After a decade of stagnant or declining real wages, "bipartisan" schemes are proliferating to shift the burden of Washington policymakers' own catastrophic mismanagement of the nation's fiscal policies right onto the shoulders of working people. The press commentary has been abysmal. All "serious" thinkers out there on television or in print are in full agreement that "entitlements" must take a big hit, along with education and health care.
President Obama's "bipartisan" deficit commission, co-chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, (sometimes referred to as the "Cat Food Commission" because of the likely dietary changes some senior citizens will have to make if its prescriptions are implemented), wants to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations. Another high-profile group, headed by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, (which might be called the "Kibble Commission"), wants to strip $650 billion out of the Social Security trust fund with a payroll tax holiday (to be paid back later!) that they believe will create economic growth. So the Cat Food Commission views Social Security in crisis and bordering on insolvency, while the Kibble Commission believes that Social Security can absorb a $650 billion hit. And these are the best and the brightest.
Both "bipartisan" bodies claim that "tough decisions" must be made. Yet their policies are only really tough if you happen to belong to America's struggling working middle class. They want to inflict the "pain" on the government programs that have traditionally given working people a slight leg up. In these "bipartisan" schemes the financial services crooks who wrecked the economy come away smelling like roses.
Are we forgetting that it was working- and middle-class taxpayers who bailed out Wall Street's biggest investment banks in what could be the greatest gesture of working-class benevolence toward the super-rich in American history? Working-class taxpayers also paid for the unemployment insurance and infrastructure projects that were needed following the pillaging of America's housing sector. Working-class taxpayers continue to foot the bill for the bloated military budget and two wars. (They've also sent their sons and daughters off to fight.) And about eight million of them who had jobs in 2005 didn't have them anymore by the middle of 2009.
And how are working taxpayers repaid for the assistance they've given to their fellow citizens of the investing class? They get "commissions" and "foundations" and elite "study groups" that are orchestrating the next giant rip-off of America's middle class.
Few in the press seem to want to educate the public about how we got into this fiscal crisis in the first place or why projected budget surpluses at the beginning of the Bush years were so needlessly squandered. And remember, those surpluses were turned into deficits through "bipartisan" agreements, such as the Bush tax cuts, the wars, and the bailouts. There's also precious little mention of the grotesque inequality in American society these days, which is worse than even during the Gilded Age. The establishment press seems determined to avoid the obvious conclusion: The rich, the super-rich, and the super-duper rich (as well as the conglomerates) must pay more in taxes to get the United States through the crisis. Ending the two debilitating wars and rolling back what Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex" should be next. And the billions of dollars wasted in corporate welfare each year must be diverted to human needs.
These steps should be the top priorities before any "deficit-reduction plan" is seriously considered -- "bipartisan" or otherwise. At this moment in American history, after large swathes of the middle class have been wiped out, the last thing we need is another elite-driven assault on the living standards of working people.
Even though it was Wall Street that fostered the conditions that produced our current economic state, we're told from pundits across the political spectrum that we mustn't tax the rich because it will stymie job-creating investments. But I'm sure Lloyd Blankfein, Hank Paulson, Angelo Mozilo, and their ilk can afford to kick in a little more in taxes to save the country they claim (when under oath at least) to love so much.
In the 2010 midterm elections, the super-rich and their business associations threw around hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign cash like it was so much chump change. And they're gearing up to set new spending records in 2012. They appear to be very civic-minded plutocrats. Yet where is their "pain" and "sacrifice" when it comes to reducing the federal deficit? What "tough decisions" that affect their bottom lines are they being asked to make? And what happened to the quaint notion that those who have so greatly benefited from the opportunities American society has bestowed upon them having a special obligation to pay a little more when their country is in crisis? We're all in this together, right?
President Obama and the Tea Party Congress will most likely end up culling the absolute worst elements from the deficit reduction plans put forth so far, tie them together into a "package," slap a "bipartisan" label on it (which inside the Beltway is close to godliness), and then ram it down our throats by triangulating against what remains of the progressives in Congress.
Politicians, pundits, commentators, and citizens must choose a side now. You're either on the oligarchy's side or on the people's side. It's D-Day in the class war.
We've been told lately, again from "bipartisan" sources, that American soldiers will be fighting and dying in Afghanistan well past Obama's July 2011 "deadline," and the war will continue until at least the end of 2014, (at which time they'll just move the bar to 2018 or 2020 or 2030). Newly-minted "deficit hawks" should ask the question: Is it worth it to drop another $350 billion into Afghanistan? Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute, and others like him, think so, but they aren't making an argument for staying in Afghanistan -- they're manufacturing consent. Now the Peter Petersons and the rest of them are manufacturing consent on the deficit too.
The Republicans have already successfully painted the Democratic president as being outside the mainstream. They've vilified his every move and have suggested that there's a huge conspiracy behind his agenda aimed at extinguishing everything that is great and wholesome about America. With control of the House of Representatives they'll go on fishing expeditions to dredge up anything that can be construed as "corrupt." They'll dirty him up while they block any progress that might improve the lives of ordinary Americans. The people will continue to be perpetually angry and disappointed.
