Mr. Putsch goes to Washington

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

9/4/01

Putsch is back from vacation, where he was not missed, and should be entertaining to watch over the next few weeks.

In one of the more ghastly ironies, he decided he was going to be buddies with organized labor today, and dropped in on a couple of their Labor Day functions. The television media obligingly showed him hard at work, using an electric drill to drive home a screw on a window frame and sweating like a pig. No word on why running an electric drill for just a few minutes would cause so much perspiration, unless it was blind, panting fear caused by memories of the pain he experienced the last time he tried wielding a common household tool in public. His thumb still tingles on rainy days, I bet.

The Teamsters were fed the notion that drilling in the Alaskan coastal plain would result in 750,000 union jobs, an absurdity on the face of it, and they’ll probably come to regard this Labor Day frolic with considerable embarrassment after Putsch gets done lying to them, cheating them, and selling them down the river. (How do I know this? Picture any Republican wanting anything that could add 5% to the union membership. Then factor in the general level of probity and honesty exhibited by this one. The Teamsters should have just tattooed "We are gullible" on their foreheads and spared themselves some public humiliation).

Of course, the biggest issue Putsch has to deal with is the way in which the biggest surplus in history managed to utterly evaporate in just eight months. Economists made a joint statement last week stating that the shrinking economy was responsible for about one third of the missing revenue, and Putsch’s tax cuts for the rest. The $300 loan to taxpayers was a part of it, but that was chump change compared to the tax incentives and cuts that went immediately to the extraction industries. Shell Oil made $11 billion in profits last quarter, and Putsch decided they needed a tax break so they could afford to increase their exploration budget. As if $11 billion couldn’t.

The polls show that the people are distinctly unfooled by the finger pointing. One poll on pollingreport.com indicated that 33% of voters felt Putsch was "very responsible" for the loss of the surplus, compared to only 15% who held the Democrats Congress "very responsible" and of course, you can get 15% of the population who will blame the Democrats for the Great Fire of London.

Of course, it’s hard to blame the Senate, which hasn’t acted on the budget yet, or the House, which has, but is controlled by the Republicans. Ooops.

Putsch’s answer is to retreat into utter absurdity. He hailed the deficit as a great victory, proclaiming that it would put reins on Congress – presumably the Republican congress – to spend wildly, and on such worthless things as the American people. This is a bit like quitting your job as an incentive to spend less on groceries, and only an arrogant moron like Putsch would even try such an approach.

For rank-and-file Republicans, the rationale lies in the unending shrill whine, "It’s OUR money!" The notion here is that the surplus is, somehow, money that the government has no earthly use for other than to waste on schools, health services, and assistance for people that capitalism can find no use for. It’s called a "surplus", and therefore that means it’s just extra money, right?

What’s amazing about this burst of greed and stupidity is that, by and large, it comes from the same people who, just a few years ago, were hollering about how dangerous the size of the debt was, and how we must avoid electing Democrats because they would never do anything to reduce the annual deficits. (The ones caused by Republican President Reagan, yesssss).

Back in 1992, Perot made debt reduction a centerpiece of his campaign and got 19% of the vote. Bush ran as the incumbent and promised "change" and got his ass kicked. Clinton proposed a deficit reduction package and promised to reduce the deficit by 50% in five years, and won handily.

Clinton not only kept that promise (despite unyielding opposition from Congress) but went on to accomplish the unimaginable: he had a surplus by his final term.

Which means that instead of spending $600 billion a year on interest on the debt, we spend $350 billion. I’ve yet to hear from any of the "It’s MY money" crowd on why it’s good that we spend $350 billion (that’s well over a thousand each every year) on interest.

Putsch has wrecked that, and now wants to convince the American people that what they really, really want is a government that is less effective and helpful, but which costs more. And just in case anyone should object to this, he proposes to increase military spending.

Hopefully the Democrats and the media will grow a little spine and point out that Putsch is behaving like every third-world strutting clown who ever seized power and was determined to hold it at all costs throughout history.

A heartbeat away, Uberpresidente Cheney is still stonewalling on his secret meetings with the powers that be in the extraction industries. This again shows the fluid nature of Republican situational ethics. Eight years ago, there were endless howls about Hillary’s "secret meetings" on health care, and even though minutes of the meetings were promptly produced, some Republicans still whine about it to this day.

Not in Cheney’s case, though. He meets with these people, presumably is promised lots of bribes, and gives them just about everything they asked for, and then has the incredible audacity to tell the American people it’s none of their business who he met and how much they bribed him. (Fifteen years ago, Cheney was just a mediocre Congressman with a drinking problem. Now he’s a millionaire many times over, thanks to big oil. Do the math).

Putsch is also facing mounting opposition to his theocracy scheme whereby churches take public money and tell the public what they must do in order to get it back.

Putsch also has to deal with the bact that people are asking about his promises to improve spending on public schools and not to touch the social security funds. It was breaking promises like that which did his daddy in, and it’s setting him up for a miserable time of it in the fall of 2002.

Finally, Garry Trudeau, creator of "Doonesbury" fell for the "Lovenstein Institute" myth. This is a non-existent institute which "rated Presidential intelligence" by accomplishments, educational achievements, reading habits, public speaking and grasp of policy. Lovenstein – there really is a Lovenstein – made the "finding" that while the IQs of most recent Presidents ranged from 105 to 145 or so, Clinton’s was 182 and Putsch’s, 91.

The problem here is that the story is so plausible. I fell for it myself. Nobody disputes that Clinton was a LOT smarter than Putsch, and the hoax is so believable simply because it is so believable.

Whether Putsch’s IQ is actually 91 or not is irrelevant. The hoax exposed the truth behind the fraudulence, which is that Putsch is a painfully stupid man who doesn’t belong where he is.

The public knows that, and no amount of arrogance on his part is going to make it go away.