Tax the Rich and End the Wars: Budget ''Crisis'' Solved.

[Octafish]

I wonder if anyone in the budget talks has put that on the table?

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Is that Peas in their pockets?

or are they just happy to see each other?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donnachaidh]

3. k&r n/t.

[Octafish]

4. Disconnect City

Something must happen to a human's critical faculties inside the Beltway.

John Boehner: It's 'Cut, Cap, and Balance'—Or Bust

— By Andy Kroll
Mother Jones
| Fri Jul. 22, 2011 8:09 AM PDT

As the White House demanded Congress reach a deficit deal to avert default on Friday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) sent a crystal clear message to Democrats and the Obama administration: It's the GOP's scorched-earth plan or bust.

Boehner told reporters at his weekly press conference that, despite media reports, there is no deal in the works between him and President Obama. Boehner insisted that his plan was the "Cut, Cap, and Balance" plan passed by the GOP-led House on Tuesday. "There is no agreement," Boehner said. "There is no deal in private. Our plan is 'cut, cap, and balance.'"

That plan, which is likely to die in the Democrat-controlled Senate today, would slash federal spending by $111 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, and go on to cap spending at about 20 percent of US gross domestic product. According to the Center for American Progress, "Cut, Cap, and Balance" would necessitate a 25-percent cut to every item in the federal budget, from defense spending to education to veterans' benefits. And if, say, defense spending was spared, it would mean far deeper cuts to other federally-funded programs.

SNIP...

In his remarks this morning, Boehner, joined by a group of GOP lawmakers, blasted Democrats for not offering a deficit reduction plan of their own. "If they don't like our version of 'Cut, Cap, and Balance' that two-thirds of the American people support, then what's their plan?" Boehner said. "Our friends across the aisle aren't at all serious about doing what the American people are doing: spending less."

CONTINUED...

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/07/john-boehner-cut-cap-balance-debt-ceiling

An adequate character actor, Boehner seems incable of reason or statesmanship. Same for his chums.

[alsame]

5. k&r

[Octafish]

6. Where's the navigator?

Something for the People to chew on:

With GOP Roadmap in Hand, Where Will Obama and Dems Wind Up?

by Roger Bybee
In These Times
Friday, Jul 22, 2011

EXCERPT...

Instead, America is headed on a path of cutting Social Security although it is now fiscally sound and not due to enounter any problems until 2037, argues economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Political Reserceh. When it comes to Socail Security, Obama has rapidly jettisoned his egalitarian words and latched on to reactionary solutions:

When President Obama preaches equality of sacrifice, it is the elderly and the poor who are supposed to do most of the sacrificing. His plan to change the annual cost-of-living adjustment formula for Social Security would reduce benefits for someone in their seventies by 3 percent, in their eighties by 6 percent and in their nineties by 9 percent.

These are huge cuts. The Republicans are screaming bloody murder because President Obama wants to raise the top tax rate by 4.6 percentage points. Imagine that he proposed raising taxes on the wealthy by twice as much. That is effectively what he is proposing for people in their nineties who are entirely dependent on Social Security.

And he is proposing to impose this tax on seniors who had nothing to do with the crisis, while leaving Wall Street untouched. A modest tax on financial speculation could raise more than $150 billion a year or $1.5 trillion over the course of a decade.

CONTINUED...

Remember, alsame, when policy was determine by what was best for the country? If that were the case, we'd see 90-percent tax rates on the Have-Mores, they who've most benefitted from 30 years of trickle-down fiscal policy.

[alsame]

9. The pain will trickle down, as always. The Dems have now

bought into the trickle down theory, we the people are not represented.

[wildbilln864]

7. k&r! Thanks. nt

[Octafish]

10. I like my Pentagon as much as any civilian, but...

...sacrifices are called for in war time. Uh...

Defense on the Chopping Block

Robert Dreyfuss
The Nation
July 22, 2011

If one were serious about reducing the deficit without either slashing entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security or raising taxes one penny, here’s a simple solution: cut Pentagon spending by one-third, and voila! There’s $2 trillion in deficit reduction right there. (By contrast, the protracted and ugly talks between the White House and Congress are projected to reduce the deficit by somewhere between $2.5 trillion and $4 trillion, depending on whose plan you look at.)

Of course, no one is seriously considering slashing the DOD budget by a third. But serious cuts are likely, as much as $900 billion, or about 15 percent of the projected $6 trillion in military spending over the next decade. And it’s got hawks and neoconservatives up in arms.

Earlier this year, in two pieces for The Nation, I wrote about a coalition of conservatives and tax hawks, including Grover Norquist, who’ve come out for cuts up to $1 trillion in defense, and about the prospect for serious cuts in defense spending across the board. In January, then-Secretary of Defense Gates had suggested trifling cuts of $78 billion, and in April President Obama upped the ante, calling for cuts of $400 billion. Now, it appears that Obama is backing cuts as much as $886 billion, and that might just be an opening bid. In any case, big cuts seem inevitable.

SNIP...

