If we call the 1920s the twenties, the 1990s the nineties and so forth, what do we call the first decade of the century? My wife, Andrea, said the naughties.
That's about right. So many have been so naughty this last decade.
While his kleptocracy funneled billions to old business buddies, Bush was still able at the last minute to intimidate Congress into dumping hundreds of billions of taxpayer money so more of the big boys could get their end-of-year bonus and pay a few dividends. Those dividends of course go mostly to extremely wealthy stockholders and other corporations. Not to mention all the greedy little games the bankers, financial wizards, and politicians engaged in to bring down the global economy. All kinds of shenanigans become the norm, including double-dipping. Or triple.
I like the story of the guy getting a full pension as a retired navel officer, a full retirement pension from a subsequent civil service job with his state, who then gets a hefty full salary from a high-powered technology and policy consulting firm, and gets consulting contracts from the Federal government. He gets four full paychecks, three funded by your tax dollars. Not to mention that he came from a generations exceptionally wealthy family to begin with which included the neat little perk of his own significant trust fund. A fund that is full of tax-free governement and state bonds, yes, you guessed it, with dividends funded by our tax dollars. These are the kind of dividends the first bail-out money went to protect.
To paraphrase Summers, basically the game for the last eight years has been: every American in the bottom 80 percent income-wise writes a yearly check for on average ten grand to the top one percent. That's the Republican "level" playing field. Anything less than that is "wealth re-distribution" and Socialism.
Definitely the naughties.
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