Showing posts with label sequestration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sequestration. Show all posts

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Republicans want to steal Social Security via Sequestration

Sequestration is back. Coming up very soon are the automatic cuts to Military Spending that were supposed to make Republicans balk at the Sequestration deal in the first place.

Except ha ha! It's time to change the rules. Republicans never, ever bargain fairly. Their goals are always to transfer as much taxpayer money to the Plutocracy. Thus, they agreed to Sequestration because they got the cuts to programs they wanted right away and once the cuts they don't like come into play they always planned to just renege on the deal.

"Deficits don't matter", Republican Arch-Fiend Dick Cheney. At least when Republicans control the White House, when a Democrat gets in their Republicans wail and moan about the Debt and beat their manly-boobs about deficits.
"Washington has a spending problem, but incessantly and mindlessly cutting national security will not get us out of our fiscal mess,” said Republican Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado.
Lamborn and Jim Bridenstein of Oklahoma have introduced the Republican Plan to steal Social Security, increase Federal Government employee pension contributions and eliminate Medicare, in a bill entitled Provide for the Common Defense.

The Sequestration cuts to DoD Budget, which Lamborn called mindless, is set to drop Military Spending from $670 Billion in 2013 to $625 Billion in 2014 and $590 Billion in 2015. So the cuts to the Official DoD Budget for 2013-2015 will be only a reduction in spending to $1.815 Trillion instead of $2.010 Trillion.
"In this protracted struggle, good management dictates that we resist overspending as resolutely as we oppose underspending. Every dollar uselessly spent on military mechanisms decreases our total strength and, therefore, our security" Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower 1961.
The Lamborn/Bridenstein Bill is nothing more than the slimy Republican tactic of Using the Troops to steal from the Working Class, poor, sick, elderly and Veterans in prostrate service to the insatiable appetite of the 1%.

But, this is a special circumstance, the Republicans see a way to accomplish their goals of Oppression and Subjugation while also transferring the blame onto the Democratic Party.

If they manage to get Provide for the Common Defense or any bill passed which affects Social Security, while President Obama is in office, Barack Obama will effectively save the Republican Party and dismantle his "own". It would be a simple four step process;
Step 1) Get President Obama to sign onto cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. 
Step 2) Triumphantly tell Wall Street Thieves they got the cuts they've always wanted while crying to the Media they never wanted to cut Social Security or Medicare
Step 3) Roll Social Security into Hedge Fund Accounts were the Trillions will be clipped, stolen and find its' way into a few thousand Cayman Island and Swiss Bank Accounts 
Step 4) Run ads in every campaign for every office for the next 100 years that President Obama and the Democrat Party cut Social Security.
Sequestration has afforded the Republicans a special circumstance in order to really screw the Working Class over, but it's nothing new in the right-wing playbook. Back in the 1970's Jude Wanniski created the Two-Santa Theory by Jude Wanniski, which lead directly to the Creation of Supply-Side Economics.

Under Reagan and W(orst President Ever), Republicans engage in massive Government spending while unemployment is kept down and the "economy" is kept going by creating millions of Government jobs with millions of dollars in direct Federal aid to local and state government to help boost state government spending.

Ah, but see that all changes when a Democrat is the President because then, all of a sudden, the bills come due; "We're broke, broke going on bankrupt," Speaker of the House John Boehner in February 28, 2011.

Under President Obama, over 500,000 federal jobs have been eliminated, wages for federal employees were frozen for two years, deficit spending has decreased faster than under any President since Eisenhower, and since 2010 the only spending bills passed cut food stamps, unemployment benefits or programs for the sick and needy.

