Showing posts with label Democratic Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democratic Party. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Here's what REAL socialists think of Obama's Victory

Excerpted from The World Socialist Website: 

Obama will repay those who turned out to vote for him by carrying out measures that will devastate their jobs, living standards and social conditions. The “grand bargain” that he has pledged to negotiate with the Republicans will come at the expense of the working class, through trillions in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs.

Obama also hailed the US military, mentioning specifically the special forces troops who killed Osama bin Laden, while claiming that his administration was “bringing war to an end.” This was a reference to Afghanistan, but US troops will remain there in force for years to come, while those who are moved out will be redeployed for intervention in Syria, Iran or other targets of imperialist military attack.

Many who voted for Obama did so to keep Romney and the Republicans out, not because they were enthusiastic about a second Obama term.

The Democrats will, as always, interpret their own victory in the most restrained and conservative terms. The last thing they want is a mandate to oppose the plutocracy, since they serve the same corporate interests. They will extend the olive branch to the Republicans, allowing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to set the agenda in Washington, as it has for the past two years.

The Obama White House made virtually no effort to elect a Democratic-controlled House, with the president providing a recorded phone call offering his personal support to only one Democratic congressional candidate. Read more >>

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Thursday, August 9, 2012

U.S. Debt Just Grew by $11 Trillion

Republicans and Democrats spent last summer battling how best to save $2.1 trillion over the next decade. They are spending this summer battling how best to not save $2.1 trillion over the next decade. In the course of that year, the U.S. government’s fiscal gap -- the true measure of the nation’s indebtedness -- rose by $11 trillion.

The fiscal gap is the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue. It captures all government liabilities, whether they are official obligations to service Treasury bonds or unofficial commitments, such as paying for food stamps or buying drones.

Some question whether “official” and “unofficial” spending commitments can be added together. But calling particular obligations “official” doesn’t make them economically more important. Indeed, the government would sooner renege on Chinese holding U.S. Treasuries than on Americans collecting Social Security, especially because the U.S. can print money and service its bonds with watered-down dollars.

For its part, economic theory sees through labels and views a country’s official debt for what it is -- a linguistic construct devoid of real economic content. In contrast, the fiscal gap is theoretically well-defined and invariant to the choice of labels. Each labeling choice changes the mix of obligations between official and unofficial, but leaves the total unchanged. Read more >>

Friday, May 11, 2012

Poll Shows Americans' Pessimism on Economy Growing

NEW YORK - JANUARY 07:  A billboard advertisem...
Americans are growing more pessimistic about the economy and handling it remains President Barack Obama's weak spot and biggest challenge in his bid for a second term, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

And the gloomier outlook extends across party lines, including a steep decline in the share of Democrats who call the economy "good," down from 48 percent in February to just 31 percent now. Almost two-thirds of Americans — 65 percent — disapprove of Obama's handling of gas prices, up from 58 percent in February. Nearly half, 44 percent, "strongly disapprove." And just 30 percent said they approve, down from 39 percent in February.

These findings come despite a steady decline in gas prices in recent weeks after a surge earlier in the year. The national average for a gallon of gasoline stood at $3.75, down from a 2012 peak of $3.94 on April 1. More...

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The American middle class no longer matters on the global stage

Banana-flavored Banana Split Creme OreosImage via WikipediaThe ideal setup for Global Corporate America is domestic stability. The erosion of the American middle class is of little concern for one simple reason: it no longer matters much on the global stage. All that Global Corporate America needs from America is a stable foundation that won't offer up any surprises or spots of bother.

As the discretionary purchasing power of the American middle class erodes, four times as many new potential customers appear elsewhere, hungry to taste the Oreos, become consumed by the iPhone, etc., and ten times as many are potential buyers of toothpaste and other basics. U.S. corporations are pulling $500 billion in profits from non-U.S. sales, and they hold $1 trillion in stashed overseas profits in various tax havens. All the growth in their revenues and profits are coming from non-U.S. sources. Read more...
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Monday, March 29, 2010

Liberal Chomsky: Change we can believe in as long as you're a bank

Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky via last.fm

Chomsky: Obama is ‘delivering, but for financial institutions’
Raw Story
Noam Chomsky: Obama is delivering, but for financial institutions. The nature of the current recession has made it clear to most Americans that a new wave of financial reforms is necessary to prevent another crash. MIT professor Noam Chomsky alleged that the Democratic establishment's reluctance to reestablish post-Depression type regulations is reflective of the systemic constraints on policy in America's dysfunctional democracy.

