Reagan cut the personal tax bracket of his wealthy friends from 70% to 28%, and he transformed America from a creditor to a debtor nation, encouraged the creation of massive debt to finance corporate takeovers, mergers, acquisitions and leveraged buyouts, and he promoted wild speculation in the stock and financial markets.
Retiring in senility to fashionable Bel Air, Reagan was succeeded by his vice-president, George H. W. Bush (Sr.), another product of the ruling elite. Both of Bush's grandfathers earned millions from the First World War as founding members of the "military-industrial complex," and his father, Senator Prescott Bush was a wealthy banker, who profited from the Second World War by helping Hitler fund his war machine.
Bush Sr. married the daughter of a wealthy publisher, who was a descendant of President Franklin Pierce. Following World War II, Bush Sr. served as a CIA asset in establishing a petroleum company that funneled money and supplies to CIA operations in the Caribbean and Central America. Sponsored by the CIA and supported by Presidents Nixon and Ford, he became a Congressman, Delegate to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Director of the CIA, before becoming Reagan's vice president.
As vice president, Bush Sr. had presided over Reagan's deregulation and government reduction programs. As president, he inherited the massive deficits provided by Reagan's "voodoo economics" and the savings and loan collapse caused by his own deregulation efforts. Bush Sr. became increasingly unpopular with republicans when he was forced to raise taxes and with democrats when he failed to reduce the unemployment and poverty resulting from an economic recession and corporate reorganizations.
Bipartisan disenchantment with Bush Sr. resulted in the election of William "Bill" Clinton in 1992, who was from a family of small business owners in Arkansas. Clinton attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University on an academic scholarship and University College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, before obtaining a law degree from Yale University (where he met his wife, Hillary Rodham).
Clinton had been fascinated with politics from a young age and, following his return to Arkansas to teach law, he was elected as the state's attorney general and to multiple terms as governor. Clinton was a "New Democrat," who believed in the "Third Way" of governing whereby he advocated free trade, welfare reform, smaller government and financial deregulation. He and his wife made political and professional liaisons with law firms that represented corporate interests and with financial and investment companies doing business in Arkansas.
Although he positioned himself as a "centralist," Clinton's failures, particularly health care reform, were on the left, while his successes, such as welfare reform, free trade agreements and financial deregulation, were on the right. Most telling, in light of future events, including the "Great Recession of 2008," was his support of the Financial Services Modernization act of 1999, which eliminated essential restrictions on the integration of banking, insurance and stock trading.
Since leaving office in 2001, Clinton has earned more than $109 million, including a $15 million advance for My Life, primarily from his speaking engagements. Among the groups paying him up to $450,000 for a one-hour speech are AEG London, Goldman Sachs, and the Chamber of Commerce. He told one audience, "I never had a nickel to my name until I got out of the White house, and now I'm a millionaire, the most favored person for the Washington Republicans." Senator Hillary Clinton has also profited from corporate sponsors, among which Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been her most generous benefactors.
With the inauguration of George W. Bush (Jr.), the ruling elite placed its own crown prince on the throne. Not only descended from political royalty, Bush Jr.'s intellectual limitations and business failures made him the most pliable of all recent presidents. He harmed workers and benefitted businesses by eliminating regulations in areas such as on-the-job injuries and overtime compensation, he refused to enforce the regulations he couldn't change, or he emasculated the enforcement agencies, such as the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Coming into office, Bush promised that he would sign a tax cut every year. He almost succeeded. With a great fanfare, he signed major tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and a smaller one in 2002. Bush very quietly signed a major revision of corporate tax law in 2004 that provided billions of additional tax breaks to corporations. In 2008, he signed extensions of tax cuts that were set to expire, and he slipped another $120 billion of "tax relief" into the financial rescue bill.
In combination, these laws lowered the marginal tax rate for high-income household, eliminated estate taxes, and reduced taxation of stock dividends and capital gains. The tax burden of the super rich fell by one third, allowing the amount "earned" by the top 1% of total U.S. personal incomes to more than double from 9.97% in 1979 to 23.5% in 2007. The top 3% of households raked in almost half of the national income!
The Obama Administration
In October 2008, Senator Obama endorsed and voted in the Senate for the economic bailout package prepared in secret by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and signed by President Bush. Thus, even before commencing his term in office, Senator Obama rewarded a cadre of corrupt international bankers, while failing to include any rescue efforts for the hard-working American people who were facing foreclosure, bankruptcy, unemployment, homelessness or hunger as a result of the bankers' fraud.
Why would Senator Obama fail to demand consideration for the poor and downtrodden in the bailout bill? One answer can be found by an examination of the political contributions he was receiving at the time. Top securities and investment firms were Obama's fourth largest source of funds, contributing $7.9 million, even more than for his republican opponent. Of these, Goldman Sachs was responsible for almost one million dollars, closely followed by Citigroup and JPMorgan.
It is increasingly difficult to find any differences between the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Even though he has increased enforcement of some labor regulations, President Obama has failed to push passage of the Employee Free Choice Act for workers. In all other respects, ranging from enforcement of environmental regulations and approving offshore drilling, to his reappointment of Ben Bernanke as the Federal Reserve Chairman and Robert Gates as the Secretary of Defense, Obama has encouraged continued massive profits and bonuses for Wall Street, followed harmful environmental policies, including allowing off-shore drilling, supported renewal of police-state legislation, and expanded the profitable wars of the military-industrial complex.
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