StickWithANose

Posted without comment: The Big Picture

I continue to see the Austerian movement in the United States as thinly disguised partisan politics. These are people who will say anything to keep the subsidies and tax benefits flowing to their electoral base. They will say anything –regardless of whether they actually believe these things — to thwart the opposing fellows priorities.

Anyone who believes the new deficit fighters care about deficits has not been paying attention. This is simply about power and money and legislative priorities and cash. With only a very few exceptions, it has nothing to do actual fiscal priorities and debt loads and deficits.

The vast majority of these new deficit chickenhawks — who voted for unfunded entitlement program (prescription drugs), who gave away trillions in unfunded tax cuts, who voted for a trillion dollar war of choice, are simply not to be believed. Their past actions speak far louder than anything they might say today.

From: Beat the Press

Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of President Obama’s Deficit Commission and a director of the Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley, claimed that the current economic crisis (which is projected to add more than $4 trillion to the national debt) was “largely unforeseen.” This is not true. Competent economists saw the crisis as an inevitable outcome of the housing bubble. It is remarkable that the deficit commission seems to be relying exclusively on economists who could not see this $8 trillion bubble, the collapse of which wrecked the economy.

The commission also does not appear to be considering any measures that would challenge powerful interest groups like the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, highly-paid medical specialists, or the Wall Street banks. Rather than incur the wrath of these powerful interest groups by reining in medical expenses or reducing the rents earned by Wall Street bankers, the commission seems intent on taking back Social Security and Medicare benefits for ordinary workers.

From: Gin and Tacos

The problem, I suppose, is that part about being thoughtful and willing to think because the Beltway elites are getting unreasonably comfortable giving edicts to those of us in the lower castes, edicts that belie their privileged status and ignorance of what life is like for the bottom 99%. Whether it’s Mika Brzezinski (born into the political elite, and I can only assume embarrassing the hell out of her father) telling the little people that they need to “get used to” having Social Security cut or Congressmen turned gubernatorial candidates claiming that government needs to tighten the screws on food service income because waiters are making $100,000, haughty politicos and pundits with six- (or seven-) figure incomes really shouldn’t be telling us what kinds of sacrifices we should be happy to make.

Mika Brzezinski doesn’t give a shit if SS is cut because she can fund her own retirement 10 times over. Tom Emmer has no idea what a waiter makes (in Minnesota, apparently the average for full timers is under $19,000) because he hasn’t had a real job in 20+ years. These facts being true of almost every elected official and media celebrity, why can none of them draw the conclusion that discretion is the better part of valor? “Maybe I shouldn’t lecture people who depend on SS about why they should get used to cuts so that my income bracket doesn’t have to pay more in taxes.” “Maybe someone who makes $200,000 per year on the books as a Congressman shouldn’t go after people who serve coffee to stoners at Denny’s for minimum wage.” “Maybe as a ‘fellow’ who makes six figures to sit on my ass at a wingnut welfare foundation and occasionally to babble on TV shouldn’t be telling unemployed professionals that they need to suck it up and work at Chik-fil-A.”