Excerpt: Bush, in the weeks before September 11, pledged to honor the sanctity of the Social Security lockbox except in the event of recession, war, or a national emergency. But after "everything changed" on 9/11, he reportedly gloated to his budget director, Mitch Daniels, "Lucky me--I hit the trifecta!" At the time, this comment (a variation of which is being recycled for laughs at current GOP fundraisers) seemed merely offensive. But in light of revelations that Bush's August 6 briefing memo was titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike US," Bush's "luck" and weird prescience are worth more than passing scrutiny.
Do you recall his concept of "ownership society"?
Well, Bush just took ownership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and expanded the national debt by another $5 trillion (now about $15 trillion up from $5 trillion when he took office.)
He literally blew up the economy and financial industries. Greenspan lowered interest rates to 1% and kept them there for more than a year while Bush encouraged
Excerpt: Expanding Homeownership. The President believes that
homeownership is the cornerstone of America's vibrant
communities and benefits individual families by building
stability and long-term financial security. In June 2002,
President Bush issued America's Homeownership Challenge
to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to
encourage them to join the effort to close the gap that
exists between the homeownership rates of minorities and
non-minorities. The President also announced the goal of
increasing the number of minority homeowners by at least
5.5 million families before the end of the decade. Under
his leadership, the overall US homeownership rate in
the second quarter of 2004 was at an all time high of
69.2 percent. Minority homeownership set a new record
of 51 percent in the second quarter, up 0.2 percentage
point from the first quarter and up 2.1 percentage points
from a year ago. President Bush's initiative to dismantle
the barriers to homeownership includes...
the mortgage and banking industries
to loan, loan, loan -- with no federal oversight
whatsoever!
Naomi Klein discusses the ownership society here
Ivan Eland ought to take another look in light of this additional information! Bush's presidency has been a series of disasters, now multiplying and reinforcing each other. The nation is effectively bankrupt -- just not yet insolvent (can still borrow and print money). There is no way we can solve our problems without cleaning up the Bush messes, and yet it will cost trillions to fix Bush's mistakes! Catch 22 bigtime.
At this point the system is going to change ownership. Foreigners will assume control of the majority of America's assets, and you can bet that they will be calling the shots. Expect a long sobering up period for Americans after Bush leave office and the Truth begins to trickle out to the Heartland.
Excerpt: Remember the "ownership society," fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? "We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property," Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush's greatest legacy, remembered "long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah." Yet in Bush's final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society's undertaker.
Comment: (9/15/2008) Whenever RepubliCON$ are in power, always look in the Pentagon; the Pentagon can't pass its own audit and Rum$FAILed announced that he can't/won't account for $2.3 trillion.
Blue BuntingPERMANENT LINK
