Free Republic

Bill Moyers sits down with former Nixon White House strategist and political and economic critic Kevin Phillips, whose latest book BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM explores the role that the crumbling financial sector played in the now-fragile American economy.

Back in August, during the panic over mortgages, Alan Greenspan offered reassurance to an anxious public. The current turmoil, the former Federal Reserve Board chairman said, strongly resembled brief financial scares such as the Russian debt crisis of 1998 or the U.S. stock market crash of 1987. Not to worry. But in the background, one could hear the groans and feel the tremors as larger political and economic tectonic plates collided. Nine months later, Greenspan's soothing analogies no longer wash. The U.S. economy faces unprecedented debt levels, soaring commodity prices and sliding home prices, to say nothing of a weak...

Hard numbers: The economy is worse than you know Ever since the 1960s, Washington has gulled its citizens and creditors by debasing official statistics, the vital instruments with which the vigor and muscle of the American economy are measured. The effect has been to create a false sense of economic achievement and rectitude, allowing us to maintain artificially low interest rates, massive government borrowing, and a dangerous reliance on mortgage and financial debt even as real economic growth has been slower than claimed. The corruption has tainted the very measures that most shape public perception of the economy: • The...

More and more, I wonder whether lefties mean it, any of it. Take Rosie O’Donnell. The other day, one of her co-hosts on “The View” was musing on current events and opined, “If you take radical Islam and you want to talk about what is going on there you have to…” And at this point Rosie interrupted. “One second. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state.” Does she really believe that? That “radical Christianity” is “just as threatening” as “radical Islam”? These terms are...

From oil to AIDS to Armageddon, liberals are buying the bizarre claims set forth in "American Theocracy." There's always been a strain of paranoia running through American politics. Back in the mid-1960s, when the right felt powerless, the John Birch Society thrived. Today, when the left feels disinherited, liberals seize upon the conspiracy fantasies of Kevin Phillips, whose book "American Theocracy" is in its fifth week on the New York Times' best-seller list. Phillips' method is pretty conventional for conspiracists -- he takes a single issue or set of data points and constructs an all-explaining story line to show how...

The Republican Party is uneasy as it shambles toward the crucial 2006 congressional elections. Many of its supporters claim to feel demoralized, if not seduced and abandoned, by the conservative president they thought they elected in 2004. With President Bush's Nixonian economic policies and unwillingness to curtail federal spending, and the Republican faithful as confused as everyone else about the Iraq War, this is a good time to gain some political perspective from two veteran architects of the Reagan Revolution. In the midst of another difficult political predicament, Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, once said he had finally found...

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history. We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party...

Last week (March 27-28), Vision America convened a War On Christians conference in Washington, D.C. It was the first to address escalating attacks on Christians from Hollywood, the news media, academia, the courts, and activist groups like the ACLU and Anti-Defamation League. Speakers included scholars, authors, clergy (among them an Orthodox rabbi), lawyers and members of Congress. Delegates came from as far away as South Africa. I was the conference coordinator, as well as a speaker on two panels ("Jews Confront the War On Christians" and "Hollywood: Christians Through a Distorted Lens"). You will be shocked – shocked! – to...

Four decades ago, Kevin Phillips, a young political strategist for the Republican Party, began work on what became a remarkable book. In writing "The Emerging Republican Majority" (published in 1969), he asked a very big question about American politics: How would the demographic and economic changes of postwar America shape the long-term future of the two major parties? ...(clip)...A stronger Republican Party, he believed, would restore stability and order to a society experiencing disorienting and at times violent change. Shortly before publishing his book, he joined the Nixon administration to help advance the changes he had foreseen. Phillips has remained...

Journal Editorial Report (Paul Gigot) - FNC show page Meme: The Bush administration policies are a failure and Bush has bad poll numbersBush's bad poll numbers are sinking the RepublicansBush must clean house and replace those the MSM hates (because they're not listening to us!)The paleocons and country club Republicans have turned their back on Bush (the Nixon wing of the party tries to rise again) Topics: 'Civil War'? - Tune in this weekend for a discussion of Iraq and Harvard professors' campaign against Israel. (Opinion Journal web site promo)Is Iraq really headed toward civil war? An interview with Reuel...

