John McAdams Part 2

[Jim Hackett II]

I had a dear aunt from Northern California that was home for the Thanksgiving holidays in 1979.

She tried to tell everyone here about the RayGun. She had seen the devastation of California's Rape by RayGun. Educational system in particular bothered her.
I already knew about the fascist RayGun.
I was the only one in my family that believed any of it.
I voted for Anderson in 1980 and feared the future under Casey as Yes, I knew about him and Ed Meese as criminal fascist punks long before 1980.

The Rust Belt was finished by 1982 with RayGun punk asshole sleeper in office.
This was a crime against the people.
And Violation of law in shedding "ourselves" of the unions.
WHAT????!!! F*CK**G IDIOT SHEEPLE!
Fascist have NO LAW, witness Bu$h/Cheney.

In 1980, I could foresee the crap about to befall WeThePeople in the next 12 years. I wish I had been wrong.
After all today too few remember the "Ketchup is a vegetable" excuse for cutting school lunch funding.
No schooling was needed by the lower classes, they could join the Army. Fascist and in your face.

I was stationed in that tarnished "golden" state too long not to know what that Empire was about.
After all he was only a drug-store-truck-driving-man in 1969 and America has a short memory of fascism.
It can't happen here, but it has!

[Steve Minnerly]

Glad to see we have anti Raygunism in common Jim Hackett. My great opposition to him was because of his insane economic beliefs. To this day supply siders still refuse to admit the importance of demand. How the Raygunites ever got a reputation foe being knowledgeable about business i will never understand. If you dont understand a simple idea like supply and DEMAND you dont understand business.

We are still basically living under the supply side system and ive read in several places that lack of demand is the top concern of small business.

The relentless drive to reduce the cost of labor has been very succesful.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Interesting connection you make between McAdams and the rise of Reaganism, Jim. In the early 1980s I spent a few years running around with my hair on fire trying to impress upon people just how disasterous Reagan was going to turn out to be.

I felt he was the anti Kennedy president in far too many ways so i can see why McAdams would be a perfect fit with the people that took over power at that time.

I agree with that. Reagan was the anti-Kennedy. And if you read either the Bernstein book, Promises Kept, the Harper and Krieg book John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited, or DOnald Gibson's book, Battling Wall Street, you will see just how progressive and effective Kennedy's economic policies were. See, when Kennedy was president the effective corporate tax rate was about 25%. Today its less than half that. Because crazy Ron actually thought corporations should not pay any taxes at all. Because he said, look if you pay taxes on your stock, that's enough. But then, Crazy Ron also wanted to lower that one, the capital gains tax.

What did all these have in common? They switched the tax load from the rich to the middle class. Thus began the gutting of the middle class in America. Which eventually led to 2007-08 near collapse of the economic system.

Kennedy was not a globalist. He wanted to reward companies for investing in America. He also was, as GIbson shows, a Keynesian. And he firmly believed in increasing productivity and efficiency.

Those three books really explain Kennedy's economic ideas. Although the Harper-Krieg book is very hard to get today.

Kennedy's economic ideas were so effective that they carried well into the Johnson years. It all came undone because of the costs of the Vietnam War. Which introduced the plague of stagflation.

The Reagan-Thatcher belief in Friedman and Hayek have brought this country to the brink of economic bankruptcy. I mean the latest city to declare is San Bernardino. But this was always their plan. To bankrupt the public sector so it could not control the private sector. Which was a warning issued by Galbraith many years ago in The Affluent Society.

So its no surprise that McAdams, who is anti-Kennedy to his fingertips, would be from the Austrian School.

[Albert Rossi]

A few quick notes -- from a venue I'm not usually at.

Gibson's book makes clear that Kennedy tax cuts were only aimed at increasing capital investment, employment and productivity. If corporations could not demonstrate the increased investment of profits into expansion, the profits were to be taxed at the standard (or increased) rate.

He also shows that into 1962 and 1963, small to medium businesses were actually prospering under JFK.

Many have been crying out for a "rebirth" of Keynesian practice today. Certainly not a radical, but Paul Krugman is usually a decent read (though sometimes unconvincingly defensive of Obama).

The Affluent Society was quite a book for its time. I remember reading it my first year in high school; it changed my way of thinking. Imagine, the government actually paying a portion of the population not to work so as to create alternating workforces!

I agree, in terms of "ideology", about Reagan. But, just as with Eisenhower, Ford and GWB, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that each had powerful VPs who probably determined policy even more than these puppet Presidents. That, compared to Dan Quayle, with his Mickey Mouse Club ears.

[Jim DiEugenio]

That is correct Albert.

I think as Reagan grew more and more ill with Alzheimer's, Bush took more control.

BTW, Thurston Clarke's book on JFK is rather spotty.

But he does have the basics of the economic plan down. ANd he is smart enough to call Heller a Keynesian who was delivering a stimulus package across the board.

