I survived the Bush administration 2001-2009

Bushonomics

A new Center for American Progress report released today -- Understanding Bushonomics: How We Got Into This Mess In the First Place -- documents "the extraordinary transfer of wealth that took place between ordinary households and the extremely well-to-do and the effort by this administration to address the consequences of that problem without addressing the root cause."

Senior Fellow Scott Lilly argues that while the "economy did in fact grow at a reasonably strong pace through most of the Bush presidency" and "the hourly productivity of American workers" increased by "more than 19 percent," average Americans did not reap the benefits of economic expansion. Instead, President Bush's economic policies redistributed wealth to the richest Americans and left the majority with stagnating wages and declining household incomes.

The transfer "drained the American consumer of the resources needed to keep the economy humming" and led the administration to stimulate the economy by expanding credit -- an action that only weakened "our long term capacity for growth," he concludes.

WEALTH GOES TO THE RICH: The Bush administration directed its economic policies and the benefits of economic growth towards a narrow segment of the population, the wealthiest Americans. Looking at the effects of the first three Bush tax cuts, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that "the percentage by which the effective tax rate was cut for high-income families was nearly twice the rate cut for those in the middle of the income spectrum."

Meanwhile, the administration's failure to raise the minimum wage coupled with its poor enforcement of federal wage and hour laws, trade agreements, and union rights further undermined the economic security of middle and lower-income Americans. Consequently, between 2000 and 2006, "those among the top 10 percent of all households on average increased their income by about 2 percent, while those in the bottom 90 percent lost more than 4 percent."

The "biggest beneficiaries of U.S. economic growth that occurred between 2000 and 2006 were U.S. corporations," the report concludes. While corporate profits grew "at a little less than two-thirds the growth rate of the gross domestic product" during the second half of the 20th century, between 2000 and 2006, "corporate profits grew nearly four times as fast as GDP," increasing by an estimated 66 percent.

NO TRICKLE DOWN: The newfound prosperity of the top 10 percent of families, "which accounted for 95.3 percent of the nation's income growth between 2002 and 2006," did not trickle down the economic spectrum, and left most Americans incapable of absorbing the rising output of consumer products. Recognizing the precarious condition of the U.S. consumer, corporations retained their extra profits, invested little in new commercial structures such as factories and office buildings, bought back their own stock, and "increased dividends rather than expand capacity."

High-income individuals absorbed some of the extra output by consuming luxury items, but most of their "increased income went to savings rather than consumption," Lilly writes.

A POOR FIX FOR DEMAND: With families unable to absorb the extra production, the Bush administration tried to keep the economy growing by ordering the Federal Reserve to drastically lower the Reserve's Discount Rate, "the interest rate charged by the Federal Reserve to member institutions for short-term lending."

By 2002, the Fed Reserve Discount Rate dropped to 0.75 percent and "the dramatic reduction in the cost of money to member banks began a frenzy of economic activity." The biggest effect was in-home mortgage refinancing. "Extremely low interest rates...made it possible for hard-pressed consumers to maintain and even improve their living standards by taking equity out of their homes," Lilly notes. But "the dramatic expansion of credit created excessive debt and distorted the price of housing. It also weakened the dollar, pushing up oil prices."

Bird and Fortune (Washington Diplomat)

John Conyers May Move to Compel Testimony on Ohio Voter Suppression

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 2/1/2008 4:43PM

Last week, Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), both of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the former Ohio Secretary of State and Co-Chair of the state's Bush/Cheney '04 campaign committee, J. Kenneth Blackwell, inviting him to appear next week at a subcommittee oversight hearing on voter suppression issues.

To the surprise of almost nobody, Blackwell has refused the invitation to testify, claiming his "schedule [would] not permit" him to attend the hearings.

The snub, according to both the following report from Jon Craig at the Cincinnati Enquirer and additional indications given to THE BRAD BLOG by a Judiciary staffer other than the one quoted by Craig, may lead to an escalation of the longtime standoff between Conyers and Blackwell. A congressional subpoena requiring an appearance by the controversial former SoS, who presided over one of the worst-run Presidential Elections in American history, may well be in the offing.

