R i g h t a r d i a: Republican prejudices and preconceived notions

Rightardia got a comment form Just a conservative girl who was upset that we said Bush was stupid from the gitgo in an article about Herman Cain. We noted that Cain is not stupid. He just is myopic and has a narrow view of the world typical to many engineers.

Cain's grasp of Us foreign policy and international events is limited. Cain was tongue tied when asked a question about about Obama's foreign policy in Libya.

Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush’s professors at Harvard Business School. He had an unfavorable view of GW Bush when he was at Harvard. Tsurumi said:

He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases.

When the professor was discussing the Great Depression and FDR policies, Bush said ‘The government doesn’t have to help poor people — because they are lazy.’

Tsurumi said, ‘Well, could you explain that assumption?’

Not only could Bush not explain it, he said, ‘No, I didn’t say that.’”

The professor noted that during a discussion of the New Deal, Bush called Franklin Roosevelt’s policies ‘socialism.’

Bush denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing.

When Bush was challenged to explain his prejudices, he was unable to defend them.

American conservatism has morphed into a series or preconceived notions and prejudices. The Republican politicians use simplistic sound bites to explain away America's problems .

For Example, Newt Gingrich tired to marginalize the the Occupy Movement by saying the protesters need to get a job and take a bath. Yet 70 per cent of the protesters are employed.

Fox News has suggested Democrats are behind the protests, but most of the protesters are independents. Rightardia is on many of the Democratic mail distribution lists and we get little email on the Occupy Movement that is not from the news media.

We see no evidence that Democrats are behind the Occupy Movement.

Over the years, the GOP has been energized by many prejudices and preconceived notions. Here are some of them:

Blacks need to get off of the plantation (government housing). Never mind, that it was conservatives who put them there. Since conservatives eliminated Affirmative Action for minorities in colleges, black enrollment plummeted.

From Rightardia's perspective, it seems conservatives want blacks to stay at the plantation. Can you name one Republican program that helps black Americans?

CNN Money also reported that black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest rate since 1984. Many black pundits have noted that a cold in the economy is like a plague in the black community.

Another conservative bromide is that the function of government is defense. The preamble to the US Constitution says otherwise:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

As you will notice, defense is only one of six items that the Founder's mention. Defense is preceded by "establish justice" and "domestic tranquility."

More importantly, the bloated defense budget is more about offense than defense. After a rag tag pack of terrorists attacked the Twins Towers, the Bush administration responded by raising the defense budget 40 per cent.

What is the ther threat to the US? China, Russia or Iran? The 2009 U.S. military budget accounts for approximately 40% of global arms spending and is over six times larger than the militarybudget of China. The Russians are for more interested in trade than war. The Europeans know this and that is why there defense budgets are modest.

Iran is a threat to Israel, not the US. Ron Paul sid this in a recent debate about Iran

. . . and I’m afraid what’s going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq.

Another conservative truism is America can recover from the economic down turn by cutting taxes for the affluent and through deregulation.

This is likely the biggest oversimplification of all. First, the US has the firth most unequal economy in the world and there is no factual evidence to support either GOP assumption. American started giving more to the affluent during the Reagan era and it fractured the Middle Class.

The fact is that most jobs are created by small businessmen, not the wealthiest Americans. Mark Zandi of Moodys Analytics' did a study on the effectiveness of government programs. This is what he found

It is clear that program like Food Stamps and Unemployment Compensation are more effective and have a “multiplier effect” because the recipient has to spend the federal money. Cutting income or corporate taxes is one of the lest effective means to stimulate the economy.

The GOP also continues to advocate deregulation although it is clear that deregulation was key culprit in the downturn of the US economy. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was a major contributor and former Senator Byron Dorgan warned :

I thought reversing Glass-Steagall would set us up for dramatic failure and that is exactly what has happened.

To fuse together the investment banking function with the FDIC banking function has proven to be a profound mistake.

On April 28, 2004, the SEC voted unanimously to permit the largest broker-dealers with net capital" of more than $5 billion) to apply for exemptions from this established "haircut" method of depreciation. Upon receiving SEC approval, those firms were permitted to use mathematical models to compute the haircuts on their securities based on international standards used by commercial banks.

Since 2008, many commentators on the 2007-2009 financial crisis have identified a 2004 SEC rule change as an important cause of the crisis on the basis it permitted certain large investment banks such as Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley to greatly increase their leverage by reducing their reserves.

The 2004 rule change remains in effect. Because of this rule change, the large investment banks maintained minimal reserves so when the mortgage loan industry crashed, the losses had limited effect on these banks and TARP 1 had to be used to cover the looming banks failures.

These investment banks are now covered by FDIC. It has been reported that bank of America has moved $75 trillion of its assets into banks that are FDIC insured. This suggests that another TARP bailout may be forthcoming.

http://www.salon.com/2004/09/16/tsurumi/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x607008

Wikipedia