KNIFING THE MIDDLE CLASS TO SAVE THE BANKSTERS

We are currently spending $1.4 trillion dollars more each year than we are collecting in taxes. President Barack Obama announced February 18th the appointment of a special blue-ribbon panel to recommend ways to cut back on Medicare and other domestic spending and to trim Social Security benefits. He named former Senator Alan Simpson, a Republican, and former White House Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, as the co-chairmen. They have both long been committed to gutting the social nets that working people, safeguards built over many decades to make old age less of a burden for those not blessed with retirement funds or employer-funded health insurance. An 18 member panel, including 6 appointed by Obama, 6 appointed by Republican congressional leadership and 6 by Democratic leadership, will supposedly issue a report approved by at least 14 of their number this coming December. The goal will be to reduce the annual budget deficit from its current 12.4% of GDP to 3% by 2015: a not-inconsiderable task.

We are told by the banksters and many members of congress from both political parties that Social Security and Medicare are “unfunded liabilities”, a form of welfare we cannot afford. This is an outright lie – the social security money Obama wants to cut already belongs to the people. They paid it into the Federal Government trust fund over their entire working lives. Can he really take away that which does not belong to the government? Furthermore, the Social Security system is now healthy and self-funding. It is not in deficit and can continue to fund retirements for another 75 years if a modest adjustment in rates, amounting one half of one percent of GDP) is made in future. We are mislead on this issue by the sly deceptions of Wall Streeters and their paid political hacks in Washington. We can expect that this blue ribbon panel will again suggest privatizing Social Security and giving all these funds to the Wall Street Banksters to play with. As Paul Craig Roberts, former Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan said (Feb 17, 2010 Counterpunch): “After the latest crisis brought on by Wall Street's dishonesty and greed, trusting Wall Street to manage anyone's old age pension requires a leap of faith that no intelligent person can make... Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after senior citizens' old age security”.

The annual budget deficit has soared under Bush 43: We had a $236 billion surplus in the final year of the Clinton administration, now our deficit has reached $1.4 trillion as Obama continues the policy of George W. Bush to throw trillions away on endless wars and costly and sophisticated armaments to defend our shores from primitively-armed bands of enemies such as the Taliban, the remnants of Al-Qaeda and assorted Somali pirates. The current deficit, is almost the same as that of Greece, whose government is about to go belly-up in default. This deep deficit is the result of (1) not only a bloated defense budget, but also (2) two costly foreign wars, (3) cutting tax rates on the wealthy from 70% to 35% under the Bushes, (4) fabricating enough tax loopholes to keep many large corporations from paying anything at all, (5) the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and (6) bailing out the banksters from their reckless gambling these past several years.

Expressed in terms of total national debt, we are currently faced with a $12.4 trillion total debt as of February 2010. It was only $3.2 trillion in Fiscal Year 2001 when Bush 43 took the reins and Cheney explained to him that deficits didn't matter. Obama's total proposed military budget is nearly $1 trillion including $880 billion for the Pentagon itself, plus secret (black) programs, military aid and bribes to Israel, Egypt and Pakistan, the costs of 225,000 mercenaries employed overseas by defense contractors like Blackwater, veterans' benefits, and intelligence services.
Afghani and Iraqi wars alone will cost $200 to $250 billion this year.

THE POLITICAL COVER COMMISSION
Why is the President cutting the retirement benefits of working people now, when we are in the depths of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Will putting less money in the hands of our senior citizens help to stimulate the economy? As Shamus Cooke explains: “Obama is being left with the dirtiest of missions – to cut the deficit by gutting domestic programs. He refuses to do this alone and talks about “bipartisan cooperation” (Counterpunch 02/16/10 ). Thus we have all this jockeying around to establish a Congressional Blue Ribbon Panel that will provide everyone with political cover while they stick the knife into the middle class while leaving the fat cats untouched. The strategy requires of course that there are no fingerprints on the knife. Even the corporate-friendly Wall Street Journal has called it “The Political Cover Commission” although their real motivation is to warn Republicans of the political fallout from cutting entitlements. The WSJ would rather let the Democrats take all the blame.

A ONE-TERM PRESIDENT?
When Democratic Party voters becomes fully aware of the complicity of Obama in this nasty business, they are likely to stay home in droves when he runs for re-election in 2012. Is he fated to be another of our one-term presidents? Maybe it will really take a Republican in the White House to rein in the banksters and bring Pentagon spending back under control, as George H.W. Bush once attemp