Tell The Bastards Who Want To Rape Us And Full Fund The Pentagon And The American Warfare State…To Shove It!
I don’t like to write this way but I guess it’s the only kind of language that a debased, dumbed-down American understands anymore.
Regarding “The Deficit Budget Crisis” Americans need to get over the bullshit the Republicans are shoveling for our nation’s Corpocracy Criminals, Financial Fuckers and Banking Bastards.
They don’t a damn about you and me.
As far as they are concerned our government exists for their pleasure, their treasure and the hell with me and you.
We are entitled to nothing and certainly the government should not be supporting anything that entitles anyone to anything: not Medicare, not Medicaid, not decent health insurance, not Social Security.
The only way that such programs should exist is if we privatize them into their fucking hands to multiply their fortunes.
Wake Up America. These folks want every regulatory law, financial, environmental, product safety, fraud, etc., repealed.
They want a rich son-of-bitch es financial sandbox to play in with the guarantee that if they screw it up we the tax payer will pay to make them whole again without being either held to account or having to repay any form of bailout.
They are “Entitled” to that because they are obscenely rich and generators of wealth that should be shelter from almost all taxation.
You are not entitled to a job; if you have one its because of their efforts and benevolence, hence they should not have to put up with your shit of attempting to engage in collective bargaining to improve your salary, working conditions or any other benefit.
You are not entitled to any benefits. You have a job so long as you kiss ass and serve them; if not out the door into foreclosure and start looking for a discarded refrigerator carton to call your own on Homeless Avenue.
You are an expendable commodity that can be replaced by some other low self-esteemed cowardly hungry readymade slave.
In their eyes all the money this government needs is that which keep the Pentagon living in the style to which is accustomed and that it aspires to in the future. So long as the blood lusting directors of our warfare state are satiated; that is all that is necessary.
Piss on International Law, piss on law suits against corporations; just shut the fuck up and do what you are told and believe what they tell you to believe. Stop that damn thinking crap and get in line. Wake up America…This is the reality they are attempting fashion.
If you closely at Obama’s remarks today, yes, he wants to cut $4 trillion, but not $1 from the Pentagon.
President Obama today proposed reducing the deficit through almost $800 billion in cuts. The biggest problem facing this country isn’t the deficit. It’s the lack of jobs and a Pentagon that sucks down money like eating potato ships.
But if we’re going to address the deficit, the place where we need to cut first and most is not in the area of domestic spending, where the President proposes most of his reductions. No. The place we need to cut first is the Pentagon -- that’s where the most waste and fraud and unnecessary spending is going on.
But if we’re going to address the deficit, the place where we need to cut first and most is not in the area of domestic spending, where the President proposes most of his reductions. No. The place we need to cut first is the Pentagon -- that’s where the most waste and fraud and unnecessary spending is going on.
Look this isn't complicated: Over half of the money Congress makes decisions on goes directly into the Pentagon’s pocket, and that doesn't count the money for actual wars.
But instead of cutting the Pentagon budget, Obama is proposing over $700 billion in cuts to programs that benefit the poor, seniors and children, while only trying to save $400 billion on war and weapons.
Obama has it exactly backwards: trying to cut $2 from things we need for every $1 in savings from the military. When the fact is when we already spend $2 on the military for every $1 we spend on everything else.
Obama has it exactly backwards: trying to cut $2 from things we need for every $1 in savings from the military. When the fact is when we already spend $2 on the military for every $1 we spend on everything else.
This is ass backwards folks.
I’m not even going to try to be eloquent and reference The Declaration Of Independence and Jefferson’s observations and assertions; put it this way: if the government isn’t doing you any good and is kicking you ass all over the play ground; it is time to topple the damn thing and replace it with a system and a government that will serve the people and keep the blood sucking maniacs who are trying to take all we have, and kill us if necessary, in line, in jails or in proper institutions and asylums.
