by Stephen Lendman
The criminal class in Washington is bipartisan, united against working household interests. In fact, lawmakers yield on virtually everything big money wants, notably when banks and other corporate favorites are affected.
Last December, Obama capitulated to Republicans, rigging a deal for up to $1 trillion dollars in handouts, mostly to corporate giants and America’s wealthy with working households almost entirely left out.
They still are, enduring a protracted Main Street depression, stiff-armed by Obama-led bipartisan crooks. In fact, he’s more crime boss than president – stealing from the many for the few. More on his dirty scheme below.
As a result, America and other “(e)conomies are being turned into rentier (‘tollbooths’) to pay debts that (‘real’ ones) can’t sustain,” according to Michael Hudson. “It’s a losing game,” but goes on, criminally defrauding millions of people to assure creditors are paid, sucking massive amounts of wealth to their coffers, unreported by major media scoundrels, suppressing what people most need to know.
In fact, new audit figures show that Bernanke’s Fed gave Wall Street and European banksters at least $16.1 trillion (called emergency loans) from December 1, 2007 – July 21, 2010, besides unknown amounts earlier and in the past year.
Moreover, it’s well known that trillions of dollars are stolen, handed to corporate interests and never returned, as well as gotten in other illegal ways. As a result, taxpayers get stuck with the bill, the nation with unsustainable mounting debt, heading it eventually for ruin.
About $13 trillion in Fed bailouts went to US financial institutions, the rest to their counterparts in Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Belgium, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) analysis.
In addition, asset swaps (good ones for toxic corporate junk) were arranged with banks in Britain, Switzerland, Canada, South Korea, Norway, Mexico, and Singapore.
Moreover, the Wall Street controlled Fed mostly outsourced its lending operations to the same institutions responsible for engineering the financial crisis, letting them profit hugely at the public’s expense.
Though unsustainable, the dirty game goes on, a take the money and run scam, leaving hollowed out economies and impoverished millions on their own sink or swim.
In dirty back room deals, Obama’s out in front arranging it, doing what no Republican leader would dare. No wonder Hudson accused him of governing to the right of George Bush, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann – America’s right-wing lunatic fringe.
Notably, only Republican Nixon could go to China when America had no diplomatic relations. Only Democrat Obama dares ending America’s decades-long social contract, especially Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and publicly funded pensions.
Hudson agrees, saying “(o)nly a Democrat posing as a left-winger could really pull off what (he’s) proposing,” pretending it’s to sustain programs otherwise heading for insolvency.
In fact, pay-as-you-go payroll tax deductions sustain Social Security and Medicare, and will keep doing it if properly administered, needing only occasional modest adjustments.
Most workers, in part, fund public pensions, and Medicaid provides mandated safety net care for poor beneficiaries, jointly funded by the states and Washington, managed at the state level.
Moreover, Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs – contractual federal obligations to eligible recipients who qualify. In fact, they’re no different from other legal arrangements between willing parties.
However, unilaterally abrogating them will strip all Americans of fundamental safety net protections without which millions will become impoverished and desperate.
America’s aristocracy chose Obama to do it, and who better than the first Black president, masquerading as a populist, still fooling half the country to think he represents them.
In fact, his disdain for ordinary people is palpable in plain sight and scandalous, once his disingenuous rhetoric is exposed as duplicitous. His policies in the past two and half years show it.
Previous yearend articles (each in two parts) explained how much harm he caused in years one and two in office, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-year-one-betrayal-and-failure.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-year-one-betrayal-and-failure_23.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/12/obama-year-two-continued-betrayal-and.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/12/obama-year-two-continued-betrayal-and_28.html
Given his overall agenda, his legacy already exposes him as America’s worst president. It’s no easy achievement given some formidable competition, notably from his predecessor, a corporate stooge/war criminal Obama shamelessly managed to outdo, besides perhaps setting back race relations a century or more.
A July 15 article discussed the current debt ceiling debate charade, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/07/debt-ceiling-debate-charade-masks.html
It suggested the fix is in, the deal done to slash vital entitlements and other social spending, while leaving in place outsized military budgets and generous handouts to corporate America, including new tax cuts and loopholes letting them save billions of dollars.
On July 21, New York Times writers Carl Hulse and Jackie Calmes headlined, “Boehner and Obama Nearing Deal on Cuts and Taxes,” saying:
A “sweeping deficit-reduction agreement” is nearly completed, “calling for as much as $3 trillion in savings from substantial (social) spending cuts and” alleged tax code changes, benefitting business and wealthy Americans at the public’s expense.
So far details are being withheld, and White House press secretary Jay Carney denied any deal is close. He lied. It was agreed weeks ago, leaving only final details to be worked out.
Negotiated by “Gang of Six” kleptocrats (three Democrat and three Republican senators), a “grand deal” minimally cuts $4 trillion (mostly entitlements), adding tax cuts and other corporate sweeteners in return for raising the debt ceiling.
Public posturing is all theater, no substance, to conceal a deal with the devil plan to wreck social America and devastate the economy, assuring a deepening Main Street depression, including permanent impoverishment for millions of former middle class earners.
Part of the subterfuge involves deceptive House/Senate theatrics. On July 19, the House passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011, calling for up to $6 trillion in cuts and a constitutional balanced budget amendment in return for raising the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion.
It’s barely enough to sustain annual spending at current levels, meaning more cuts would be demanded to raise it further, and so on to keep slashing additional trillions from vital social programs until all of them are extinguished and ended. That’s planned anyway whatever deal is announced.
On July 22, the Senate rejected the House proposal, paving the way for the secretly agreed on Obama/Speaker Boehner scheme to be adopted.
Besides criminally waging multiple imperial wars, that’s Obama’s legacy. Progressive historians and analysts one day will wonder how he and other irresponsible officials defrauded the public and got away with it. It’s happening now in plain sight.
In his new article, Paul Craig Roberts headlined, “An Economy Destroyed: The Enemy Is Washington,” saying:
“Washington’s priorities and those of its presstitutes could not be clearer. President Obama, like George W. Bush before him, both parties in Congress, the print and TV media, and National Public Radio (dubbed National Pentagon or Petroleum Radio) have made it clear that (imperial) war(s are) far more important priorit(ies) than health care and old age pensions for Americans.”
In fact, power-hungry, greed-driven Obama-led government and corporate scoundrels want working Americans’ wealth, homes, jobs, health, welfare, and futures stolen to benefit themselves at their expense.
It means $4 trillion is only for starters. Expect trillions more ahead until virtually all personal and public wealth is in elitist private hands.
Moreover, whatever amount of deficit reduction is agreed on (allegedly over the next decade), America’s national debt will keep growing. As a result, years from now it’ll be greater than ever. It’s one of many dirty secrets politicians and media liars won’t explain or even touch. Instead they pretend social America is being destroyed to save it by preventing insolvency.
It’s one of many Big Lies, showing government abrogated the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause – Article I, Section 8, stating:
“The Congress shall have power to….provide for (the) general welfare of the United States,” meaning all its citizens. Moreover, the Preamble’s opening words are “We the People.”
They never, in fact, meant everyone, just America’s special few, notably since the 1980s, now more than ever in modern times under Obama. Unless public anger derails them, Washington’s criminal cabal will transform America into a wasteland, its working class into serfs.
Is it worth just watching from the sidelines, or will reality stir popular outrage to act. It’s the only way constructive change ever comes. It’s never from the top down, given corrupt politicians put in office to serve their elitist masters – America’s aristocracy wanting it all for themselves. So far, in fact, they’re well on the way to getting it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