The The Democratic Republican reads: THE BRAD BLOG

A Felon Goes Free

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will not serve a day in prison for his felony convictions of perjury and obstruction of justice. President Bush yesterday commuted Libby's 2.5 year prison sentence, hours after an appeals court ruled that Libby could not delay serving his jail time while he appealed his convictions. Bush's commutation comes at a noteworthy time. Three years ago this week, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson published his New York Times op-ed revealing that the Bush administration had "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

For this act, which began to expose how Bush misled the nation into war, Wilson became the target of an aggressive White House smear campaign that culminated in the outing of his wife Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer. Arthur Brown, a CIA division chief who retired in 1995, described the actions taken against Plame as the "moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units." Yet when federal investigators tried to investigate this potential grave national security crime, they ran into a roadblock: Vice President Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compared Libby's lying and obstruction to throwing sand in an umpire's eyes. "He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view." Now Bush, who once pledged to "return the highest standards of honor to the highest office in the land," has condoned this criminal conduct, to the cheers of leading conservative politicians and pundits around the country.

SELECTIVE COMPASSION: "I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement yesterday. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive." This explanation "only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk," the New York Times opines.

As governor of Texas, Bush infamously joked about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. ("Please don't kill me," Bush whimpered to a reporter while imitating Tucker, "his lips pursed in mock desperation.") As president, Bush has repeatedly put himself and his administration above the law, on matters from torture and warrantless domestic spying to congressional oversight and the use of signing statements. Bush's treatment of Libby's sentence is extraordinarily rare by his own standards.

"Bush has granted fewer pardons -- 113 -- than any president in the past 100 years, while denying more than 1,000 requests." In addition, Bush has "denied more than 4,000 commutation requests, and hundreds of requests for pardons and commutations are still pending."

A DEEPLY UNPOPULAR DECISION: Bush's disregard for the rule of law is not popular. A SurveyUSA instant poll found just 21 percent of Americans agree with the decision to commute Libby's prison sentence. Sixty percent said Bush "should have left the judge's prison sentence in place," and only 17 percent wanted a full pardon.

'EXCESSIVE' PUNISHMENT: Bush's claim that Libby's sentence was "excessive" doesn't hold water. As Fitzgerald pointed out yesterday, "this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country."

In this case, a federal judge appointed by Bush "considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws," Fitzgerald wrote. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals."

Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman, an "expert on federal criminal sentencing policies," said Bush's excuse is "hypocritical and appalling from a president whose Justice Department is always fighting" attempts by judges and lawmakers to lower the punishment called for under federal sentencing guidelines. Berman said Bush's message amounted to, "My friend Scooter shouldn't have to serve 30 months in prison because I don't want him to."

Godfather IV - Gonzales trial youtube video

Illustrated guide to GOP scandals

Bushies Behaving Badly
An illustrated guide to GOP scandals.
By Holly Allen, Christopher Beam, and Torie Bosch
Updated Friday, May 11, 2007, at 12:36 PM ET

Bush Approval Map: No Safe Districts for GOP

bush

FORMER CONGRESSIONAL AIDE MARK D. ZACHARES PLEADS GUILTY TO PUBLIC CORRUPTION CHARGE

TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2007
WWW.USDOJ.GOV

WASHINGTON - A former high-level staffer of the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation & Infrastructure Committee has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, the Department of Justice announced today.

Mark D. Zachares, 48, entered his plea to the one-count criminal information today in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, before Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. Zachares faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and supervised release following his incarceration. As part of a plea agreement, Zachares has agreed to cooperate with the ongoing investigation into the activities of former Washington, D.C., lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others.

According to plea documents, Zachares met Abramoff in the mid-1990s when Zachares was a government official for the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), then an Abramoff lobbying client. After a failed attempt to secure for Zachares an appointment as head of the Department of the Interior's Office of Insular Affairs in Washington, D.C., Abramoff ultimately helped Zachares secure what became a series of positions as a high-level staffer to the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. Zachares admitted that his job search with Abramoff, which started in late 2000, marked the beginning of a conspiracy that continued through April 2004, wherein Zachares corruptly solicited and received a stream of things of value from Abramoff and his lobbyists in exchange for agreeing to take, and taking, official action to benefit Abramoff, his lobbyists, and their lobbying clients. Zachares left the House committee in November 2005.

