NO INCREASE IN NET JOB GROWTH.
Now if something goes wrong under the GOP it’s Greenspan’s fault,
well he’s a die hard ayn rand Republican. If Greenspan hurts the Dens,
it’s Clinton’s fault ! You are the last person to talk about other peoples’
brains, you have not demonstrated any intelligence whatsoever and
any honesty, a more serious failing. I’m in management, not labor
and I can tell you Reagan’s depression of 1981-83 was the worst
since The Great GOP Depression of the 20s & 30s AND WAS ONLY
EXCEEDED BY BUSH 1’S MAJOR DEPRESSION OF 1990-1992.
It started in late 90 and was THE factor which finished him in the
election in 92, despite his 91% approval rating after the Gulf 1 Massacre ! It was the economy, STUPID ! as Carville used to say.
If Bush 2’s DOL is now rigging the stats, why would that surprise
anyone after his lying on Iraq alone ?
Chicago Cab Driver, “Scorp” has posted here and on other boards
as a troll. He’s a lowlife piece of crap and is INTENTIONALLY A LIAR.
We need to get his diseased ass out of here.

CDC -

You have no right to make ad hominem attacks on people you don�t know anything about only because you don�t approve of their politics. This is typical right-wing bullying and intolerance. It is also ignorant beyond belief!! I think a lot deeper than you have by the look of things. I really don�t know who you think you are!!

I.  Don�t.  Think.  So.  Here are some real ad hominem attacks from our friend Mike:

... you are dishonestly averaging them (figures) ...

Since I did not average anything, it certainly wasn�t done dishonestly.

Your (sic) a rushlimbaughgoppartylinegoonshittohead

... contrary to your juvenile redbaiting.

I�m getting tired of having to change your excrement filled diapers every morning.

You need to get your lazy behind out of that trash trailer and seek gainful employment. Recycling Rush�s lies every day is not going to put food on the table.

Now, CDC, this is just the latest post from Mike.  All of his posts are like this.  If Mike were prevented from being insulting, obscene, and scatalogical, he would have no detectable brain function at all.  You do not seem to be bothered by left-wind ad hominem attacks.  Why is that?  Or perhaps you selectively complain about some thing, and selectively do not complain about other things.

At any rate, you might consider that my comments to you were friendly, well-intentioned, and dead-on.  And you would do well to apply a little critical thinking to these socialist websites you keep coming up with.  They will rot your brain.

Mike -

The American Prospect???  Counterpunch???????

Well, that explains a lot. 

If you look to Counterpunch and American Prospect for information, you undoubtedly call telephone numbers you find on the men’s room wall at the Oakland Bus Terminal in order to find a date. Or do you go to the San Francisco Bus Terminal?  Your social life is as empty as your so-called intellectual life.

You, Sir, are a nekulturny nut case.

“Scorp” coming from a Party Line LimbaughLite Shittohead like you I take that as a compliment.
Again, you have failed totally to deal with ANY of my rebuttals to your
many nonarguments. None of my posts were obscene.
I used “excrement” to describe you, that’s proper english and proper
characterization.
Take your sad little behind out of here, no one is buying your rightwing
poison.
I feel very sorry for you, little man.

Scorp, it may interest you to know that Reagan didn’t bring down the Soviet Empire. It was a drastic drop in world oil prices after 1986 and hence a foreign exchange bottleneck which made debt repayment and needed technology imports difficult. Also, Soviet oil production had been seriously declining along with domestic economic growth because oil prices didn’t reflect actual domestic oil scarcity meaning that the Soviet Union was depleting its oil resources to fast and needed to free up the economy in order to adjust. It also needed to maintain energy production and supply levels to continue economic growth. It was the capacity to increase oil production/import levels to maintain economic growth in the late 1980s not the massive Reagan military buildup which actually hurt the US more than the Russians who were actually poised for dramatic economic and political reform.

chicago cab driver, thanks again for your intelligent effort to set the record straight.  “Scorp” is immune to reason but it’s always good
to nail a myth peddler.

What’s the difference between a Republican and a Democrat?  BOTH will spend every dime in the Treasury, but the Republican will feel bad about it the next day!

Ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.  They are like the legal mafia.  Most things that the policticians do under the guise of government force would be considered crimes in the private sector.

CDC -

Scorp, it may interest you to know that Reagan didn’t bring down the Soviet Empire.

Oh, I assure you that I am very interested in what you have to say about President Reagan and the Soviet economy.  It is always fascinating the spin you left-wind types put on subjects of which you know nothing. 

