U.S. Austerity Measures: Putting the Cart before the Horse

After discovering the first attempt at an on-location promotion of austerity measures in the U.S., one very important element seems to be missing from the conversation. Liability.

Robert Bixby jerks the microphone from Alison McLeod.
McLeod began speaking after the meeting and QnA session
was finished.  The microphone probably belongs to the house
or Giffords' staff.

Arizona's 8th Congressional District is experiencing a temporary power vacuum since the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords last January. Regardless, guests David Walker, CEO of the Comeback America Initiative and Robert Bixby, Director of the Concord Coalition, were comfortable visiting this remote, ambiguous neck of the woods to begin the promotional push for austerity measures aimed at reducing deficit spending and the national debt. One question noticeably absent from this conversation is, "why are they tapping the public citizenry to pay the bill?"

Criminal Recklessness

After the persistent, behind-the-scenes, unceremonious gutting of the U.S. Treasury these last thirty years, there seems to be an assumption that U.S. taxpayers are going to pay for the party. U.S. taxpayers had nothing to do with the illegal wars in Central America, the Savings and Loan bailouts, NAFTA, GATT, the missing trillions from the Pentagon, 9/11, the oil spills, the trillions of dollars for the Middle East adventures and the bank bailouts to cover the phony housing bubble.

Lame Duck Power Structure

The Walker/Bixby team took great pains to describe how this current bankrupt state diminishes the amount of available capital, requires interest payments, reduces flexible spending for new needs and increases the number of fiscal crises. A fairly mild warning compared to seasoned economists predicting a worldwide economic train wreck. Regardless, that's not our problem. It's a situation that must be dealt with by those who have screwed up the country not by the people who were dragged to this point kicking and screaming.

Going Through the Motions

Perhaps the players like Walter and Bixby don't believe they need a consensus or public support. After all, when you look at the list of targets put together in the 256 page Congressional Budget Office Report, you find every last reference and detail thick with this inherent assumption of citizen sacrifice. Our last article posted an account by SPNOW member Lee Stanfield of the heavy handed tactics designed to build a phony consensus. Stanfield teamed up with others in Tucson to develop a handy worksheet entitled: "COUNTERTACTICS FOR ANTI-ACTIVIST PSEUDO PUBLIC MEETINGS".

Giffords' staff worked very hard in conjunction with the suits from out of town for this illusion of austerity enthusiasm. These heavy handed tactics, however, became so painfully obvious to the disgruntled crowd that Giffords' staff didn't bother picking up or recording the responses from each table.

A Restaurant Analogy by Mike Rivero

Probably the most succinct analogy illustrating why the the people should not be charged with feeding our currently bankrupt system is the restaurant analogy from my favorite web author, Mike Rivero of whatreallyhappened.com.  Here is a portion:

"If the proprietor of the restaurant has miscalculated the cost of meeting his agreed-to obligation to the customer [a hamburger for $10.00], is the customer obligated to cover the shortfall? No. The proprietor of the restaurant is responsible for the error, and if he cannot meet his agreed-to obligations for the agreed-upon price, he should declare bankruptcy, go out of business, and make way for a new restaurant with better fiscal sense.

Simple common sense.

Let us imagine for a moment that you live in a nation, and you request some benefits. The government tells you the cost is $1000 for the benefits, and you pay $1000 in taxes for the benefits. You get your benefits. No problems. Well worth the money you paid for them. No complaints.

Then when you have your benefits, the government shows up at your door, apologizes profusely, explains that it underestimated the real cost of providing you with the benefits it agreed to provide and hands you a bill for an additional sum it had to borrow in order to provide the services, plus interest since the start of your use of the benefits. Do you pay it? Of course not. You, the citizen, entered into a verbal contract with the government to provide you with your benefits at the taxes agreed to by all parties prior to the transaction."

The following list below from that Congressional Budget Office Report may be the blueprint for what austerity measures in the United States will actually look like.  As with the WTO Summits from Seattle and Georgia, expect the shipment of stout, less than empathetic police from remote cities flush with overtime pay, coated in Kevlar and wielding consensus-building billy clubs for your curious noggins.

J.T. Waldron

Push for Austerity Measures Coming to a U.S Congressional District Near You

Testing the Waters for Pushing Austerity Measures

As promised, below is the amateur video footage of the "Deficit" Town Hall Meeting held two nights ago. Again, we have little understanding about Gabrielle Giffords' capacity to function in her role as a congressional representative because she was shot in the head last January. The two guests for this austerity PR campaign seemed to be testing the waters by exploiting Giffords' situation:

The Honorable David Walker -- founder and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative and former Comptroller General of the United States

Robert Bixby -- Executive Director of the Concord Coalition and member of the bipartisan Domenici-Rivlin Debt Reduction Task Force.

