Thursday, July 7, 2011

OBAMA'S WAR ON THE AMERICAN WORKER

The implications for the American people, already suffering under near-depression levels of unemployment and relentless attacks on wages and benefits, are catastrophic.

ASK YOURSELF, ARE OBAMA’S CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS HURTING? ANY GONE TO PRISON?

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ARE JOBS STILL GOING TO ILLEGALS?

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Obama’s budget summit
7 July 2011
Today's White House summit between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders of both parties is part of a stage-managed and cynical charade behind which a bipartisan plan is being worked out to dismantle large parts of basic social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Without any democratic debate and over the heads of the American people—who overwhelmingly oppose the cuts—the social programs of the 20th century are being gutted. Reforms going as far back as the Progressive Era—such as the expansion of public education—and including those of the New Deal and Great Society of the 1930s and 1960s are being reversed.
The implications for the American people, already suffering under near-depression levels of unemployment and relentless attacks on wages and benefits, are catastrophic.
In remarks to the press Tuesday, Obama sent a clear signal to the corporate-financial elite that he is prepared to push through historic cuts. He rejected calls by some Republicans for a short-term deal to raise the federal debt limit before the August 2 default deadline in exchange for a down payment of hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts.
Saying he believed that “right now we’ve got a unique opportunity to do something big,” he declared that “we need to find trillions in savings over the next decade, and significantly more in the decades that follow.” He explicitly targeted “entitlement programs”—i.e., Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps—for massive and permanent cuts.
This attack on health care, pensions and living standards for hundreds of millions of Americans is supposedly to be “balanced” by closing a few tax loopholes for corporations and the rich—token measures, such as ending tax write-offs for corporate jets, that would affect a relative handful of people.
The tax loophole issue is a red herring designed to give the Democrats a measure of political cover while they embrace the entire framework of the so-called budget “debate” dictated by finance capital and promoted most nakedly by the Republicans. The latter reject even the slightest increase in taxes on the wealthy.
Any restriction on tax loopholes for the wealthy that might be enacted will be more than compensated for by tax cuts elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal in an editorial Wednesday proposed a course of action endorsed by the deficit reduction panel appointed by Obama. It advised the Republicans to support the elimination of some tax breaks in exchange for a sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate.
There is a division of labor between the Democratic White House and the Republicans. Obama agrees to carry through the agenda laid out by the financial establishment, while the Republicans provide background noise to promote the fiction that there are serious differences between the two parties, at the same time providing the atmospherics for Obama to move ever further to the right. The same propaganda techniques were used after the Wall Street crash of 2008 to justify the bailout of the banks.
The current austerity campaign confirms what the World Socialist Web Site said at the time about Obama’s health care overhaul. The bill passed last year was aimed at breaking up the existing structure of health care in the US in order to carry through cuts in both corporate and government health care costs. It immediately ran up against massive popular opposition.
Republican Scott Brown won the January 2010 special Senate election in Massachusetts by appealing to opposition to Obama’s bogus health care “reform” among the elderly and workers targeted for cuts in benefits. The so-called Tea Party, a media creation, was launched to channel anger over Obama’s health care plan and the bank bailout and promote the myth that the American people wanted massive cuts in social spending. The Republicans recaptured control of the House of Representatives in the November 2010 midterm elections largely by posing as defenders of Medicare.
In the teeth of this popular opposition the ruling class decided to simply launch a frontal assault on social programs, and then created the crisis situation of a looming US debt default so as to push the measures through.
What is being implemented is a social counterrevolution. There is no precedent for such a far-reaching rollback in social programs and social conditions in modern American history.
Tens of millions of people who presently rely on Medicare or Medicaid will find themselves shut off from access to basic health care. Poverty and disease will rise dramatically. Life expectancy will fall. The US will see the return of infectious diseases associated with poverty such as tuberculosis. The public schools in working class neighborhoods will be turned into little more than holding pens for youth doomed to a lifetime of poverty wages or unemployment.
The trade unions and the liberal-left line up behind Obama, supporting his reelection, because they agree with his right-wing policies. If it takes the destruction of working class living standards to prop up American capitalism, they are for it. Trailing in their wake are the pseudo-left defenders of the trade unions, who devote their efforts to preventing a break by the working class from the Democratic Party and the two-party system.
The Socialist Equality Party approaches the so-called budget debate from the standpoint of intransigent opposition. We reject the entire framework of the discussion and oppose all cuts and all demands that working people “sacrifice” in order to balance the books of the ruling class.
The real causes of the debt crisis are not social programs or a failure of the American people to “live within their means.” The major causes are, first, the long-term decline of American capitalism, expressed most powerfully in the decimation of its industrial base and the stagnation and decline in the living standards of the general population; second, the reorganization of the economy in the interests of finance capital and the consequent growth of social inequality, speculation and economic parasitism; and third, a staggering reduction in taxes for the corporations and the wealthy over the past 30 years.
The responsibility rests not with working people, but with the capitalist system. To the extent that the Democrats and Republicans argue that “there is no money” and the living conditions of the people must be drastically lowered, they provide a powerful argument for the abolition of their own system.
To address the social crisis facing millions of people, we propose the levying of a 90 percent tax on all incomes over $500,000. Just the return to the income tax rates that existed as late as the 1960s would itself bring in hundreds of billions of dollars. We further propose the immediate withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and the cessation of the neo-colonial war in Libya and US interventions in Yemen and Somalia. That would raise hundreds of billions more.
We propose that these funds be used to launch a vast program of public works, to put the unemployed to work rebuilding the crumbling social infrastructure.
Such measures are only the initial steps required to uphold the interests of the working class. But the fight to realize these demands will immediately bring workers into a collision with the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.
The Socialist Equality Party insists that the working class has basic social rights—such as the right to a good-paying job, the right to health care, education and decent housing, the right to a secure retirement, the right to leisure and access to culture. These rights can be secured, however, only through a mass social and political struggle against the ruling class and all of its political parties, representatives and institutions. The conscious aim of this struggle must be the taking of political power by the working class, the expropriation of the wealth of the financial aristocracy, and the transformation of the banks and corporations into public utilities under the democratic control of the working people.
