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

Sat Apr 21 09:04:52 UTC 2012

"The Matrix is a system, Neo.
That system is our enemy.

But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see?
Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters.

The very minds of the people we are trying to save.
But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that 
makes them our enemy.

You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.
And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, 
that they will fight to protect it."

The Sad Truth is that the United States is the way that it is
because the People want it that way.  And because it is the
way that The People want it, it will become more and more of the
way that it is.

On 4/21/2012 2:31 PM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> 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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>>    
>
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