LOS ANGELES COUNTY, THE HOMELESS CAPITAL OF AMERICA, SPENDS $1.5 BILLION YEARLY ON WELFARE FOR ILLEGALS. HOW MANY CONDOS FOR LOW INCOME LEGALS COULD THAT HAVE BOUGHT BY NOW? ANYTHING TO KEEP THE INVASION OF 'CHEAP' LABOR COMING!!!
US ruling class sets the stage for a massive attack on Social Security and Medicare
A major editorial published Wednesday by the New York Times under the headline “America Is Living on Borrowed Money” gives the signal from the leading corporate media organ aligned with the Democratic Party for a full-scale onslaught on social benefits for working people, particularly Social Security and Medicare, the two largest social programs.
The editorial is thoroughly dishonest, purporting to be concerned about the rise in interest payments to investors, declaring, “Rather than collecting taxes from the wealthy, the government is paying the wealthy to borrow their money.” It then bemoans the refusal of the Republicans to raise taxes on the wealthy.
But after the populist pretenses, the real point is slipped in at the end:
Democrats must recognize that changes to Social Security and Medicare, the major drivers of federal spending growth going forward, should be on the table. Anything less will prove fiscally unsustainable. That will require painful choices.
There is no doubt that the sole purpose of the editorial is to raise the necessity for what is euphemistically called “entitlement reform” in the think tanks that study the policy options for the US ruling elite. In plain language, this means gutting the two main programs on which tens of millions of elderly and retired people depend for income support and health insurance.
The reference to Social Security and Medicare as “the major drivers of federal spending growth going forward” is particularly cynical. It amounts to a backhanded admission that these programs are not the cause of the massive ballooning of the federal debt over the past 25 years, while claiming that they will play that role in the future. The editorial never mentions the multiple bailouts of Wall Street and the banking system or the massive expenditures on the wars of the past three decades. It does not refer, in its warning of future deficit growth, to President Biden’s pledge to fund the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”
The editorial thus contradicts an instructive analysis published in the pages of the Times itself only six months ago, when the federal government first exhausted its borrowing authority, leading to the manufactured crisis over the debt ceiling. This study, published January 22 under the headline “How the US Government Amassed $31 Trillion in Debt,” gave a factual accounting of the actual sources of the accumulated deficits.
The US federal debt rose from roughly $5 trillion when George W. Bush took office in January 2001 to $31.4 trillion in January 2023, some 22 years later, an average increase of $1.2 trillion a year. The contributors to the rising debt can be summarized briefly:
Wars in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and other operations linked to the “war on terror” cost $6 trillion. This does not include the costs for the war against Russia in Ukraine, the military buildup against China in the Asia-Pacific, or the ongoing expense of maintaining the vast US military machine worldwide, now running at $1 trillion a year.
Tax cuts, primarily to the wealthy, cost well over $7 trillion. One study found that the Bush tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, cut $5.6 trillion in revenue from 2001 to 2018. They continue in force under a bipartisan deal between the Obama administration and House Republicans in 2012, which preserved most of the original package, so there have been additional losses in revenue. The Trump tax cuts, enacted at the end of 2017, have added another $1.2 trillion and continue in effect under the Biden administration.
Bailouts of Wall Street and the financial system as a whole have cost $5.7 trillion: $800 billion in the 2008 crash, enacted by a Democratic Congress under the Obama administration; $3 trillion in 2020 in the CARES Act passed on a bipartisan basis and signed into law by Trump; and $1.9 trillion in Biden’s American Recovery Act, the second round of bailouts linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Times analysis in January concluded: “The biggest—and often bipartisan—drivers of debt have been the federal responses to two sharp economic downturns: the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic recession.”
But on Wednesday there is no reference by the liars on the Times Editorial Board to the bailouts of the financial aristocracy. Added to this is at least $5 trillion in interest costs over that period, what the Times editorial refers to as “paying the wealthy to borrow their money.”
Social spending, by contrast, was only a marginal contributor to the increase. The Times analysis in January noted that Medicare spending increased by up to $100 billion a year because of Bush’s addition of a prescription drug benefit, while suggesting that Obama’s Affordable Care Act actually reduced Medicare spending compared to previous projections.
As for discretionary social spending (on education, transportation, housing, the environment and similar programs), this is such a small component of the overall budget that the Times analysis did not even mention it. This category of spending has declined substantially under the terms of the 2012 agreement between Obama and the Republicans.
The four main drivers of budget deficits—wars, tax cuts, bailouts and interest payments—account for nearly $24 trillion of the $26 trillion rise in the total federal debt since 2000. The ruling class has been running the federal budget for two purposes: to finance imperialist aggression and to stuff its own pockets with untold wealth.
Yet it regards the modest incomes of the retired and disabled as extravagant and insupportable, a sentiment no doubt exacerbated by the significant jump in Social Security payments this year due to the acceleration of inflation. Corporate America, with the collaboration of the unions, has eliminated cost-of-living escalators for most workers, but retirees on Social Security still get a yearly boost that partially offsets rising prices.
The analysis in the Times published six months ago suggests a blueprint for the working class in responding to the moaning about the bankruptcy of the federal government. Workers should reply to the demands for sacrifice by declaring that those who have run the United States into the ground financially should pay the consequences, not working people.
The ruling class parasites should be expropriated, through the nationalization of the banks, the hedge funds and the financial system as a whole, as well as the seizure of the personal fortunes of the billionaires and multi-millionaires. The financial system should be reorganized under the democratic control of the working class, with the books opened to make all its operations transparent and comprehensible, ending the endemic corruption and criminal manipulation by the super-rich.
