Prelim Deficit Recs: Opening Gambit to Make the Coming Assault on Economic Security Seem Palatable

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

Preliminary Deficit Recommendations: an Opening Gambit to Make The Coming Assault on Our Economic Security Seem Palatable
Recent leaks are intended to lay the groundwork for the Commission’s budget slashing report.

November 11, 2010 |


On Wednesday, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of Obama’s deficit reduction commission, released their own recommendations for balancing the budget. It’s being treated as a very serious proposal by much of the corporate media, but it is in fact deeply unserious -- it’s a profoundly regressive, unrealistic set of proposals that wouldn’t get the support of 14 of the commission’s 18 members -- required to spur Congressional action -- much less enough votes to pass on the Hill.

It should be seen for what it is: a opening gambit in a campaign to shift yet more of the risks of a modern capitalist society off the shoulders of corporations and the highest-earners and on to working families. The chairmen's proposals are intended to lay the groundwork for the Commission’s report, due before December 1, by making them seem reasonable in comparison. It’s all Kabuki theater, but with a nefarious end.

As Dan Froomkin wrote on the Huffington Post, the Simpson-Bowles plan “would have devastating effects on the government and its ability to help the most vulnerable in our society, and it would put the squeeze on the middle class, veterans, the elderly and the sick - all in the name of an abstract goal that ultimately only a bond-trader could love.”

The co-chairs spin their plan as a grand compromise -- they say there’s something in there for everyone to love, and something for everyone to hate. That, supposedly, will insulate law-makers politically. Alan Simpson told reporters that they’d “harpooned every whale.” But the reality is that the recommendations are a collection of “third rail” issues -- everyone will find something in it that is unacceptably odious, that crosses a red line in the sand. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148827/preliminary_deficit_recommendations_are_merely_an_opening_gambit_in_a_brutal_assault_on_our_economic_security/

[Scruffy1]

1. You are getting it-its all a charade

That way the open faced shit sandwich will be a little more palatable.

[marmar]

3. "open faced shit sandwich"

Graphic but effective. :)

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[notesdev]

4. quibble

"It should be seen for what it is: a opening gambit in a campaign to shift yet more of the risks of a modern capitalist society off the shoulders of corporations and the highest-earners and on to working families. "

This has already happened - Elizabeth Warren proved it (see "The Coming Destruction of the Middle Class")

All we're arguing about right now is how forthrightly we are prepared to acknowledge the consequences of ignoring this beggaring process for the past 30 years.