The Privilege of Health Care

We pointed out in our last article the  irony surrounding the health care Gabrelle Giffords enjoyed as a congressional representative.  The willingness of her staff to deny others health care on behalf of the banking industry is downright creepy and does not seem like the choice of someone who was recently severely wounded. The people of Arizona's 8th Congressional District are not being served. Instead, these citizens are being sold a bill of goods they are not liable for.

Building a Phony Consensus

Industry funded nonprofits often engage in phony PR campaigns to build an illusion of a consensus for their agendas.  SPNow's Lee Stanfield bears witness in her account below to that same activity. Performed in concert with industry shills in the audience,  facilitators assign certain strangers a "leadershop role" in each cluster or table.   These so-called 'representatives' manage and shape the message that will ultimately be recorded and cited later to justify austerity measures to other parties.

Dominant Agendas Emerging in Giffords' Team

With no efforts to address the current vacancy in leadership for Arizona's 8th Congressional District, Giffords' congressional staff appears to be commandeered by one or more dominant members pushing agendas.  In a previous conversation with former news anchor and congressional candidate Patty Weiss, I remember hearing Weiss describe a situation as she walked into a room of potential donors.  She was immediately approached by one individual who said, "Either you will start returning these peoples' phone calls, or you will lose this race".  My follow-up question was "Were these people in any way similar to the moneyed interests behind the 2 billion dollar Regional Transportation election?"  Patty replied, "Very".   Giffords, of course, beat Weiss in the primary.   Many have stated that politicians are eventually captured by industry but it appears they are actually born captive to industry.  In the case of Giffords, one should consider whether these dominant forces were involved prior to her injury.


Here's is  Lee Stanfield's account of what took place last Thursday night.  Expect similar shenanigans in your town or congressional district in the near future and be prepared.


J.T. Waldron

Alison has attached a link below to an excellent video of what took place at the town hall, where, despite her being the first person to raise her hand to ask a question, she was not called on or allowed to speak at all, and was forced to leave. In the face of this severe limitation on what it was possible to say, I think Chet, Rick, & Joyce did great jobs of getting in at least a couple of points for "the people"!!! You will hear them on the video.

Thinking back on it, it is now very clear that the entire thing was carefully choreographed ahead of time. I believe it was no accident that there was less than enough time allowed for all the things on the agenda. Then they made attendees feel hesitant to speak up by appealing to our sense of fairness by saying we needed to be brief "in order for everyone to have equal opportunity to speak." They kept all attendees busy, allowing no time for scrutinizing what was being done to us, or for figuring out a way to overcome the obstacles they were throwing up to curtail any free speech on the part of the constituents present.

Then, I am certain that there were a lot of "plants" in the audience. I believe that they purposefully placed at least one staff person or friend of a staff person at each table. Many (if not all) of these were dressed in coats and ties, which then probably resulted in the same thing that happened at my table.... the majority of people at the table looked at  him and said, you look like you would understand this stuff... so why don't you be our Chair? As it turned out, he was a terrible Chair, and wasted tremendous amounts of our time (personally, I can't help but think that was part of the plan). He also was the tie-breaker, and "surprise"..... he always sided with those who leaned to the right in their votes.

I also believe that they  purposefully did not explain any details ahead of time regarding the exercise we were to do, and to make matters even more confusing, we were given only one item-explanation booklet per table. This contained very wordy (often confusing) explanations of the items to be voted on. In fact, no one at our table even knew we had the book of explanations until I happened to see it and brought it to everyone's attention. Unfortunately, by then we had already voted on several of the items, without even understanding what some of them would do. At least one of the items was worded as a double negative, making it even harder to discern whether a yes vote or a no vote  would actually do what you intended.

We were also told that we had only a short amount of time in which to complete the task. In addition (pardon the pun) the format they had us use to tally the monetary values of the various items (in terms of how much $$$ it added to, or subtracted from the deficit) was unnecessarily complicated and confusing, when it could (and should) have been very simple. Again, this was a perfect strategy on their part.

In the end, they did not even take up the packets where we recorded our votes, or make any effort to find out which items were voted for and which against, by the constituents attending.

The only wrap-up that was done after we completed the exercise, was a set of very brief interviews of only about 4 of the "randomly chosen" Chairs ( & there were quite a few tables). They were asked only how much they were able to reduce the deficit, and how smoothly the process went.

