Republicans, Democrats attacking Americans in bipartisan push for savage austerity

PressTV
Webster Tarpley

By all indications, the US ruling class of Wall Street financiers is determined to follow Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Great Britain down the road to drastic austerity. The financiers of lower Manhattan are thus ignoring the evidence offered by these other countries showing that austerity policies reduce employment, lower production, cause severe mass privation, introduce powerful elements of chaos into society, and actually increase the government budget deficits in future years -- meaning that austerity fails even in its own terms.

Since the 1930s, it has been widely recognized that a policy of deflation with severe cuts in government spending and in expenditures for social services will plunge a country deeper into depression. Once the depression has hit, usually as the result of the collapse of a speculative bubble like the $2 quadrillion derivatives mania of 2000-2008, the private economy shrinks rapidly, leaving government spending as the principal form of economic activity. If the government budget is nevertheless cut, this lowers the overall rate of economic activity; working people paying taxes are turned into recipients of public assistance, and the budget deficit grows rapidly. The classic case is the German government of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning in 1930-32, whose brutal austerity policies shrank the national economy by about 25% over the course of two years, but still could not prevent the German budget deficit from growing.

Despite all this, there is today a consensus between Wall Street and Washington that draconian austerity must be imposed in the United States. This will be the case no matter whether Obama or Romney wins the upcoming election. Romney has been very open about his determination to rule in the name of the top 1% of financiers and oligarchs, while imposing hardships and sacrifices on the rest of the population. Obama is somewhat more discreet, but he also has clearly signaled his desire for a sweeping austerity program to be agreed on by the two major US parties as soon as possible, probably before the end of this year.

Observers have noted that Obama and Biden, in their three debates held so far with their Republican rivals, have never mentioned the traditional Democratic Party platform planks of raising the minimum wage; preserving the funding of the food stamp program (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program of the US Department Of Agriculture) which keeps some 50 million Americans alive; maintaining and extending unemployment insurance payments to the jobless; or making it easier for trade unions to organize.

Obama and Biden ignore waitress moms

This failure by Obama and Biden to even mention these concerns of lower middle class working people and the working poor does not represent astute politics. On the one hand, it is true that the Democratic Party has almost entirely lost its earlier base of support among white male workers. But the Democratic Party still has a sizable constituency of working women, often single mothers, who have no college education. These are the so-called “waitress moms,” for whom the economic issues are very important. But the Democratic Party ignores them, since promises of this type might get in the way of delivering the austerity demanded by Wall Street.

Intelligent trade unionists have not forgotten that, when the entire state of Wisconsin was gripped by a de facto general strike against the fascist Governor Walker in February-March 2011, Obama refused to lift a finger to help them. Obama could have sent in Vice President Biden, who pretends to be a populist, to support the strikers. He could have sent Attorney General Eric Holder to frighten the Walker gang with the prospect of federal indictments. He could have sent Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to investigate violations of the labor law. Obama could even have gone to Wisconsin himself, something he had promised to do in his 2000 campaign. But Obama did nothing. Nor did he help unions and other residents in Ohio, who were able to fight off a union busting campaign by their own fascist Governor Kasich, or in Indiana, where a union busting plan largely succeeded, or in Michigan, where the fascist Governor Snyder has kicked out the democratically elected mayors and city councils and replaced them with austerity dictators in cities like Benton Harbor, Flint, Pontiac, and Ecorse, and in the Detroit public schools.

Obama needs the members of trade unions to mobilize in his support during the final phases of his reelection campaign, but he offers nothing in return but killer cuts. When Obama ran for president the first time, he promised to institute a reform known as Card Check, which is simply a way to facilitate the establishment of union representation in workplaces. But Obama never did anything to get this law through Congress, and he has not mentioned it for years.