The problem with these nutty supply siders is that you cannot even begin to equate what they gave the rich to what they gave anyone else. Even Stockman saw through it and then left. I mean anytime you get below 50 percent in the top bracket, and only a drop off to 34 % for the middle class, things start getting out of whack. And then all the other things the Gingriches wanted, like lower capital gains, lower estate taxes etc. The goal was to ultimately stick the middle class with the tax bill while the upper classes became billionaires. ANd the frigging media bought this Laffer alchemy.

Remember what Stockman said in that wonderful article by Greider? Supply side was just a synonym for trickle down. Because you can't sell trickle down because of the stigma it has with the Great Depression. So Laffer decided to rename it.

BTW, that jerk Laffer was still saying it was a great idea a month before the crash!

Jon Stewart made a great montage of all the GOP idiots on Fox talking up the stock market right on the eve of the crash. If I recall, this was about a week before Bear Stearns fell.

(For my money, Stewart is the best guy on TV now. The Young Turks are not bad either.)

But anyway, these are the people McAdams is in bed with. I mean check out Heartland Institute.

And BTW, please click the links in that article. They are all good ones. And go ahead and post it around hopefully on some more wider angle sites like DU or Rigorous Intuition.

[Jim Hackett II]

"...I mean anytime you get below 50 percent in the top bracket, and only a drop off to 34 % for the middle class, things start getting out of whack. And then all the other things the Gingriches wanted, like lower capital gains, lower estate taxes etc. The goal was to ultimately stick the middle class with the tax bill while the upper classes became billionaires. ANd the frigging media bought this Laffer alchemy."

Hot stuff Jim, and in the bull's eye.

Taxes and control of Education are the primary tools used by the Elite to separate the classes, today only two thank you O'Bummer.

Media bought all the junk as they were paid to do....
As ABC and "The Day After" blew holes in the DOD "survivable nuke war" deceptions of the RAYGUN crew, after that ABC was absorbed by Casey's gang. ABC as then configured had to go....

Sure the Elite would survive but who the hell would want to survive?

As the Golden Girl was taking the Nazi Criminal Imports story and the Pope's Banker story to the public and other things being done. ABC had to be "reconfigured" to the MSM norm we now know so well.
FWIW.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Getting back to McAdams, wasn't that rich about his defense to Pat Speer about those CIA recruitment ads on his radio web site?

I mean when Pat sent me those ads, I was surprised.

How could the guy be so dumb as to be so overt like that?

I mean I bet he got a talking to. Maybe likes Banister with Oswald after he put Guy's address on the flyers.

[Tracy Riddle]

Getting back to McAdams, wasn't that rich about his defense to Pat Speer about those CIA recruitment ads on his radio web site?

I mean when Pat sent me those ads, I was surprised.

How could the guy be so dumb as to be so overt like that?

I mean I bet he got a talking to. Maybe likes Banister with Oswald after he put Guy's address on the flyers.

LOL.
Or they're just feeling increasingly brave and arrogant. I think CIA doesn't have the negative image it used to, since a lot of Americans don't know (or forgot) its history. And wow, do all the girls there look like Valerie Plame?

[Jim DiEugenio]

I'm actually glad you brought that point up Tracy about the CIA losing its stigma.

That is a major theme of my new book Reclaiming Parkland.


Its how this was done in the film world, through people like Tom Hanks. But also through the conscious and determined work of the Agency's man on the ground, their liaison to Movieland, Chase Brandon. This man, who no one knows about, did more to rehab the Agency's image in culture after Stone's movie than anyone I know.

At the end of the book I do a lamentation over what our film and TV culture has become because of this.

I use Susan Sontag to do it. She stopped writing about films in 1995 after her famous article, "The Decay of Cinema" appeared in the NY Times.

IMO, she looks like she was right.

I really go after Hanks and Spielberg and our good old buddy at the MPAA who went there at LBJ's urging from the White House. After he urged his boss to help John Wayne on his pro-Vietnam War movie The Green Berets.

[Magda Hassan]

I'm actually glad you brought that point up Tracy about the CIA losing its stigma.

That is a major them of my new book Reclaiming Parkland.


Its how this was done in the film world, through people like Tom Hanks. But also through the conscious and determined work of the Agency's man on the ground, their liaison to Movieland Chase Brandon. This man, who no one knows about, did more to rehab the Agency's image in culture after Stone's movie than anyone I know.

At the end of the book I do a lamentation over what our film and TV culture has become because of this.

I use Susan Sontag to do it. She stopped writing about films in 1995 after her famous article, "The Decay of Cinema" appeared in the NY Times.

IMO, she looks like she was right.

I really go after Hanks and Spielberg and our good old buddy at the MPAA who went there at LBJ's urging from the White House. After he urged his boss to help John Wayne on his pro-Vietnam War movie The Green Berets.

Yes, Brandon, he's not well known about by many and he has done a good job for the agency. He's moved on to Roswell and UFOs now.....

Ironic too that Tommy Lee Jone who played Clay Bertrand in JFK is his cousin...and a Man in Black Agent K.