USA: How 'One Nation' Didn't Become 'Under God' Until The '50s Religious Revival -" A Republican Invention "

US Dollar: "In God We trust"

The words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase "In God we trust" on the back of a dollar bill haven't been there as long as most Americans might think. Those references were inserted in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration, the same decade that the National Prayer Breakfast was launched, according to writer Kevin Kruse. His new book is One Nation Under God.
 
In the original Pledge of Allegiance, Francis Bellamy made no mention of God, Kruse says. Bellamy was Christian socialist, a Baptist who believed in the separation of church and state.
 

US Dollar : the real meaning of the symbols and dates

"As this new religious revival is sweeping the country and taking on new political tones, the phrase 'one nation under God' seizes the national imagination," Kruse tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "It starts with a proposal by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic lay organization, to add the phrase 'under God' to the Pledge of Allegiance. Their initial campaign doesn't go anywhere but once Eisenhower's own pastor endorses it ... it catches fire."

Kruse's book investigates how the idea of America as a Christian nation was promoted in the 1930s and '40s when industrialists and business lobbies, chafing against the government regulations of the New Deal, recruited and funded conservative clergy to preach faith, freedom and free enterprise.

He says this conflation of Christianity and capitalism moved to center stage in the '50s under Eisenhower's watch.

"According to the conventional narrative, the Soviet Union discovered the bomb and the United States rediscovered God," Kruse says. "In order to push back against the atheistic communism of the Soviet Union, Americans re-embraced a religious identity. That plays a small role here, but ... there's actually a longer arc.

That Cold War consensus actually helps to paper over a couple decades of internal political struggles in the United States. If you look at the architects of this language ... the state power that they're worried most about is not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but rather the New Deal and Fair Deal administrations in Washington, D.C."

The New Deal had passed a large number of measures that were regulating business in some ways for the first time, and it [had] empowered labor unions and given them a voice in the affairs of business. Corporate leaders resented both of these moves and so they launched a massive campaign of public relations designed to sell the values of free enterprise. The problem was that their naked appeals to the merits of capitalism were largely dismissed by the public.

The most famous of these organizations was called The American Liberty League and it was heavily financed by leaders at DuPont, General Motors and other corporations. The problem was that it seemed like very obvious corporate propaganda. As Jim Farley, the head of the Democratic Party at the time, said: "They ought to call it The American Cellophane League, because No. 1: It's a DuPont product, and No. 2: You can see right through it."

So when they realized that making this direct case for free enterprise was ineffective, they decided to find another way to do it. They decided to outsource the job. As they noted in their private correspondence, ministers were the most trusted men in America at the time, so who better to make the case to the American people than ministers?

They use these ministers to make the case that Christianity and capitalism were soul mates. This case had been made before, but in the context of the New Deal it takes on a sharp new political meaning. Essentially they argue that Christianity and capitalism are both systems in which individuals rise and fall according to their own merits. So in Christianity, if you're good you go to heaven, if you're bad you go to hell. In capitalism if you're good you make a profit and you succeed, if you're bad you fail.

The New Deal, they argue, violates this natural order. In fact, they argue that the New Deal and the regulatory state violate the Ten Commandments. It makes a false idol of the federal government and encourages Americans to worship it rather than the Almighty. It encourages Americans to covet what the wealthy have; it encourages them to steal from the wealthy in the forms of taxation; and, most importantly, it bears false witness against the wealthy by telling lies about them.

So they argue that the New Deal is not a manifestation of God's will, but rather, a form of pagan stateism and is inherently sinful.

Read more: How 'One Nation' Didn't Become 'Under God' Until The '50s Religious Revival | WSHU

USA: "We are not a Christian nation: Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and the eternal lie of the “city upon a hill”

When Barack Obama delivered his first inaugural address six years ago last week, on January 20, 2009, it was the first time a newly elected president used the occasion to give voice to the diversity of religious life among its people. “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims,” Obama said, “Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”

Such a high­-profile expression of the varieties of American religious experience was unprecedented, even if the reality it described predates the Republic itself. A spectrum of beliefs informed the nation’s history well before its first president, in his 1789 inaugural address, spoke of “that Almighty Being who rules over the universe.” Yet Obama’s choice of words served as a reminder that only recently did the range of opinions about the nature of that Being, including its existence, begin to receive their due in the ongoing national conversation about the appropriate place of religion in American life.

