Yail Bloor Wrote:
druucifer Wrote:
i don't think it's fair to say bush is like lbj in his spending. a democrat who wanted to craft a drug benefit would never have ran it through private insurance companies, which has created bush's medicare clusterfuck.
he's all about spending lots of money, but a good chunk of it is going to his pals and cronies (no-bid contracts in iraq and new orleans). corporate welfare ain't the same thing as welfare.
to me he just seems cravenly political. like he'll propsose big programs to get elected, boost as poll numbers, etc., but as soon as the deficit hawks push back he abandons them.
Both WW2 aqnd Vietnam were huge benefits to the Military Industrial Complex, money wise. LBJ was as bought as any politician in history by corporations. Sorry.
ok, sure, my point wasn't to cast the democrats as pure and untainted by corruption. the point is it's a stretch to call bush a big government liberal. the fact that bush, lbj and fdr all spent a lot of money doesn't mean they spent that money the same way. and lbj being "bought" still doesn't mean that his big gov'ment programs were thinly veiled handouts to the insurance industry. and every president feeds the military industrial complex in some way or another, thats hardly unique to lbj and fdr.