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Jack Kemp has just died and the corporate press are already abandoning any pretense of balance, fairness, or accuracy. This was one of the most venal hucksters in the history of American politics, yet he is being lionized.
If you recall, Kemp was the con artist who popularized the scam of "supply side economics" to the extreme right. This "theory" claimed that cutting taxes would raise revenues and living standards for the American people. When another dishonest, bought politician, Ronald Reagan, led the effort to apply this tripe, we had enormous deficits and the wages of most Americans declined as the rich got richer. One of the few honest things pappy Bush ever said was when he described it as "Voodoo Economics."
Kemp wasn't a drooling imbecile. He knew that what he was saying was downright laughable. He didn't care. He was completely bought and paid for by wealthy interests who wanted undeserved tax cuts regardless of the consequences for the country, the middle class, and the poor.
Politics and religion are the only two fields where brazen fraud doesn't get prosecuted. If Kemp had attempted to defraud the public in any other field on a comparable scale, he would have been imprisoned for years. He would have deserved it.
To put it simply, Jack Kemp was the Bernie Madoff of politics.
The corporate media also is lying feverishly when they say Kemp was "compassionate." Kemp didn't give a rat's ass about poor people. He just exploited them rhetorically to push "enterprise zones" in poor communities which made his wealthy donors wealthier but did little to employ or otherwise help the communities they exploited for the purposes of selective tax evasion. Even worse, revenues lost because of these scams resulted in services to poor people being cut. So much for "compassion."
Far from being compassionate to women, he was filled with such a vicious and compromising hatred that he actually opposed the basic human right of women to choose on abortion. He was so bigoted against atheists and non-Christians in general that he actually supported unconstitutional, coerced prayer in public schools.
Jack Kemp was a hateful and dishonest political hack without even the slightest human decency. When corporate media lionize this monster, they make it clear that they exist to push the financial agendas of the people who own them. Accurate news reporting is pretty much forbidden in the corporate spin zone.
Liberals are much more inclined to read newspapers, to try to be informed on the issues, and to read in general. Yet, the corporate media go out of their way to insult our intelligence with lies that would strain the credulity of a ten year old. If these media outlets don't start at least trying to be honest and accurate, they are going the way of the mastodons, extinct animals far to similar to the symbol of the GOP.
Update: Joe My God reminds us that Kemp also was an obsessive heterosexist bigot.
Psycho Woman Throws Knives At Children
13 years ago
The corporate media is always willing to pass of one it's elite as a saint. Perhaps that's why so many newspapers are folding, people don't like to be lied to on such a consistent basis.
he was also a lousy quarterback.
when i saw Kemp died i just knew that media would go into homage-overdrive.
Kemp was not an idiot in the Palin-Bush-Bachmann-Huckabee mold, but he defintely filled the evil mold quite well
I heard about his death on NPR this AM. they didn't seem to be lionizing him, at least.
all they said about him was the fact that he pushed supply side economics.
I snorted coffee all over the kitchen table.
I do not know that much concerning the late Jack Kemp, and where-of I know not, I speak not!
However, whilst you are correct to point to Reagan's huge deficit you might recall that much of it went on zillion dollar defence projects which eventually broke the economic back of the Soviet Union when it tried to keep up and thus 'won' the Cold War.
Also, in the interests of accuracy it is worth remembering that whilst unemployment peaked at 10.8% in the his 2nd year in office, almost certainly due to the lag effects of his predecessor, there-after it dropped like a stone and 16m new jobs were created. On top of that, American GDP grew at 3.4% pa there-after.
No politician is perfect but Reagan deserves better than you gave him, I think.
There is one thing that I have learned from reading die hard liberal blogger comments.
They are so busy bashing everything about the other side, they never see that their side isn't doing much for them either.
Doesn't matter what administration is in charge, the poor are still poor and the so called middle class are fighting to keep their heads above water.
Lew: I know it's a reason why I seldom buy newspapers.
Distributorcap: Yep, the main difference between him and many other Republicans was that he had better pr done for him.
two crows: Good for NPR. MSNBC was talking about what a supposedly great leader Kemp was. Sigh.
David Duff: You claim to know what you are talking about regarding Reagan, yet you are unaware of the fact that the Reagan administration had intelligence showing that the Soviet Union was falling all on it's own. They suppressed the intelligence to justify huge military budgets that made big money donors in the arms industry very happy. Reagan's military spending had nothing to do with the fall of the USSR and everything to do with corruption and massive deficits.
Palmo: The last economically liberal president was LBJ. His war on poverty significantly decreased poverty in this country which went back up as Reagan and his predecessors cut back on or eliminated war on poverty programs.
The liberal economic policies of the 30's to the 60's broadly expanded the middle class. They are a proven success.
Kemp had Ivy League good looks (at least as a young GOPer) and he was a former football star -- an irresistible marketing combination that the RNC exploited shamelessly.
Of course, Kemp wasn't an extremist in the Reagan/Poppy/Gingrich tradition which isn't saying much because he was still a Repug and utterly useless.
No, no, 'GLH', I don't claim to know thatmuch about Reagan, just more than I do about Kemp. As to your response, I seem to remember that the most surprised bunch of people on earth at the news of the Soviet implosion, and indeed the last to know of it, were the CIA's Russian Desk!
Anyway, off topic, but to cheer you up with a laugh, I came across this report in an Arkansas newspaper (don't ask!):
"It was big news in June when, in an Olympics prep race, Tyson Gay, former Razorback sprinter, dashed the fastest 100 meters ever. Even the OneNewsNow website of the homophobic American Family Association ran the Associated Press news story about Gay's feat. Only problem was, the site's software had been programmed to replace the rather cheerful and respectable-sounding word “gay” with the more sinister-sounding word “homosexual” every time it appeared, so its banner-headlined article had Tyson Homosexual, rather than Tyson Gay, making the record-breaking dash. (Yes, they're morons.)"
At least he's gone and another sign that the Reagan era is long gone (thankfully).