I am sure that President Reagan had lots of help in bringing down the Soviet Union.  The Soviets, following good socialist principles, had created a gigantic house of cards masquerading as a superpower state.  Reagan just recognized that it was a flimsy structure, and blew on it, bringing it down.  Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” and down it came. 

Now, notice that President Carter, just a few years before, had declared that the USA economy and state were in a hopeless fix, and that our best course of action was to cut the best deal we could with the Soviets because things were not going to get any better.  A few more years of Carter, and it would have been the USA collapsing, for sure. 

There was a famous quote from that era, I can’t lay my hands on it just now, but the comment was from a Westerner who wondered out loud why a superpower like the Soviet Union could not build a workable flush toilet.  The joke was that the Soviets could not build any workable system, but they could massively, and inefficiently, apply resources to specific projects, such as their space program..  OK, the space projects were visible, but the toilets did not work, and the time spent waiting in the line to get bread was not available to spend waiting in the other line to get toilet paper. 

Reagan was virtually alone in recognizing the true state of affairs within the Soviet Union.  Neither the CIA nor the State Department nor the European intel groups nor the European states saw the collapse coming.  When President Reagan called for the Berlin Wall to come down, his own speechwriters tried to delete the line, and he got a very negative reaction from the Europes, because nobody had the vision and foresight that President Reagan had. 

The only other person of note who shared President Reagan’s vision was Winston Churchill, who in the 1950s stated that the Eastern European states would someday be free of communist domination. 

So, why did you focus on the Soviet oil industry as a cause of the Soviet collapse?  What was your point?  Lots of oil producing countries, some of them poorly managed, went through the 1980s energy crunch without collapsing, and all parts of the Soviet economy were in trouble.  And why was Soviet oil production “seriously declining”, do you suppose?  Before the collapse, the Soviet oil facilities were poorly maintained and quite decrepit.  After the collapse, there was a lot of capital invested, and oil production increased.  Then Putin started taking over the oil companies, and 2005 saw the first production declines since the collapse.  Makes you wonder about the virtues of socialism, doesn"t it?  No?

It was the capacity to increase oil production/import levels to maintain economic growth in the late 1980s not the massive Reagan military buildup which actually hurt the US more than the Russians who were actually poised for dramatic economic and political reform.

You have just stated that the Russians, “were actually poised for dramatic economic and political reform”.  But the Soviet Union collapsed.

And you said, “the massive Reagan military buildup ... actually hurt the US more than the Russians”.  But the US was entering the strongest growth period of any nation in history.

Can you justify either of the above statements?  Or are they as insane as they sound?  Learn how to think.

CDC -

Have you been following the debate in our colleges and universities on academic freedom?  There is quite a history, and some of it is pretty ugly.

A key step was taken in Pennsylvania, when the legislature held hearings on academic freedom for students.  The leftist professors reacted furiouly, but the hearings revealed that existing rules on academic freedom allowed the professors to say anything, including bald indotrination in areas outside their competence and the class subject.  Meanwhile, students’ academic freedom was limited to things like being in a smoke-free classroom.

The hearings led to new academic freedom standards in the several Pennsylvania institutions of higher learning.  A new Penn State Polict HR 64, Academic Freedom, now states:

The faculty member is entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing his/her subject.  The faculty member is, however, responsible for the maintenance of appropriate standards of scholarship and teaching ability. It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence, in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty member is expected to be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without supersession or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.

No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study. The faculty member is normally bound not to take advantage of his/her position by introducing into the classroom provocative discussions of irrelevant subjects not within the field of his/her study.

Imagine that.  “The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently.”

I have an MA in Political Science from the UW-Madison ...

I can well believe that, but what you do not have is an education.  No educated person would entertain the ideas contained in Global South for more than a few minutes; such ideas are patently absurd for a person with the capacity for critical thought.  Your indoctrination at the University of Wisconsin has done you a great disservice, and that is why you are a cab driver in Chicago. 

You could go back to UW and demand a real education, in light of UW’s incompetent and fraudulent treatment of you and your classmates.

You probably do not have to do anything about academic freedom standards, because the idea is catching on everywhere, notably in California.  Poor Mike is in the same dilemma as you are, but I am a firm believer that our world continues to improve, despite how the left-wind professors indoctrinate their students, and themselves.  Academic standards are a trailing indicator, and all the old radicals from 1960 are retiring and dying off.  Good riddance.

Whatever you do, learn to think for yourself.

