BANKS MADE MORE DURING OBAMA’S
FIRST TWO YEARS THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH. OBAMA KEPT HIS PROMISE THAT NOT ONE
BANKSTER WOULD BE PUNISHED... HIS DOJ IS TOO BUSY PUSHING OBAMA’S LA RAZA
AGENDA OF NO E-VERIFY, NO ID REQUIRED OF ILLEGALS, AND DREAM ACT AMNESTIES....
HOLDER HAS ARMED THE MEX DRUG
CARTELS, APPEARED AT LA RAZA CONVENTIONS TO KISS UP TO OBAMA’S PARTY BASE OF
ILLEGALS, AND SUED AMERICAN STATES TO PUSH OBAMA’S LA RAZA AGENDA!
WASHINGTON -- The
poor and middle classes have shouldered by far the heaviest burdens of the
global political obsession with austerity policies over the past three years.
In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education,
public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe,
welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their
lives.
Austerity's Big Winners Prove To
Be Wall Street And The Wealthy
Posted: 07/23/2012 1
This article is part of a Huffington Post series on the global impact of austerity --
"A Thousand Cuts" -- from affordable housing funds lost in San
Francisco to increasing class sizes in New York, food inspector cuts in Canada,
disability benefits taken away in the United Kingdom, decimation of France's
solar industry, and more. Click here for information on how you can
help people affected by these measures.
WASHINGTON -- The
poor and middle classes have shouldered by far the heaviest burdens of the
global political obsession with austerity policies over the past three years.
In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education,
public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe,
welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their
lives.
But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government
programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of
conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class,
as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax
cuts for the wealthiest citizens.
U.S. financial interests that stand to gain from Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security cutbacks "have been the core of the big con," the
"propaganda," that those programs are in crisis and must be slashed,
said James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas.
Advocates of austerity measures have sold their proposals as a means to
improve the economy.
"It is an error to think that fiscal austerity is a threat to growth
and job creation," declared European Central Bank President Jean-Claude
Trichet in July 2010.
"We're going to cut spending to get the debt down, help create jobs
and prosperity, and reform government programs," vowed Rep. Paul Ryan
(R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, in a February 2011 commentary
for Real Clear Politics. Ryan would later declare that his budget plan, with
far more aggressive austerity measures than those ultimately enacted by
Congress -- including $6.2 trillion in spending cuts -- would have spurred $1.5 trillion in economic
growth and created 2.5 million jobs.
As for the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, it is often
described by Beltway insiders as a "centrist" proposal that could
"bring the country together"
and improve the economy. In fact, Simpson-Bowles is yet another austerity program that would cut Medicare
and Social Security while securing tax breaks for corporations and the
well-off, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities.
Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of the bipartisan commission that worked on the
plan, is a director at Morgan Stanley, the sixth-largest American bank and a
financial institution for which the United States made huge commitments to help
it weather the economic downturn. Morgan Stanley took $10 billion in bailout
funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program and received more than $100
billion a day in cheap loans from the Federal Reserve at the height of the past
financial crisis. For weeks, Morgan Stanley borrowed more money from the Fed than the
company's stock market value.
That solicitude for the profits of big corporations shows up in
Simpson-Bowles too. The plan offers multiple corporate tax reform proposals,
but one, which calls for shifting to a so-called territorial tax system, would
be especially advantageous to Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street banks. It
would allow U.S. companies to permanently avoid paying U.S. taxes on overseas
income, including money stashed in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
According to a 2008 report by the Government
Accountability Office, Morgan Stanley operates 273 sub-companies
headquartered in such tax havens.
While Social Security advocates have attacked the plan,
the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group for corporate CEOs, has praised Simpson-Bowles. So
has Peter Peterson, who served as Richard Nixon's commerce secretary before
founding Blackstone Group, a major private equity firm. Peterson has long
advocated cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and he started a think tank
devoted to federal debt reduction in 2008.
"I'm a great fan of Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson," Peterson told Bloomberg in 2011.
"I think they're American heroes."
As many economists predicted,
however, the austerity policies implemented after the financial crisis have
proved to be a losing proposition for the global economy. The strong economic
growth that austerity advocates predicted has not materialized, with the United
States showing only anemic improvements, and European countries sliding back
into devastating recessions.
At the same time, corporate profits in the financial industry remain above
even the levels reached at the height of the housing bubble, according to
Commerce Department data. And elites on both sides of the Atlantic have secured
generous tax breaks, made possible in part by cuts to social services.
In the United States, President George W. Bush's tax breaks for the
wealthiest citizens were extended, while unemployment benefits and even food stamps have gone on
the chopping block.
