Massive Budget Slashing Can Lead to Economic Disaster, Violence and Repression

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Mark Ames

Stop the Austerity Craze! Massive Budget Slashing Can Lead to Economic Disaster, Violence and Repression
The DC-Wall Street power circuit, with a big assist from the corporate media, is blindly pushing an agenda that could lead to massive social upheaval.

January 25, 2011 |


Now that the shock of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting is starting to wear off and the country is returning to its more familiar climate of insanity, we’re back to facing a far worse, far more serious, and far more violent threat than mere rampage shootings: Austerity.

The Washington-Wall Street power circuit has already decided for the rest of us that “austerity” will define the 2011 political agenda. Austerity is what the oligarch-sponsored Tea Party demanded, what the Republicans are promising to deliver now that they’re in control of drafting the budget in the House, and what the Obama administration is going to try to enact as part of its neo-Clinton triangulation strategy. And the DC pols have the total endorsement of the corporate media, which have been hammering home the same message for months now: Austerity is the answer to our problems — problems that were created by the same establishment which wants to make us scream in pain again.

The way this austerity debate has been framed in all the major media outlets, anyone pushing for austerity cuts and “pain” is automatically labeled “courageous”—which is an odd way of defining courage, since not a single rich politician or pundit pushing for "austerity" will actually suffer that pain, and most will profit from it. But that’s what counts as courage in our era.

Bush speechwriter-turned-Washington Post pundit Michael Gerson has been an early promoter of the courage-austerity complex. Here's Gerson writing about his old colleague, former Bush OMB director Mitch Daniels, now Indiana governor, whose first act upon taking oath was pawning the Indiana Turnpike to a multinational as fast as you can spell courageous: Daniels became a highly successful Indiana governor, combining a motorcycle-driving, pork-tenderloin-eating populism with courageous budget cutting, a solid record of job creation and a reputation for competence. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/149659/stop_the_austerity_craze!_massive_budget_slashing_can_lead_to_economic_disaster%2C_violence_and_repression/

[notesdev]

1. That die is already cast

Massive social upheaval became inevitable when it became clear that under no circumstances will the government prosecute any of the heavy hitters in the banking clan; and not only that, but would continue to let them steal relentlessly from the people.

Get ready for it, it's coming.

[xchrom]

2. lets see what happens with this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/24/financial-crisis-commissi_2_n_813415.html


Financial Crisis Commission Finds Cause For Prosecution Of Wall Street

now -- i'm a skeptic -- but we'll see if there aren't some prosections here.
of course if they don't take their wealth -- and they won't -- the incentive to commit wrong doing remains.

[notesdev]

3. Shall we place bets?

Nothing will come of it; it's an ass-covering farce. They may as well have titled the story "Financial Crisis Commission finds Ass with Both Hands"

[xchrom]

4. oh somebody will go to jail.

it's part of the theatre today.