Scorp,

How the hell can an uneducated right-wing moron such as yourself tell others whether or not they’re educated just because you disapprove of their views. The so called movement for academic freedom is nothing more than a rightist ploy to infest the last bastions of free thought in the US, American Universities, with rightist morons who want to spread culture war BS and degrade the level of academic discourse down to that of an unschooled cracker. In my entire 6 years as a student at the UW I never saw any student attacked, demeaned, prejudicially graded or treated, or excluded from academic awards, positions, or funding because of their political views!! If it happened at all it was to individuals on the left and then only because of merit. There were plenty of right-wingers at the UW and they were treated with respect and engaged in discourse like all the others.

Scorp, the American Cracker cannot understand what goes on in the University because whether left or right, students are told the world is a complex place. This is something the American cracker can’t abide.  Don’t EVER expect the American University to be like FOX News. It’s a University and it is a place people come to seek enlightenment. We aren’t going to be seen speaking in tongues or screaming for the apocalypse. Universities are to bring enlightenment and that is important in these dark days of the medieval revival. I am proud to have been part of such an endeavor.

Your take on Reagan it is absurd. Most experts across the political spectrum disagree with you. The claim about him bringing down the Soviet empire is non-sense, mere right wing sound bites with no other value. It was clear that the Soviet economy was in trouble due to energy and foreign exchange bottlenecks as per much CIA analysis. How could Reagan know things that the CIA, DIA, Mi6, and other Intel groups didn’t pass along. Maybe its that direct line to Jesus!!

FYI, the anti-Soviet policy started with Carter and Brezhinski, in the summer of 1979 six months prior to the Soviet invasion.  The CIA began arming and training Mujihadeen in northeastern Afghanistan at the time as per the open claims of Zbigniev Brezhinski in the European Press. Reagan and Co. picked up on the policy of “bleeding the Soviets through the Afghan wound” despite repeated Soviet attempts to extricate themselves from a situation they went into with grave hesitation, proof, by the way, that the Soviets had limited objectives to stabilize the regime in Afghanistan and not a grand design to overrun southasia or alter the balance of power in the region.  Today we have the Al Qaeda legacy of this misguided policy. And the Russian economy is a worse mess now than in the 1980s when according to the CIA it experienced higher annual average economic growth rates than many western powers. Most eastern European migration today is economic. Only the rich few can afford to live in Eastern Europe and Russia!!

As far as Order 81 is concerned I attempted to explain that in light ot the massive destruction of natural Iraqi seed stocks the US was trying to replace those stocks with patented GM seeds controlled by large TNCs. Millions of dollars of USAID money is spent to subsidize the promotion of six major GM grain varieties half of which are for export. This will entirely restructure the agricultural profile of the country. It will reduce the number of local farmers who produce for the domestic market, while creating a nexus between the export oriented part of the farming sector and US TNCs who will extract most of the profit from the agricultural sector in royalties, and from revenue from the sale of seed, fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs. The local market which had a great deal biodiversity in its natural food supply, will become even more dependant on imports than they already are after 10,000 of being the breadbasket of all Mesopotamia!!  This is undoubtedly another reason behind the insurgency.

CDC -

Now, come on, boy.  On the one hand you are complaining that I treat you too roughly, by questioning the quality of the left-wind education you received at UW-Madison.  Now you are complaining that even though your MA in PolySci only qualifies you for a cab driver’s job, you are “educated”.  Which is it?  The two positions you have taken are incompatible. 

How could Reagan know things that the CIA, DIA, Mi6, and other Intel groups didn�t pass along.

You have probably never heard of it (you certainly do not exhibit it), but there is a mental faculty called “common sense”.  I don�t know why they call it common sense, it is one of the least common things around.  Reagan had lots of common sense to go with his degree in economics.  Bureaucracies and socialists have no common sense what-so-ever. 

Try to look at it from Reagan�s point of view.  The Soviets had large and highly visible space and military efforts.  But the flush toilets really did not work.  People really did stand in long lines for basics like bread and toilet paper, and there were no luxuries.  How productive are people when they stand in long lines for long periods of time every day?  How productive is an economy that so misutilizes its resources?  With only this information and a little bit of common sense, I have just demonstrated that the Soviet Union�s claim to super power status was shaky at best and farcical at worst.  Reagan knew that.  The CIA is a bureaucracy, and internal contradictions do not register within a bureaucracy.  Consequently, the CIA would be, and was, the last to recognize something like this. 

