Are you better off today? 

You didn't hear the party platform trumpeted as a jihad against working Americans, but that's what it is. And the Fifth Column aiding the Bushites is the servile press. Just as the media failed America in seldom questioning what really led to 9/11, and just as the media failed America in refusing to be skeptical over the smoke-and-mirrors charade that got us into Iraq -- so, too, has the media failed America in concealing the information and the context about what has really happened in the economy.

And that undisclosed truth is: You're screwed.

Nor do you ever get the information that would enable you to understand that the media owners have little in common with their customers. When it comes to economics -- dense stuff on a good day -- the news stories report facts, but seldom are you given the tools to understand those facts. Opinion pages -- either muddled messages or rightwing rants in most papers -- buy into the myth that American corporatism is basically good for everyone, if we could just tweak it a bit. In short, if you relied on the daily rags to understand the economy, you'd be lost in a swamp with no compass.

It gets worse. To get the picture of how much worse, let me offer an anecdote. I had a great uncle who was a lighthouse keeper in Key West about 80 years ago. Most of the good citizens of that island relied on "wrecking" -- salvaging ships that had run aground -- for their livelihoods. So, my great unc's job wasn't to turn on the lights. His mission was to douse them and ignite fake signals that lured ships onto the reefs. What he did was good for business, and I'm sure he earned many free beers at Sloppy Joe's.

The media counterparts of my uncle are the talk show hosts -- the big fat liars such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz. They're luring listeners to their doom with a never-ending drumbeat: Tax cuts for the rich through some sort of voodoo alchemy help everyone ... it's righteous for money to dominate the political process (a perversion of the First Amendment whose corrosive impact is ensuring that only the wealthy have free speech) ... eliminate virtually all constraints on how companies treat workers ... scrap environmental protections ... crush unions ... abandon the minimum wage ... supercharge "globalization" (whose most immediate impact is shipping your jobs to offshore sweatshops).

Anything that jacks up corporate profits is good, no matter the social costs.

Add to that the biggest deceit of Republicans: While touting themselves as "fiscal conservatives," they have crafted the biggest expansion of government in modern history, funded by $2,750,000,000,000 (yes, that's $2.75 trillion!) in deficits over the next decade. That borrowed money will be paid by your grandchildren, who may find the bill a little steep since about the only jobs left in America in 30 years will be as Wal-Mart greeters.

The scam of deficits was first crafted by Ronald Reagan -- and the covert strategy then as now is truly evil -- to bankrupt the federal government, forcing a shutdown of education, health and almost all social spending. You see that strategy at work in Florida, as the Dark Prince Jeb Bush lards taxpayers' money onto "economic development" (that is, paying back campaign contributors) while stripping funds for the state's neediest and weakest.

Similarly, at the national level, George Bush is slashing critical money for schools, the elderly, national parks, veterans -- just about everybody except the wealthiest 2 percent. Corporations are being shoveled your money -- hell, they get tax breaks for eliminating American jobs. And there's always a few extra billions for Halliburton, Bechtel and the Bush family's very own defense contractor, the Carlyle Group.

A Top 40 hit on talk radio -- Limbaugh and Boortz have both sung the tune in recent weeks -- is that American business is more productive than the weenies in Europe, and stripping away more regulation will make us even more macho and productive. This is, of course, spin emanating from the Republican National Committee and the Heritage Foundation, and is the economic equivalent of raising the terrorism threat level every time Dubya lurches into some new disaster. It's the charlatan's old trick: Watch this hand so you don't see what the other hand is doing.

In addition, the productivity claim is nothing but myth. A recently released study shows that the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Germany and Norway have sped past the United States in productivity -- and all of them treat workers far better than American employers. More vacations, health care for everyone, a real social safety net.

The average worker in the Netherlands is 6 percent more productive (even with legal dope smoking), but works 59 days less per year than the average American worker, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC.

Workers in Norway -- one of the countries Boortz loves to deride as "socialist" -- are 31 percent more productive.

The same report notes that most European countries have only about half the poverty of the United States -- even though we have the highest per capita income. (Seventeen percent of Americans -- and 22 percent of our children -- are destitute.)

What's more, that disparity is accelerating. In the 1960s the wealthiest one-fifth of Americans had about 3,000 percent more assets than the poorest one-fifth. Now that spread has more than doubled -- the richest have more than 7,500 percent more wealth than the crumbs left for the "other" America.

And how do the talk show blowhards spin that? They claim the wealthy are under attack. Boortz's perennial crusade is a national sales tax to replace the income tax -- a nostrum that would shift the burden even more to the middle class. As the Congressional Budget Office reported a few weeks ago, under Bush there has been a steady increase in the percentage of taxes paid by workers, while the wealthy increasingly dodge the government's bills.

Boortz blames the victims. "I'm tired of hearing about the poor," he smugly fumed recently. "To hell with them. [They got] the sum total of decisions they have made. They got what they deserved."

Oh.

The radio ignoramuses also repeat the lie that there are hardly any poor in America, when every study shows the opposite.

And the rich? Well, the largest single source of income listed on the Forbes 400 is "inheritance." Forty-eight out of the 400 "got what they deserved" by doing nothing but being born. Many others aren't listed under the inheritance column, but the source of their wealth is nonetheless daddy.

As with the Iraq war, the Bush administration conceals the assault on America's middle class behind mountains of mendacity. The Bush administration has declared that sending jobs offshore is good for business. (Whose business? India's and China's?)

And, in a report signed by Bush in February, a lame attempt is made to gloss the three million manufacturing jobs that have evaporated in this country. Bush declares that slapping a hamburger on a bun at McDonald's is a "manufacturing" job, not a service sector gig. (Shades of Reagan, who declared that catsup was a "vegetable" in order to shave money spent on poor kids' school lunches.)

And, as we learned in recent weeks, Bush's economic "recovery" is one of the shortest-lived in the world's history. After a few months of lukewarm job creation, with the talk show chorus chanting hosannas to Bush, only 32,000 jobs were added to America's economy in July -- 12 percent of the administration projection. Moreover, all of the jobs created in the last year are barely sufficient to offset population growth.

Think of that as the GOP plots how to lift more money from your wallet. The Bush Cabinet members averaged more than $140,000 each from the $2 trillion in tax cuts over the last three years. More than half of those cuts went to the nation's wealthiest 1 percent. Did your share even pay for a dinner at a fast-food restaurant? A cup of coffee?

I'm always amused at Bush's posturing at being a Christian. The Bible I read has Jesus warning that the wealthy will find it hard to get into heaven. He fed the multitudes, he didn't cheat them.

And I'm not the only one who has noticed the Republican hypocrisy -- invoking Christ to instill hatred of minorities and gays in the nation, and to justify a war for profits and political gain, while ignoring Jesus' message of love and giving. A few weeks ago, while Bush was vacationing in Kennebunkport, he attended a Sunday service at St. Ann's Episcopal Church. Unbeknownst to Bush's handlers, a guest minister, Martin Luther Agnew Jr. from Shreveport, had been selected to deliver the sermon.

With a pointed rebuke at Bush, Agnew preached: "Our material possessions do not have to be a wall. ... Jesus says, "Sell your possessions and give alms.' I'm convinced that what we keep owns us, and what we give away sets us free."

The Bushes left quickly -- and probably went back to tally their profits from the Carlyle Group's sale of killing machines.

Group Senior Editor John Sugg -- whose economic expertise is evidenced by the fact that he balanced his checkbook ... oh, about 25 years ago -- can be reached at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.