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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Macro- and microeconomic policies are subordinate to the circular alliance of oligarchy and oligopoly. Government expenditures have raced to the fastest pace of increase under Bush since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But the spending is not intended to prime the economic pump. Nor is it invested mainly in public goods such as infrastructure or schools; nor is it used to expand the standard of living of the middle and working classes, whose incomes and real wages are rapidly shrinking. Instead it is poured into military contracts and tax cuts heavily weighted to the very wealthiest, who do not in turn invest in productive capital. As a result, the largest budget surplus in U.S. history has been transformed into the largest deficit, whose bonds are principally held by Asian banks, a shift that presages a strategic tilt of global power and long-term threat to national security. The illusion that as the post-Cold War unipolar power the U.S. faces no countervailing forces is undermined by the administration's constantly draining deficits. Thus 21st century Republicanism reverses the policies that brought about the American century.
Under Ronald Reagan, the unanticipated consequences of supply-side economics -- instead of tax cuts fostering increased government revenues, they blew a black hole in the budget -- has under Bush been a conscious policy following the Reagan lesson. The reason is to apply fiscal pressure on government, making its regulations more pliable for manipulation in the interest of oligopoly and therefore the Republican political class. Just as macroeconomic policy is the plaything of politics, so is microeconomic policy. Environmental degradation, lowered public health and urban neglect are indifferent byproducts.
The Republican system is fundamentally unstable. Bush has no economic policy other than Republicanism. As the economic currents run toward an indefinable reckoning, the ship of state drifts downstream.
In stable systems, individuals are replaceable parts. Republicanism as constructed under Bush is a juggernaut that cannot afford to scrape an iceberg.
The Republican scandals converge on operators who are the center of the oligarchy. Their own relationships are complicated and tangled. But the outcome of the scandals affecting these major actors will inevitably unravel the Republican project.
On Monday, Tom DeLay was indicted by a Texas grand jury for money laundering of corporate contributions through his political action committee, a crime that carries a life sentence. DeLay had resigned on Sept. 28 as House majority leader after being handed his first indictment for felony conspiracy. Even as DeLay proclaimed himself a victim of injustice -- "I am indicted just for the reason to make me step aside as majority leader" -- he proclaimed that he would rule "with or without the title."
As DeLay shouts defiance, federal prosecutors close in on one of DeLay's "closest and dearest friends," Jack Abramoff, whose largess to DeLay over the years, including lavish trips to Korea and Britain, are part of the investigation. Abramoff's bilking of millions from Indian tribes has brought other Republican figures, including lobbyist Grover Norquist, a key DeLay advisor, and Ralph Reed, a central character in the religious right, under legal scrutiny.
At the same time, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, investigating the exposure by senior administration officials of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, has completed his inquiry by receiving the testimony of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and must issue any indictments before his grand jury expires on Oct. 28. Within the White House, Karl Rove, feverishly mustering wavering conservative support for Bush's nomination of his personal lawyer and White House legal counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court, awaits.
Bush never much liked DeLay. DeLay criticized Bush's father, for which there can be no forgiveness, and he criticized him, too. When DeLay wanted to slash the earned-income tax credit, Gov. Bush, beginning his presidential campaign in 1999 and seeking to establish his bona fides as a "compassionate conservative," said DeLay wanted to balance the budget "on the backs of the poor."
DeLay, the former exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, a suburb of Houston, who had called the Environmental Protection Agency "the Gestapo," had risen from the Texas Legislature to the U.S. Congress. Once known for his boisterous reveling as "Hot Tub" Tom, he became born again, and his right-wing politics always had a forbidding punitive undercurrent. When he became Republican whip, he hung a whip on his office wall. He relished his nickname, "the Hammer." Asked to put out his cigar in a restaurant because it violated the nonsmoking rule, he bellowed, "I am the federal government."
DeLay never really respected Newt Gingrich, who had led the Republicans out of their 40-year wilderness to control of Congress and become speaker of the House. Despite Gingrich's penchant for vituperative personal attacks on Democrats, DeLay thought he was soft. There was something of the lost boy about Gingrich, who collected dinosaur bones, loved to visit zoos and speculated about outer space. DeLay also felt that Gingrich had fallen under the seductive spell of President Clinton and conceded too much to him. DeLay plotted coups against Gingrich and finally succeeded after the Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. DeLay worried that Gingrich would weaken in the struggle to impeach and remove Clinton, and because of Gingrich's mistress on the House payroll, which made him doubly vulnerable. DeLay coerced House Republicans to impeach Clinton, threatening moderates that he would fund primary opponents and deny them advantageous committee assignments. Without DeLay, there would have been no impeachment. After the Senate acquitted Clinton, DeLay preached at his local church that Clinton had been impeached because he had "the wrong worldview."
The center of DeLay's operation was the K Street Project, the pay-for-play system by which businesses and lobbyists kicked back to the Republican Party in exchange for legislation. He kept a little black book noting which lobbyists were good and which were bad, who deserved favors and who punishment. One reporter, believing that the story about the black book was apocryphal, asked DeLay, who proudly showed it to him.
Of all the lobbyists on the good list, Jack Abramoff ranked at the top. Abramoff's provenance as a scion of Beverly Hills, Calif., could not have been more fortuitous for a career in the Republican Party. His father was president of the Diners Club franchises, owned by Alfred Bloomingdale, a member of Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet. Abramoff parlayed his connections and money into a campaign that gained him the chairmanship of the College Republicans in 1981, Year 1 of the Reagan era.
Abramoff's campaign manager was a radical right-winger named Grover Norquist, and the two of them recruited a zealous younger activist to carry out their orders, Ralph Reed. Reed required College Republicans to recite a speech from the movie "Patton," replacing the word "Nazis" with "Democrats": "The Democrats are the enemy. Wade into them. Spill their blood! Shoot them in the belly!"
