They’re up to it again – this time with what they call the “fiscal cliff.”The "fiscal cliff" rhetoric coming from the nation's financial and political elites is "all hysteria," says Hartmann.
Beware of con men bearing slogans. The oldest trick in the book is for conservatives – cons – to create hysteria around something, and then get all of us to give them billions of our tax dollars to fix the problem they’ve gotten us all hysterical about.
Four generations ago, the right was whipping up hysteria about Reefer Madness. They got us to spend trillions over the years incarcerating mostly poor people for a mostly victimless crime. But they made a fortune doing it! And now they’re even building private prisons to hold potheads.
Three generations ago, the right was whipping up hysteria about Communism. Although Khrushchev never actually said, “We will bury you,” right-wingers and their PR machine made sure every American thought he did. And the Red Chinese were going to take down Vietnam and that domino would flip other countries from Laos to Canada – and pretty soon North Dakota would be filled with commies. They got us to spend trillions over the years building nukes and having pointless wars. But they made a fortune doing it! And now that they’re making money partnering with China, they’d like us to forget that it’s still officially a communist country. No droids in this car!
Two generations ago, the right was whipping up hysteria about taxes and regulation. Reagan told us that – even though the decades of the 50s, 60s, and 70s had been among the strongest in American history in terms of GDP growth and growth of the middle class – still, taxes on rich people were so high, and regulation of industry was so bad, that if we didn’t do something about it now, disasters would happen. They got us to spend trillions giving tax breaks to billionaires, and deregulated giant corporations so they could destroy most small and medium-sized American businesses in the great Mergers and Acquisitions frenzy. But they made a fortune doing it!
And in this generation, the right is whipping up hysteria about our national debt. They want us to be afraid, very afraid, that because of their war on drugs, their war on communism, and their war on taxes and regulation, our country now is trillions of dollars in debt.
It becomes particularly ironic when they get hysterical about a program that goes into effect at the end of this year that will modestly raise taxes back to where they were when Bill Clinton was president, and will cut spending, particularly military spending, although not even close enough to take us back to where it was before Bush.
We don’t have a “fiscal cliff” to worry about – we have a jobs cliff.
They call this the “fiscal cliff,” as if it’s something we could fall over the edge of and die from the crash. But it’s all hysteria. The tax increases on middle class people are easily remedied with a tax cut – something Republicans say they love. And the spending cuts sound like a lot – over a trillion dollars – but that’s over the next ten years. That’s plenty of time to go through those things and decide which is important, like keeping long-term unemployment benefits flowing, and which can wait, like building more bombs.
In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is another classic example of what Naomi Klein called “Disaster Capitalism.” Create a panic, and then profit from it. For example, Wall Street is helping fund groups like the Third Way that are pushing hard for us to give our Social Security Trust Fund – which has over two and a half trillion dollars in it – to Goldman Sachs and Citibank so they can take care of it for us. Doesn’t that make you feel all safe, and warm-and-fuzzy?
While we have a large debt, it’s not as large as it was after World War II. And how did we solve it then? Presidents Truman and Eisenhower – a Democrat and a Republican – both realized it wasn’t a “cliff” or a debt problem: it was a jobs problem. So they invested billions of dollars in sending millions of Americans to college for free, and billions more in building highways, schools, and hospitals. Those investments paid off in more and better jobs, which meant more taxpayers, which meant more tax revenue. As if by magic, the World War Two debt was paid off!
We need to change the conversation. We don’t have a “fiscal cliff” to worry about – we have a jobs cliff. Giant corporations and their conservative buddies have been sending those jobs overseas as fast as they can, and, while it’s making the fat cats rich, it’s wiping out the middle class.
It’s time for a national conversation about our insane trade policies and how we can grow real jobs, not just fast-food jobs. No fiscal cliff or grand bargain needed – let’s just put Americans back to work.
In a conference call with fund-raisers and donors to his campaign, Mr. Romney said Wednesday afternoon that the president had followed the “old playbook” of using targeted initiatives to woo specific interest groups — “especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people.”
“In each case, they were very generous in what they gave to those groups,” Mr. Romney said, contrasting Mr. Obama’s strategy to his own of “talking about big issues for the whole country: military strategy, foreign policy, a strong economy, creating jobs and so forth.”
