DAVID STOCKMAN, THE POSTERBOY FOR THE WINGNUTS' VOODOO ECONOMICS IS INDICTED FOR FRAUD

When it was first announced last September that former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman was being investigated for crooked dealing, it should have come as a surprise to no one at all. What, afterall, do crooked dealers do besides deal crookedly? In public life Stockman was always a flim-flam man, selling what Bush's father called Voodoo Economics, another Republican scheme to soft pedal their ultimate and undying ambition to make the rich richer and the rest of us... slaves. His record as Budget Director was one of abysmal failure. He spoke in terms of idealism but he didn't try to prevent his budget cuts from falling disproportionately on the poor; the GOP's wealthy paymasters proved too powerful to defeat-- not that anyone tried. Ultimately, Stockman failed to achieve budget cuts of any kind sufficient to reverse a trend toward growing deficits fed by the Reagan administration's tax cuts for the rich. Bush and the pseudo-economists he's brought into his Regime couldn't wait to take up this mantle.

Yesterday Stockman was indicted "on charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and obstruction of justice. Stockman, 60, who faces the prospect of three decades in prison, is accused of defrauding investors and banks during his stewardship" of bankrupt MI auto-parts maker Collins & Aikman.

At some point there will be enough Republican ex-congressmen in jail, no doubt awaiting pardon, to merit, at minimum, a wing in a prison, if not an entire facility. I'm sure Stockman will feel right at home with fellow far right nut cases-- also with sticky fingers-- like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Jerry Lewis, Gary Miller, John Doolittle. Mr. "Trickle-Down Economics" was elected to Congress from Michigan when he was just 30 years old. He was a radical zealot for every extremist right-wing notion that came sailing down the pike. Four years later, Reagan appointed him Director of the Office of Budget and Management where he made absurd pie in the sky projections based on ideology and faith in right wing chicanery. "Reagan chastised his young budget chief [the infamous "walk to the woodshed"] for expressing doubts to a Washington Post editor about massive defense spending, tax cuts and the resulting deficits at the same time he was selling the plan to the public and the Congress. The article threw Washington into uproar and led to Stockman being jettisoned by the Reaganites. He then made his way into the private sector where he has continued a career of dishonesty and manipulation-- except this time with the purpose of lining his own pockets.