The Buying and Selling of the Pentagon (Part I) | Truthout
The "People's Budget" charts a path that keeps America exceptional in the 21st century, while addressing the most pressing problems facing the nation today.
April 11, 2011
Budgets are more than collections of numbers. They are a statement of our values. The Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget is a reflection of the values and priorities of America's working families. The "People's Budget" charts a path that keeps America exceptional in the 21st century, while addressing the most pressing problems facing the nation today. Our Budget eliminates the deficit, stabilizes the debt, puts Americans back to work, and restores our economic competiveness.
The CPC Budget does this by listening to the American people. In poll after poll, the public is telling us that they want to preserve Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, make higher education more affordable, expand job-training programs, cut taxes burdening the middle class, subsidize affordable housing and assist those struggling to prevent foreclosures. The majority of America, furthermore, thinks cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, K-12 education, heating assistance to low-income families, student loans, unemployment insurance, scientific and medical research, are completely unacceptable.
In contrast, Americans find a progressive tax policy very acceptable. The overwhelming majority of America supports additional taxes on millionaires and billionaires, eliminating unnecessary weapons systems, eliminating tax credits for the oil and gas industries, phasing out Bush tax cuts, and eliminating subsidies for new nuclear power plants. Poll after poll gives voice to what Americans are asking of us.
Our Budget listens to what the American people are telling us. It does all of the above in a fiscally responsible way that dramatically reduces our borrowing from banks and foreign governments and ensures our long-term economic competitiveness. It does all of the above recognizing that in order to compete we need every American to be productive, and in order to be productive, we need to raise the skill level of every American while making sure that basic needs of every working family are met. It does all of the above, while remaining rooted in fairness, recognizing that America works only when everyone has an opportunity to make it in America.
Our Budget Eliminates the Deficit by 2021: The CPC budget eliminates the deficit in a way that does not devastate what Americans want preserved, specifically, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Instead of eroding America's hard-earned retirement plan and social safety net, our budget targets the true drivers of deficits in the next decade: the Bush Tax Cuts, the wars overseas, and the causes and effects of the recent recession. By implementing a fair tax code, by building a resilient American economy, and by bringing our troops home, we achieve a budget surplus of over $30 billion by 2021 and we end up with a debt that is less than 65% of our GDP. This is what sustainability looks like.
Our Budget Puts America Back to Work & Restores America's
Competitiveness: The CPC budget rebuilds America and makes it competitive again. We put America back to work. We rebuild our roads and bridges, ensuring that those who use it help pay for it. We rebuild our dams and waterways with seed money for shipping systems that can compete with the rest of the world. We rebuild our education system by training more and better teachers, restoring schools, helping each student graduate, and supporting community colleges. This is what competitiveness looks like.
Our Budget's Fair Tax System: The CPC budget implements a fair tax system, based on the American notion that fairness and equality are integral to our society. Our budget restores fairness to a system that unfairly benefitted the richest few while hurting the majority of America. Our budget heeds America's call to end the Bush Tax Cuts and the estate tax and create fair tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires -while maintaining credits for the middle class and for students. It ensures that the banks which wrecked our economy pay a modest financial responsibility fee and that exotic trading, by Wall Street traders who gambled away America's savings, is levied a tax. It guarantees that hedge fund managers (and those who use them) do not get special treatment, by taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income. It eliminates charity to oil companies making record profits from prices paid at the pump by the American people, given that it is unfair that the American people must also give these oil companies billions of dollars in handouts. Finally, our budget taxes US corporate income as it is earned, in much the same way Americans are taxed. This is what fairness looks like.
Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home: The CPC budget responsibly ends our wars, currently paid for by American taxpayer dollars we do not have. We end these wars, not simply to save massive amounts of money or because this is what the majority of America is polling in favor of, but because these wars are making America less safe, are reducing America's standing in the world, and are doing nothing to reduce America's burgeoning energy security crisis. The CPC budget offers a real solution to these fiscal, diplomatic and energy crises - leaving America more secure, both here and abroad. The CPC budget also ensures that our country's defense spending does not continue to contribute significantly to our current fiscal burden - a trend we reverse by ending the wars and realigning conventional and strategic forces, resulting in $2.3 trillion worth of savings. This is what security looks like.
Our Budget's Bottom Line (Over 10 year Window)
• Deficit reduction of $5.6 trillion
• Primary spending cuts of $869 billion
• Net interest savings of $856 billion
• Total spending cuts: $1.7 trillion
• Revenue increase of $3.9 trillion
• Public investment of $1.7 trillion
• Budget surplus of $30.7 billion in 2021, debt at 64.1% of GDP.
• Primary spending cuts of $869 billion
• Net interest savings of $856 billion
• Total spending cuts: $1.7 trillion
• Revenue increase of $3.9 trillion
• Public investment of $1.7 trillion
• Budget surplus of $30.7 billion in 2021, debt at 64.1% of GDP.
Tax Me, I'm Rich, Says Deep-Pocketed Group
Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength--rich guys in favor of raising taxes on themselves and other wealthy people--say they are irritated over President Obama's failure to do just that.
Nor do they believe his latest announcement that he intends to try again, says Erica Payne, founder of the Agenda project and coordinator of the Patriotic Millionaires campaign.
The president, when a candidate in 2008, had recommended ending the Bush tax cuts for households earning over $250,000 a year. But he conceded that point when he signed into law in 2010 an agreement with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts two more years.
It's that concession that has disappointed and rankled Patriotic Millionaires, curdling their feelings. "The administration cut the deal they felt they needed to cut," shrugs Payne. "But we disagreed wholeheartedly. The president's quick and easy capitulation on an issue with such solid moral elements was disheartening."
One of Obama's primary jobs, she says, is to be chief educator.
"He did not do a good job on this issue or on the one we are currently facing. There's a moral lens through which you have to view these choices."
On Sunday, the White House announced it would renew its attempt to increase taxes on the wealthy. That proposal is expected to be part of a speech the president will deliver later this week describing his long-range plan for strengthening the economy and dealing with the nation's debts and deficits.
Payne has little confidence the president will fare any better in the fight ahead than he fared against the Republicans in 2010.
"Allegedly, he was always in favor of raising taxes on people making over $250,000. In fact, he capitulated when pushed. He showed little marketing accumen. It's not a very auspicious beginning to what will be the continuing fight. He knows he won't get it through the House. It would surprise me greatly if he actually stepped up to fight for it."
In her view, the fight this time--over whether to raise the nation's $14 trillion debt ceiling--"ups the ante" and makes less likely an administration victory on forcing the wealthy to pay higher taxes.
"At the end of last year they had an easy fight, and they couldn't make the case. Now they have a much more difficult fight and a more difficult end point, which is raising the debt ceiling. He didn't make it when it was easy. I see no reason to think he'll do it now. This White house has been surprisingly inept at articulating what's sensible public policy. It's not ideologically driven one way or another."
Her group's members are, she says, are "just as irritated now as they were four months ago." And in the interim they have grown in number: Patriotic Millionaires now counts about 150 members.
Patriotic Millionaires earned headlines last winter when it ran ads calling on the President to let the Bush tax cuts expire on the wealthy. The ads read in part:
"We have done very well over last several years. Now, during our nation's moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don't need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. Letting tax cuts for incomes over $1 million expire is an important step in that direction."
The statement was signed by 45 persons "who now or in the past earned an income of $1 million per year or more." They included Jerry Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, Grammy Award-nominated DJ, MOBY, Princeton Review founder John Katzman, and star attorney Guy Saperstein.
What's ahead for the group?
Paul Ryan's attack against the middle class might have been expected to draw an outraged response. Instead, the punditry rallied around the GOP Rep.
April 12, 2011
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan put out a budget proposal last week that will leave the vast majority of future retirees without decent health care by ending Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to purchase a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030. They would be paying much more than half of their income in later years.
