December 23, 2012

Look at the Offers. Look at what was never on the table. Real change cannot happen

until we are honest about what we are being fed here. Look at the Offers and how tremendously skewed toward the rich they were, even from Democrats, and even from the start of this process.

This is how thick and ludicrous the corporate propaganda has become, that any Democrat can look at these numbers and claim that we are winning or being honestly represented in any way.

Don't forget that this entire process was rigged from the outset to give us austerity.

That is how it began last spring, and that was the corporatists' goal from the outset: to ensure that austerity and budget slashing are guaranteed as an outcome of this process. That was the purpose of the faux Kabuki Theater debt ceiling Shock Doctrine "crisis" in the first place: to set up a faux crisis and closed door meetings to create a chain of events in which massive budget slashing, or a trigger with slightly less massive budget slashing, were the only possible outcomes.

The ONLY possible outcomes.

It is the stale, familiar, old "lesser of two evils" game by corporatists who own both parties now. Corporate Democrats will ostentatiously withhold a threatened assault on some portion of Social Security or Medicare so that they can point to it and claim to be working hard for us, but the goal all along was to force austerity on America, and they have already guaranteed that.

Look again at the offers from the Democratic side, even after we won this election. They are Absurd. They are so heavily tilted to the rich that this could be a Monty Python skit.

We live in a corporate illusion of representative government. Tell us that these offers make any sense at all from a party that supposedly won this election by a landslide and that pretends to be representing the people. Nothing from Democrats about cutting the MIC. Nothing about cutting corporate welfare. Nothing about cutting the police state. And in a country where Americans overwhelmingly oppose austerity and favor protecting Social Security and Medicare.

Austerity is damaging to economies and deadly to people. Democrats should not be feeding this budget-slashing narrative at all.

Is it time to demand real representation yet?

It is a travesty. Look at the Offers.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2055232

December 19, 2012

How propaganda works to change our expectations of the Democratic Party

We used to take for granted that the Democratic Party had a responsibility to put forth policies to HELP the 99 percent. To actively help all of us, stand with us against predatory corporatism, and push changes in policy to *improve* our lives.

Over time, Third Way propaganda lowered those expectations, so that now we are exhorted to be grateful if the party merely refrains from joining with corporatists to ATTACK us in some way or another. Hence the bids for joy and satisfaction when Obama merely refrains from this or that assault on Social Security or Medicare.

Now, judging from posts on this board, it seems we are moving toward a view that it's okay for Democrats to assault SOME of us, as long as it's not "the most vulnerable." Some here are busily feeding us the idea that it would be perfectly fine to implement the right-wing, tax-regressive scam of a chained CPI across this nation, as long as certain protections are provided for "the most vulnerable among us."

What utter bullshit. The Democratic Party should not be assaulting ANY of us. The Democratic Party should not be in the business of entertaining right-wing scams *at all.*

It's time to step back and remind ourselves what this party is supposed to stand for.

December 18, 2012

Amen with a caveat: This is not only about Medicare and Social Security.

Whether they cut SS and Medicare *this time* or use them again as hostages to convince lemmings that withholding a vicious, contrived blow is the same as standing *for* the people's interests, we are being betrayed and assaulted, repeatedly, by the party that pretends to represent us.

We have lost if they inflict these cuts. But we have still lost even if they do not lower this particular axe on us at this particular time.

SS and Medicare cuts, if they happen now, are happening within a SEA of predatory policies by this President and the bipartisan one percent in both parties. We get austerity and trillions slashed from the budget no matter what. Criminal bankers remain immune to prosecution, no matter what. We get more wars and bloody empire no matter what. We get deform of public education and a fetish of privatization no matter what. We get pipelines and new job-murdering free trade agreements no matter what. And we get a growing surveillance and police state that is suppressing dissent and imprisoning more and more of us every day for profit, no matter what.

There is absolutely nothing serious being offered now or on the horizon to slow the looting or reverse what has been done to us in any way. Rather, the process is being escalated.

