Brazil's austerity package decried by UN as attack on poor people

[Judi Lynn]

Source: The Guardian

Senior official says proposed budget cuts, which have been protested in violent street clashes, are lacking in all nuance and compassion

Jonathan Watts in Rio de Janeiro
Friday 9 December 2016 11.04 EST

Brazil is poised to implement the most socially regressive austerity package in the world, a senior United Nations official has warned.

Despite violent street protests against budget cuts, President Michel Temer who came to power after engineering the impeachment of his former running mate, Dilma Rousseff is pushing through a 20-year social spending freeze that will be locked into the constitution.

Ahead of a final senate vote on the measures next Tuesday, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, took the unusual step of decrying the plan as an attack on the poor and a violation of Brazils obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

This is a radical measure, lacking in all nuance and compassion, he said in a statement on Friday. It is completely inappropriate to freeze only social expenditure and to tie the hands of all future governments for another two decades. If this amendment is adopted it will place Brazil in a socially retrogressive category all of its own.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/09/brazil-austerity-cuts-un-official

[DonCoquixote]

1. The right has gotten global

It is now an aristocracy, complete with noble houses that pass around land like a wine pitcher.

[Warpy]

2. "Austerity" is always an attack on poor people

because it never hits a single rich man in the form of higher taxes to fund essential services. They think poor people are poor because they're lazy and all they have to do to avoid going hungry is work just a little harder.

[lambchopp59]

3. Actually, I think the truth is much more crass and greedy than that.

Having overheard one of our lovely Bush dynasty state that all you must do to get elected republican is say "Jeebus" and hoardes of so-called "Christians" fall in line. They know full well the poor are not necessarily lazy, it's just part of the charade to pad their pockets, and those of their only considered constituency. How quickly will dirt poor Trump supporters be screwed by the incoming administration? All Bill O Really has to say is "Jeebus wants" and they melt subserviently to the lies.

[killbotfactory]

4. No one could see this coming, after they got rid of Rousseff

Some people around here saw nothing wrong with her impeachment. They were primed by media coverage to assume she was corrupt and deserved impeachment.

Hopefully people will wake up to the class war that's been happening, at home and abroad.