The ideological atmosphere in Washington, DC is heavily in favor of severe austerity, reflecting the elite consensus. Many news commentators are demanding that Obama implement the recommendations of the so-called Simpson-Bowles Commission, which favored three dollars worth of cuts in entitlements and the social safety net compared to one dollar in increased revenue, with only a tiny fraction of the latter coming from taxes on the super-rich. Former Senator Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chair of this commission, is no humanitarian, but is on record saying he hates senior citizens and also that he hates his own grandchildren, among others. Simpson Bowles is often called the cat food commission, since the entitlement cuts it demands would reduce many elderly people to eating cat food because of their poverty. In the first presidential debate, Obama endorsed the murderous program of Simpson-Bowles.

In the United States Senate, an effort for savage austerity supported by an alliance of both major parties is being mounted by the Gang of Eight, sometimes called the Crapo Commission by its critics in honor of the reactionary Idaho Mormon Senator Mike Crapo who is one of its prominent members. Crapo is joined by Republicans Alexander, Coburn, and Chambliss, plus Democrats Bennett, Warner, Durbin, and Conrad in discussions over how to flay the American people alive.

The essential unifying ideology of the Democratic Party is the defense of the progressive economic reforms of the New Deal, New Frontier, and Great Society. Depending on the specific program, polls show that between 65% and 80% of the American people want these social programs preserved in their current form, with no cuts. But Obama and other leaders see the Democratic Party as a confederation of social groups, each of which wants to practice its own brand of identity politics. By pandering to each of these forms of particularism and parochialism, postmodern Democrats like Obama hope to sell out the traditional entitlements and still survive politically. But it is quite possible that a massive betrayal by Obama of his own base on these issues would lead to a permanent weakening of the Democratic Party, conceivably a fatal one.

During the current pre-election phase, Obama is pretending to take a principled position on the coming austerity deal, sometimes referred to as the “Grand Bargain.” According to the Washington Post of October 18, Obama is sending out word to the Congress that he will veto any December-January budget deal that does not contain some tax increase on the rich. This posturing is hollow, for at least three reasons. First, Obama would be more than willing to barter a tiny tax hike on the super-rich for massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare. These cuts would leave the luxuries of the superrich untouched, but would cut deeply into the amenities of the middle class and the necessities of the working poor. Secondly, the Obama White House refused to say whether this veto threat will apply in case Obama loses the election. The implication is that, if he becomes a one term president, Obama will want to secure his place in history - as an austerity enforcer, given his neoliberal mentality -- at the expense of the weakest, oldest, sickest, and most defenseless elements of US society. A third problem is that the cowardly Obama has surrendered so many times that few take his threats seriously now. “Some Republicans, noting that the president has backed off demands for higher taxes twice in the past, are skeptical that he will stand firm now,” commented theWashington Post.

Another group which Obama has sold out is the college students who did so much to put him into the White House in 2008. Two thirds of the US college graduates of 2011 were groaning under student loan debt, with an average of $26,000 per bachelor’s degree student, plus more for advanced degrees, and much more for degrees in law and medicine. The student loan burden has now topped $1 trillion, about as much as consumer and credit card debt. Student loan debt is interfering with the normal process of human life, since the indebted young people are less likely to find apartments of their own, less likely to get married, and less likely to have children.

Because the US government is operating under multiple states of emergency, a real president could easily use the existing provisions of the Defense Production Act to declare a five-year freeze on all payments of interest and principal on these crippling student loans. He could use the same law to impose a 10% ceiling on all interest rates in the United States, thus reviving the usury laws of the pre-Volker era. But Obama is determined to serve Wall Street to the bitter end, even if the financiers are now channeling significantly more money to Romney than to the current tenant of the White House.

Justice Department launches ad campaign

The Examiner

For the first time in the history of the agency, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched an ad campaign featuring a sitting attorney general speaking to Americans about the need to protect endangered children.

This reporter saw the ad for the first time last evening.

The series of ads comes at a curious time in American politics. The U.S. presidential election is less than three months away. The DOJ is under intense fire due to the Fast and Furious scandal. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the DOJ issued his first draft report on Fast and Furious this week, and leaks from DOJ indicate that already the report has created a flurry of activity as officials scurry about attempting damage control.

DOJ officials have one month to pour over the OIG report, providing their feedback, prior to its release to Congress, the media, and the public.

Yet as if to get a head start and gain the upper hand in the court of public opinion, Holder launches a massive ad campaign touting the agency's work and focusing on the need to "protect the children."

No one would argue that vulnerable children do not need to be protected. But why is this suddenly the focus of an ad campaign during an election year? Is there some reason that now is the time to step up such efforts? Are there statistics showing that suddenly, out of the blue, multimillions more children are now in harm's way within, say, the last six months?

In all likelihood, children are in no more danger now than they have been at any other time during the Obama presidency.

The thing that has changed, however, is the president's likelihood of being reelected. National opinion polls are skewed toward Democrats and are thus unreliable. Americans in the heartland and in the small towns and cities that dot the landscape all across the nation know in their hearts that this president has failed to deliver on his promises. He did not, as he promised, lower unemployment below 8 percent. He did not, as he promised, fix the economy. He did not, as he promised, make sure that the elderly will be secured in the national safety net for decades to come. Instead, he robbed the Medicare program of nearly 800 billion dollars in order to fund ObamaCare, placing the Medicare program in a highly vulnerable position going forward.

In addition, the president faces a Republican ticket that headed out of Tampa in a very strong position. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan did what they had to do to define themselves and their positions on the issues. Nothing at the Republican Convention gave the impression that this team is not ready on day one to begin to clean up the mess that Obama has made worse.

Thus, the only explanation for the DOJ ads is that they are part of the Obama reelection campaign without identifying themselves as such. And the taxpayers are footing the bill.

ALERT!

A new entry in my regular series Musings After Midnight is now posted at my blog, The Liberty Sphere. It's titled "With All of THIS Going On, It's Enough to Make a Normal Person Become a Conspiracy Theorist." Don't miss it!

A Social Security shell game

The Examiner

William Heuisler

Because of our climate, Tucson Arizona has a higher percentage of elderly voters than most metro areas in the United States. Apparently the Feds think Tucson (and other) elderly cannot read or they have short attention spans.

In a press release the Feds announce they will give out money with one hand and take it back with the other, before they even send out all the checks. Why do they bother? The government wants our votes, of course. The Feds hope social security beneficiaries will not read the fine print... or are really stupid.

This week the Federal Government is making a big deal about increasing Social Security payments for the huge voting block of Americans over 62 who vote in higher percentages than any other group. But there is a big catch.

The Federal Social Security Agency announced yesterday that there will be a 3.6 % increase in benefit checks for 2012. This increase - for a higher cost of living - will be the first since 2009. This new 3.6 % cost-of-living adjustment supposedly will begin for 55 million Social Security beneficiaries with checks in January 2012. (Social Security, 2011)

Then they announce that Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for more than 60 million Americans will also increase 3.6% in 2012. Also they say higher Social Security checks for another 8 million supplemental income beneficiaries will be arriving on December 30, 2011.

But the Feds might as well have saved their breath and paper and figuring. They will be taking back as much or more of our money at the same time.

America's Great Health Care Takeaway

Global Research
Shamus Cook

The health care crisis in the United States is getting worse with no visible end. The popular anger over unattainable or unaffordable health care has been diverted away from corporations by crafty politicians, always seeking to exploit a social disaster for their benefactors. Instead of making health care more affordable for the average person, politicians have successfully switched the messaging. Now, the purpose behind "reform" is to make health care less costly for governments and employers, at the expense of patients and workers.

This was the essence behind Obama's health care reform. And although Republicans exploited the "individual mandate" in Obamacare to gain populist credentials, they wholeheartedly agree with the deeper philosophy of the plan, which aspires to control health care costs -- for corporations and governments -- by providing less health care services to those who need it. This agreement to "ration" health care aligns the two parties over the coming cuts to Medicare in Obama's bi-partisan "Super Congress,” while also binding the two parties' approach to health care on a state and business level.

Most workers now understand that there is a difference between apparently having health care and actually having health care: if you are technically "insured" but cannot afford doctor visits due to high deductibles and co-pays, you really aren't insured.

This fact, applied to Medicare, has startling consequences. The New England Journal of Medicine found that, "For every 100 people enrolled in plans that raised co-pays, there were 20 fewer doctor visits, 2 additional hospital admissions and 13 more days spent in the hospital..."

When co-pays and deductibles are raised, people simply stop going to the doctor and use the emergency room as needed.

This dynamic pleased politicians because less Medicare money was being spent on doctors’ visits, but they were upset that hospital stays were more frequent. The answer? Stop paying Medicare payments to hospitals if they re-admit a patient after 30 days, a policy sure to "reduce costs.” And it worked! This aspect of Obama's Affordable Health Care Act gives hospitals financial incentives not to admit patients and, according to Bloomberg, is a major reason that Medicare costs have dropped significantly in the past year:

"Historically, nearly 20 percent of Medicare patients have been readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of being discharged... The Affordable Care Act included, among other remedies, a modest penalty for hospitals with high readmission rates." (August 24th, 2011).

The problem here is that re-admissions are usually medically necessary. According to a study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, only one out of ten hospital re-admissions were preventable. Hospitals are thus encouraged to deny hospital stays to those who need it, something they've already started. According to Case Management Monthly, hospital social workers have noticed this disturbing trend accelerate: "Several case managers have recently received readmission denial letters...they are surprised because the readmissions in question were actually appropriate and medically necessary." (October 1st, 2010).

Cost saving ideas like these are at the heart of Obama's health care plan -- which included massive cuts to Medicare -- and further cuts to Medicare can be expected in his Super Congress. Even if the bi-partisan Super Congress is unable to agree to make massive cuts to social programs, cuts to Medicare will be automatically "triggered.” Obama tells us not to worry because the triggered Medicare cuts will affect only providers -- hospitals and doctors -- not patients, as if the two could be so easily separated. The above example of denied hospital re-admissions is also a case where providers were targeted for cuts but patients were the most affected.

Another way that politicians are saving health care money is by slashing Medicaid, the shared federal-state health care program that serves low-income populations. The states' budget crises are quickly debilitating this already under-funded program, reducing availability and quality of health care for those low income people who qualify for the program. USA Today reports:

"With a shortage of doctors...[ Medicaid] patients have little choice but to use hospital emergency rooms for more routine care." (July 5th, 2011).

Higher income workers across the country are also seeing their health care rapidly deteriorate. The shoddy health insurance that includes high deductibles and co-pays are standard to most non-union workers who've suffered under this pseudo insurance for years. But even these plans are being shelved. Two studies recently show that employers plan to quit offering health care plans altogether: a survey by Towers Watson showed that one out of ten companies plan to eliminate health care coverage by 2014; while a different study by the McKinsey Company showed that, by 2014, 30 percent of companies will drop their health coverage for workers.

Much of this is due again to, Obama's Affordable Health Care act: companies were encouraged and given an excuse to drop their health care coverage because everyone would be mandated to buy their own shoddy coverage. Politicians recognized that high health care costs were hurting corporate profits, and they were determined to do something about it.

Hidden Agenda: The "Debt Crisis Plan" was to Strike a Blow at the National Social Safety Net

Global Research
Shamus Cooke

The debt crisis has been averted and people across the globe are breathing sighs of relief.

But in the back rooms of the US Congress, politicians are celebrating for a different reason. It's the kind of celebration that erupts when a group executes a complicated plan to perfection. The objective in this case was to strike the first blows against the national social safety net without encountering massive resistance. Mission half-accomplished thus far. 

