Cutting Out the Poor

[EC]

Cutting Out the Poor

By William Raspberry
Monday, January 31, 2005; Page A21

<snip>

Before you dismiss it as partisan hyperbole, hear Edelman's specifics: The basic structure of Social Security is under attack (on the grounds that the program is in crisis, though most respected economists say it isn't). Pell Grants for college tuition are on the cutting block. So are Section 8 housing vouchers (which started under Richard Nixon) and food stamps. Programs that have offered some protection for people in the lower third of the economy are under threat of evisceration.

And the rationale for the attack is a budgetary crisis created by the gift of $1.8 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

Edelman thinks the needle has jumped off the dial altogether, that the people in philosophical power are determined to abrogate the contract many of us still take for granted. Nor does he believe that it is a matter of fiscal necessity. An unnecessary tax break (abetted by an optional war) created the crisis, and now the crisis justifies a radical reordering of the American system. As Edelman and Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change (CCC), put it in a recent joint statement:

"The federal budget is not just an accounting tool. It is a statement about our priorities and our values as a nation. But because of decisions this president made to benefit an elite few -- at the expense of the rest of us -- we're now facing a set of budget choices that are unsupportable, immoral and dangerous."

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[Warpy]

1. Federal programs were subsidies for companies that paid

below survival wages to employees. All these guys are good pubbies, and all think labor costs are killing them.

Well, we know what happens next. Programs are slashed, people are forced to make do on wages that don't allow them to afford food and shelter, let alone health care, and they start experiencing real hunger, the type where you look for edible plants in the city parks.

That's when we're going to have to fight all those labor fights we thought were over 50 years ago. It's coming, and these pubbies are all going to be blindsided, all because they're too cheap to pay people enough to live on or too stupid to do the arithmetic to figure it out.

[EC]

2. I think I'm going to start leaving the dandelions

in the yard grow...they make really healthy salads and greens...and grow only edible flowers, lucky I collected all my nasturtium seeds last year...

[TomClash]

3. Let them eat cake - I need another porsche nt

[GOPFighter]

4. Everything going according to plan!

1. Tax cuts for the wealthy, creates
2. Huge budget deficit, forces
3. Cuts to government safety net
4. Outsource jobs overseas, results in
5. High unemployment, poverty, and a desperate workforce
6. A desperate workforce will work for lower wages
7. Lower wages mean greater profits, which produces their ultimate goal of
8. The "Haves and Have-Mores" happily living in gated communities, feeling so damn superior

9. Revolution

[deacon2]

5. A new name for the GOP

The Marie Antoinettes. A short while back they reclassified hamburger slinging as "manufacturing" to shore up anemic jobs data. Next we're likely to see that the poverty / hunger index is really double plus good since cockroaches have been reclassified as "ambulatory protein." What a miserable excuse for human beings is at the helm of this great nation. They daily endeavor to abrogate the bare bones social contracts with our citizenry. Their clear intention is to take us back to the days when William Jennings Bryan was forced to scold the Grover Norquists of his time with these words at the 1896 Democratic National Convention:

When I find a man who is not willing to bear his share of the burdens of the government which protects him, I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.

Next up: Crucifixion on a Cross of Gold. Stay tuned...