The packets recording our votes were never taken up. Instead, we were told to keep them for ourselves. So no one attending and no staff person was able to see how the majority of people in the room voted on any item or on any set of items. 

I questioned a staff person afterward re this and had to insist that my packet be taken, so Giffords could get some feedback from at least one constituent (of course, I am sure they threw it into the "circular file" as soon as I left). I let the staff person know how appalled I was that there was no attempt to get any constituent feedback on the very items the House will be voting on (supposedly in behalf of consituents) !!!

Lee Stanfield

Representative Giffords' Staff Pushes Austerity Measures, Moves to Suppress Constituents' Single Payer Healthcare Message

A "Deficit" Town Hall meeting by Gabrielle Giffords' staff went out of its way to censor those constituents advocating for a comprehensive, substantive health care plan.

U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords (Democrat) was shot clean through the head last January the 8th. Her recovery so far has been described as remarkable, but more time is required to determine whether she will continue serving as a congressional representative for her district. Despite this setback, Giffords' staff held what was described as a "Deficit" Town Hall last night to push for de facto austerity measures on behalf of the banking industry.  They presented the following two guests:

The Honorable David Walker -- founder and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative and former Comptroller General of the United States

Robert Bixby -- Executive Director of the Concord Coalition and member of the bipartisan Domenici-Rivlin Debt Reduction Task Force.

No stranger to the phony left/right paradigm evident in Giffords' political career, Dick Kaiser, SPNOW member and advocate for a single payer health care system, shares his assessment:

"The two speakers who have been invited to 'educate' Tucsonans at the event are both advocates for reducing both social security and medicare. They are accolytes of Peter Peterson, billionaire hedge fund owner.

I'm hoping this event is both well-attended and recorded. The Congresswoman's staff is doing a disservice to her constituents by not having a balanced presentation at the least. Some other actions are probably in order as well."

Kaiser later breaks it down succintly:

"GIFFORDS voted FOR the bank bailout, increasing OUR DEBT astronomically.

GIFFORDS voted FOR war funding at every opportunity, at least once on an off-budget basis, increasing OUR DEBT astronomically.

GIFFORDS voted FOR homeland security appropriations, increasing OUR DEBT.

Now, GIFFORDS thinks the American People should be responsible for the deficit and debt by surrendering their past payments into Medicare and Social Security to reduce a debt created by greedy, criminal bankers and greedy, immoral Congress members?"

Alison McLeod, the Southern Arizona Field Organizer for PDA, attended the meeting last night and sent out the following report:

"HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE, LOVE PROTECT IMPROVE MEDICARE, and TAX WALL STREET signs: Giffords’ staff told us we could not bring them inside, so they were festooned along the walls outside the event.

HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE STICKERS : a popular item and almost everyone took one when offered. The exception was the men in dark suits, who turned out to be the speakers of the event. They did not want a Healthcare Not Warfare sticker.

GIFFORDS STAFF STARRING ROB MCLEOD (no known relation of Alison McLeod): Asked Alison McLeod to stop distributing Healthcare Not Warfare stickers so close to check-in table lest people would think she was one of Giffords staff.

CONNECT THE DOTS, PEOPLE’S BUDGET and NURSES’ MAIN STREET CONTRACT flyers : Casually distributed at each table.

MEN IN DARK SUITS: Gave presentation full of charts with diagrams and circles and graphs and lots of incomprehensible wordy sentences formulated to convince the hoi poloi that all this budget stuff was so complex it should be left to the experts and if we didn’t the world as we know it will surely end.

ALISON MCLEOD, RN: Raised her hand at beginning of question-and answer session and kept her hand up entire time as circulators ignored her and passed microphone to other audience members; then two people walked up to circulator and asked to let nurse speak, circulator assured them she was second to speak, then when it came her turn circulator said, 'Whoops, sorry - time’s up.'

AND THEN IT HAPPENED.

What happened next was recorded on video if my cohort managed to press the right buttons, but if he didn’t, Pam Powers, who was sitting in the front row, did.

Please forward this preliminary report to all interested parties."

Gabrielle Giffords' recovery is partially attributed to the full and complete comprehensive health care she enjoys as a congressional representative.   Giffords' staff seem willing to deny others health care in exchange for bailing out the banks and subsidizing horrendous past choices in spending on behalf of "National Security".

We have little understanding about Gabrielle Giffords' capacity to function in her role as a  congressional representative.  A kind assessment of this situation is that her staff has run amok. 

The Intercept will post the video recorded last night once it is made available.

J.T. Waldron