This tradeoff is even more apparent at the state level. In 2010, New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie (R) opted not to make the $3 billion annual contribution to
the state workers' pension fund, instead securing $1 billion in tax
cuts for the state's better-off residents. Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker (R) has similarly proposed budgets that provide tax breaks for
corporations and the rich while demanding pay and benefit cuts for middle-class
state workers.
"Austerity policies are literally a redistribution from the bottom of
the income spectrum to the top," said Dorian Warren, a professor of
political science at Columbia University and a fellow at the Roosevelt
Institute, an economic policy think tank. "In Wisconsin, both wealthy
people and businesses got tax breaks, while middle-class and working-class
employees of the state essentially got crushed."
Warren emphasized that there are political dimensions to the austerity
push. Efforts to curb collective bargaining rights -- and thus pay and benefits
-- for state employees cut to the heart of the American labor movement. With
only 7 percent of the private-sector workforce unionized, public-sector unions
are a critical component of labor's political influence and an important bloc
in Democratic Party operations.
Governments in Europe, most notably the United Kingdom, have also pursued tax cuts for the rich
while imposing austerity measures on the working classes. And the European
financier class has benefited even more directly than their American
counterparts from these budgets.
Every time the European Union has reached a crisis point on the debt
carried by Greece or Spain, EU leaders, especially German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, have come to the rescue with bailout funds. That money goes to the
banks that own Greek and Spanish debt, whose holdings would take a hit if
either country were unable to repay. But the bailout comes with harsh austerity
requirements intended to encourage budgetary discipline, so it's ordinary
citizens who end up taking the hit. The most vulnerable populations are harmed
by the bailouts, while the well-paid financial professionals who made the deals
to finance Greek and Spanish deficits in the first place continue profiting
handsomely.
"Imposing pain on Greeks is ... a blood price for the ever-repeated
bailouts whose actual beneficiaries are said to be Greeks, but are in fact
French and German bankers," said Galbraith.
The consequences have been dire. In Greece, HIV/AIDS infections have soared 1,500 percent since
the end of 2010, as public health programs and anti-drug campaigns have been
decimated. Unemployment has risen above 20 percent in both Greece and Spain.
Yet none of this has slowed the bipartisan American political movement for greater
austerity. The U.S. budget will reach the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of
the year, when a number of tax breaks expire and harsh budget cuts under the
2011 debt ceiling deal kick in. Republicans in Congress are calling for
additional slashing of federal spending, and they have been joined by Wall
Street Democrats. Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), now a managing
director at Morgan Stanley who supported the American bank bailout, advocated
for austerity during a June appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Obviously, we hope that things go well there in Greece," Ford
said. "And when I say, 'well,' I mean that the austerity camp wins
out."
“We could cut unemployment in half simply by reclaiming the jobs
taken by illegal workers,” said Representative Lamar Smith of
Texas, co-chairman of the Reclaim American Jobs Caucus. “President Obama is on
the wrong side of the American people on immigration. The president should
support policies that help citizens and legal immigrants find the jobs they
need and deserve rather than fail to enforce immigration laws.”
*
THE
BELOW FIGURES ARE DATED. IT’S NOW ESTIMATED THAT THE MEX OCCUPATION DEPRESSES
WAGES FROM $300 TO $400 BILLION PER YEAR.
THIS
IS WHY OBAMA SABOTAGED E-VERIFY, AND THE U.S. CHAMBER of COMMERCE SUPPORTS
OBAMA’S OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS, AND SABOTAGE OF E-VERIFY!
OBAMA’S
SEC. of ILLEGAL LABOR IS LA RAZA SUPREMACIST HILDA SOLIS. SHE DECLARES THAT
“WE” ARE ALL AMERICANS. LEGALS AND MEX LOOTERS!
“The principal
beneficiaries of our current immigration policy are affluent Americans who hire
immigrants at substandard wages for low-end work. Harvard economist George
Borjas estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed
wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market at the low-wage end.” Christian Science Monitor
*
“Listen to people from the National
Council of La Raza, LULAC, CARECEN, Latino TV networks, the Piolin radio show
(that’s Hispanic anti-Rush Limbaugh), and you will see that the U.S. is replete
with its own Chavezes-in-waiting.”
Most threatening internal American issue since slavery
By Frosty Wooldridge
In the past week,
since the Supreme Court upheld a key component of Arizona’s anti-illegal
immigration law S.B. 1070, millions of illegal alien migrants spoke defiantly
against the law and grew more vociferous in their collective voice to break the
law.
Over eight million of
them work full time jobs in our communities across the nation. Over 20 million
of them reside in our country in violation of our laws. They siphon our
medical, educational, welfare and prison systems out of multiple billions of
dollars.
They benefit only
rich corporations that hire those illegals, yet the average American taxpayer
subsidizes illegals’ presence in this country. The rich benefit while citizens
pay their bills. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports illegals and presses for
an endless stream of them. Notice that stream continues year in and year out
for the past 30 years.