According to plea documents, the things of value received by Zachares included tens of thousands of dollars worth of tickets to concerts and sporting events, a luxurious golf trip to Scotland on a private jet, free meals and drinks, and multiple rounds of free golf at Abramoff's country club. Zachares also admitted receiving $10,000 from an Abramoff-controlled entity shortly before he started working on Capitol Hill.

Zachares also admitted that he and Abramoff entered into what they called a "two year plan," whereby Zachares would work as a Capitol Hill staffer to benefit Abramoff's interests, while making political contacts necessary to eventually be hired as a highly-paid lobbyist with Abramoff's firm.

Zachares admitted that the actions he agreed to take, and took, to benefit Abramoff, his lobbyists, and their clients included securing for Abramoff non-public information, referring potential lobbying clients to Abramoff's firm, reaching out to administrative agencies on behalf of Abramoff clients, using his position to exert "payback" on entities that had retained competing lobbying firms, and actively participating in the strategic planning of a new "maritime lobbying practice" at Abramoff's firm, which was explicitly designed to take advantage of Zachares' then-position with the House subcommittee with maritime oversight responsibilities. Zachares further admitted that he intentionally failed to disclose the gifts he had received from Abramoff and his lobbyists, as required in annual financial reports.

The Zachares case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorneys Richard C. Pilger and Matthew L. Stennes of the Public Integrity Section, which is headed by Chief William M. Welch II. The case is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The broader investigation into the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff is being conducted by a task force including special agents of the FBI, the Department of Interior Office of the Inspector General, the General Services Administration Office of the Inspector General, and the Criminal Investigation branch of the Internal Revenue Service, as well as prosecutors in the Public Integrity and Fraud Sections of the Criminal Division and the Criminal Tax Section of the Tax Division. To date, the investigation has yielded guilty pleas from several defendants, including public officials such as former Congressman Robert Ney and former Deputy Secretary of the Interior James Steven Griles. The investigation has also resulted in the conviction by jury trial of the former chief of staff for the General Services Administration, David Safavian.

Articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney

Kucinich's Impeachment Proposal Takes Antiwar Stand to New Lengths
By Marie Horrigan
Congressional Quarterly
Tuesday 24 April 2007

Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich on Tuesday introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney for "high crimes and misdemeanors" related to his participation in the buildup for the war in Iraq - and what the longshot Democratic presidential contender said was belligerent rhetoric toward Iran.

In an 18-page draft resolution, Kucinich outlined three charges against Cheney: that he "manipulated the intelligence process ... by fabricating the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction" to justify the war in Iraq; that he deceived citizens and Congress "about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" to justify the war; and that he has "openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran, absent any real threat to the United States, and has done so with the United States' proven capability to carry out such threats."

"In all this, Vice President Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as vice president, and subversive to constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and the manifest injury of the people of the United States ... [and] by such conduct, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office," the resolution concluded.

Kucinich introduced the articles at a news conference held at 5 p.m. Tuesday on Capitol Hill, which was delayed for several hours. The event was originally planned for noon, but Kucinich initially postponed it based on news reports Cheney was undergoing emergency medical treatment for a chronic blood clot condition in his leg. When subsequent news reports indicated the tests were more routine, Kucinich rescheduled the event.

Democratic leaders, who have stated repeatedly they have no intentions of pursuing the impeachment of either President Bush or Cheney, do not support the impeachment effort. Kucinich said Tuesday that he did not have any co-sponsors for the resolution. But he proclaimed that he had the support of "millions of Americans."

Speaking at the news conference, Kucinich said he was pursuing impeachment of Cheney, and not Bush, for practical reasons. "It's significant and responsible to start in this way, because if the same charges would relate to the president as relate to the vice president, you would then have to go through the constitutional agony of impeaching two presidents consecutively," he said.

Kucinich posted his proposed articles of impeachment on his congressional Web site.