Truth vs. the Big Lie

Funny how the truth has been sold down the river in the US. That just goes to show that big money can buy anything it wants. This is from the Robert Reich blog. I've bolded the key bit:

Republicans are telling Americans a Big Lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.

The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity. Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can’t borrow as before, and must save for retirement.

The short-term solution is for government to counteract this shortfall by spending more, not less. The long-term solution is to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely (for example, through a more progressive income tax, a larger EITC, an exemption on the first $20K of income from payroll taxes and application of payroll taxes to incomes over $250K, stronger unions, and more and better investments in education and infrastructure.)

But instead of telling the truth, Obama has legitimized the Big Lie by freezing non-defense discretionary spending, freezing federal pay, touting his deficit commission co-chairs’ recommended $3 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase, and agreeing to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

Will Obama stand up to the Big Lie? Will he use his State of the Union address to rebut it and tell the truth? Maybe, but so far there’s no evidence.

I'm betting that Obama won't. Instead he will call on Republicans to compromise while he sells out more of his base by making appeasements to the rabid Right. This is what he has done before. This is what he will continue to do. You don't change your personality.

Sadly this isn't the Obama who sold himself to the electorate in 2008. Too bad there isn't a "truth in advertising" requirement for politicians!

The US economy is much like a Monopoly game played until one player has managed to acquire most of the properties you can land on and has put hotels and houses on these properties. He sits on a pile of cash while the other players watch their little piles of money melt away. Obama can exhort people to "think positive" and to "work hard" and "give the recovery a chance" but none of that will do any good. The other players are being inexorably ground down by the fact that one player owns everything. That's the reality in the US economy. Employers can now dictate wages. They can transfer jobs overseas at will, they have bought and paid for politicians so they can get endless "tax cuts" and special deals like earmarks and pork thrown at them "for the sake of the economy". Sad.

It is worth your while to read the whole of the Robert Reich post. Here's how he ends it:

Starting Wednesday, when the 112th Congress convenes with a Republican majority in the House, we’ll be hearing far more of the Big Lie.

George Orwell once explained that when a public is stressed and confused, a Big Lie told repeatedly can become the accepted truth. Adolph Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that “the size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed” and that members of the public are “more easily prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.”

Only the President has the bully pulpit. But will he use it to tell the Big Truth?

Don't hold your breath for "the Big Truth".