Half accomplished because only half of the $2.5 billion in cuts have been decided on. The other half will be sent to a bi-partisan committee where, according to the White House Fact Sheet:

"... the committee will consider responsible entitlement [Social Security and Medicare] and tax reform [cuts to entitlement programs]. This means putting all the priorities of both parties on the table – including both entitlement reform [Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid] and revenue-raising tax reform.” 

If the committee fails to agree on the cuts, they would be automatically triggered, and Medicare would be the target: "...any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side." This means that fewer doctors would accept Medicare patients or they would provide fewer services to Medicare beneficiaries. 

When it comes to cutting Social Security and Medicare, the Democrats are Republicans are only trying to get their foot into the door. Nevertheless, the potential cuts will have a massive impact on the millions of Americans who depend on these vital services. And if these cuts are allowed to happen unopposed, the possibility of future, more dramatic cuts is certain. 

Equally bad is that the budget deal makes the unemployment situation even worse. In writing about the effect the cuts would have on employment, a Moody’s analyst predicted that:

"The deal announced last night calls for a yearly average of $240 billion in cuts over the next decade. Very roughly, that suggests the new plan would cost around 1.6 million jobs per year during that time. [!]" (August 1st, 2011).

This noxious level of contempt for working people was the product of a manufactured crisis, with Democrats and Republicans playing along. How did Obama and the Democrats essentially push through the long-term objectives of the Republican Party? Author Michael Hudson explains on Democracy Now: 

"... There has to be a crisis. Now, in reality, there is no crisis at all. In reality, raising the debt ceiling has been done for a hundred years automatically. There is no connection between raising the debt ceiling and arguing over tax policy. Tax policy takes many years to work out. All of a sudden, Mr. Obama is going along with the charade of saying, "Wait a minute, let’s create a crisis."... And Wall Street doesn’t like real crises, so there’s an artificial non-crisis that Obama is treating as a crisis so that he can put forth the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Commission to get rid of Social Security that he has supported all along." (July 22nd, 2011). 

Thus, it's not true that Obama was "held hostage" by the Republicans. If he told the country only half of what Mr. Hudson explained on Democracy Now, the Republicans would have folded instantly. If Obama would have told the country that the Republicans wanted massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, instead of purposely hiding these issues, Republican voters would have converged on Capitol Hill with torches and pitchforks. Instead, Obama went along with the charade; because in order for it to succeed, he was required to play a leading role in the drama. 

Liberal groups and the major labor federations -- AFL-CIO and Change to Win -- have given a left cover to Obama's far-right policies, wrongly blaming only the Republicans every step of the way. But this willful blindness has its limits. These groups intend to "get out the vote" for Obama in 2012 while ignoring all the damage he's done to working families, while they also ignore all the promises Obama made to them and didn't keep last time. 

The rank-and-file members of labor unions and liberal groups are among the million of Americans suffering under Obama's economic policies and will not follow their leaders like lemmings over the cliff for Obama's next presidential run. There will be a profound lack of rank-and-file volunteers to campaign for Obama, even as labor union leaders throw away their members’ dues money for the campaign. And because fewer members will campaign for Obama, he will feel less inclined to reward them after (or if) he wins. Instead, he'll again reward Wall Street, meaning, he'll continue to take from working people and give to the rich, further exacerbating the problem. 

Obamanomics: Waging War on American Workers

Indybay
by Stephen Lendman

Since taking office, Obama shamelessly betrayed his constituents by:

-- ignoring popular needs during America's greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression;

-- giving Wall Street crooks trillions of taxpayer dollars;

-- spending another $1.5 trillion annually on militarism, imperial wars, and related policies at a time America has no enemies;

-- waging war on organized labor and public education, as well as civil and human rights; and

-- claiming "tough choices" demand class warfare through neoliberal austerity for working Americans, mainly middle and lower income ones least able to afford it.