Nothing has stopped
it. Not our 14 million unemployed nor our seven million underemployed! Not our
devastated educational systems faltering beyond repair in California and
everywhere illegal alien children collect.
The U.S. Congress
continues to kick the can down the road. Speaker of the House John Boehner
nullifies, at every juncture, any attempt to pass E-Verify to force employers
to check immigration status. The House and Senate continue to pump no less than
100,000 legal green card holding foreign workers into this country every 30
days, 12 months of the year. Corporations force additional H-2B Silicon Valley
visas to insource jobs away from millions of Americans. Farmers and ranchers
cheat the H-2A visas that would give them unlimited legal farm labor in favor
of illegal alien labor—but cheaper and off the books. Finally, the past five
presidents failed to enforce our immigration employment laws at every
intersection.
It’s as if, our
presidents and Congress want to take this country down to its knees. No amount
of logic, no amount of suffering by our middle class, no amount of poverty will
make our leaders stop this massive illegality thriving within our country.
Result: we are losing
our national identity. Last week, Muslims in Detroit stoned peaceful marching
Christians and the police arrested the Christians rather than go after the
Muslims who were clearly breaking the law. Mexicans continue their takeover of
Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities by displacing our language and
customs in our own country. Arabic grows in its majority language status in
Detroit and even in Washington DC from influx of Middle Eastern immigrants that
refuse to meld into the American mosaic.
Legal and illegal
immigration constitute the greatest internal issue of our country since slavery
at the signing of the U.S. Constitution.
I talked with
Bromwell Ault, director of the www.centerforpublicconscience.org in West Palm Springs, Florida. He
writes and publishes the “Matters of Conscience” quarterly.
He addressed
Florida’s rampant illegal immigration problem with his local paper.
“Your recent coverage
of this topic, like most others, fails to adequately inform the reader of the
importance of this issue,” Ault said. “Which could well turn out to be the most
threatening internal issue we have faced since slavery.
“Although there are
multiple similarities between them, far too many Americans view immigration as
a question that should and will be solved by Congress. They are dead right
about "should" and tragically wrong about "will", as every
congress and president since the Reagan amnesty of 1986 has "kicked the
can down the road" by refusing to enforce existing law. This is a deeply
flawed choice that destroys the balance between our three branches of
government that is spelled out and required by our Constitution.
“Immigration, like
slavery, is not just one issue. Both raise serious constitutional, economic,
political and social questions which, of course, our political representatives
are unwilling to address because it is impossible to discuss immigration
sensibly and openly without causing offense or creating opposition to one or
more constituencies. As votes are easily lost by having firm opinions, the
tactic of choice is to speak as generally as possible and to defer any real
action.
“This is not new. Our
founding fathers and their successors dodged the slavery bullet for seventy
years during which time the money and power that surrounded the issue grew ever
larger until it was no longer possible to be contained. We are engaged in the
same process today with immigration with the exception that the numbers today
(i.e., population, money, votes, taxpayer funding, etc.) are exponentially
larger than they were 150 years ago.
“The American voter
deserves a better presentation of our growing immigration crisis than has so
far been made available from government, the main stream media, both major
political parties and our educational and religious institutions.”
Ironically, Obama
enhances and supports illegal migration. Congress does everything to continue
it. No matter how bad it gets for Americans, their own leaders will continue
import 100,000 legal immigrants every 30 days until our national identity,
language, educational systems cannot and will not remain American.
Worse, the American
people sit, stand, grow fat and lethargic year after year as their national
identity morphs into multiple countries and languages.
Look at what is
happening and will happen. We continue on course to add 100 million immigrants
within 38 years—by 2050. (Source: PEW Hispanic Report, “US Population
Projections” Fogel/Martin at www.FAIRUS.org and U.S. Census Bureau)
In a five minute
astoundingly simple yet brilliant video, “Immigration,
Poverty, and Gum Balls”, Roy Beck, director of www.numbersusa.ORG, graphically illustrates the impact of overpopulation. Take
five minutes to see for yourself:
“Immigration by the numbers—off the chart” by Roy Beck
This 10 minute
demonstration shows Americans the results of unending mass immigration on the
quality of life and sustainability for future generations: in a word “Mind
boggling!” www.NumbersUSA.org
But the kind of
America that you see in the second demonstration does not have to happen. You
can prevent it by working with www.NumbersUSA.org and www.CapsWeb.org
and become part of nearly 1.5 million Americans who send in pre written faxes
to force your Congressional critters to change course. Do it today and tell all
your friends.
##
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as eight times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. His latest book is: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, copies at 1 888 280 7715/ Motivational program: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, click:
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as eight times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. His latest book is: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, copies at 1 888 280 7715/ Motivational program: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, click:
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