This sort of broadside against the living standards of the middle class might have been expected to draw an outraged response in a nation that exalts the lifestyle and values of the middle class. Instead, the punditry rallied around Mr. Ryan's plan to deal with the problem of runaway entitlement spending, crediting it for being "serious" even if they did not embrace all the details.
If there is any doubt that our political system is controlled by an elite who is completely removed from the bulk of the population, this response to the Ryan plan ended it. There is nothing at all serious about the Ryan plan. It is a naked attempt to redistribute yet more money to the country's rich at the expense of everyone else.
The proposal to end Medicare relies on market efficiencies to get health care costs under control, as though we had not tried this before. Has Representative Ryan never heard of Medicare Advantage or Medicare Plus Choice? Doesn't he know that we already have the opportunity to see the effectiveness of private insurers in containing health care costs in the vast non-Medicare insurance market?
Based on this extensive experience, we know that the private insurance market does not control costs. This is why the CBO calculated that Ryan's plan would hugely raise the cost of health care for seniors. If every senior got a Medicare equivalent policy under Representative Ryan's plan (which most will not be able to afford), the added cost of his system would be more than $20 trillion over the next 75 years.
This comes to more than $60,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. That would be money out of the pocket of ordinary workers and retirees that will go to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, highly paid medical specialists, and other health care providers.
When it comes to redistributing money upward, the bar for intellectual coherence is set very low. Pundits from across the political spectrum had a hard time containing their enthusiasm for Ryan's plan even if few were willing to embrace it in its entirety. And if there was not enough substance over which to get excited, then there was always the 37 footnotes which Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer trumpeted last week.
In principle, the country's elite should be laying low right now. After all, their greed and ineptitude has given us the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. But after getting the Wall Street banks back on their feet with trillions of dollars of government subsidized loans, the elite are once again making a full-frontal assault on the living standards of the middle class. Last week it was Medicare, but they promise to be back to attack Social Security in the not too distant future.
The ostensible rationale for this attack is the country's huge budget deficit. This is garbage. As all the pundits know, the country has a huge deficit today because the Wall Street boys drove the economy off a cliff. If the government deficit were not propping up the economy, we would be looking at 11 or 12 percent unemployment, rather than 8.9 percent. Spending creates jobs, and at this point, it is not coming from the private sector, so the government must fill the hole.
Over the longer term, the projections of huge deficits are driven by the projected explosion in health care costs. President Obama's health care reform took steps toward constraining these costs, although probably not enough. Remarkably, Ryan's plan abandons these cost control measures, virtually guaranteeing that quality health care becomes unaffordable for all but a small elite.
And the pundits call Ryan's plan "serious." Yes, it is very serious. It is a serious plan for taking tens of trillions of dollars from low-income and middle-income people and giving them away as tax breaks to the rich and to the health care industry. It is about as serious as a robber with a gun pointed at your head.
This column first appeared on TruthOut.org.
Obama's failure to challenge the Right's economic mythology is both inexcusable, and a sign that the White House isn't prepared for the major battles to come.
April 11, 2011
The deal Obama struck with GOP leaders last week will cost our moribund economy around 400,000 jobs. It was a tragic compromise with an unyielding ideological opposition, yet Obama hailed it as “historic,” prompting theWall Street Journal's plutocratic editorial board to crow that the president has now “agreed to a pair of tax cut and spending deals that repudiate his core economic philosophy and his agenda of the last two years.” They painted it as proof that “Republicans in Washington have reversed the nation's fiscal debate.”
Then came the news today that Obama will introduce a long-term deficit reduction plan, which might include “reforming” (read: cutting) Medicare and Medicaid.
The reality is that slashing public spending while private consumer demand remains in a deep trough is tantamount to economic suicide – every business survey conducted in the past two years has found that business's biggest problem is a lack of customers. Cutting programs that put dollars into the pockets of the poor and jobless and adding to the number of unemployed Americans is the worst thing we can do.