This is not *only* about Social Security and Medicare. In fact, I would not be surprised if SS and Medicare were ostentatiously "saved" at the last minute one more time as propaganda to make the people cheer and be grateful and feel represented when the blow is withheld, rather than demanding to know why predatory policies are still being enacted in every other area of our lives, and why nobody is helping us.

Your post is desperately needed, but let's be clear. It's needed whether they inflict this particular blow this time, or not. At a certain point, we need to be honest that we really have one party now in this country, a party of Republican and Democratic corporatists, and that party is assaulting us every single day.

December 4, 2012

The people are restless, so the media grab is necessary.

They are going after the internet, too.

Have we had enough yet, America?

November 18, 2012

Predictable bullshit Third Way propaganda. You want FACTS?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1798380

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1



Here it is. The bid for compromise. What a ridiculous, reeking load of nonsense. Democrats are lectured for being one-sided and "purist," as though WE are the ones insisting on getting our way, all the time, with no compromise....when the truth is that this country has been dragged *so far* to the right over the past 30 years that:

*our middle class has been virtually obliterated through policy

*forty percent of our wealth has been looted

*virtually ALL new wealth of the past 30 years has gone to the top one percent

*93 percent of the "recovery" has gone to the top one percent

*over a million American schoolchildren are now homeless

*America now ranks higher than any other developed nation in child poverty with the exception of Romania, which a DUer mentioned was only recently added to the list, perhaps to spare America the embarrassment of being last...

*CEO pay is now 350 times the average worker's pay, up from fifty times between 1960 and 1985

*CEO pay has skyrocketed 300% since 1990. Corporate profits have doubled. Average "production worker" pay has increased 4%. The minimum wage has dropped. (All numbers adjusted for inflation).

*After adjusting for inflation, average hourly earnings haven't increased in 50 years.

*income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in "income equality." China's ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.

*Social mobility is near an all-time low.

*The top 1% of Americans own 42% of the financial wealth in this country. The top 5% own nearly 70%.

*Hundreds of millions of Americans are deep in debt.

*Taxes on the highest earners are near the lowest they've EVER been and lower than for many who earn less.

etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

*much, much more at link below,and that's just one of MANY we could post here...

______________________________


We have received no compromise. We have been looted, again and again and again, with no end in sight. And still the message comes, like a drumbeat: You have not compromised enough. You are being a purist.

It doesn't fly anymore. In fact, it has reached the point of ludicrousness.



________________________________________________________

*Much here taken directly from this article at Business Insider, perhaps the best summary I have seen of the looting of America: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

There is much, much more there. I strongly recommend that every DUer click through the whole thing again for a reminder of how how much "compromise" WE have received from the ones who are looting us blind:

June 18, 2012

This insanity, this GARBAGE, this deliberate partisan political PSYCHOSIS has to stop.

How broken and incoherent have our politics gotten, when the very same corporate/authoritarian policies persist and grow from administration to administration, but the partisan electorate on each side works itself to the point of disconnection from reality trying to claim it is just the *other* side doing it?


So now we have Republicans twisting themselves into contortions to pretend that they are scandalized by pre-emptive war, indefinite detention, and the police state....completely denying history and reality in their astounding claims that Obama is the sole and only source of the corporate fascism we see being carefully constructed around us....and utterly ignoring the fact that they were cheering on the exact same policies four years ago.

....While on this side we have corporate Democrats pushing equal amounts of self-delusion.....feeding us the ludicrous fantasy that all of these outrages are somehow not being actively continued under Obama, or that they are not as bad under Obama, or that he is helpless to stop them and has not enabled them in any way......and we are asked as Democrats to minimize them and overlook them and completely wipe out of our consciousnesses that we opposed and screamed bloody murder about them under Bush.

What the hell is happening to us? How can we allow ourselves to be manipulated in this way?

Good god, people. We are in serious, serious trouble in this country. The corporatists have purchased our government, and they are systematically creating something that none of us want. And we enable it by participating in this garbage, this fantasyland that allows it all to continue.

We will *never* have a unified opposition to this metastasizing corporate empire and police state until we can stand up, acknowledge, and condemn the wrongs that are being done by both corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats.