Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The ‘Repo-Demo’ Party’s Three Phase Austerity Plan for America
Published on Thursday, December 23, 2010 by In These Times
by Jack Rasmus
The Bush tax cuts are now extended. What cost $3.4 trillion over the past decade, 80% of which accrued to the wealthiest households and U.S. corporations, will now cost another $802 billion over the next two years and a projected $4 trillion over the coming decade.
But the Bush tax cut extension just passed by a political elite increasingly united on economic policy—a ‘Repo-Demo’ Party dominated by corporate interests—is only the first of three phases in a new policy offensive designed to protect the incomes of the wealthy and corporate America for another decade, to be paid for directly by middle- and working-class America. Together, the three phases represent the emerging U.S. variant of a general austerity strategy, similar in objective but different in content to other austerity programs now emerging as well in the Eurozone, Japan and elsewhere.
[President Obama's deal with Republican leaders, signed into law December 17, 2010, extended tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans for another two years. (Photo by ALEX WONG/Getty Images)]President Obama's deal with Republican leaders, signed into law December 17, 2010, extended tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans for another two years. (Photo by ALEX WONG/Getty Images)
Phase two: draconian spending cuts
The second phase will likely be implemented in the next three months, before the ceiling on the federal debt has to be lifted. It will take the form of massive spending cuts in the U.S. budget, targeting Social Security and Medicare in particular. (A parallel draconian slash in spending will occur at the state level, targeting Medicaid and education).
Social Security has been a prime target since the Reagan years. Unable to cut it in the early 1980s, Reagan instead settled on a major increase in the payroll tax in 1984, creating a $2.5 trillion surplus over the last 25 years. However, that surplus was ‘borrowed’ every year by Congress to cover up in part U.S. budget deficits created annually since the 1980s to pay for war spending and tax cuts.
All that remains of the surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund are government IOUs promising to replace the shortfall when necessary—a replacement we’ll never see in our lifetimes.
In 2003, Bush II re-opened the attack on Social Security by trying to privatize it, but failed. Despite the accumulated surplus having been drained, Social Security was still annually producing a surplus and was thus financially too stable to convince the public it needed basic change. In contrast, today, as a result of a chronic three year long recession, there is no longer an annual surplus being created. Social Security is just breaking even.
But implementing the pending payroll tax cuts—part of Phase One—will finally put Social Security in the red, creating for the first time the net annual losses conservatives and corporate America have always needed to push a major gutting of the program. The payroll tax cut is thus the first move in what will prove a general attack on social security that will gain momentum in the coming months. Reagan conservatives have argued it would first be necessary to ‘starve the beast’ in order to dismantle it. For the first time, that scenario will exist.
Phase three: revising tax code to help the wealthy
Following the imminent draconian cuts in spending and Social Security-Medicare-Medicaid-Education about to take place in 2011, which lie at the heart of the second phase, the third phase of the new austerity strategy will follow in the summer of 2012. It will take the form of a fundamental revision of the U.S. tax code.
As part of this general revision, the Bush tax cuts will likely be made permanent for the rest of the decade to come. In addition, personal income tax brackets for the wealthiest households will be reduced to no more than three, possibly two, with a top rate for the wealthy or no more than 28%, representing a return to Reagan years.
For corporations, depreciation write-offs, a de facto investment tax credit for business, will be accelerated to full deductions in the first year—a measure already just enacted for small business this year. For multinational corporations, the foreign profits tax will be restructured to their advantage. The corporate tax rate will be significantly reduced or even phased out entirely. Not least, the new 2% cut in payroll taxes could also be extended, forcing yet another round of further reductions in Social Security and Medicare benefits and still higher co-pays for retirees.
To pay for the tax code rewrite and even more concessions to wealthy households, investors and corporations, the middle class will pay more. Adjustments to the Alternative Minimum Tax, AMT, for the middle class will be phased out. And the mortgage interest tax credit will be eliminated in stages as well.