Chomsky, who has written many books detailing the perils of corporate influence in politics, said in an interview that the president and his party are hamstrung by fears that banks will punish them if they implement policies that do not satisfy the industry's desires.

President Obama is delivering, but for the financial institutions, he told Raw Story, which isn't a big surprise, “that was the core of his funding. They preferred him to McCain, in fact by a considerable margin. They expected a payoff, and they got a payoff."

The Obama administration last month walked into a public relations debacle after the president told Bloomberg News in an interview that he doesn't begrudge banking executives making large bonuses for their savvy skills.

That was very revealing, Chomsky said, alleging that Obama was merely heeding the threats from the banking community.

Obama months ago shifted his rhetoric and started talking about greedy bankers and even made some policy proposals the financial institutions didn't like, he continued. And they didn't waste a minute. They told him right off, you continue talking like that and we're going to shift our funding to Republicans. Well they did so.

One day before the interview, the New York Times reported that J.P. Morgan, which has traditionally preferred contributing to Democrats, directed most of its cash to the GOP this year. Campaign finance trends on OpenSecrets.org reveal that financial institutions have gradually shifted their funding away from the Democratic Party and toward Republicans in recent months.

And Obama got the message, Chomsky said. Within days, he said to Bloomberg that the bankers are great guys, I'm in favor of their profits and bonuses and so on; "that that's the way the free market works, and I join the American people in applauding their successes."

These are the same American people who are screaming bloody murder about all this, so that tells you something about how the country works, Chomsy added.

GOP's goal is to win back power by making the country ungovernable.

Chomsky's verdict on Obama and the Democrats may have been damning, but his take on Republicans was scathing.

"The Republican Party has transformed itself, since Reagan but much more extensively now, into a new kind of political operation," he told Raw Story. "It's abandoned really any political programs. Its only goal has been to prevent governability."

The MIT professor said the GOP's posturing as a small-government populist organization has been a disingenuous strategy to capitalize on nationwide anger and defeat Democrats.

"When critics call it the "party of no" they're pretty much correct," he continued. "They basically want to make the country ungovernable so that they can regain power and dedicate themselves to their actual constituency which is not tea party activists but corporate power."

Chomsky predicted the November elections won't be easy on the majority party, as enthusiasm among Republicans is far higher than among Democrats, who are largely apathetic now.
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Saturday, March 27, 2010

Dems are now shaking down CEOs who don't get with the program

powerlineblog
The Empire Strikes Back

We wrote here about the consequences of Obamacare that are beginning to be felt, even before its provisions are implemented: Caterpillar said Obamacare will cost it an additional $100 million in the first year; Medtronic warned that the new tax on its products "could force it to lay off a thousand workers;" Verizon told its employees that it "will likely have to cut healthcare benefits to offset the new costs;" and AT&T announced that it will record a $1 billion non-cash expense in the first quarter and "will be evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company."

These announcements are the tip of the iceberg; hundreds like them will follow as Obamacare becomes a reality. Congressional Democrats, evidently stung by the bad publicity, are trying to strike back. A reader writes:

Good post on the true cost of ObamaCare. But it gets better: the Dems are now shaking down CEOs who don't get with the program. In the attached letter, Henry Waxman not only orders the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co, and Verizon to testify before the Energy and Commerce Committee, but also to produce internal analyses and emails related to their statements. They don't expressly subpoena the CEOs, so we can hope that they tell the Dems to GFY, though somehow I doubt that will happen.

The Dems sent these letters to the Republicans on the committee after 6pm tonight with no advance notice or prior cooperation.

