Galbraith: Is This the End for the Deficit Drones?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/galbraith-end-deficit-drones?akid=9979.277129.cAtWbd&rd=1&src=newsletter783906&t=13







In wars, sometimes there comes a moment when the tide turns. The collapse of Ludendorff's offensive in 1918 presaged the Armistice; failure in the Ardennes meant the end for Germany in 1944.

Today we have two drone wars in a similar state. One is mainly in Pakistan. Built on a gee-whiz technology that can't do what it promised, this war has claimed too many victims for too little effect. It is a diplomatic disaster and its days are numbered, almost surely, for that reason.

The other drone war is in Washington. The drones are in groups with names like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and Campaign to Fix the Debt. They drone on, and on, about the calamities that await unless we cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

That the goal of the deficit drones is to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has been plain for years to anyone who looks at where the money comes from. It comes largely from Peter G. Peterson, a billionaire former secretary of Commerce under Nixon, who is Captain Ahab to Social Security's Moby Dick. And when one trick, such as privatization, falls flat, his minions always have another, whether it's raising the retirement age or changing the COLA. But a cut by any other name is still, and always, just a cut.

Peterson's influence is vast; practically the entire DC mind-meld has bought his line to some degree.

[quaker bill]

1. I agree completely.

Thanks for posting.

[PATRICK]

2. The larger problem is even worse

Schools, postal service, corporate anything, the general attitude of DC is hostile to the public interest, so much so that if the entire government representation lost their jobs, if K Street was razed into a parking lot for the ordinary visiting citizen, the media vanished, I would not exactly shed a tear even for those considered heroes of the people still navigating this sludge.

The fact it got this this bad, so bad that the vacuum created by such an "impossible" vision of this mind boggling insanity ending has no prospect of hope ready for contention, is the "reality" that DC deals with. And is owned by. And corrupts and interferes with anything that works of benefits in our failing nation. I've thought for some time the puppets love their strings. They would rather be spit on by a billionaire like Petersen than take a sizable donation from their humble constituents. Certainly their operating philosophy or mindset, genuine or submissive is extremely corrupted and realistically off the beam. Incrementalism and reform are headed much faster into social Hell, and on discredited, insane principles and points that should prohibit any human being from being allowed near public office.

Yet to save the schools or save the Postal Service or save Medicare and Social Security, it is presumed that the people who did the damage will get to put social institutions into their private bordello stables- and that this is practical and an accomplishment so long as the charade parade is conducted by pretentious DC hypocrisy.

I have listened to the MSM for decades and they constantly have been drumming in the legitimacy of outright lies and the pose of naive concern without even championing common sense, the facts or exposing the liars. Here is what you generically get: the institution is outmoded, failing, needs private enterprise cures. Pick any vital program or institution or the names given to them or the simplistic memes constantly repeated in this unflagging attempt to harm public support. The flip side of media fairness extends pretty much only to the quieter puzzlement that people still support these institutions(attacks on the public's selfishness and irrationality are open but rather careful). The treasonous profiteers and attackers become legitimate. The smears and memes ingrained. Reality never "discovered" or defended. Reforming back to the nineteenth Century seen as modern.

Many people on DU who are very much and very rightly opposed to the worse have nonetheless been gradually brainwashed by the assault in some small degree, turned into suckers by the corporate Mephistopheles, which is why some posters like Madfloridian and others closer to the reality of their respective sectors get a rough time. I have felt the effects of this constant attack too. When you bother to really research the critiques and alternatives backed by our shambles of a national discussion the horror, outrage and embarrassment of being meekly put on the defensive by slick frauds almost inevitably grows.

But DC is no DU and the killer money has bought more influence there than the truth can withstand.

[xchrom]

3. +1

[tech3149]

4. Very clear and accurate description of the state of affairs n/t

[reteachinwi]

5. +1

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver. Ambrose Bierce