Another example: Global South. What would be the purpose of taking the poor farmer�s seed grain, when there is better quality, better performing, commercial grains available at nominal cost?  How many kajillion man-hours would be required to take all the inferior grain from all the farmers in Iraq, and what would be the purpose?  Why did Global South claim that Order 81 said things that Order 81 did not say?  This ain�t rocket science, CDC.  Ten minutes reading and forty seconds reflection tells you that this is nonsense.  Nonsense or not, Global South has gone to considerable effort to convince people of something that was both untrue and ridiculous.  And you bought in.

Learn how to think.  Aspire to common sense.

And don�t bother to tell me about universities.  I have more years in more universities than you ever will.

CDC -

The so called movement for academic freedom is nothing more than a rightist ploy to infest the last bastions of free thought in the US, American Universities, with rightist morons who want to spread culture war BS and degrade the level of academic discourse down to that of an unschooled cracker.

Well, I have been trying to convince you that you can and you should learn to think for yourself.  It is a much bigger job than I expected.

Quite apart from your left-wind, knee-jerk reaction as expressed above, take a moment to consider what Penn State Policy HR 64, Academic Freedom, actually calls for.  The requirements may be summarized as:

* Instructors stay on topic.

* Instructors present balanced views in an academic manner.

* Insructors encourage students to learn to think, and avoid indoctrinating students. 

And you think this is bad, and motivated by rightists with negative intent for negative purposes?

Well, let�s try a little common sense, that most uncommon of values.  I have personal knowledge of situations similar to the ones described below:

Parents send their child to university at a prodigious cost.  The child takes a course in Medieval Literature, and the instructor spends the entire semester talking about contemporary feminist issues.  There are reading assignments in medieval literature and contemporary feminist issues, but no tests or discussion of the literature.  Everyone gets an A in the course, except a couple of people who dropped out in disgust.  Is this situation leftist, or rightist, or idiotic?  Were the parents and the student getting their money�s worth?  Have the instructor and the school committed breach of contract?  Do the answers change if the instructor is pushing rightist viewpoints?

In a science course, an instructor spends the first 10-15 minutes every day reviewing current events, and pushing leftist viewpoints.  Is this situation leftist, or rightist, or idiotic?  Were the parents and the student getting their money�s worth?  Have the instructor and the school committed breach of contract?  Do the answers change if the instructor is pushing rightist viewpoints?

A well-known male professor of engineering (you might recognize his name from his radio broadcasts) regularly talked about his most recent visit to the old Soviet Union, and how wonderfully the Soviets were doing.  This continued up until the SU collapsed, at which time, without missing a beat, the professor declared that he was an ardent feminist, and then regularly talked about how wonderfully the ladies were doing.  After a period, he stopped talking about extraneous matters, and stuck to engineering.  Was this situation leftist, or rightist, or idiotic?  Were the parents and the student getting their money�s worth?  Have the instructor and the school committed breach of contract?  Do the answers change if the instructor is pushing rightist viewpoints?

All correct answers consist of a single word.  Don�t strain your brain, but if you can come up with some good answers, there may be a little hope for you yet.

Scorp,

You exhibit all the qualities of a right-wing neanderthal. First you put words in my mouth. I never “complained” that my degree wasn’t useful except for unskilled labor. In fact, if you would have read what I actually stated you would have discovered that I stated the opposite. I said I was very proud of my degree and time spent at the UW-Madison (with a politically diverse group no less!!) I’m sorry you don’t know the joy of a higher education. As they say it’s never to late!!

Reagan didn’t use common sense. It is well known that the “Cold War II” was initiated by liars like the recently dismissed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began circulating deliberate misinformation about a “strategic bomber gap” and other such nonsense that everyone now knows is false in order to justify large defense budgets. This caused huge deficits in the US and needless financial dependance on foreign capital. It began our long decent as a nation as much as the Russians. BTW, I actually know far more Russians than you do here in Chicago and I can tell you the myths about long lines and a disfunctional economy before 1989 are false. There wasn’t the choice of consumer goods but people had everything they needed. Today there is a real economic problem. Most people can’t earn a living as their economies are overtaken by Western capital and domestic oligarchs pushing prices up above wages to the point there is massive outmigration. The social gap is growing over there like never before in their history. They often tell me they pine for the good old days in some ways!!

As far as Global South’s mistake perhaps they were taking a page from the right’s playbook. At least they came out and thoroughly corrected their error instead of continuing to lie like our nation’s fearless leader.

