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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">“The Matrix is a
system, Neo. <br>
That system is our enemy. <br>
<br>
But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? <br>
Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. <br>
<br>
The very minds of the people we are trying to save. <br>
But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that
makes them our enemy. <br>
<br>
You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be
unplugged. <br>
And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system,
that they will fight to protect it.”</font><br>
<br>
The Sad Truth is that the United States is the way that it is<br>
because the People want it that way. And because it is the<br>
way that The People want it, it will become more and more of the <br>
way that it is.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 4/21/2012 2:31 PM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4F92544A.4000603@pigs.ag" type="cite">
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Sladsky pretty much nails it. <br>
"...the phony and undemocratic character of the entire electoral
process."<br>
<br>
"The American two-party system is a political conspiracy against the
working class. <br>
The two parties defend the interests of corporate America and the
super-rich. <br>
The people have no say in the policies that are carried out."<br>
<br>
Most of the people don't have a friggin' clue what is going on.<br>
<br>
H.D.T. --<br>
<br>
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation <span class="huge">and
go to the grave with the song still in them.</span><br>
<br>
- R. Crumb, "Despair". 1969.<br>
<img src="cid:part1.05090700.04020103@pigs.ag" alt="" height="366"
width="193"><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
- Wm. Banzai7, 2012.<br>
<br>
<img src="cid:part2.08010006.06090403@pigs.ag" alt=""><br>
<br>
<img src="cid:part3.06000600.03060703@pigs.ag" alt=""><br>
<br>
On 4/21/2012 8:28 AM, David Johnson wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:0EFC69C507804DD39AC8E375EF0CE01A@owneryr3fp4mcb"
type="cite">
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<div
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Original
Message -----
<div
style="background: rgb(228, 228, 228) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: border; -moz-background-origin: padding; -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;"><b>From:</b>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" title="tanstl@hotmail.com"
href="mailto:tanstl@hotmail.com">David Sladky</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Friday, April 20, 2012 1:14 PM</div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Democrats conceal post-election austerity plans</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<h2>Democrats conceal post-election austerity plans</h2>
<h5>19 April 2012</h5>
While the Obama reelection campaign claims to support higher taxes on
the wealthy and oppose cuts in Medicare and other programs on which
working people depend, the White House and congressional Democrats are
already making plans for a bipartisan attack on social programs after
the election.<br>
These plans are being concealed from the people behind a smokescreen of
demagogy about standing up for the “bottom 99 percent” and making the
rich pay “their fair share” in taxes. The cynicism of the Obama
campaign underscores .<br>
The Obama campaign has focused on political ploys such as the “Buffett
Rule,” a proposal to establish a minimum 30 percent income tax rate for
all those making $1 million or more a year. This is an effort to make
the American people forget three years of bailouts of the banks and the
super-rich and a worsening of income inequality. According to a study
released March 2, the top one percent of the American population
garnered 93 percent of all increased income in 2010, the first year of
economic “recovery” according to the White House.<br>
Obama’s pretended attacks on the wealthy have been combined with
denunciations of congressional Republicans and the presumptive
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for supporting a budget,
drafted by Congressman Paul Ryan, that calls for $5.4 trillion in
spending cuts over the next 10 years, including the gutting of
Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs. The
Republicans would, for example, cut three million people off from food
stamps.<br>
The real attitude of the Democrats to massive budget cuts was seen in
Tuesday’s decision by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad,
Democrat from North Dakota, to postpone any action on a 2013 budget
resolution until after the November election. Conrad announced that his
committee would begin drafting a budget resolution based on the
deficit-cutting recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission,
appointed by Obama, but that no actual votes would be taken until after
the election—i.e., until it is too late for the American people to
react at the polls.<br>
Conrad said he had made the decision to postpone a vote after it became
clear that not enough Democrats were prepared to support a
comprehensive deficit-reduction plan in advance of the elections. “I
don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election,” Conrad
said, indicating action would only be taken in a lame-duck session of
Congress.<br>
The Bowles-Simpson plan would slash $5.4 trillion from the deficit over
ten years, cutting discretionary domestic and military spending as a
percentage of gross domestic product from 8.4 percent this year to only
4.8 percent by 2022, and raising taxes, mainly on middle-income
families, through abolishing tax breaks such as deductions for mortgage
interest and employer-paid health benefits. The plan envisions
reductions in income tax rates for the wealthy as well as corporate tax
rates.<br>
The result of such policies will be a devastating decline in the living
standards and social conditions of the vast majority of working people,
who will be paying the price for the ongoing bailout of the financial
system, the increase in wealth of the super-rich, and the escalating
costs of American military operations overseas.<br>
Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, echoed the concerns of
Conrad in remarks ahead of a meeting Friday of the finance ministers of
the Group of 20, which brings together the major industrial and trading
nations. At the end of this year, he said, “It will be a big test … how
Washington deals with those challenges.” He added, “Hopefully, we use
it as an opportunity to make another significant step towards long-term
fiscal reform at that time.”<br>
Geithner was referring to the period after the November 6 election,
when the US Treasury again reaches the legal limit on borrowing and the
Bush tax cuts expire December 31, as do other stopgap measures adopted
over the past two years, including the extension of unemployment
benefits and the payroll tax cut for working people and the deadline
for $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts.<br>
These deadlines will be used to create a crisis atmosphere and claim
that sweeping austerity measures are unavoidable. The measures that
will be brought forward after the election will go far beyond anything
proposed publicly by either party.<br>
According to <em>New York Times</em> columnist David Brooks, Obama
administration officials have given private assurances of support for
major spending cuts after the elections and have already proposed, in
the most recent budget, to cut discretionary domestic spending from 4
percent of US gross domestic product to only 2.2 percent, far below the
level of the Reagan administration.<br>
The 2012 election is a political fraud, used by the big business
politicians of both parties to give the American people the illusion of
choice, while behind the scenes the two parties are preparing measures
so unpopular that they cannot be discussed openly for fear of a public
backlash.<br>
The American two-party system is a political conspiracy against the
working class. The two parties defend the interests of corporate
America and the super-rich. The people have no say in the policies that
are carried out.<br>
</div>
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