This is an international struggle. Workers in every country—from Greece, to Egypt to the US—face the same attacks and the same enemy. We fight for the international unity of the working class in the struggle for socialism.
The American working class stands at a crossroads. It must mobilize its collective strength against the unfolding social counterrevolution or suffer a catastrophic decline in its living standards and the destruction of its democratic rights.
Workers must and will fight back. Already this year there have been signs of growing opposition, in the form of mass demonstrations in Wisconsin and elsewhere against budget cuts. However, the social assault cannot be stopped by mere protests.
Workers are involved in a political struggle against the entire existing economic and political system. The critical issue is the building of a new political party and a new leadership to arm the coming struggles with a revolutionary socialist program. We urge all of our readers to study the program of the SEP and make the decision to join and build it as the mass party of the working class.
To read the program of the Socialist Equality Party, “The Breakdown of Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the United States,” click here.
Barry Grey
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/07/obamanomics-rich-get-richer-and.html
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WASHINGTON — This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.
Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.
After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven't kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy's meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.
Workers' wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable — about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.
Executive pay is included in this figure, but rank-and-file workers are far more dependent on regular wages and benefits. A big chunk of the economy's gains has gone to investors in the form of higher corporate profits.
"The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders," says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.
Corporate profits up
Corporate profits are up by almost half since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.
And an Associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth from 2009.
Driven by higher profits, the Dow Jones industrial average has staged a breathtaking 90 percent rally since bottoming at 6,547 on March 9, 2009. Those stock market gains go disproportionately to the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans, who own more than 80 percent of outstanding stock, according to an analysis by Edward Wolff, an economist at Bard College.
But if the Great Recession is long gone from Wall Street and corporate boardrooms, it lingers on Main Street:
Unemployment has never been so high — 9.1 percent — this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.
— The average worker's hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.
— The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.
Settling for less
Kathleen Terry is one of those who had to settle for less. Before the recession, she spent 16 years working as a mortgage processor in Southern California, earning as much as $6,500 in a good month, a pace of about $78,000 a year.
But her employer was buried in the housing crash. She found herself out of work for two and a half years. As her savings dwindled, the single mother had to move into a motel with her three daughters.
They got by on welfare and help from their church and friends. Terry started taking a 90-minute bus ride to job training courses. Eventually, she found work as a secretary in the Riverside County, Calif., employment office. She likes the job, but earns just $27,000 a year. "It's a humbling experience," she says.
Hard times have made Americans more dependent than ever on social programs, which accounted for a record 18 percent of personal income in the last three months of 2010 before coming down a bit this year. Almost 45 million Americans are on food stamps, another record.
Ordinary Americans are suffering because of the way the economy ran into trouble and how companies responded when the Great Recession hit.
Soaring housing prices in the mid-2000s made millions of Americans feel wealthier than they were. They borrowed against the inflated equity in their homes or traded up to bigger, more expensive houses. Their debts as a percentage of their annual after-tax income rose to a record 135 percent in 2007.
Not since the Great Depression
Then housing prices started tumbling, helping cause a financial crisis in the fall of 2008. A recession that had begun in December 2007 turned into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.
Economists Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Carmen Reinhart of the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzed eight centuries of financial disasters around the world for their 2009 book "This Time Is Different." They found that severe financial crises create deep recessions and stunt the recoveries that follow.
This recovery "is absolutely following the script," Rogoff says.
Federal Reserve numbers crunched by Haver Analytics suggest that Americans have a long way to go before their finances will be strong enough to support robust spending: Despite cutting what they owe the past three years, the average household's debts equal 119 percent of annual after-tax income. At the same point after the 1981-82 recession, debts were at 66 percent; after the 1990-91 recession, 85 percent; and after the 2001 recession, 114 percent.
Because the labor market remains so weak, most workers can't demand bigger raises or look for better jobs.
Fewer quitting jobs
"In an economic cycle that is turning up, a labor market that is healthy and vibrant, you'd see a large number of people quitting their jobs," says Gluskin Sheff economist Rosenberg. "They quit because the grass is greener somewhere else."
Instead, workers are toughing it out, thankful they have jobs at all. Just 1.7 million workers have quit their job each month this year, down from 2.8 million a month in 2007.
The toll of all this shows in consumer confidence, a measure of how good people feel about the economy. According to the Conference Board's index, it's at 58.5. Healthy is more like 90. By this point after the past three recessions, it was an average of 87.
How gloomy are Americans? A USA Today/Gallup poll eight weeks ago found that 55 percent think the recession continues, even if the experts say it's been over for two years. That includes the 29 percent who go even further — they say it feels more like a depression.
*\ http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-obama-duped-nation-but-his-bankster.html
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“All of these writers proceed from a fact of American life that is becoming impossible to deny: the sharp divergence in the fortunes of the banks and investors, on the one hand, and the broad mass of the population, on the other. The Wall Street giants, the very firms that precipitated the financial crisis, are doing better than ever. They are planning record bonuses while unemployment continues to soar and wages are declining at a rate not seen in decades.”
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“Herbert (“Safety Nets for the Rich,” October 20), adopts a populist tone, complaining, “Even as tens of millions of working Americans are struggling to hang onto their jobs and keep a roof over their families’ heads, the wise guys on Wall Street are licking their fat-cat chops over yet another round of obscene multibillion-dollar bonuses—this time thanks to the bailout billions that were sent their way by Uncle Sam, with very little in the way of strings attached.”
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Underlying both columns is the concern that the Obama administration’s promises of “hope” and “change” are increasingly perceived by those who voted for Obama as hollow phrases. Rich complains that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is “tone deaf” and that “an air of entitlement” wafts from the administration.
People are beginning to feel that they have been duped into lending their support to a government that is unreservedly serving the interests of the banks. To the layer of the liberal establishment represented by Obama’s journalistic would-be advisers, the eruption of opposition to the Obama administration would be an unmitigated disaster.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-how-barack-obama-is.html

Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His
Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses

BY TIMOTHY P CARNEY


Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.” And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the Obama years.”
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs, this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/rich-love-way-obama-gives-jobs-of.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-why-super-rich-love-obama.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obamanomics-rich-donors-get-richer-and.html
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OBAMA’S ONLY JOBS PLAN IS CALLED AMNESTY. HIS UNOFFICIAL VERSION IS CALLED BIT BY BIT BY BIT LA RAZA NON-ENFORCEMENT!
HERE’S WHAT IT REALLY LOOKS LIKE!

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/joe-american-legal-vs-la-raza-jose.html


Gallup: Obama Hits All-Time Low Among Poor; Approval Comparatively Highest Among Rich
Thursday, June 30, 2011
By Terence P. Jeffrey
[President Barack Obama at the U.S. manufacturing headquarters of Cree, a maker of energy-efficient LED lighting, June 13, 2011. (AP photo/Carolyn Kaster)
(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama’s approval has hit an all-time low among the poorest Americans, according to the Gallup poll. Meanwhile, when compared to the other income brackets reported by Gallup, Obama's approval is highest among the richest Americans.
In the week of June 20-26--the most recent week published by Gallup--only 45 percent of Americans in the lowest income bracket reported by the polling company (those earning less than $2,000 per month) said they approved of the job Obama was doing as president.
Gallup publishes the president’s weekly approval numbers [2] among Americans in four income brackets: those earning less than $2,000 per month, those earning between $2,000 and $4,999 per month, those earning between $5,000 and $7,499 and those earning more than $7,500.
In Gallup's most recent survey, Obama had majority approval in none of these income brackets.
However, of the four, his approval was highest--47 percent--in the richest bracket, those earning more than $7,500 per month.
His approval rating last was 42 percent among those earning $2,000 to $4,999 per month and 43 percent among those earning $5,000 to $7,499 per month.
Prior to last week, when it hit an all-time low of 45 percent, Obama’s approval rating among the poorest bracket reported by Gallup had never dropped below 47 percent. It had hit that level twice: first in the week of Nov. 8-14, 2010; then again in the week of April 25-May 1.
In addition to being at an all-time low among the poorest Americans, Obama’s approval rating is also nearly at an all-time low among the next poorest group of Americans reported by Gallup, those who earn between $2,000 and $4,999 per month. The only time his approval among this group was lower than the 42 percent it was last week was in the week of Aug. 23-29, 2010, when it dropped to 41 percent.
According to Gallup, Obama’s highest approval rating among the poorest Americans came in the week of March 16-22, 2009, just two months after he was inaugurated and one month after he signed his $787-billion economic stimulus law. That week, his approval was 68 percent among Americans earning less than $2,000 per month.
In March 2009, the unemployment rate in the United States was 8.6 percent. This month, it is 9.1 percent.
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WAR ON THE AMERICAN WORKER!
WE ARE LOSING!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/07/frosty-wooldridge-immigration-is.html
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WASHINGTON, OBAMA’S LA RAZA INFESTED ADMINISTRATION, THE ACLU FIGHTING FOR ILLEGALS, AND THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE HAVE JOINED WITH MEXICO A IN A WAR AGAINST THE AMERICAN WORKER!
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/joe-american-legal-vs-la-raza-jose.html

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