Same wine in same bottles, with new label
Obama and the ‘Repo Demo’ Party have launched a PR offensive in the wake of the Bush tax cut extensions, proclaiming that the Bush tax cuts plus unemployment insurance extension plus payroll tax cut together amount to a ‘Stimulus 2’ package that will result in more economic growth and new jobs.
This is the same old tired song of the Bush administration. In fact, every one of the four major Bush tax cuts passed between 2001-04 was officially called ‘job creation’ bills.
The result of these ‘job bills’ was the weakest job creation following a recession of all the nine prior recessions since 1945. It took 46 months to recover jobs lost from January 2001, the start of Bush’s first recession. The second recession of the Bush II era, which started in December 2007, was followed by a $168 billion stimulus bill passed in spring 2008—about $90 billion of which was tax cuts. The result: 4.5 million full-time jobs lost in 2008. Then another $787 billion stimulus in early 2009, Obama’s ‘Stimulus 1’ package—about half of which was tax cuts. The result: Another 6.5 million full time jobs lost in 2009. In 2010, another half million lost jobs and dropped out of the labor market. Of the 900,000 private sector jobs created in 2010, more than two thirds were part-time and temp jobs.
At the close of 2010, now we have yet another tax cut heavy ‘Stimulus 2’. Again the claim is that it will create jobs. However, except for the payroll tax cut of $112 billion there is nothing ‘net new’ in the so-called ‘Stimulus 2.’ It’s the same old wine poured into same old bottles—just a new label slapped on the side and a brand new cork (payroll tax cut) added to the opening.
The key question: Will any jobs be created?
Corporations are today sitting on a cash hoard of more than $2 trillion, according to the business press, not investing or creating jobs. Why should increasing that hoard another $500 billion or so result in anything different? That’s the key question conservatives and the ‘Repo-Demo’ Party elite must answer—but are avoiding. That’s the question the media should be asking, but about which they remain conspicuously silent.
Only the $112 billion payroll tax reduction represents a ‘net new’ contribution to stimulus. But is it sufficient to generate jobs? Not by a long shot. For those earning $50,000 a year to the top payroll tax rate of $106,800 a year, the payroll tax cut will, on average, lead to no more than $20/week in real spending power after adjustments for partial saving, debt paydowns and what will be accelerating costs for food, healthcare, and gasoline coming in 2011. Those below $50,000 will actually have less to spend, since the “Make Work Pay” credit is ending for them. That’s nowhere nearly sufficient to stimulate the economy and create jobs.
Obama’s 2011 ‘Stimulus 2’ will thus prove no more effective than his 2009 ‘Stimulus 1.’ The past decade has produced repeated tax-cut heavy policies targeting the rich and corporations: Bush II and a Republican Congress 2001-06. Bush II and a Democratic Congress 2006-08. Obama and a Democratic Congress 2008-10. And now Obama and a de facto Republican Congress.
The recent Bush tax cut extensions show the corporate-dominated political elite of both parties are now closing ranks as the economic crisis continues with no resolution for all but the wealthy and corporations. The ‘Repo-Demo’ Party, newly aligned around the same old failed policies, has just begun to do its work. Get ready for more of the same.
Jack Rasmus is the author of Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression, published in May 2010 by Pluto Press, Palgrave-Macmillan.
http://www.commondreams.org/print/63807
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
In final Senate speech, Specter slams political ‘cannibalism’
Tue Dec 21, 1:57 pm ET
Arlen Specter isn't leaving Washington quietly.
In his final speech on the Senate floor, the outgoing Republican-turned-Democrat sounded off on the tea party, the rise of partisanship in Congress and the "judicial activism" of the Supreme Court.
"Defeating your own is a form of sophisticated cannibalism," the Pennsylvania senator said of the tea party activists who worked to defeat GOP centrists.
Specter bemoaned the loss of a Senate where both parties seemed to be interested in finding compromise, and he was especially critical of lawmakers who campaigned against their fellow members.