As far as the Universities go you obviously have never been to one so it is YOU that go by biased hearsay not me. I’ve only known professional and dedicated instructors with integrity and knowledge that don’t lie or deliberately distort the truth. There are many different ways to look at a political question. I’ve seen many of them at the UW-Madison. The people there study hard and are not guilty of the wrongs you have accused them of out of sheer bias and prejudice. Like I said however, a University is not a Pentacostal Church!! Don’t go there expecting to see people speaking in tongues...or davening for that matter!!

As far as Order 81 goes, it is official US government admission that between 1983 and 1990, the US Commodity Credit Corporation disbursed some $5 billion in agricultural credits to Iraq which not only enabled Saddam’s War Machine but caused the bankruptcy of thousands of local Iraqi farmers, ruined the national seed bank supply, and created a more than 80% import dependancy on US grains. It also created unnecessary balance of payments deficits and massive foreign debt while ultimately making food more expensive to the Iraqi consumer.  Order 81 is an attempt to displace the natural seed varieties that Iraqi farmers have been breeding for centuries with a limited number of GMO seeds controlled by US TNCs like Monsanto and Conagra. Your typical racist arrogance ASSUMES the Iraqi varieties to be “inferior” when in fact they possess far greater nutrients and are cheaper in the long run. Iraqis have been feeding themselves for millenia. Why now do they need GMO seeds? It is the TNCs who want to streamline Iraqi agriculture in order to create (a) import dependance for surplus US grains and, (b) to create a vertically integrated global production structure with Iraqi farmers functioning essentially as low wage producers in a profit driven export system mostly favoring large TNCs.

CDC -

It is well known that the “Cold War II” was initiated by liars like the recently dismissed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began circulating deliberate misinformation about a “strategic bomber gap” and other such nonsense that everyone now knows is false in order to justify large defense budgets.

Whoa, CDC.  Learn to think.  Try to use a little common sense. 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first ever reference to a “missile gap” was by Senator John F. Kennedy on 14 August 1958.  This “missle gap” became a major theme in Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, even though President Eisenhower declared that no such missile gap existed.  Eisenhower knew this because of the U-2 intelligence flights.  But Kennedy kept lying until he won the election, but then a funny thing happened.  In October 1961, just months after Kennedy was safely elected, his Administration revealed that there was no missile gap and that the United States had overwhelming military superiority.  Read all about it at answers.com, “missile gap”. 

So, first you say:

The claim about (Reagan) bringing down the Soviet empire is non-sense …

And now you say:

Reagan didn’t use common sense. It is well known that the “Cold War II” was initiated by liars like the recently dismissed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who began circulating deliberate misinformation about a “strategic bomber gap” and other such nonsense that everyone now knows is false in order to justify large defense budgets. This caused huge deficits in the US and needless financial dependance on foreign capital. It began our long decent (sic) as a nation as much as the Russians.

“It began our long decent (sic) as a nation as much as the Russians.”

So, you are saying that the Russian (Soviet, actually) empire declined as a result of the American military build-up?  Why, yes, that is exactly what happened.  Reagan knew that the Soviets were too corrupt and inefficient to compete with us, and he planned this carefully.  Read a good account of the Reykjavik Summit with Gorbachev for the details, when Gorbachev realized that he did not have the horsepower to compete with the USA. 

And if you knew that Reagan brought down the Soviet Empire, why did you pretend that he did not?

But part of your statement is nonsensical.  Our long descent?  Umm, what would that be?  There was a relatively brief period of financial and immoral excess during the Clinton years (the Bubba Bubble), followed by the inevitable reaction decline (the Clintn Recession).  But fortunately, President Bush took the proper corrective actions by lowering and reforming taxes.  Voi-LA!  The economy is booming and markets are higher than during the Bubba Bubble, without benefit of a distorting, destructive bubble. 

“ … needless financial dependance on foreign capital … “

Whatever are you talking about?  Don’t start this argument.  I don’t have time for it , and you will lose, anyway.  Go read The Skeptical Optimist if you are confused.

BTW, I actually know far more Russians than you do here in Chicago and I can tell you the myths about long lines and a disfunctional economy before 1989 are false.

Whoa, CDC.  Learn to think before saying perfectly idiotic things.  Try to use a little common sense.  Quit being so fucking stupid. 

The only time I was actually behind the iron curtain was in East Germany, and they definitely had long bread lines.  Not in the big showcase cities, of course, but in the towns and villages.  But there is this marvelous thing called Google, and you can use it to call up all sorts of interesting information.  Like articles on the Soviet Union and their long bread lines and rationing and empty shops.  The Soviets were not big on showing how bad off their people were, but there are even a few photos of Soviet breadlin