Published on Thursday, August 4, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
The Beast Is Starved: Welcome to the Next Great Depressionby John Atcheson
...So, after starting with a surplus in 2000, Republicans used two wars, two rounds of tax cuts, and a giant giveaway to big Pharma, to get the country racking up debt like a drunken sailor.
Along comes the Bush recession, and the debt accelerates, and the Republicans declare the debt to be an “emergency” and right on schedule immediately attack popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Student loans –and virtually anything that doesn’t help the uber rich or the corporations suddenly must be cut if we are to stay solvent.
Never mind that cutting Social Security to balance the budget is like attacking the mailman because your car doesn’t work. It has nothing to do with the budget – but again, that’s a mere fact. When you’re drowning the beast, facts don’t matter.
So OK. The beast is drowned. Keynes is dead. Now what?
Well, if past is prologue, welcome to the next Great Depression.
See, the dirty little secret is that we never had a debt “crisis.” We had a jobs crisis...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/04-2