Some excerpts from the Mount Vernon Statement versus the reality of conservatism.
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law.
Waxman Probes Iraq Contracting, Missing $12 Billion
Representative Henry Waxman, kicking off hearings on government contracting, questioned former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer today on what happened to as much as $12 billion in unaccounted-for cash spent when he was in charge of rebuilding Iraq.
The Founders believed in no bid contracts to multi-national corporate interests whose former President was Dick Cheney? Halliburton’s no-bid contracts for work in Iraq get FBI scrutiny
Treasongate – Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Scotter Libby betray identity of CIA NOC agent. In response conservatives rise money for Libby defense and lie about Rove and Libby’s involvement.
President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condelezza Rice lie, exaggerate, and distort intelligence they used to drum up support for invading Iraq. Maybe “Mount Vernon” is conservative code for they hope the American public has a very short memory about all that “rule of law” stuff.
Bush administration successor to Ashcroft at the Department of Justice, the far Right Alberto Gonzales brought us the U.S. attorney scandal. Concurrently with the Republican vote caging scandal – the scandal where they tried to stop Americans from exercising their right to vote.
The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.(‘Mount Vernon Statement’)
Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law
Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.
Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, recommended the Republican strategist Ralph Reed to the Enron Corporation for a lucrative consulting contract as Mr. Bush was weighing whether to run for president, close associates of Mr. Rove say.
World Bank Chief Paul Wolfowitz Resigns – Iraq War ‘Architect’ Leaves Bank Amid Controversy Over Girlfriend’s Raise. Paul was at a bank and there were checks and balances of a sort.
Ex-Aide To Bush Found Guilty – Safavian Lied in Abramoff Scandal
A federal jury found former White House aide David H. Safavian guilty yesterday of lying and obstructing justice, making him the highest-ranking government official to be convicted in the spreading scandal involving disgraced former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Some more “checks and balances” – House Panel Grills GSA Chief on Republican Briefing
Another federal agency, and another appointee of President Bush’s, is stuck in the klieg lights of ethics allegations. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked Wednesday why Lurita Doan, administrator of the General Services Administration, allowed a White House aide to brief her managers on the Republican Party’s prospects for 2008.
Doan calls herself an “unabashed entrepreneur.” She has also raised $200,000 for the Republican Party. GSA is the government’s landlord and office supplier.
In her testimony, Doan preferred to emphasize her entrepreneurial efforts. But Democrats were interested in other things: a contract that she tried to award to an old friend; negotiations with Sun Microsystems, in which she became involved; and, more especially, the briefing. In January, Scott Jennings — the top aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove — talked to GSA political appointees about the 2006 election results and the Republican goals for 2008.
Another snip from the “Mount Vernon” statement,
It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
So most of those middle-class Americans who flock to the tea party demonstrations were big losers during the Bush era. So who were the winners? According to David Cay Johnston, America’s premier tax journalist, newly released IRS data shows that the country’s very wealthiest citizens — the top 400 — marked enormous income gains while paying less and less in taxes. For purposes of comparison, Johnston notes that the bottom 90 percent of Americans saw their incomes rise by only 13 percent in 2009 dollars, compared with a 399 percent increase for the top 400.
In a single year, between 2006 and 2007, the income of those top 400 taxpayers rose by 31 percent — from an average of $263.3 million to an average of $344.8 million per year. Meanwhile, Johnston writes, “Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show. That rate is lower than the typical effective income tax rate paid by Americans with incomes in the low six figures, which is what each taxpayer in the top group earned in the first three hours of 2007.” He also notes that the IRS data probably understates the income of the top 400, because of deferral rules enjoyed by hedge fund managers (at least three of whom earned $3 billion or more in 2007).
Yet it cannot be said enough – who do the tea baggers blame – not the wealthy corporations that posess powers disproportionately to their numbers and contrary to the Founders ideals of government for and by the people, but the poor and liberals – who are at the bottom of the ladder in terms of wielding power.
More MV,
It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
Bush floated the costs of not just Iraq and Afghanistan, but much of the U.S. economy on communist China’s credit plan. Some of those merely suspected of having terrorist association were renedered by the Bush administration to authoritarian regimes such as Syria. Conservatives that were and still are in economic bed with some of the world’s worse despots “oppose” tyranny. That part is either a sick joke or worse, these tea baggers are so delusional they actually believe it. The Abu Ghraib scandal was conservative’s gift to the terrorists recruiters.
More MV,
* It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.
If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.
Family? The Republican party has had so many sex scandals involving prostitution, children and rape they’ve turned the word into a kind of warning – hear a conservative start talking family values and its time to run, not walk to safety. Republicans have well established record of looking out for the average American’s economic interests? – Economists say black Americans suffer more during recession, Census: Income Gap Widens with Bush Recession
The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets.
Newly released census figures show the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans – those making more than $138,000 each year – earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.
Bush- Cheney and the neocons were not the sudden reversal of established conservative “values” they were a continuation of Republican values and public policy such as those under Ronlad Reagan who has 138 members of his administration charged with federal crimes. To Reagan;s credit he saw that his slash and burn approach to federal spending and revenue(voodoo economics) was heading the economy toward disaster so he did raise more revenue, i.e. taxes – What the new literature on the Gipper won’t tell you
In the 90s conservatives had a Mount Vernon statement, only it was Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. That was filled with simlar hot air and a foundation of corruption and crony captialism, A Scandal for our Time: Republicans ruled; ergo, Enron – and – Newt’s New Con
The trend is obvious enough. From Reagan to Bush 41 to Newt to Bush-Cheney to the tea baggers, conservatives keep reinventing themselves. They sell the public on their new improved image, which always turns out to be an even worse iteration of the last reinvention.
The Long Goodbye 