"This is America!" the old man cried, as he was dragged from the room by thugs. The politico continued her speech on freedom and the media described the man who had stood silently with his back turned to the politician as a "heckler." It is prophetic, a pang of birth, a moment when the mask fell away. This same politician just sent $150 million to Egypt to help them make the adjustment to (democracy) and warned Congress not to cut aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan because it might endanger our security.
The President offers up a draconian budget that is, in fact, shameful. An assault, an affront, to the poor, the working poor and the make believe middle class. After speaking about education in his state of the union address the President wants to cut funding for education. After claiming victory in the health care debate the President wants to cut funding for health care. Of course the Republicans want more and deeper budget cuts but that is all part of the game. The President ran as a Democrat yet rules as a Reagan Republican, no matter how often or how much the President capitulates the Republicans will only want more.
Tis the best of both worlds for the Republicans, a President carries their water and they kick him for it. Never in American history has a such a Quisling front existed between the White House and Congress. Democratic Senator Kent Conrad offers up, "fiscal 2011 spending levels are already $42 billion less than what President Barack Obama requested. Republicans seek $100 billion less than what Obama wanted." Conrad said "Senate Democrats support something in line with the $42 billion."
"Social Security is not contributing to the deficit," Conrad said. "Our problem is in other entitlement accounts. It's in domestic spending."
A trillion dollar defense budget, and the fighting Democrats like Conrad see the problem as domestic spending? America has become Prussia, a military with a state rather than a state with a military. The freedom preaching politico says, but we saved $45 billion on the defense budget in Iraq! A shell game, the joint strike fighter's second engine program was voted down as proof by Congress of fiscal restraint. Imagine, the Postal Service buying five hundred new delivery trucks with Ford engines in them and then going to Congress for money to develop a GM replacement engine just in case Ford ran out of engines. The Pentagon giving up its desert for that day in between Tuesday and Wednesday.
A rancid plan to de-fund services for the American public in the name of fiscal restraint. Fiscal restraint after restoring the massively unfair and fiscally irresponsible Bush tax cuts. Selling the story to the mighty morphine power media, that it can't be helped and that the problem is domestic spending.
The problem is in a rate of taxation which cannot cover spending in the face of falling wages. Real wages fell between November and January. In 2007 wage growth averaged .06 percent per month, in 2008, .058 per month and in 2010 the rate had fallen to .027 percent 2011 it is below zero. The number of Americans listed as employed in the workforce dropped by 167,000 this year while the number working part time for economic reasons rose by 400,000. Last month the economy added just 36,000 jobs and the number of discouraged workers dropped by 72,000 workers. Where did they go? Down the memory hole?
The problem is the economy and wage growth and neither political party are saying or doing anything about it. They throw up their hands, confused, they have no ideas but to cut spending. Cut home heating oil subsidies for the poor and elderly. Let them freeze, let them die, let them eat cake. Let the children go to substandard schools in over crowded classrooms because we have no other ideas of what to do.
The Commerce Department shows a rise this month in multi family home construction and cash investors are buying up the homes that you once owned. The ruling class and the renting class, the public school and the private school, public health care and private health care. "Our problem is in other entitlement accounts. It's in domestic spending." Senator Conrad said.
In 1934 when unemployment stood at 70 percent for Minnesota iron miners and farm prices were falling through the floor the New Deal spent close to one billion dollars in today's dollars on just one state. The money was spent to give relief to the people. To feed them, to give them heat, to save their homes and to give them hope. In the former case the leaders were trying to save the people, in the later they are trying to save themselves. To recreate that old America, of renters slums and freezing elderly of bad schools and dangerous streets.
The 2010 budget for the State Department led by that politico who speaks about freedom as the silent heckler is dragged from the room was $16.389 billion. That includes $6,000,000 to treat Tijuana sewage and $10 million to hire more lawyers to handle the damage claims from the war on terror. Under the Border Environmental Cooperation Commission the (BECC) the State Department will spend $2,249,000 to bring Mexican communities up to 300 kilometers inside of Mexico up to international environmental standards. The 2010 appropriation is an increase of $129,000 over 2009 and this was a side agreement from the North American Free Trade Act.
These are peanuts, literally pennies on the floor as US foreign aid and credits for Eastern Europe in 2009 were one and a half billion dollars. In Africa, six billion dollars. Near East and South Asia, $11,778,000,000 for just one year. Afghanistan $8,557,000,000 Egypt $ 1,734,000,000 Iraq $5,276,000,000 Israel $1,992,000,000 Mexico $1,284,000,000 but home heating subsidies for America's poor must be cut. Medicaid funding must be cut. Worker must be turned against worker to be played out in a gladiatorial spectacle played out on TV.
This is but the beginning of the labor pains, the sowing is over and this wretched act must now bring forth bitter fruits. The twisting with forceps the head of what will become our society, the taking by force and by guile.
In America today, millions go jobless and the government does not care. The government that knows the number of palmetto bugs in South Carolina but has no idea how many American school children are homeless on any given night. They turn away, they change the subject, they have no vision except for the money in their pockets. That is their only national interest, the money in their pockets.
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