The plunder of America: Tax breaks for the rich; Cuts to Social Security; and now More War

[seafan]

And we have no leadership firewall to stand between us and economic ruin.


I often wondered why no discussion of our troops' presence in Afghanistan occurred before this election. In fact, those in power went out of their way to avoid the topic.


Now, we find this:

U. S. troops are expected to be in Afghanistan in 2014.

November 10, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is increasingly emphasizing the idea that the United States will have forces in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2014, a change in tone aimed at persuading the Afghans and the Taliban that there will be no significant American troop withdrawals next summer.

In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves. Implicit in their message, delivered at a security and diplomatic conference in Australia, was that the United States would be fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan for at least four more years.

.....

Last year the White House insisted on the July deadline to inject a sense of urgency into the Afghans to get their security in order — military officials acknowledge that it has partly worked — but also to quiet critics in the Democratic Party upset about Mr. Obama’s escalation of the war and his decision to order 30,000 more troops to the country.

On Wednesday, the White House insisted that there had been no change in tone. “The old message was, we’re looking to July 2011 to begin a transition,” a White House official said. “Now we’re telling people what happens beyond 2011, and I don’t think that represents a shift. We’re bringing some clarity to the policy of our future in Afghanistan.”

.....

“There’s not really any change, but what we’re trying to do is to get past that July 2011 obsession so that people can see what the president’s strategy really entails,” a senior administration official said Wednesday.

This sounds eerily like the administration's protestations on the Bush tax cuts.


And eerily like the bait and switch on the public option. And the sellout of single payer, while we're remembering.

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause) “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003.

But, it's November of 2010.


And we "need to extend tax cuts" for the rich, you see.


Funny, how the screamers about the national deficit are just fine with adding $700 Billion back to the deficit to accommodate continued tax cuts for the rich. But the middle class must continue to shell out, you see.


Ever wonder why yesterday's austerity proposals by the two co-chairs of Obama's hand-picked Deficit Commission make absolutely NO MENTION of taxing Wall Street speculation and trading? You know, the people who stripped this country's assets blind, in the biggest orgy of greed seen in our history?


And do you wonder why one of the Simpson/Bowles' odious proposals is to cap the amount of revenue the government takes in? Perhaps it is to maintain forever the oligarchy's claim that 'there's no money to fund social programs, infrastructure, research, job creation or education, now or ever.' Especially the social program part.



But, it's November of 2010.

And we "must accept" draconian cuts in our social safety net.


Krugman:

We’ve known for a long time, then, that nothing good would come from the commission. But on Wednesday, when the co-chairmen released a PowerPoint outlining their proposal, it was even worse than the cynics expected.

Start with the declaration of “Our Guiding Principles and Values.” Among them is, “Cap revenue at or below 21% of G.D.P.” This is a guiding principle? And why is a commission charged with finding every possible route to a balanced budget setting an upper (but not lower) limit on revenue?
Matters become clearer once you reach the section on tax reform. The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh.

So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?

Actually, though, what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. They suggest eliminating tax breaks that, whatever you think of them, matter a lot to middle-class Americans — the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest — and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.

It will take time to crunch the numbers here, but this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?

.....

It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.

.....

Now, it's November of 2010.



And now we must "accept" protracted occupation of Afghanistan, after nine years of the George W. Bush legacy of dropping bombs on families and children at wedding parties and asleep in their beds. Somehow, propping up a criminal in Kabul is more important than the growing hatred of America and its warmongering around the planet.


And this president bends over backward to thoroughly demean and mock the Nobel Prize for Peace.



We don't have peace, Mr. President. Far from it. Either here at home or abroad. We have had enough, Mr. President.



My imagination isn't adequate to contemplate where America is headed.


Under this administration, it is in a direction most Americans do not want to go.

[WinkyDink]

1. It has been about plunder (GREAT word!) since RR's election. The Bush Family just perfected it.

And thought Poppy would become president the old-fashioned, sure-thing way, IYKWIM.

[inna]

4. I prefer the term "class warfare", it's far more descriptive. nt

[OHdem10]

2. For the past 30 years there has been a transfer upward.

Even when we went to war, the Rich got their big Tax break
and the Middle Class pays for the wars with their taxes
and their kids. Where is the justice, economic or otherwise.

[Autumn]

3. K/R Great post !!

I agree 100%. We have had enough, Mr. President.:kick: :kick: :kick: :dem:

[inna]

5. Another great post. K&R

[Catherina]

6. Is there any good news this week? Rec'd n/t

[seafan]

7. Yemen

Gareth Porter:


November 12-14, 2010

.....

The CIA directorate and the two major figures in the Iraq- Afghanistan wars, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lobbied Obama in 2009 to expand covert operations against al Qaeda to a dozen countries in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia.

In spring 2009, McChrystal, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded the White House to give U.S. combatant commanders wider latitude to carry out covert military operations against al Qaeda or other organisations deemed to be terrorists, according to a May 25 report by Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic.

Based on the Obama decision, on Sep. 30, 2009, Petraeus issued an order creating a Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force to plan and execute covert intelligence gathering in support of later covert military operations throughout the CENTCOM area.
The Petraeus order was followed within weeks by an influx of surveillance equipment and as many as 100 SOF trainers, as well as additional CIA personnel in Yemen, according to the Post Nov. 7 report.

.....

On Dec. 17, less than three months after the Petraeus order, a cruise missile was launched against what was supposed to have been an al Qaeda training camp in Abyan province in south Yemen.
But the strike, which was supposed to have been attributed to Yemen's tiny air force, was based on faulty intelligence. The Yemeni parliament found that it had killed 41 members of two families, including 17 women and 23 children. It was known almost immediately to have been a U.S. strike.

By all accounts, it was major political gift to AQAP, which has its sights set on toppling the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. AQAP seized on videos of the carnage to step up its attack on Saleh as a U.S. stooge.
Al Qaeda has also been able to justify targeting the United States as revenge for the Dec. 17 attack. In June and July, the AQAP announced that it was planning a "catastrophe for the enemies of God" in response to the Abyan attack, according to Gregory Johnsen, a Princeton doctoral candidate who has done research in Yemen.

That may have been a reference to the two parcels from Yemen to an address in Chicago intercepted Oct. 29, one of which was discovered to have "explosive material".

.....

Did our media connect these dots during their reporting of this recent Chicago incident?


Rhetorical question, I know.


We are under ongoing and increasing threats against our national security because of our foreign policy, and still, those in power never change their blind tactics.


The War Machine is too addicting.

[noise]

8. Many people don't want to hear it

but the two parties are colluding against the public.