The Sunshine Empire

Most Americans by far feel that the country is on the wrong track, and that is mainly due to the Iraq War, and the current state of the economy. When you speak to most hardened conservatives like John McCain and George Bush, they will fight you on the textbook definition of recession, then tell you that in fact, the “fundamentals” of the American economy are strong. But to look at the current “fundamentals of the American economy, most understand that the country’s economy is teetering on the brink. They are correct that under the textbook definition of recession, it says that you need to have two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The economy grew at just slightly higher a clip than the melting glaciers near Ms. Palin’s home, but it grew last quarter.

Yet tomorrow will give us the largest investment bank failure in 18 years with Lehman Brothers. The dollar is worthless compared to 8 years ago, and more financial institutions would have failed had not the Republican’s Administration using the power of the government to prop them up. Now conservatives will invariably run back to the idea that they are blameless for this disgrace and point to 9/11 and the housing bubble. Now I will admit that the tragedy of September 11th was a huge shock to the American financial system, but if you listen to economists and not the Republicans you know the “Clinton recession” was over by the end of 2001. The housing bubble is another matter all together. First the use of a bubble to claim blamelessness is ironic in the fact that Bill Clinton’s administration was routinely blamed for the .com bubble. But we know that according to conservatives everything bad that has happened to the republic from 1927 to 2035 is all Bill Clinton’s fault. That aside conservatives blame the financial institutions (which they then use taxpayer money to bail out, see Bear Sterns, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) for poor lending practices. What could have caused this recklessness? Maybe it was the Republicans in Congress who prayed at the alter of financial sector deregulation for so many years when they were in control of all three branches of government. This prospective Lehman Brothers bankruptcy is just another sign of it for those who want to pay attention.

This is where the clear political irony becomes titanic. The McCain Palin ticket is now claiming that they understand the financial issues facing you, and that you cannot trust Obama and Biden because they will raise your taxes. John McCain’s senior financial adviser was correct when he said tax cutting is just the Republican brand, and you don’t go against your brand. They wont even do it when Alan Greenspan says they are living in a fantasy world. They repeat over and over to middle class audiences that Obama are going to raise taxes, when it is a bald faced lie. McCain gets upset when he’s told he’s a liar because the former straight talker knows he’s right. Obama’s tax plan includes a tax break for 95% of the working class. You can argue that it will never pass or that he wont give it to as much, but to say he plans to raise taxes on the middle class is the McCain camp thinking you are stupid. Hopefully the fallout of the Lehman Brothers collapse will refocus the political debate in this presidential campaign on the economy, and not on recipes for moose and sexism. The political realty that most Americans still refuse to see right in front of their eyes is that the Republicans have destroyed the economy. The American public has much less money in their pockets, and don’t know the textbook definition of recession.