Mr. Romney’s comments in the 20-minute conference call came after his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, told WISC-TV in Madison on Monday that their loss was a result of Mr. Obama’s strength in “urban areas,” an analysis that did not account for Mr. Obama’s victories in more rural states like Iowa and New Hampshire or the decrease in the number of votes for the president relative to 2008 in critical urban counties in Ohio.
“With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” Mr. Romney said. “Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.”
Your right, the wealthy have the advantage of being rich they can out last bad policies. One hundred and sixty workers laid off this is just one example of what we have to look forward to for the next four years. There is going to be lay off after lay off after layoff due to this administrations anti business policies. You can not be for job creation and be unfriendly to the job creators. Unless you think the only job creator is the federal government. The job creators are the wealthy in this country. Here is a good question for you? Have you heard of any jobs being created because of Obamacare that were not government jobs?
"Your right, the wealthy have the advantage of being rich they can out last bad policies."
You're right - they just have to wait a few more election cycles, and the reoub party will cease to be relevant at the national level, just like it already is in CA
And their bad policies will be gone.
Just Another Failed Ideology Consigned To The Ash Heap Of History.
Conservatives are such hypocrites on health care. They say the government should not provide single payer health care like the rest of the civilized world, that people should get their health insurance from their work.
and then they want people's work to be totally free to not offer their workers any health insurance.
Meanwhile the uninsured pay twice as much for the same procedure than an insurance company gets charged for it.
Translation, You non-elite working class chumps can suck it!
A judge from the Western District of Washington Seattle Court approved a class action suit against Papa John's on Friday. The plaintiffs, three people from Washington State, are standing in for thousands of customers claiming that Papa John's and a marketing firm called OnTime4U worked together to send spam texts to customers who hadn't given their consent to be texted with marketing information, violating the US Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991.
The Seattle law firm Heyrich Kalish McGuigan is representing the plaintiffs. It claims Papa John's customers received 500,000 unwanted text messages nationally, and the firm also claims this could cost Papa John's $500 per text message (a bill that would tally up to $250 million). While such a large payout is highly unlikely, a class-action payout may be in the future for the pizza chain.
There is going to be lay off after lay off after layoff due to this administrations anti business policies.
Sure. That's why unemployment is down from 9.8% to less than 8% over the last two years.
You can not be for job creation and be unfriendly to the job creators. Unless you think the only job creator is the federal government. The job creators are the wealthy in this country.
That's a myth. If you want to see what the wealthy really do with their money, look at Mitt Romney. Is he creating jobs with his wealth? No. Zero. He is investing his money in the tax shelters afforded in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Switzerland.
a "crisis for women"? well, at least, they all have insurance
Yes Bookworm and you will be happy to know that our right wing christian evangelist federal government is doing its best to bleed our national healthcare system of the required funding and human resources it needs via lowering taxation of corporations and higher incomes and depending on wildly oscilating resource royalties, which of course they low ball to start with.
Sounds familiar? If you deliberately make it weak, you strengthen the case for an alternate system - privatization.
. CIA: We Didn’t Ask for Help During Benghazi Attack
Source: TDB
by Eli Lake Nov 15, 2012 4:45 AM EST
The agency’s acting director will tell Congress today that agents on the ground the night Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed never requested military assistance, Eli Lake reports.
When the CIA’s acting director, Michael Morell, testifies Thursday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he is expected to say that the agency never requested Europe-based special operations teams, specialized Marine platoons, or armed drones on the night of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official.
The disclosure may put an end to one line of inquiry into the Benghazi affair about why reinforcements from the region were not sent on the night of the attack. “Assistance from the U.S. military was critical, and we got what we requested,” the senior U.S. intelligence official said.
According to a Pentagon timeline made public last week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta prepared multiple military responses from the region at around midnight Benghazi time, more than two hours after the initial assault began. Those orders included mobilizing two special Marine platoons known as Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) from Rota, Spain, to deploy to Tripoli and Benghazi. Panetta also ordered a special operations force, training in central Europe, to deploy at the Signonella Airbase in Italy. Another special operations team based in the United States also prepared to deploy to Libya.
The CIA, however, requested none of that assistance. Neither did the State Department. None of those teams ever arrived in Benghazi.
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