One can argue that the pain that would have been inflicted by a complete shutdown of government would have been so great, and the likelihood of the GOP caucus blinking under relentless pressure from its Tea Party base so slight, that Obama was nonetheless justified in cutting the deal. But his failure to challenge the Right's economic mythology is both inexcusable, and a sign that the White House is not prepared for the next two major battles to come.
The White House reads the polls, and according to Pew research (PDF), four in 10 Americans “said that major cuts in spending this year would not have much of an effect on the job situation.” Another especially confused 18 percent said deep cuts would actually help create jobs.
But that's simply the result of a self-fulfilling prophesy: the administration has conceded the idea that focusing on deficit reduction in this economic climate is something other than insane. They've framed the debate as a choice between deep, “irresponsible” cuts the Tea Party wants to make with a hatchet and intelligent trims the administration would make with a scalpel – Democratic center-right technocracy versus the crazy-right Republican “revolution” inspired by Ayn Rand.
That doesn't portend well for the fights ahead. In the next month or so, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling – the maximum amount of public debt the government can hold – or face a possible default on the government's obligations. And then Washington will turn to the 2012 budget battle.
Increasing the debt ceiling is usually a routine matter, and the consequences for failing to do so are potentially catastrophic – it would wreak havoc on the financial markets and send an already shaky recovery into a steep backslide. But Republicans are nevertheless expected to once again attach onerous conditions to the bill – holding the economy hostage in exchange for extremely painful cuts to social safety net programs and other, unrelated items on their ideological wish-list.
It will be the result of a Republican party having been emboldened by the administration’s past concessions. Robert Reichcompared it to handing over one's lunch money to a bully every day rather than confronting him in a bloody schoolyard fight: it may seem like the least painful approach in the short-term, but it's actually the very worst way to manage the situation.
What the administration should be doing appears clear, at least from the outside. Analysts agree that Obama needs a credible strategy for dealing with this form of extortion going forward. Matt Yglesias suggests a two-pronged approach. First, a “credible, repeated commitment not to surrender anything in exchange for getting congress to agree to the debt ceiling being increased.” Every serious person in Congress knows the ceiling must be raised, and therefore “there's nothing to bargain over.”
The second part is educating the public about what's really at stake in these battles, and in the most dramatic way. Yglesias notes that failing to raise the debt ceiling wouldn't force the government to shut down, it would only limit its ability to cut checks, which would mean that the administration “will be able to selectively stiff people.”
Then came the news today that Obama will introduce a long-term deficit reduction plan, which might include “reforming” (read: cutting) Medicare and Medicaid.
The reality is that slashing public spending while private consumer demand remains in a deep trough is tantamount to economic suicide – every business survey conducted in the past two years has found that business's biggest problem is a lack of customers. Cutting programs that put dollars into the pockets of the poor and jobless and adding to the number of unemployed Americans is the worst thing we can do.
One can argue that the pain that would have been inflicted by a complete shutdown of government would have been so great, and the likelihood of the GOP caucus blinking under relentless pressure from its Tea Party base so slight, that Obama was nonetheless justified in cutting the deal. But his failure to challenge the Right's economic mythology is both inexcusable, and a sign that the White House is not prepared for the next two major battles to come.
The White House reads the polls, and according to Pew research (PDF), four in 10 Americans “said that major cuts in spending this year would not have much of an effect on the job situation.” Another especially confused 18 percent said deep cuts would actually help create jobs.
But that's simply the result of a self-fulfilling prophesy: the administration has conceded the idea that focusing on deficit reduction in this economic climate is something other than insane. They've framed the debate as a choice between deep, “irresponsible” cuts the Tea Party wants to make with a hatchet and intelligent trims the administration would make with a scalpel – Democratic center-right technocracy versus the crazy-right Republican “revolution” inspired by Ayn Rand.