[See also: Winners and losers in the latest U.S. census data]
"That conduct was beyond contemplation in the Senate I joined 30 years ago," Specter said. "Collegiality can obviously not be maintained when negotiating with someone simultaneously out to defeat you, especially within your own party."
He called the increasing lack of civility in politics discouraging. "Civility is a state of mind," Specter said. "It reflects respect for your opponents and for the institutions you serve together." Political polarization, he said, will make civility in the upcoming Congress "more difficult [but] more necessary than ever."
[See also: Haley Barbour defends his comments on race]
The former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman then went after the Supreme Court, accusing Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito (both conservatives whom he supported) of "eroding the constitutional mandate of separation of powers."
"The Supreme Court has been eating Congress' lunch by invalidating legislation with judicial activism after nominees commit under oath in confirmation proceedings to respect congressional fact-finding and precedents," Specter said, per CNN's Alexander Mooney.
The former prosecutor jokingly referred to his final speech as more of a closing argument than a farewell. "A closing speech has an inevitable aspect of nostalgia," he said. "An extraordinary experience has come to an end. But my dominant feeling is pride in the great privilege it has been to be a part of this unique body with colleagues who are such outstanding public servants."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/in-final-senate-speech-specter-slams-political-cannabalism/print
Monday, December 20, 2010
News Black-Out in DC: Pay No Attention to Those Veterans Chained to the White House Fence
Saturday 18 December 2010
by: Dave Lindorff | This Can't Be Happening | Op-Ed
There was a black-out and a white-out Thursday and Friday as over a hundred US veterans opposed to US wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, and their civilian supporters, chained and tied themselves to the White House fence during an early snowstorm to say enough is enough.
Washington Police arrested 135 of the protesters, in what is being called the largest mass detention in recent years. Among those arrested were Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who used to provide the president’s daily briefings, Daniel Ellsberg, who released the government’s Pentagon Papers during the Nixon administration, and Chris Hedges, former war correspondent for the New York Times.
No major US news media reported on the demonstration or the arrests. It was blacked out of the New York Times, blacked out of the Philadelphia Inquirer, blacked out in the Los Angeles Times, blacked out of the Wall Street Journal, and even blacked out of the capital’s local daily, the Washington Post, which apparently didn't even think it was a local story worth publishing.
Making the media cover-up of the protest all the more outrageous was the fact that most news media did report on Friday, the day after the protest, the results of the latest poll of American attitudes towards the Afghanistan War, an ABC/Washington Post Poll which found that 60% of Americans now feel that war has “not been worth it.” That’s a big increase from the 53% who said they opposed the war in July.
Clearly, any honest and professional journalist and editor would see a news link between such a poll result and an anti-war protest at the White House led, for the first time in recent memory, by a veterans organization, the group Veterans for Peace, in which veterans of the nation’s wars actually put themselves on the line to be arrested to protest a current war.
Friday was also the day that most news organizations were reporting on the much-touted, but also much over-rated Pentagon report on the “progress” of the American war in Afghanistan--a report prepared for the White House that claimed there was progress, but which was immediately contradicted by a CIA report that said the opposite. Again, any honest and professional journalist and editor would immediately see the publication of such a report as an appropriate occasion to mention the unusual opposition to the war by a group of veterans right outside the president’s office.
And yet, the protest event was completely blacked out by the corporate news media. (Maybe the servile and over-paid White House press corps, ensconced in the press room inside the White House, didn't want to go out and brave the elements to cover the protest.)
If you wanted to know about this protest, you had to go to the internet and read the Huffington Post or to the Socialist Worker, OpEd News, or to this publication (okay, we’re a day late, but I was stuck in traffic yesterday), or else to Democracy Now! on the alternative airways.
