Perhaps the biggest economic lie told by the Bush government is the whopper Mitch Daniels started telling in a White House press release back in July; that is, Bush's tax handout to the richest one percent only accounts for 15 percent of the deficit.
As the former Eli Lilly number-cruncher finally admitted, he had "misspoken," he simply went to the Web site and corrected the July press release as if the self-serving lie had never occurred. That is, it's a big 40 percent. Why are the media still using the 15 percent lie - including the Daily News?
Of course I'm responding to the big joke Lauren Johnson wrote about Sept. 30 - the College of Business is bringing in 6 business-community speakers, sponsored by a Lilly grant, to discuss ethics. This is akin to bringing in the Republican fox to lecture the chickens in the hen house. Why not bring in real ethicists?
Pity the "poor" Republicans. This corporate mess happened on Bush's watch. The NASDAQ has dropped about 75 percent and the S & P 500 about 45 percent. The Dow is in the 7,000 range. With the stock market plummeting, investor confidence crumbling, an all-capitalist class war going on between CEOs and investors, and an election looming, they're totally spooked. Therefore, let's bring in business hacks to discuss ethics with our students. Rubbish!
Why doesn't the Business College require an ethics course taught in the Philosophy Department?
Where in the annals of class conflict do we place the current fight between CEOs and investors? This would have been an absurd question only weeks ago, because both groups bobbed on the same tide.
The picture looks very different now that corporate scandals, a panicky market and the weak economy have reframed the national debate. The nonpartisan CBO said this year's drop in revenue is unlike anything seen since the end of World War II, and Mr. Bush's answer is even more tax cuts under any and all circumstances. In fact, in all my years of observing the political scene, I've never heard so much nonsense from so many important "Bushes," as the federal budget deficits head back into the Reagan stratosphere, taking every dollar in the Social Security Trust Funds. So much for the Republican "lock box" idea. Remember the GOP pledge?
We need a coherent alternative philosophy to the orthodox conservative worship of free-market idols. The set of free-market-era claims are due for re-appraisal and broad political challenge.
We can no longer trust the opinions of right-wing think-tanks, such as Heritage, Cato and Hudson, on free-market idols. They pushed regulation into an inconsequential corner. They have lost the trust of the American people. Even Fed Chief Alan Greenspan admits that he was wrong to support Bush's tax cut, and he says we must reduce the number of "avenues" for greed by the "Kenny Boys" of this world.
Let's talk about ethics and create a "Corporate Task Force." Let's have Big Business write a set of ethical guidelines. Rubbish!
The Business College needs a good ethics course taught by an outsider. Why? We are not correcting the weaknesses in our market system, and assembling a group of business professionals to deal effectively with ethical problems is absurd.
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