My underlying thesis in American Theocracy is that these are the three major perils of the United States in the early 21st century. First, radical religion – this encompasses everything from the Pat Robertson-Jerry Falwell types to the attacks on medicine and science and the Left Behind books with their End Times and Armageddon scenarios. Second, oil dependence – oil was essential to 20th century U.S. hegemony, and its growing scarcity and cost could play havoc. And third, debt is becoming a national weakness – indeed, the “borrowing” industry in the U.S. has grown so rapidly that finance has displaced...

This is not a month for reading too much into Trent Lott's ignoble departure from the Republican Senate leadership. While this will change the office arrangements in the U.S. Capitol, it doesn't rearrange the Republican Party, which remains overinvested in the South ideologically and overcommitted to upper-income America economically. Lott aside, January 2003 is unfolding very nicely for the political flagbearers of the Old Confederacy. By promising a referendum on the Georgia flag, Sonny Perdue rode an angry tide of rural white voters to victory in November and will soon be inaugurated as the first GOP governor of Georgia since...

THERE'S no love lost between Kevin Phillips, author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," and the administration of George W. Bush. But the former White House staffer and economist was overheard at Litchfield's West Street Grill saying with a sense of resignation about John Kerry's chances of beating the president, "It's a lost cause. It's all over."

Read this CAREFULLY. MOYERS: Let's take a specific that is in the report and sees what it says about accountability. Look at the video of those hijackers going through the security at Dulles Airport. The commission is very specific about this. Now, the report says that screener, who's not identified by name, should have reconciled or resolved why the detector went off. But the screener never did. It names no name. Surely, though, above the screener was a supervisor. Above the supervisor was a manager. Above the manager was a CEO. Above the CEO was, you know? You never find...

I couldn't sleep so I flipped the TV on about an hour ago. Normally I don't watch PBS but channel 2 comes on when I turn the TV on and they were showing the newly released video of the Dulles Airport hijackers on 9/11. I need the transcript of what came next. I just went to PBS.org and they had a transcript of Moyers interviewing this Kevin Phillips guy from a few months ago but they didn't have tonight's transcript. They were much more than implying that President Bush arranged so that the hijackers were let through. I've heard liberals...

By Peter Schweizer Over the course of the first three months of this election year, no book on the Bushes and the Bush presidency has sold more copies than Kevin Phillips's American Dynasty. Having spent 11 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list (currently, it's Number 4), it has been praised by Times columnist Paul Krugman as "remarkable." Yet, surprisingly, it has received little scrutiny. In the past, Phillips has written books that were based on solid documentation and used historical and economic data. Agree with him or not, you could tell that he had done his homework. But...

Note from summer: This is a true story. I was in Barnes & Nobel today, and I happened to pick up a new, non-fiction, NYT best-seller, anti-Bush book, published in January 2004, titled: American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush by Kevin Phillips It is currently ranked #3 on the NYT Best Seller list for hardcover, non-fiction. Here is the cover of the book: I was reading a few pages about FL Gov Jeb Bush, and thinking it was nothing I hadn't seen before on some Dem web site, until I got to...

Conservative Historian Links Bush Family to Oil Scandals By DYLAN FOLEYFeaturewell (02-24-04) In his new book “American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush” (Viking, $25.95), historian and political commentator Kevin Phillips, a populist social critic who has decried the growing gap between rich and poor, writes a scathing assessment of the four-generation Bush dynasty that includes the forty-third President George W. Bush. Phillips follows the Bush family preoccupations with the finance industry, oil and covert operations, and the scandals they have been attached to, from Iran-Contra to Enron. Phillips traces the rise...

Kevin Phillips, author of a best-selling book that is harshly critical of President Bush, said Friday that the Atlanta History Center had withdrawn an invitation for him to speak next Wednesday for political reasons. The History Center said the invitation to Phillips, author of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," had been merely "tentative." Spokeswoman Hillary Hardwick said Phillips' talk and planned book-signing, scheduled for Wednesday evening, had been canceled while planners were finalizing the center's regular schedule of speakers. Andy Ambrose, deputy director of the center, issued a written statement Friday...

Dynasties in American politics are dangerous. We saw it with the Kennedys, we may well see it with the Clintons, and we're certainly seeing it with the Bushes. Between now and the November election, it's crucial that Americans come to understand how four generations of the current president's family have embroiled the United States in the Middle East through CIA connections, arms shipments, rogue banks, inherited war policies and personal financial links. As early as 1964, George H.W. Bush, running for the U.S. Senate from Texas, was labeled by incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough as a hireling of the sheik of...