My old employer, the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia, showed how it’s supposed to be done. In an article published Friday about the latest ABC/Washington Post Poll, reporter Simon Mann, after explaining that opposition to the war in the US was rising, then wrote:
The publication of the review coincided with anti-war protests held across the US, including one in Washington in which people chained themselves to the White House fence, leading to about 100 arrests.
That’s the way journalism is supposed to be done. Relevant information that puts the day's news in some kind of useful context is supposed to be provided to readers, not hidden from them.
Clearly, in the US the corporate media perform a different function. It’s called propaganda. And the handling of this dramatic protest by American veterans against the nation’s current war provides a dramatic illustration of how far the news industry and the journalism profession has converted itself from a Fourth Estate to a handmaiden to power.
http://www.truth-out.org/news-black-out-dc-pay-no-attention-those-veterans-chained-white-house-fence66096
Saturday, December 18, 2010
House Overwhelmingly Approves New $725 Billion Military Spending Bill
Posted By Jason Ditz On December 17, 2010 @ 3:15 pm In Uncategorized
The US House of Representatives today overwhelmingly approved the $725 billion military appropriations bill for 2011, by far the largest single military spending bill in the history of mankind.
The 341-48 vote saw vast majorities of both parties supporting it, and was referred to by officials as a “stripped down” version, despite its impossibly large pricetag. In addition to its budget busting expense, the bill also solidified the ban on closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
The bill now moves on to the lame duck Senate, where it is expected to face at least some resistance around the Gitmo ban and a scramble to even have a vote in the waning days before it goes into recess.
Some officials expressed disappointment with the $725 billion in spending, not because it was so much, but because it actually didn’t include every major expense people were hoping to shoehorn into it. In that regard, it seems the Obama Administration may be facing the prospect of an “emergency” appropriation bill at some point next year that will push the already record bill even closer to a trillion dollars.
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/17/house-overwhelmingly-approves-new-725-billion-military-spending-bill/
Friday, December 17, 2010
The Daily Show on Senate/9-11 Responders Bill
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Worst Responders | ||||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| 9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster | ||||
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Thursday, December 16, 2010
Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid
Posted on December 15, 2010, Printed on December 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/
Yet another study has been released proving that watching Fox News is detrimental to your intelligence. World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, conducted a survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation.
So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false. This study corroborates a previous PIPA study that focused on the Iraq war with similar results. And there was an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that demonstrated the break with reality on the part of Fox viewers with regard to health care. The body of evidence that Fox News is nothing but a propaganda machine dedicated to lies is growing by the day.
In eight of the nine questions below, Fox News placed first in the percentage of those who were misinformed (they placed second in the question on TARP). That’s a pretty high batting average for journalistic fraud. Here is a list of what Fox News viewers believe that just aint so:
- 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
- 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
- 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
- 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
- 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
- 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
- 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
- 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
- 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)
The conclusion is inescapable. Fox News is deliberately misinforming its viewers and it is doing so for a reason. Every issue above is one in which the Republican Party had a vested interest. The GOP benefited from the ignorance that Fox News helped to proliferate. The results were apparent in the election last month as voters based their decisions on demonstrably false information fed to them by Fox News.
By the way, the rest of the media was not blameless. CNN and the broadcast network news operations fared only slightly better in many cases. Even MSNBC, which had the best record of accurately informing viewers, has a ways to go before it can brag about it.
The conclusions in this study need to be disseminated as broadly as possible. Fox’s competitors need to report these results and produce ad campaigns featuring them. Newspapers and magazines need to publish the study across the country. This is big news and it is critical that the nation be advised that a major news enterprise is poisoning their minds.
This is not an isolated review of Fox’s performance. It has been corroborated time and time again. The fact that Fox News is so blatantly dishonest, and the effects of that dishonesty have become ingrained in an electorate that has been been purposefully deceived, needs to be made known to every American. Our democracy cannot function if voters are making choices based on lies. We have the evidence that Fox is tilting the scales and we must now make certain its corporate owners do not get away with it.
Mark Howard is an artist and author and the publisher of News Corpse.