On April 13, he announced his latest plan through $4 trillion in largely social spending budget cuts over the next 12 years. More on them below.

The same day, New York Times writers Mark Landler and Michael Shear headlined, "Obama's Debt Plan Sets Stage for Long Battle Over Spending," saying:

Obama's Wednesday George Washington University speech "propos(ed) a mix of long-term spending cuts, tax increases, and changes to social welfare programs," omitting that they harm working Americans most.

A Times editorial headlined, "President Obama, Reinvigorated," saying:

"The man America elected president has re-emerged." His budget speech "was a reasonable basis for a conversation and is far better than its most prominent competitors. That is because it is grounded in themes of generosity and responsibility....(I)t was a relief to see Mr. Obama standing up for the values that got him to the table."

These aren't surprising comments from a broadsheet long associated with wealth and power interests, now pretending hammering working Americans is fair and just.

A supportive Washington Post editorial headlined, "President Obama's deficit plan: Benefits and drawbacks," saying:

Obama "made an important and welcome contribution to the debate over deficit reduction Wednesday...(S)orely needed presidential engagement on the nation's fiscal crisis has arrived at last."

A Wall Street Journal editorial, however, called Obama "The Presidential Divider," saying:

His speech was "toxic," "dishonest," (and) even worse (for) deficits and debt" by not matching Rep. Ryan's (R. WI) slash and burn plan even more draconian that his own - "in the midst of a fiscal crisis" both parties refuse to address responsibly, nor do major media reports, op-eds, and editorials explain it.

In fact, Obama largely embraces plans proposed by Republicans and his own deficit cutting commission, offering a different mix for the same purpose - protecting America's super-rich while hammering working Americans through "shared sacrifice."

In other words, middle and low income households "sacrifice" to let wealthy ones "share," his agenda since day one in office.

For example, his proposed tax increase plan is a sham, knowing Republicans won't agree. Moreover, since taking office, he broke every major campaign pledge, and twice, since December alone, capitulated to Republicans on taxes and spending:

-- last December, with Democrats controlling both Houses, by extending Bush's tax cuts to the rich after promising to end them; and

-- in April, agreeing to $38 billion in largely vital social services cuts after promising to preserve them, rationalized by arguing for "a willingness to give on both sides."

Representing wealth and power, his promises are empty. His April 8 budget deal includes significant social spending cuts including:

-- $3.5 billion from Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding;

-- $2.2 billion from nonprofit health insurance cooperatives;

-- $600 million from community healthcare centers;

-- $1 billion from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other disease prevention programs;

-- $1.6 billion from EPA's clean/safe drinking water and other projects;

-- $950 million from community development grants;

-- $504 million from nutrition aid for poor Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);

-- $500 million from education programs;

-- $390 million from home heating subsidies to the poor, as well as $2.5 billion for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) announced in February;

-- $350 million from labor programs, including grants for community service jobs for seniors;

-- other social service cuts;

-- $786 million from FEMA first-responder funding;

-- $407 million from energy efficiency and renewable energy programs;

-- $260 million from National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical research;

-- $127 million from the National Park Service; and

-- billions less for public infrastructure and transportation spending, while increasing war appropriations by multiples more, including for conquering and controlling Libya.

Moreover, Obama agreed to more draconian FY 2012 cuts and corporate tax breaks as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling before its limit is reached in mid-May. Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press April 10, senior White House advisor David Plouffe said he'd consider new austerity measures to raise the debt ceiling and reduce the deficit - an oxymoronic compromise, especially with unlimited defense spending and generous corporate handouts instead of major reductions.

