The Dow Jones has increased more than 50% -- from 8,000 to more than 12,000;
The wealthiest received a massive tax cut;
The top marginal tax rate was three times less than during the Eisenhower years and substantially lower than during the Reagan years;
Income and wealth inequality are so vast and rising that it is easily at Third World levels;
Meanwhile, "the share of U.S. taxes paid by corporations has fallen from 30 percent of federal revenue in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009."
Some Anti-Business Marxist, Socialist, Communist, Kenyan, eh?
Glenn Greenwald demolishes the self-pitying lies of the billionaire Koch Brothers who claim that President Obama is "...the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation...and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had."
They go on to say: "He's a dedicated egalitarian...I'm not saying he's a Marxist, but he's internalized some Marxist models -- that is, that business tends to be successful by exploiting its customers and workers."
Really?
Greewald then goes on to, y'know, use ACTUAL FACTS to destroy the lying Koch Brothers' self-serving, factless propaganda:
"Despite high unemployment and a largely languishing real estate market, U.S. businesses are more profitable than ever, according to federal figures released on Friday.GREENWALD CONCLUDES:"Whether one finds this state of affairs desirable or not, no rational person can describe them as the by-product of a Marxist, business-hating egalitarian. Quite the opposite. The political power of America's richest has never been greater, and the level of their responsibility and collective burden has never been less. Meanwhile, for ordinary Americans, the remaining remnants of their financial security and middle class comforts rapidly erodes. It's true that the U.S. Government has little regard for the free market: they intervene constantly in the free market on behalf of the nation's wealthiest and most powerful business interests; it's crony capitalism, corporatism: government run by corporations (or, as Dick Durbin said of the Congress in which he serves: "the banks own the place").
U.S. corporate profits hit an all-time high at the end of 2010, with financial firms showing some of the biggest gains, data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis show. Corporations reported an annualized $1.68 trillion in profit in the fourth quarter. The previous record, without being adjusted for inflation, was $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006.
Many of the nation's preeminent companies have posted massive increases in profits this year. General Electric posted worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, while profits at JPMorgan Chase were up 47 percent to $4.8 billion."
For billionaires to see themselves as the True Victims, to complain that the President and the Government are waging some sort of war against them in the name of radical egalitarianism, is so removed from reality -- universes away -- that's it's hard to put into words. And the fiscal recklessness that the Kochs and their comrades tirelessly point to was a direct by-product of the last decade's rule by the Republican Party which they fund..."
These data, of course, will not penetrate the cemented minds of the malcontented conservatives who continue to claim Mr. Obama is a Marxist, Socialist who is ruining America.
But facts are stubborn things, and the facts are that Mr. Obama is no such person. However, the Koch Brothers, in their funding of malignant organizations that spread lies and propaganda contrary to actual facts, are finding success with people who eagerly eat up "false facts" and who wouldn't know what truth was, even if it sat on their
mouth-breathing faces.
Links to all of the data are on Greenwald's blog.
UPDATE:
REPORT: Fox Linked Obama To Socialism At Least 35 Times In Run-Up To Election
March 29, 2011, by Rob Savillo
"During the weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election, Bill Sammon used his position as a top Fox News editor to engage in a campaign to link Barack Obama to "Marxists" and "socialism." Today, Media Matters revealed that Sammon subsequently acknowledged that he had "privately" believed that the socialism allegation was "rather far-fetched."
Sammon's effort to push the bogus socialism charge included an October 27, 2008, email he sent to Fox journalists highlighting what he described as "Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists" in his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father.
In the nine days between Sammon's October 27 email and the November 4 election, Fox employees linked Obama to socialism, Marxism, or Communism at least 35 times on air. In some cases, Fox employees directly said or suggested that Obama was linked to socialism; in other cases, they gratuitously mentioned accusations made by "Joe the Plumber" or others."
The lemonheads who watch FAUX NOOZ for information heard the propagandist "news" readers repeat what Sammon told them to say, and then they scampered to their blogs and dutifully pasted the FAUX NOOZ lies--and felt patriotic about it. Not once did any of these malcontented lackeys bother to check the veracity of what the FAUX NOOZ talking heads said. Like good little lemmings, they just lathered, rinsed, and repeated.
