[Peace-discuss] Fw: Democrats conceal post-election austerity plans

Sat Apr 21 06:31:38 UTC 2012

Sladsky pretty much nails it.
"...the phony and undemocratic character of the entire electoral process."

"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."

Most of the people don't have a friggin' clue what is going on.

H.D.T. --

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with 
the song still in them.

- R. Crumb, "Despair". 1969.

- Wm. Banzai7, 2012.

On 4/21/2012 8:28 AM, David Johnson wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* David Sladky <mailto:tanstl at hotmail.com>
> *Sent:* Friday, April 20, 2012 1:14 PM
> *Subject:* Democrats conceal post-election austerity plans
>
>
>     Democrats conceal post-election austerity plans
>
>
>           19 April 2012
>
> 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.
> 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 .
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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."
> 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.
> 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.
> According to /New York Times/ 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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