Here is the letter Waxman sent to the Chairman of AT&T; the others are similar. Click here to enlarge:

ATTpageone.jpg ATTPagetwo.jpg

In my original post, I wondered why these companies had not spoken out sooner, when it could have done some good. I suppose this is the answer: they know how vindictive the Democrats are. The Democrats' reaction would have been even more hostile (and more dangerous to the companies' well-being) if they had dared to blow the whistle on Obamacare before Congress voted.

Monday, January 18, 2010

More Dead Afghans: Franken is “Cautiously Optimistic”

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
January 17, 2010

Turn them upside down and they all look alike. Democrats and Republicans that is. When Bush and the neocons ruled the roost, Democrats complained about the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that their man is in office, Democrats support Obama’s criminal expansion in Afghanistan.

For the average Afghan on the ground, however, there is zero difference between Bush or Obama. It is a continuation of butchery.

“Fresh from a tour of Afghanistan, Sen. Al Franken expressed modest support this week for the president’s plan to drastically expand America’s presence in the war, now in its eighth year,” reports the Star Tribune in Minnesota, where Franken is a senator. “The Minnesota Democrat previously was uncommitted on whether the U.S. should deploy 30,000 more troops to the region. Speaking to reporters Wednesday from an airport in Dubai, Franken said he will back Obama’s plan and is ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the war’s progress.”

He wasn’t necessarily opposed to illegally invading Iraq and killing over a million people. “Al Franken has had many positions on the Iraq war. Franken supported the war at the outset, although in a much more ambivalent way than [Norm] Coleman did. He says he felt, at most, ‘53 percent’ in favor. There were reasons to be for the war, and reasons to be against, but ‘all the reasons to be for the war turned out to be false,’ Franken said during our interview,” the Minnesota Post wrote in 2008.

Al Franken was more than half in favor of committing war crimes. As for what many of us knew in 2002 as Bush’s neocons dreamed up lies in preparation for invasion — the lies were so transparent as to be absurd — Franken was clueless along with a lot of other Democrats.

“I do support the president’s plan,” Franken said, adding that he will vote for additional funding. “I may have done it a little bit differently myself but I … came away from this trip feeling that we already have momentum from the president’s speech.”

Al Franken and your garden variety Democrat — and Republican for that matter — are completely clueless about the reality on the ground in Afghanistan. Somebody needs to tell them about the Afghan code of Pushtunwali, their honor-to-the-death code.

“Afghans have their own agendas, which are inevitably local, and exist only at the town and village level. Their loyalties – indeed their sense of manhood and honor – are based on promoting the well-being of their families, their clan, their tribe and their Islamic sect,” writes Robert P. Pearson. “The paradox is that the more American troops we send, the more resistance we will create. Neither the British (three tries) nor the Russians (a 10-year war) has succeeded in controlling Afghanistan, and after eight years there, we are failing too.”

Franken’s boss Obama will fail like Bush, the Russians, and everybody else who tried to invade and hold Afghanistan, including Alexander the Great.

The United States is not in Afghanistan to save the people of that country from the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The United States created both. The Pentagon is in Afghanistan at the behest of Wall Street and the bankers. Orwell said War is Peace. It is also immensely profitable.

“The counter-insurgency strategy McChrystal advocates will never work. There is no way we can provide long-term security to tens of thousands of villages throughout the country. Even if security is the main Afghan preoccupation, they know the Taliban are a far surer path to that end than American soldiers whom they know will eventually leave. At present, the Afghan government can barely keep Kabul safe, and has little influence in the countryside, which is under the control of numerous warlords or the Taliban, none of whom are eager to have their power taken away by American or NATO forces,” Pearson concludes.

In the meantime, we will have to suffer Mr. 53 Percent, Al Franken, the former comedian who is now an apologist and facilitator for mass murder.

In Germany at the end of the Second World War, war criminals were tried and summarily delivered to the gallows for invading small defenseless countries and killing countless people.