And if someone points out the incredible shrinking of Government spending under President Obama why Republicans simply ignore it.
"Are you arguing that there are fewer government employees under Obama than they were under Bush?" Senator Rand Paul asked. 
"That's a fact. That's a Tremendous Fact." Paul Krugmann 
"No, the size of government is enormous under President Obama." Rand Paul
But, while the Neoliberal Piss Down Your Back and Tell You It's Raining Prosperity Reaganomic Model has been incredibly successful at transferring Billions from the 99% into the pockets of the 1%, the Tea Party Fanatics don't have a grasp on the finer points of using the Apparatus of Government to steal The Wealth of Nations.

But, it's not the 1970's and 1980's anymore.

The Two-Santa Theory is being hampered by the Zealotry of the Tea Party types who have no time for RINOs and "Squishes", like Mitch McConnell and Grover Norquist, and in their quest for right-wing purity they make war on Working Class, minorities and women.

So, the Republicans have increasingly turn to the new Breed of Democrat, the so-called Reagan Democrat or Pro-Business Democrat or Third Way Democrats, to aid them in passing the Politics of Austerity.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

GOP plans to kill their Hostages. Will the President sacrifice us?

The Republicans have hijacked the US Government and Budget. The Republicans aren't going to destroy the entire Government, they are just going to destroy the Government which helps Us.

Since, Ronald Reagan's elevation and the adoption of Piss Down Your Back and Tell You It's Raining Economics (Supply Side economics), the Republican Party has been steadily undermining  a Government which helps the Poor and Working Class.

This Government Shutdown was coming all along, Republicans had planned it at least a year ago, and it was so the Republicans could hijack the Budget and use it as a "Forcing Mechanism" to enact their Death to the Poor Budget.

Ah, but the Republicans went of half-cocked thanks to the efforts of Senator Ted Cruz and the anti-Obamacare propaganda they've been spewing for the past 4 years.

Nonetheless, the Shutdown is having ancillary benefits for the crotch-sniffing lapdogs of the Plutocracy.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has currently furloughed 1600 of 1611 workers and almost all case handling including hearings, investigations, inspections, elections and more has come to a halt. This is not a negative to Republicans but a desired outcome.

"There is some good news out of the shutdown, the EPA can't issue new regulations." - Republican Marsha Blackburn.

During the last shutdown, Jonathan Schweitzer, an environmental engineer at the agency, and his team was forced to call off a planned inspection at a sewage treatment plant in the Chicago area.
 "During that time the treatment plant violated its discharge limits," he said. "In the long term if we can't review permits and pre-treatment programms, then states and municipalities will likely tend to slack off if nobody is keeping after them as far as their job is concerned protecting the waterways."
Of course, while Republicans hate the EPA and want it eliminated, Chicagoans and other Americans would rather not drink cholera-laden water, 
"It stinks," said John O'Grady, a union representative at the EPA's Chicago office. "No one is going to be out inspecting water discharges, or wet lands. Nobody is going to be out inspecting waste water treatment plants, drinking water treatment plants, or landfills - nothing. None of that is going to be done. The employees are absolutely devastated."
The Republicans message has always been the Government doesn't work. After being elected Republicans exert all their power and spend all their energy ensuring that statement comes true.

What this Shutdown helps them do is sow discontent and exasperation amongst the American people and speed up the transfer of the Wealth of Nations into the bank accounts of the 1%.

Already they have gotten President Obama to agree to funding the Government at Sequestration levels, which represents a huge reduction in spending and is a major compromise.

But, Sequestration levels of spending isn't good enough for the Republicans and their Plutocratic Masters. The 1% want nothing less than the complete and total destruction of the New Deal, the Great Society and the any parts of the Government which helps the Poor and Working Class.

The most frightening part is not that President Obama has signaled his agreement to sequestration budget spending but that some neo-liberal advisors to the President are telling him it's his time, that President Obama is the One who can make changes to Social Security or Medicare and that by agreeing to cuts to entitlements he'll secure his legacy.

If President Obama agrees to any real cuts to Social Security or Medicare he will hand a bloody shirt which the Republicans will wave for a hundred years. And he'll go a long way towards ushering in the Era of Neo-Feudalist Domination of America.