Fiscal Phantoms, The Myth of the Fiscal Cliff, & Other Political Skullduggery

President’s Obama’s parasitic Bankers remind me Richard Nixion’s White House Plumbers. A group of modern day highwaymen, so single minded in advancing Nixion’s political fortunes, that no form of skullduggery was beneath them.  But at least the Plumbers were committed to Nixon. Obama’s parasitic bankers are singularly committed to increasing the wealth of the One Percent at the expense of every one else, especially the poor and the working class, because they're the most defenseless.

This is why they’re allowing the Republi-creatures and the corporate lobbyist muscle, to frame the debate about the myth of the fiscal cliff,  in the same way they peddled wolf tickets to the Publius that if “we” didn’t bail out the Multi National Banking Conglomerates, they would stop lending, effectively cutting off the money supply to America. We never asked why the smaller banks and credit unions, if backed by the Fed Reserve bank(s) could not fill this role quickly.  We just opened the public spigot, pouring trillions of tax payer dollars into them and we are still ruined. Yet, their wealth has been vastly increased and they continue to destroy our country by not only failing to extended enough credit to lift the economy, but doing the same short term “grab the cash & dash” by investing in the very financial shell games, three-card –monte hustles, and ponzi schemes, that collapsed our economy in the first place. 

Our political handlers, using the same "Leibnizian Optimism", ridiculed by Voltaire's character "Candide"in 1762, tell us had we not bailed out the banks, It could have and would have been worse.

We don’t question our “betters”,  so we don’t require detailed explanations, let along explanations in plain english.

President Obama has been reelected, and it's back to business for them. With massive and unprecedented unemployment and poverty in this country, they’re now calling for drastic social service cuts, least China and other foreign interests, supposedly fearful of their investments, show up at the “American Pay Window” demanding full payment, similar to what happened to Greece.  What they're not saying is Greece, as part of the European Union doesn’t control it’s own currency. America does, so in the extremely minuet chance that China did demand payment, we would just print up what we owe them, which they know.

The Republi-creatures, as always, falls back on the inflation argument. But we are in a depression- at least.  So a weaken dollar would help rejuvenate our economy. American goods would become more desirable to foreigner consumers, creating jobs and lifting wages. And frankly, if the banks are not making loans, then they’re the only ones who benefit from lower interest rates. They're able to borrow, (at an even cheaper “window"rates than we receive ) which they reinvest in ways that do not help the economy.  Meanwhile all the public gets is junk pensions and pathetic c.d.s rates.

Pulitzer Prize winning author and Professor of Economic at Princeton University Dr. Paul Krugman, provides a more detailed analysis in his OP-ED entitled "Fighting Fiscal Phantoms", published in the  Nov. 25, 2012 edition of The New York Times.

The sad thing is that Paul Krugman will never be appointed by President Obama to any position let alone Treasury Secretary.  And a budget deal is in the works. Senator Dick Durban, called on "fellow progressives  not to fight", but to  support a budget deal that includes major cuts to entitlements and social programs. Durbin said,  “We can't be so naive to believe that just taxing the rich will solve our problems. Put everything on the table. Repeat. Everything on the table.”

It seems that the next four years will be like the last.  While there will be political co-option and shallow pacification, targeted toward the white liberal and tiny Black elite, there will be no critically needed efforts to restructure our government that continues to fund and protect a mammoth mechanism created 40 years ago that continues to constrict the flow of necessary political information, communication, and cooperations between the poor and working class, while draining our wealth and redistributing it, to the One Percent. 

Yes, I'm worried,

I.M.

Make Wall Street Pay/ Do your Patriotic Duty, Get Arrested/ Poor People's Campaign

A family with bags from a service that provides for people in need in Oswego, N.Y-.NYT

In a nation of vast poverty, inequality, and economic despair , we are now told by "our" government handlers that hundreds of billions of dollars in service cuts must happen to prevent America from sliding into economic ruin.

Under a measure called  sequestration, 1.2 trillion in service cuts will occur  automatically on January 1, 2013, if Congress doesn’t either delay the cuts, drastically cut spending, or raise taxes.

Previous Government bailouts have demonstrated, that major corporations and the rich have vast political resources to insure  their place, far ahead of the line. Yet, the voices of the powerless are always on the defensive, trying to protect the dwindling meager resources we have.

In this age, we don't get to go forward, we fight, not to be pushed too far back.

 I am please to see a coalition of grassroots and faith-based organizations called "Make Wall Street Pay Illinois" demand that Wall Street pay to balance the budget. Equally important, they used civil disobedience, leading to arrests, to demonstrate their resolve.  

On Friday, November 9, eight people entered Senator Dick Durban's Chicago office- paid for by the tax payers, to request a meeting with him, which was denied.  They then refused to leave and were arrested. An hour later, 11 activists holding a banner in the building’s lobby were dragged and carried  away to jail. Dick Durban is considered the  unofficial spokes person for the Democratic Party and is close to the president.

With the election of President Obama, the left has a choice. Either force President Obama, the Democrats, and liberal advocacy groups to wage political war on behalf  of ( and organize) the majority in America, who continue to lose economic ground and tumble into the abyss. Or, they can also continue to tinker around the edges for a paycheck,while the rich continue syphoning the rest of the wealth from this country.

These arrests need to continue and in mass.  This country will only change through civil disobedience.

Every progressive needs to get arrested at east least once, and assume the burden of "waking up" their friends, family, and neighbors to reality that Democracy is now mostly a political illusion to keep the citizenry pacified.

We need a national rescue program for poor people and those barely making it, including a "Federal New Deal" program which includes major debt reduction programs for students, the poor, and the working class. This country is brazen in it's support of the One Percent. Now it's time to support The People. 

Right before Martin Luther King was assassinated he made a monumental pivot  from race to a campaign centered on Economic Justice, called The Poor People's Campaign. 

This movement needs to happen now or our country is lost.