In America, they retire and write books.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Audit the Fed Bill: Attempted Saturday Night Massacre Underway

nakedcapitalism.com

So get this, sports fans: the day (or maybe two max) before the so-called Audit the Fed bill (a bipartisan initiative to increase transparency) has a torpedo shot at it by a member of the House Financial Services committee, one Mel Watt of North Carolina. Of course, his amendment professes to increase transparence too, but in fact does nothing of the kind, and in fact would reduce the GAO’s audit powers over the Fed.

I’ll admit I’m a bit of a newbie at these matters, but it strains credulity to think Watt came up with this Trojan horse on his own. I’ll bet the Fed provided the language for this stealth operation.

From the Huffington Post:

Rep. Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina, has introduced an amendment intended as an alternative to the measure to audit the Federal Reserve introduced by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson’s (D-Fla.) . But instead of increasing transparency, as the amendment claims to do, Watt’s measure would instead make the institution more opaque….

Watt pitched his amendment in a letter to colleagues circulated Tuesday. “While my amendment will certainly fall short of demands by those intent on destroying the independence (if not the existence) of the Fed, the critics of my amendment will have to concede…that my amendment will provide transparency of the Fed’s financial operations that will be completely unprecedented,” he wrote.

In fact, the critics are conceding no such thing. “The Watt Amendment, as written today, actually places new restrictions on the little authority that exists, such as it is, for independent auditing of the Fed,” Grayson said. “It keeps in place all existing restrictions and adds four more. So I don’t see why anybody would reasonably think that it creates unprecedented authority to audit the Fed.”

The devil, as always, is in the details. While Watt’s amendment talks a big game about opening up the Fed to a complete audit, all of the new powers granted must be carried out “each case in accordance with subsections (b) and (e).”

Those subsections of the current law delineate the many restrictions that an auditor confronts when seeking to audit the Fed. Watt’s measure not only leaves those in place but requires all audits to abide by them.

And in addition to the current restrictions in place, it creates new ones. An auditor could not look at loans or liquidity arrangements the Fed enters into, the terms of those arrangements, or the effect of those loans and other liquidity deals on “reserves, the balance sheet or financial condition of a Federal reserve bank or the Federal Reserve System.”

Yves here. That is tantamount to saying you are permitted to operate a strip club as long as the patrons are prohibited from looking at un or underclad bodies. Back to the article:

The Fed has expanded its balance sheet drastically over the last year, entering into exotic swap arrangements and otherwise pumping trillions of dollars into the economy. How it has done so and who has been on the receiving end would remain secret under Watt’s bill.

By contrast, the Paul-Grayson amendment is patterned after Paul’s bill H.R. 1207, which has broad bipartisan support. It has more than 310 cosponsors in a chamber with 435 members.

Paul’s measure would repeal the provisions that Watt’s leaves in place. If every member who cosponsored Paul’s bill votes for it in committee this week, it would have the votes to pass. Watt’s amendment is an effort to peel off votes…

“The new exemptions are described as limited but they are extremely broad,” Grayson said. They’re so broad, in fact, that there would be very little left for an auditor to look into. What could an auditor check up on?

“Count the pencils on the desks,” Grayson speculated. “Perhaps check on proper Metro card usage.”

You can read the full text of the Watt letter at HuffPo.

If this offends you as much as it does me, I hope you’ll make a call or two tomorrow. Here are the Democratic numbers of Congress who support auditing the Fed. They should support the Paul-Grayson amendment and not the Watt amendment. Thanks!

Rep. John Adler, NJ: (202) 225-4765
Rep. Travis Childers, MS: (202) 225-4306
Rep. Steve Driehaus, OH: (202) 225-2216
Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, TX: (202) 225-2531
Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, FL: (877) 956-7627
Rep. Dan Maffei, NY: (202) 225-3701
Rep. Brad Miller, NC: (202) 225-3032
Rep. Walt Minnick, ID: (202) 225-6611
Rep. Ed Perlmutter, CO: (202) 225-2645
Rep. David Scott, GA: (202) 225-2939
Rep. Brad Sherman, CA: (202) 225-5911
Rep. Jackie Speier, CA: (202) 225-3531