BUSH LEGACY: TEN TRILLION DOLLAR SCAM

[L.Wood]

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While the RightWing talking heads are making much noise about about President Elect-Obama's planned $800 Billion stimulus package it pales in comparison to
Dick Cheney and his Pimp's record. Frank Rich lays it out in today's New York Times:

. ...................................... Eight Years of Madoffs

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.
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Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” Two officials tasked with marketing oil on behalf of American taxpayers got so blotto at a daytime golf event sponsored by Shell that they became too incapacitated to drive and had to be put up by the oil company.........

The tentative and amorphous $800 billion stimulus proposed by Obama last week sounds like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket when set against the damage it must help counteract: more than $10 trillion in new debt and new obligations piled up by the Bush administration in eight years, as calculated by the economists Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current Harper’s Magazine.

If Bernie Madoff, at least, can still revive what remains of our deadened capacity for outrage, so can those who pulled off Washington’s Ponzi schemes.

(this is worth a read on NYT link above)

Edit Feb 5, 09: If you wish to read the original-

THE $10 TRILLION HANGOVER
Paying the Price for Eight Years of Bush
By Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz

published in Harpers Jan 09 then please use thislink to a .pdf of the artlice
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[Dardedar]

. "...our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.

DAR
Again:

"Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq. “What do you think that’ll cost?” Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

“I think it’s going to cost billions of dollars,” Mr. Garner said. “My friend,” Mr. Rumsfeld replied, “if you think we’re going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken.”

NY Times

[L.Wood]

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"..you are sadly mistaken.”

That seems to be the Neo-Conservative mantra. Not a clue of how things such as statecraft work. When they do have a clue they lie about it.

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