Obama Proposes Draconian Cuts on Working Americans

According to White House.gov, Obama's plan over 12 years includes:

-- $4 trillion overall;

-- $770 billion from education, environmental, transportation, and other infrastructure cuts, as well as lower wages and benefits for federal workers when they need more, not less;

-- $480 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, besides another $1 trillion from Obamacare;

-- $360 billion from mandated domestic programs, including food stamps, home heating assistance, income for the poor and disabled, federal pension insurance, and farm subsidies;

-- $400 billion from military-related spending from unneeded weapons, as well as healthcare and other benefits for active service members and veterans - not priority items the Pentagon and war profiteers want to protect generous annual defense spending increases and supplemental add-ons, plus black-hole black budgets for intelligence and other nefarious purposes.

Like all his demagoguery, Obama hypocrically stressed we're broke and have to make shared sacrifices, suppressing how he's served wealth and power interests at the expense of working Americans during the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

The times demand stimulus, job creation, help for the working poor and unemployed, and much more, including:

-- programs to prevent banks from foreclosing on homeowners they defrauded;

-- slashing defense spending;

-- ending imperial wars and occupations;

-- using the funds for vital domestic programs;

-- breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks; prosecuting their officials guilty of grand theft;

-- reinvigorating public education;

-- strengthening Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as assuring universal healthcare;

-- guaranteeing every qualified student affordable higher education;

-- supporting organized labor;

-- instituting tough regulations to end monopoly and oligopoly power, punish corporate theft, curb speculation, end subsidies, and assure they all pay their fair share in taxes;

-- replacing today's dysfunctional tax system with a progressive one, making the rich share the burden they now avoid;

-- making social justice issue one at a time none exists, Democrats as mean-spirited as Republicans; and

-- instituting real government of, by and for the people, what's never existed and doesn't now under corrupted duopoly governance, ignoring people needs to serve Wall Street, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites.

The alternative assures greater militarism, social inequality and decay, growing poverty, eroding freedoms, police state harshness, and overall conditions too dire to imagine because public apathy let elected officials do nothing to change things.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen [at] sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

US lacks credibility on debt, says IMF

 Financial Times


The latest warning on the deficit was delivered as Barack Obama, the US president, is becoming increasingly engaged in the debate over ways to curb America’s mounting debt. 

To meet the 2010 pledge by the Group of 20 countries for all advanced economies – except Japan – to halve their deficits by 2013, the US would need to implement tougher austerity measures than in any two-year period since records began in 1960, the IMF said. In its twice-yearly Fiscal Monitor, the IMF added that on its current plans the US would join Japan as the only country with rising public debt in 2016, creating a risk for the global economy.

Carlo Cottarelli, head of fiscal affairs at the Fund, said: “It is a risk that if it materialises would have very important consequences ... for the rest of the world. So it is important that the US undertakes fiscal adjustment in a way sooner rather than later.”

At the moment, the US has outlined less than half of the tax increases and spending cuts necessary to bring its public debt down in the medium term, the IMF calculated. “More sizeable reductions in medium-term deficits are needed and will require broader reforms, including to social security and taxation,” the IMF said.

The IMF said the US economy “appears sufficiently strong” to withstand greater austerity measures and tax increases, adding that the benefit of last year’s stimulus package “is likely to be low relative to its costs”.

Having narrowly averted a government shutdown last week through a deal with congressional Republicans to cut $38.5bn in spending from this year’s budget, Mr Obama will today unveil his plans to rein in America’s long-term deficits, which are driven by popular programmes like Medicare, Medicaid and social security.

The debate over US fiscal policy is expected to intensify in the coming weeks and months as the US hits its congressionally mandated debt limit of $14,300bn. Without approval by lawmakers to increase it, the US could face potential default as early as July, and so far Republicans and Democrats remain some distance from reaching a deal.