Perhaps most noteworthy about the president’s acknowledgment that the United States is a country of many faiths was that it seemed noteworthy at all. His simple declaration of a catalogue of beliefs surprised many because there persists, among believers and nonbelievers alike, an assumption that the United States is, for better or worse, a Christian nation.

Nothing has done more to keep this notion alive than the stubborn persistence of words spoken more than a century before this land was a nation at all: John Winthrop’s designation of the community he would establish in America as a “city upon a hill.” Some historians have doubted these words were ever spoken, but tradition maintains that in 1630, while the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay were still aboard the Arabella, the governor of the colony delivered a sermon comparing their humble settlement to a lofty city described in a parable of Jesus.

For at least the past fifty years, that single unifying metaphor has dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding, causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in America’s civil religion. While not a direct refutation, Obama’s statement of religious diversity presented a challenge to reconsider the meaning, and even the relevance, of this image in the twenty­-first century.

Read more: We are not a Christian nation: Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and the eternal lie of the “city upon a hill” - Salon.com

USA: "Look who is calling the Kettle Black" ? Ronald Reagan “treason” amnesia: GOP hypocrites forget their hero negotiated with terrorists

It’s been said that if President Obama were to walk on water, the headline news would be “President Can’t Swim.” That can explain why what would normally be a cause for celebration — the return of America’s only prisoner of war in Iraq or Afghanistan — quickly became a controversy, with talk of it being a crime.

Reactions to the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, in exchange for five Taliban members being held at Guantanamo, have been so severe that even the hometown joy at his release has been dampened.

GOP criticism — picked up by the media — initially focused on two lines of attack on Obama, the first claiming that “negotiating with terrorists” sets a bad precedent, and the second claiming that Obama broke the law by failing to consult with Congress 30 days in advance of releasing the Taliban detainees.

There were calls for “investigations,” the GOP’s favorite word in Obama’s second term. But the consultation requirement in a bill passed by Congress was countered by a presidential signing statement — and acting on such signing statements was never a problem for the GOP when Bush was president.

As for “setting a bad precedent” by “negotiating with terrorists,” the GOP’s very serious concern comes three decades too late: Their hallowed icon, Ronald Reagan, firmly established that precedent in a still-murky tangle of secret dealings with Iran, only some of which came to light in the Iran-contra scandal.

While Obama was actually involved in prisoner-of-war negotiations — a quite different matter, as several commentators have tried to explain — Reagan clearly was not. Thus, if we really want to put the current faux controversy over Bergdahl’s release into context, a review of Reagan’s record should prove most illuminating.

The particulars involved in that record were far more shocking than the ambiguities surrounding Bergdahl’s conduct, which have opened up a third line of attack on Obama’s success in bringing him home.

Read more: Ronald Reagan “treason” amnesia: GOP hypocrites forget their hero negotiated with terrorists. He was just really bad at it - Salon.com

Economics: Thatcher and Reagan were wrong: Supply side economic does not work- it deepens the deficit and worsens inequality

Ronald Reagan

When you cut taxes on the wealthy, pretty much all you do is raise the after-tax income of the wealthy (and lose federal revenues).  In this simple sense, supply-side tax policies exacerbate market-driven increases in income inequality.

More recent, interesting scholarly analysis by economist Emmanuel Saez et al, discussed here, shows that by over time and across advanced economies, lower marginal tax rates are associated with greater income inequality but not with faster growth.  These researchers argue that “lower top tax rates induce top earners to bargain more aggressively for higher pay” and since they’re not adding more value—they’re just flexing their K-Street induced bargaining clout—it’s a zero sum proposition.   Their gain is somebody else’s loss.

Supply-siders can’t understand why you’d need stimulus spending to offset a demand contraction because demand doesn’t contract in their model..Supply-siders believe growth and revenue are always a tax cut away—the theory is always structured around marginal rate cuts.

