Like the Beat, Beat, Beat of the Tom-Tom
Reported by Marie Therese - August 29, 2004 -
....over and over again, FOX drums the message into your dear little head - Bush, good , Kerry, bad - Bush, good, Kerry, bad
In a segment today at 12:56 PM EDT on FOX News Weekend, business correspondent, Stuart Varney, and host Brian Wilson yet again sang a song of fiscal nonsense, pocket full of lie.
WILSON: "We will hear a lot this week about the President's economic policies. How will his plans directly affect you?....What do they [the Republicans] need to do here, in your mind?
VARNEY: "I think the President...is going to push for making the tax cuts permanent. I also think he may well try to surprise us by mentioning measures as to how he would bring down the cost of health care and bring down the cost of new drugs by ...."
My ears perked up. A surprise? Could this be a major policy shift? The President did mention a national sales recently. Wow! Maybe that's it!!! Trumpet fanfare. Hushed silence. Baited breath.
VARNEY (continuing): "...reining in all of those lawsuits."
Major disappointment. Massive sigh. Facial frown.
VARNEY: "If he did that, he would be combining solical policy - health care - along with economic policy because health care and the very sharp rise in health care costs has been a job killer....and also, I must say it would be a way of challenging Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards who has made - what? - $50 million suing doctors in North Carolina."
Not only does Varney NOT offer anything new from Bush, he and Wilson go on to repeat the totally discredited notion that lawsuits in and of themselves are the major reason that health care costs are so high. Keep in mind, lawsuits raise health care costs a mere 2%.
WILSON: "....the traditional wisdom is that Wall Street wants to see a Republican President and they've rallied this week. Is that because the President's numbers have been a little bit better?"
VARNEY: "Yes. There's nothing that Wall Street and business generally wants more than some degree of reining in lawsuits. It's a huge cost to American business."
Two percent is a "huge cost"?!
VARNEY: "They don't want to be bearing that cost any longer. It clearly has helped raise the cost of health care in America which is hurting new job creation. ... [Wall Street is] very much opposed to what Mr. Kerry wants to do, which is simply fund the uninsured - [fund] insurance for the uninsured - with taxpayer money."
Comment
Ah, finally some truth. American companies don't want to bear the cost of lawsuits. That's what this all boils down to. Not some altruistic desire to create more jobs.
American business is dedicated to its bottom line. Period.
The interests of those who run the corporations are no longer in sync with the interests of the American worker. The tragedy today is that the very people who are being thrown into ever-deeper poverty are the very people who have been bamboozled into voting for George Bush.
The "hidden agenda" of American business (and, I believe, of the Bush administration) is the systematic reduction of the wages and benefits of the American laborer. Unless American wages drop to far less than they are today, the jobs will continue to go elsewhere. That is a bald economic fact.
The usual counter-argument to this is that lower American wages would not benefit the global economy because that economy depends so heavily on American consumption. That's true as far as it goes. But it's been my contention that - if you remove the cost of basic necessities from the various consumption indices, those necessities being defined as food, gas and shelter - one is left with a far smaller group of consumers who actually make enough money to contribute to the "global economy".
I believe most arguments regarding the American consumer deliberately muddy the waters. Sometimes the pundits means "all" American consumers, but most of the time they are actually referring to this considerably smaller population of "discretionary consumers".
I guess what I'm saying is that Joe and Jane Six Pack have already been factored out of the equation by most economists. Witness Greenspan's warning to baby boomers about Social Security.
The Machiavellian brilliance of the GOP is that they have diverted Joe and Jane's free-floating anger over their diminishing paychecks, escalating debt and unemployed family and friends to "other" targets, e.g., gays, liberals, non-Christians, the war on terror, pinheads, bomb throwers, etc.
Congratulations, Geroge, Dick, Karl and Rupert. Great use of the diversionary tactic!
