Ten years ago today on December 6, 2002, the Bush Administration fired its top two economic advisers: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey due to the continuing lagging economy (when Bush took office, unemployment was 4.2%. In Dec of 2002... more than a year after 9/11... the rate jumped from 5.7% to 6.0% in one month). In November of 2002, when O'Neill, a "deficit hawk", tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits... expected to top $500 billion that fiscal year alone... posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off, saying, "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter."

O'Neill was replaced with CSX (the freight train company) CEO John Snow, also a "deficit hawk", yet appointed the unenviable task of convincing the public (ie: Wall Street) that "deficits don't matter".

It is worth remembering on this tenth anniversary just how we got here. When the Bush Administration took office 22 months earlier, they were handed a balanced budget in which the government was actually collecting more in taxes than it needed to run the federal government. Less than two years later, O'Neill was warning of a HALF-TRILLION DOLLAR deficit for 2003. The surplus revenue under Clinton was used to start paying off our Debt which had exploded under Reagan and the first President Bush. Presidential candidate George W. Bush actually campaigned on the fact that because we were collecting more in taxes than it takes to run the government, that means we were being "overtaxed", telling cheering crowds, "It's not the government's money, it's YOUR money!", and therefore deserved a "tax cut"... the much heralded "Bush Tax Cut" that we are fighting over today, despite the fact that the original premise in support of them... a budget surplus... hasn't existed in over 12 years.

Think about this: How do we EVER pay off the Debt if the moment we take in enough in taxes to start paying it off, Republicans use it as an excuse for tax cuts?

Blast from the past: July 2006

This whole thing is depressing as hell. Wall Street's Masters of the Universe devastate the entire world economy, and all the House of Lords (aka the Senate) can think about is not making the bankers mad at them. Imagine how bad it is that their attempts at reform are only making the problem worse. Krugman spells it all out:

So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.

[...] There’s no question that consumers need much better protection. The late Edward Gramlich — a Federal Reserve official who tried in vain to get Alan Greenspan to act against predatory lending — summarized the case perfectly back in 2007: “Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers? The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”

Is it important that this protection be provided by an independent agency? It must be, or lobbyists wouldn’t be campaigning so hard to prevent that agency’s creation.

And it’s not hard to see why. Some have argued that the job of protecting consumers can and should be done either by the Fed or — as in one compromise that at this point seems unlikely — by a unit within the Treasury Department. But remember, not that long ago Mr. Greenspan was Fed chairman and John Snow was Treasury secretary. Case closed. The only way consumers will be protected under future antiregulation administrations — and believe me, given the power of the financial lobby, there will be such administrations — is if there’s an agency whose whole reason for being is to police bank abuses.

In summary, then, it’s time to draw a line in the sand. No reform, coupled with a campaign to name and shame the people responsible, is better than a cosmetic reform that just covers up failure to act.

"One of You Will Betray Conservatism" by Darkblack. Click image for larger, which shows, left to right, and according to the artist, "keeping in mind that they are not necessarily matched up to any disciple's biblical personality description": John Snow / Alberto Gonzales / John Bolton / Steven Hadley / Scooter Libby / Donald Rumsfeld / George W. Bush / Dick Cheney / Josh Bolton / Michael Chertoff / Condoleeza Rice / Karl Rove / and Ari Fleisher.

Open thread below, with the hopes that William Donohue gets a big ol' gander at this one.

Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John Snow could be next

That's what CNN is reporting....

Update: Roxanne has her new replacement for Scotty posted now.

Lou Dobbs took a look at the family ties between the two.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

(Transcripts)

DOBBS: President Bush's family and members of the Bush administration have long-standing business connections with the United Arab Emirates, and those connections are raising new concerns and questions tonight in some quarters about why the president is defying his very own party leadership and his party in defending the Dubai port deal.

CHRISTINE ROMANS: The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is a major investor in The Carlyle Group, the private equity investment firm where President Bush's father once served as senior adviser and is a who's who of former high-level government officials. Just last year, Dubai International Capital, a government-backed buyout firm, invested in an $8 billion Carlyle fund.

Another family connection, the president's brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his educational software company from the UAE investors. A call to his company was not returned.

Then there is the cabinet connection. Treasury Secretary John Snow was chairman of railroad company CSX/. After he left the company for the White House, CSX sold its international port operations to Dubai Ports World for more than a billion dollars.

In Connecticut today, Snow told reporters he had no knowledge of that CSX sale. "I learned of this transaction probably the same way members of the Senate did, by reading about it in the newspapers."

Another administration connection, President Bush chose a Dubai Ports World executive to head the U.S. Maritime Administration. David Sanborn, the former director of Dubai Ports' European and Latin American operations, he was tapped just last month to lead the agency that oversees U.S. port operations.

via Nieman Watchdog

Political scientist Jeffrey Tulis writes that President Bush may be inventing a new political practice for a sitting president, by only speaking before screened audiences – and no one's asked him how he justifies it.

World O' Crap has much, much more...The President and His Traveling Revival Show

From the LA Times: WASHINGTON — The Bush administration today announced a 60-day, 60-stop barnstorming tour to promote the president's plan for overhauling Social Security, amid signs that public support is slipping and congressional anxiety rising.

President Bush and Treasury Secretary John Snow said they intended to hit the road one or two days a week from now until May 1 to promote Bush's Social Security initiative. [...]

"We'll be taking the message out," Snow said. "We will be meeting with groups of our youngest workers. We'll be meeting with our oldest retirees. We'll be meeting with everybody in between."

"And by "everybody in between," they apparently mean, "some hand-picked people, and you're not one of them."

Say, for instance, you want to get tickets for the President's meeting at Notre Dame. Well, tough beans, because the local paper says the general public can't get any. read on

Treasury Secretary John Snow was interviewed by Chris Wallace of "FOX News Sunday" and couldn't make a case for President Bush's plan for Social Security reform because there isn't one.

Ziaspace video not currently available

Snow: We don't have a detailed plan yet.

Chris: So you're saying the income cap could be raised?

Snow: Well I'm not saying it would be, we don't have a plan yet.

again

Snow: We don't have a plan yet...

again

Snow: We don't have a plan yet...

Here's some of the transcript.