In order to evaluate whether supply-side policies really delivered on their promise, we looked at the economic performance of the three eras, all beginning at equivalent points in the business cycle. Since the 1993 tax increases were passed 10 quarters into an economic expansion, we compared performance for all three eras starting 10 quarters into their respective expansions, and then going forward five years from that point, or—in the case of the 2000s—until the expansion ended in December of 2007.

We compared performance during these equivalent years along seven key economic measures. Here are the facts.

The critical link in supply-side theory’s chain is business investment. Proponents argue that lower taxes on the rich will spur more investment, and since investment is a key ingredient to growth, that will boost the overall economy. But investment growth during both supply-side eras lagged far behind that of the 1990s when taxes were higher.

Did the supply side policies of Presidents Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and George W. Bush work? Did they boost investment, spur growth, and cause prosperity to trickle down? The data says no. And when President Clinton raised taxes in 1993, did the economy suffer a slowdown, as was predicted by those who believe in supply-side economics? Again, the data says no.

EU-Digest

US Economy: Why Obama's economic recovery is impressive - by Joe Weisenthal

The 2012 election will revolve around the economy, and somehow Obama will have to make the case that he should be re-elected with GDP growing below historical trend, and unemployment above 8 percent.

James Pethokoukis of the Conservative American Enterprise Institute has been doing a lot of work comparing the Obama recovery to the Reagan recovery, pointing out how much more robust the latter was.

In a new post, he takes aim at the suggestion that comparing the two recoveries is somehow unfair because Obama had to deal with the aftermath of the housing bust, whereas Reagan didn't.

For more: US Economy: Why Obama's economic recovery is impressive | GlobalPost

Poland: Walesa unveils statue of Ronald Reagan in Warsaw

Former Polish president and anti-communist leader Lech Walesa unveiled a statue of Ronald Reagan on an elegant Warsaw street on Monday, honoring the late U.S. president for inspiring Poland's toppling of communism.

Though Reagan's legacy is mixed in the U.S., across much of central and eastern Europe he is considered the greatest American leader in recent history for challenging the Soviet Union.

The moniker he gave it - the "evil empire" - resonated with Poles, who suffered greatly under Moscow-imposed rule.

For more: Walesa unveils statue of Ronald Reagan in Warsaw - World Wires - MiamiHerald.com

Supply-side economics does not work

US Political environment: Obama bashing seems to be the only thing US right-wingers can come up with. In the 9 months that the Republican majority in Congress has been in power they themselves have not come up with anything constructive or bi-partisan on the economy, job creation, alternative energy ,or the environment, apart from presenting some "rehashed" existing conservative programs.

US economy: the Anglo-Saxon controlled financial and popular press - Wall Street Journal, Fox News - the Sun - the Telegraph etc - most of them owned by Rupert Murdoch and his cohorts - now blame Europe for all the economic problems the US is experiencing. Basically these "pundits" are feeding the people a lot of delusions and hogwash, instead of constructive and factual journalism. But as the saying goes; "keep telling a lie and eventually people will start to believe it". This they do very well.

The Problem: the worlds economic&problems should really be pinned on supply-side economics. The supply-side theory popularized by Republican Icon Ronald Reagan and British Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, held that cutting taxes would lead to a great thrust of economic energy - and a rush of revenue into federal accounts that would replace the drain from the tax cuts themselves. Not true. The facts show that revenues as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product declined from 19.6 percent when Reagan was inaugurated to 18.3 percent when he left Washington. Even among the influential and multi-partisan American Economics Association, which has close to 18,000 members, not more than about 10 call themselves supply-side economists.

In American universities there is no major department that is called "supply-side", and there is no supply-side economist at any major US university department. This is significant, because  academia in the 70s was dominated by conservative economic theory, and conservative economists normally welcome all ideas that make the case against government intervention. The fact that conservatives scrutinized supply-side theory and rejected it wholesale shows that supply-side economics has very little credibility.

Following Clintons inauguration Republican predictions forecast that his tax hike included in the 1993 deficit-reduction package would bring on an economic Armageddon? ( sounds familiar?) Looking back it would seem that the 21 million jobs added to payrolls during the Clinton era showed they were very wrong on that prediction.

Supply-side economics has not worked and never will, but conservative politicians are at it again. Unfortunately, this time the risks are far greater, and again, it won't work.

EU-Digest