That doesn't portend well for the fights ahead. In the next month or so, Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling – the maximum amount of public debt the government can hold – or face a possible default on the government's obligations. And then Washington will turn to the 2012 budget battle.
Increasing the debt ceiling is usually a routine matter, and the consequences for failing to do so are potentially catastrophic – it would wreak havoc on the financial markets and send an already shaky recovery into a steep backslide. But Republicans are nevertheless expected to once again attach onerous conditions to the bill – holding the economy hostage in exchange for extremely painful cuts to social safety net programs and other, unrelated items on their ideological wish-list.
It will be the result of a Republican party having been emboldened by the administration’s past concessions. Robert Reichcompared it to handing over one's lunch money to a bully every day rather than confronting him in a bloody schoolyard fight: it may seem like the least painful approach in the short-term, but it's actually the very worst way to manage the situation.
What the administration should be doing appears clear, at least from the outside. Analysts agree that Obama needs a credible strategy for dealing with this form of extortion going forward. Matt Yglesias suggests a two-pronged approach. First, a “credible, repeated commitment not to surrender anything in exchange for getting congress to agree to the debt ceiling being increased.” Every serious person in Congress knows the ceiling must be raised, and therefore “there's nothing to bargain over.”
The second part is educating the public about what's really at stake in these battles, and in the most dramatic way. Yglesias notes that failing to raise the debt ceiling wouldn't force the government to shut down, it would only limit its ability to cut checks, which would mean that the administration “will be able to selectively stiff people.”
So the right strategy is to start stiffing people Republicans care about. When bills to defense contractors come due, don’t pay them. Explain they’ll get 100 percent of what they’re owed when the debt ceiling is raised. Don’t make some farm payments. Stop sending Medicare reimbursements. Make the doctors & hospitals, the farmers and defense contractors, and the currently elderly bear the inconvenient for a few weeks of uncertain payment schedules. And explain to the American people that the circle of people who need to be inconvenienced will necessarily grow week after week until congress gives in. Remind people that the concessions the right is after mean the permanent abolition of Medicare, followed by higher taxes on the middle to finance additional tax cuts for the rich.
It's the right way to play it, but it was also the case that the battle could have been avoided altogether had the Democrats played hardball last fall when, with control of the House and the polling in their favor, they didn't hang tough in the battle over the Bush tax cuts and failed to pass a 2011 budget. There is little reason to believe they will suddenly grow a backbone with the GOP in control of the House.
But the bigger problem is that it may be too late in the game to articulate an alternative vision for how to restart the economy. They've accepted the terms of the debate – that we have a “deficit crisis” and addressing it, now or in the near future, is integral to our economic future (this assumes that Obama is not himself a dedicated deficit hawk, as some believe). They've validated the conservative myth that we can't afford to keep our elderly out of poverty and provide health care to those who can't afford it. It was Obama who convened the bipartisan “catfood commission” headed by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. Pushing back against these narratives now would represent a heavy lift.
They could have gone another way early on – eschewing the false value of “bipartisanship” and educating the public about what's really at stake. They could have staked out a position that all of this deficit madness is ultimately a way of enacting unpopular policies favored by Wall Street. Over two-thirds of the American public think lobbyists, “major corporations” and “banks and financial institutions” have “too much power,” according to Gallup. But Obama's handlers obviously determined to go another way – to take credit for implementing the Right's disastrous economic voodoo.
In heading off a government shutdown, they may have been right in terms of the short-term political calculus. Polls show that the public would have spread the blame for a shutdown on both parties equally, and although the Democratic base wants a harder fight, the administration nonetheless retains its support.
But accepting the Right's economic discourse as being grounded in reality will result in real and lasting economic pain. And in November 2012, with unemployment still high, the foreclosure crisis continuing unabated and a president who appears weak in the face of a determined conservative movement, the Democrats are destined for a well deserved thumping as a reward for their lack of political acumen, even if Obama himself wins another term by default.
Tell The Far Right They Can Shove IT!
Is That Clear Enough!
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