The Pentagon war machine should be dismantled, along with an end to all US military operations overseas and a halt to US military aid and economic support to dictatorships and right-wing regimes: Ukraine, Israel, Egypt, the Gulf monarchies and the like.
There is a remarkable similarity between the present bankruptcy of the American government and the crisis of the monarchy in France on the eve of the great Revolution of 1789. King Louis XVI was compelled to summon the Estates-General to obtain additional revenue because his regime had been bankrupted by endless wars and the profligacy and mismanagement of the ruling nobility. He soon lost his head, and the aristocrats lost their estates.
There is a more contemporary point of reference as well. During the heyday of liberal social reformism in the mid-1960s, there was a ferocious debate in the US political establishment over the federal budget. Spending on the Vietnam War was constraining the ability of the Lyndon Johnson administration to finance “Great Society” programs like the newly introduced Medicare and Medicaid programs, along with the whole edifice of Johnson’s supposed “War on Poverty.”
The debate was framed as “guns vs. butter,” and Johnson initially tried to have it both ways, spending ever-increasing sums on the genocidal war against the Vietnamese revolution, while at the same time expanding the welfare state at home. But the contradiction derailed his reformist promises and ultimately his administration as a whole.
Today there is no longer any debate within the ruling elite. It has opted decisively for militarism and war, against Russia in Ukraine, and, looming on the horizon, against China in the vast Indo-Pacific region, home to more than half of humanity. The Times editorial demonstrates that no section of the ruling class can offer a progressive solution to this crisis.
It is a task that falls to the working class, through the building of a mass revolutionary movement based on a socialist program.
Scott Baio on Moving to Florida: ‘I’ve Watched Southern California Devolve into a Third World Country’
Actor Scott Baio, the Charles in Charge, Arrested Development star, said he moved from California to Florida because the Golden State had devolved into a “third-world country.”
Baio gave his explanation for the big move when speaking with Fox News host Jesse Watters on Tuesday.
“I’ve been there for 45 years, Jesse, and I’ve watched Southern California devolve into a third world country,” Baio said. “Between the homeless defecating on the sidewalk, doing drugs on the sidewalk in the middle of the day, illegal aliens all over the place, laws mean nothing, crime is out of control, graffiti on everything.”
“And all my tax dollars, I don’t know what they go for. I’m afraid to go to the mall, my wife and kid are afraid to go to the mall,” he added. “I’ve been in California a very, very long time and it’s so sad to me, I’ve got family and I’ve got friends there. I didn’t want to leave, but I’ve been pretty much forced out.”
Though Baio would list himself as a conservative, he did note that other less conservative celebrities like Katy Perry have also left California.
“You know what’s interesting to me? You know how many requests I’ve had for interviews because I tweeted I’m leaving California? Maybe 40. Nobody has ever asked, that I know of, any liberal actor that’s left California to come on and talk about why they left California,” Baio said. “Katy Perry left California to move to Kentucky or something. Me, because I want to get out of the hell hole that it’s become, I don’t get it. I must be a unicorn or something.”
Baio also scolded California for floating the possibility of slavery and racial reparations. As Breitbart News reported, the California Reparations Task Force also recommended that California review its past housing ordinances to rectify any discrimination.
Despite initially opposing reparations, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) eventually caved and backed the proposal.
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
Poll: 7 in 10 Voters Say U.S. in State of ‘Cultural and Economic Decline’
Seven in ten Americans believe the U.S. is in a state of “cultural and economic decline,” the latest Convention of States Action/Trafalgar Group survey found.
The survey asked respondents if they believe the U.S. is in a state of “cultural and economic decline” and found that most, 72.5 percent, believe it is. Another 21.6 believe it is not, and 5.9 percent remain unsure.
Interestingly, there is bipartisan consensus, as most — 91.7 percent of Republicans, 71.5 percent of independents, and 50.7 percent of Democrats — believe the U.S. is in a state of cultural and economic decline.
When asked who is best equipped to reverse this state of decline, most across the board, 80.6 percent, said “everyday Americans” as opposed to 19.4 percent who said “elected officials.”
Once again, there is bipartisan consensus as 72.1 percent of Democrats, 80.7 percent of Republicans, and 87.5 percent of independents agree that “everyday Americans” are best equipped to halt and reverse the decline.
The survey was taken June 5-9, among 1,088 general election voters and has a +/- 2.9 percent margin of error.
The poll was released toward the end of what society has deemed “pride month,” which put the general state of cultural decay on full display, with woke companies pushing leftist agenda items to the forefront of their businesses.
Target, for example, came under fire after pushing the transgender agenda, offering transgender swimsuits for adults. One such swimsuit was advertised as “tuck-friendly” for males who wish to “tuck away” their genitals to appear more feminine. Target also advertised a swimsuit as having a “light binding” effect for females who wish to flatten their breasts to appear more masculine.
Target Pride Month merchandise display (Phillip Pessar/Flickr)
Perhaps what is more, the popular retailer also offered an array of pride-themed items for children and babies, including apparel advertised as “Thoughtfully Fit on Multiple Body Types and Gender Expressions.”
RELATED VIDEO — “FIGHT THE CIS-TEM”: Pride Merchandise Being Sold at Target Includes Coloring Books for Children:
Matt Perdie / Breitbart News
Meanwhile, economic decline has been on the forefront of Americans’ minds since President Biden took office, as the country has experienced high inflation and record-high gas prices during that time.
Most, 52 percent, disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, the latest survey from The Economist/YouGov found.
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