Alarmed, but outgunned politically, the hawkish coalition called Defending Defense – made up of the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and Bill Kristol’s Foreign Policy Initiative, all neocon-oriented – issued a report yesterday warning that cuts of that magnitude, or even smaller ones, could result in a “hollow force.” It said:

“This week, Obama praised the latest in a series of plans to cut military spending by roughly $900 billion or more. He said the most recent plan that proposes cutting $886 billion from defense is “broadly consistent” with his own approach for getting the country’s finances under control. Although this plan, like the others, is light on details of how it would actually achieve trillions in overall spending cuts, it is clear that there is a willingness within the administration and among some members of Congress to slash defense well beyond the President’s earlier mark of $400 billion.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.thenation.com/blog/162227/defense-chopping-block

Not that we're really at war, otherwise the rich would be taxed retroactively on 30 years' of ill-gotten trickle down gains.

[wildbilln864]

13. make love....

not war!

[blkmusclmachine]

8. But then you couldn't drown the Gov't in a bathtub.

And that appears to be what they want to do.

[Octafish]

12. Never hear anyone mention in the United States, the government is ''We the People.''

Which would constitute murder, which, come to think of it, is what the neocons and neoliberals are doing.

$23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System?

By MATTHEW JAFFE
ABC News
July 20, 2009

EXCERPT...

"The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government's efforts to fix the financial system.

Yes, $23.7 trillion.

SNIP...

Barofsky's estimate means that if each federal agency spends the maximum potential amount involved in these 50 different initiatives -- if the Federal Reserve ends up spending $6.8 trillion on its programs. If the Treasury Department spends $4.4 trillion, if the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation spends $2.3 trillion, and so on -- then the numbers add up to a total of $23.7 trillion.

SNIP...

But in his new quarterly report to Congress that will be released Tuesday, the watchdog warns that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars could be lost if the government does not make certain changes to these programs. The Treasury Department, he cautions, needs to increase the transparency of the $700 billion TARP program, which he says has grown to an unprecedented scope and scale.

CONTINUED...

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/story?id=8127005&page=1

Washington, we have a problem. And it ain't us. Or our math.

[Hotler]

11. I wonder if anyone in the budget talks has put that on the table?

Fuck no! Many of the richest families in this country make their money off of war. k&r

[Octafish]

14. One of America's greatest warriors would never have approved of the warmonger class.

Porter B. Williamson, a close aide to Gen. George S. Patton before World War II, said the general, of all Republican conservatives, would be completely against the idea of wars without end. During Vietnam, Williamson had occassion to imagine what Patton would say regarding what has become the continuing national situation:

"...I remember hearing a service club speaker, a high government official, say that a little bit of war in a distant place was good for the economy of the United States.

Fighting a war to help the economy would cause Gen. Patton to explode, "Who in hell ever heard of fighting a war to help the economy? War is killing people. Trying to say there is such a thing as a little bit of war is like saying a woman is a little bit pregnant! Who would have the gall to tell a soldier he was giving his life to help the economy?"...

"General Patton's Principles for Life and Leadership," Grab'em by the Nose and Kick'em in the Pants, pp. 128.

Now, to really piss the ultrarich tax dodgers and their bought and paid for officials off, I suggest getting rid of taxes altogether. When the jails free the violent so-and-sos, the inmates can go straight to their house for accomodations, victuals and relaxation. Same goes for the NAZIs. They'd feel right at home.

[mmonk]

15. No one will put that on the table. It doesn't promote the rise of the

corporate state and would derail this shock doctrine.

[Octafish]

16. It's as if the Democrats secretly believe in what the Republicans stand for.T

The rich deserve all they can get.
Same goes for the poor.
And the middle classes are mopes
to be left footing the bill for the rich
until they become the new poor.



Richard Perle, CEO, Trireme Partnerships

Remember Leo Strauss, the neocon father figure who believed that the minority had to use subterfuge to rule the majority -- for their own good?

The Despoiling of America

EXCERPT...

Strauss’s teaching incorporated much of Machiavelli’s. Significantly, his philosophy is unfriendly to democracy—even antagonistic. At the same time Strauss upheld the necessity for a national religion not because he favored religious practices, but because religion in his view is necessary in order to control the population. Since neo-conservatives influenced by Strauss are in control of the Bush administration, I have prepared a brief list that shows the radical unchristian basis of neo-conservatism. I am indebted to Shadia Drury’s book (Leo Strauss and the American Right) and published interviews for the following:

First: Strauss believed that a leader had to perpetually deceive the citizens he ruled.

Secondly: Those who lead must understand there is no morality, there is only the right of the superior to rule the inferior.

Thirdly: According to Drury, Religion “is the glue that holds society together.”<40> It is a handle by which the ruler can manipulate the masses. Any religion will do. Strauss is indifferent to them all.

Fourthly: “Secular society…is the worst possible thing,” because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, all of which encourage dissent and rebellion. As Drury sums it up: “You want a crowd that you can manipulate like putty.”<41>

Fifthly: “Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat; and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured.”<42>

Sixthly: “In Strauss’s view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations.”

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

Thanks to DU and DUers, we know this.