20 Shocking New Economic Records That Were Set In 2010

By Michael Snyder
Blacklisted News

2010 was quite a year, wasn’t it? 2010 will be remembered for a lot of things, but for those living in the United States, one of the main things that last year will be remembered for is economic decline. The number of foreclosure filings set a new record, the number of home repossessions set a new record, the number of bankruptcies went up again, the number of Americans that became so discouraged that they simply quit looking for work reached a new all-time high and the number of Americans on food stamps kept setting a brand new record every single month. Meanwhile, U.S. government debt reached record highs, state government debt reached record highs and local government debt reached record highs. What a mess! In fact, even many of the “good” economic records that were set during 2010 were indications of underlying economic weakness. For example, the price of gold set an all-time record during 2010, but one of the primary reasons for the increase in the price of gold was that the U.S. dollar was rapidly losing value. Most Americans had been hoping that 2010 would be the beginning of better times, but unfortunately economic conditions just kept getting worse.

So will things improve in 2011? That would be nice, but at this point there are not a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic about the economy. The truth is that we are trapped in a period of long-term economic decline and we are now paying the price for decades of horrible decisions.
Amazingly, many of our politicians and many in the mainstream media have declared that “the recession is over” and that the U.S. economy is steadily improving now.

Well, if anyone tries to tell you that the economy got better in 2010, just show them the statistics below. That should shut them up for a while.

The following are 20 new economic records that were set during 2010….

#1 An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#2 The number of homes that were actually repossessed reached the 1 million mark for the first time ever during 2010.

#3 The price of gold moved above $1400 an ounce for the first time ever during 2010.

#4 According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, approximately 1.53 million consumer bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2010, which was up 9 percent from 1.41 million in 2009. This was the highest number of personal bankruptcies we have seen since the U.S. Congress substantially tightened U.S. bankruptcy law several years ago.

#5 At one point during 2010, the average time needed to find a job in the United States had risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.

#6 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs, which is believed to be a new record low.

#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” was the highest it has been in at least five decades during 2010.

#8 The number of American workers that are so discouraged that they have given up searching for work reached an all-time high near the end of 2010.

#9 Government spending continues to set new all-time records. In fact, at the moment the U.S. government is spending approximately 6.85 million dollars every single minute.

#10 The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 43 million by the end of 2010. This was a new all-time record, and government officials fully expect the number of Americans enrolled in the program to continue to increase throughout 2011.

#11 The number of Americans on Medicaid surpassed 50 million for the first time ever in 2010.

#12 The U.S. Census Bureau originally announced that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that was the highest number of Americans living in poverty that they had ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping. But now the Census Bureau says that they miscalculated and that the real number of poor Americans is actually 47.8 million.

#13 According to the FDIC, 157 banks failed during 2010. That was the highest number of bank failures that the United States has experienced in any single year during the past decade.

#14 The Federal Reserve brought in a record $80.9 billion in profits during 2010. They returned $78.4 billion of that to the U.S. Treasury, but the real story is that thanks to the Federal Reserve’s continual debasement of our currency, the U.S. dollar was worth less in 2010 than it ever had been before.

#15 It is projected that the major financial firms on Wall Street will pay out an all-time record of $144 billion in compensation for 2010.

#16 Americans now owe more than $881 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.

#17 In July, sales of new homes in the United States declined to the lowest level ever recorded.

#18 According to Zillow, U.S. housing prices have now declined a whopping 26 percent since their peak in June 2006. Amazingly, this is even farther than house prices fell during the Great Depression. From 1928 to 1933, U.S. housing prices only fell 25.9 percent.

#19 State and local government debt reached at an all-time record of 22 percent of U.S. GDP during 2010.

#20 The U.S. national debt has surpassed the 14 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever and it is being projected that it will soar well past 15 trillion during 2011.

There are some people that have a hard time really grasping what statistics actually mean. For people like that, often pictures and charts are much more effective. Well, that is one reason I like to include pictures and graphs in many of my articles, and below I have posted my favorite chart from this past year. It shows the growth of the U.S. national debt from 1940 until today. I honestly don’t know how anyone can look at this chart and still be convinced that our nation is not headed for a complete financial meltdown….

It's Called Class Warfare