It's not surprising that in 2010 Democratic base voters couldn't match the Republicans vote for vote. We're told that the progressives must organize and mobilize to fight back in the coming years against the right-wing onslaught, which is true. Workers in France and Greece and college students in London are engaging in the kind of protests against austerity that should be happening here.
I guess we're going to find out if a career legislator (in the Illinois State House and the U.S. Senate) can make the adjustment from being one voice among many to take command as president. On the campaign trail it seemed self-evident that Obama would make an extremely effective chief executive. But two years later, it appears he has the temperament of a legislator. He was a great campaigner, but in power he has been a very weak leader.
For the better part of two years, while the Tea Partiers and Republican base voters were breathing fire, the Obama administration was beating up teachers' unions, following Larry Summers' advice on the economy, and allowing hacks like Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe to dictate what was in the realm of politically possibility. Obama accepted far too many a priori limits on moving his legislative agenda forward.
It's time for President Obama to tap into his inner community organizer.
Follow Joseph A. Palermo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/N/A
that earnest young man is long gone.
call me shrill, but he isn't weak or rudderless - he's running the Clinton playbook on steroids - ending Social Security "as we know it "
'cept the geniuses who thought it was the way to go forgot to take in to account that the country has suffered under 18 years of this neo liberal bullshit and that Clinton fella didn't have to deal with the internet - I think it's why it's blown up in his face so spectacularly
But, now, that fairness has vanished. Obama and the Dems, instead, "looked forward" to a bi-partisan relationship with the very party that protected War Criminals. Our current political gutter-ball is what we got in return.
The American middleclass has become a commodity that must work for slave wages simply to keep corporations employing in our country else they take their jobs overseas where governments ensure low wages, low social standards, and low environmental standards. Our corporations continue to coerce our regulatory structure to further maximize their profits at the expense of our environment and well-being.
Our tax laws ensure that the working man will never have the opportunity to enter the class of the wealthy. After-all. Income of the common man as wages is taxed at a much higher marginal rate than capital gains from investments which is a major form of income for the wealthy. In other words, a wealthy investor sipping tea at his pool will make more and pay less in taxes than someone who wakes up every morning and perform a solid day’s work.
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My Book: As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom
Book’s Webpage: http://books.egbertowillies.com - Twitter: http://twitter.com/egbertowillies
Therefore higher taxes on the wealthy - ie. wealth redistribution - is just because they enjoy the structural advantages of capitalism while wage-earners' incomes are stagnant.
It's time for him to announce that he won't run again, so we can salvage whats left of the party. If he doesnt, he will run. We Will lose, and the left will disintegrate.
controlled by the private sector, no regulations, no environmental laws, no watchdogs, no any protection
from the Corporate Slimeballs at all. Wait, didn't we just do that? Wait, isn't that what landed us here?
I personally will not be happy until we have rolled back every public agency to a status of being "de-commissioned" and "de-funded". Only those things like Defense which are mandated in the Constitution get the nod to continue operating and then under very close scrutiny. Why do I want this? Because I'm getting screwed. I'm not getting any value from the products and services the government is delivering and I see no reason to carry the other guy on my back. Government organizations are the ultimate make-work schemes where we are confronted by the likes of the TSA porno squad patting us down in the name of some sort of safety. continued in next post.....
the american dream has been over for a at least a decade. our socioeconomic mobility is behind all of western europe - with the exception of brittain and iltaly.
and the people you are carrying on your back are the rich corporations of this country, not the poor and middle class which is quickly becoming one in the same.
p.s. its moot, not mute.
http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499
If you like the term, you will LOVE Chomsky. He's frickin amazing.
The hype over the deficit and social security "crisis" is not an attempt by the media to educate the public on economic policy, but a propaganda exercise that serves the interests of Pete Peterson and Wall Street. Hence, manufacturing public consent for quietly acquiescing to the cat food commission's recommendations.
http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Rule-Investment-Competition-Money-Driven/dp/0226243176
Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the
Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (American Politics and Political Economy Series
BIG Money Party is also descriptive.
It's almost impossible to get third-parties on the ballot:
http://www.thelibertyvoice.com/ralph-nader-ron-paul-agree-ballot-access-laws-are-rigged-against-independent-third-party-candidates
Ralph Nader & Ron Paul Agree: Ballot Access Laws are Rigged Against Independent & Third Party Candidates | The Liberty Voice
The Federal Absentee ballot allows write-ins:
http://www.fvap.gov/resources/media/fwab.pdf
FEDERAL WRITE-IN ABSENTEE BALLOT INSTRUCTIONS
It would NOT be easy, but it's possible that a slate of independent or third-party candidates could be elected to Congress and the White House, bypassing the Democrats and Republicans, both beholding to corporations.
President William K. Black would know how to deal with banksters' fraud.
We will all be slaves, working for subsistence wages at best, while providing the goods and services that are required by the very wealthy to maintain their opulent life styles.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/iron+law+of+wages
Iron law of wages | Define Iron law of wages at Dictionary.com
"the doctrine or theory that wages tend toward a level sufficient only to maintain a subsistence standard of living. "