The Real Battle: Deficit Reduction is Class War
Here's a really good post on the deficit wars - and the myth of economic "recovery." [via Corrente]
For about 20 years now, I've been warning people that the continuing rise in home values was unsustainable - and bad for the economy. I can't stress this enough: Shelter is shelter, and not an investment. Speculating in residential real estate on the basis of constantly-increasing equity is a relatively recent development that drives a lot of bad economic and social consequences. (Don't even get me started on what a very bad idea it is to use property taxes to fund school systems.)
Using houses as ATM distorted many things in the economy, not the least of which was the parallel stagnation in wages. Think about this: since the 70s, we've seen a steady rise in women working outside the home, a rise in property values, and a monstrous increase in personal debt.
Yet wages never kept pace with any of that. (In fact, those of us who still have jobs are now working harder for less money than we earned in the 1970s.) But with a working spouse bringing in additional income and home equity loans, we could convince ourselves that increasing equity was the same as earning more.
It also kept things calm on the domestic political front, because we bought the illusion that the economy was rewarding us. (Which is one of the reasons why otherwise conservative Republicans were always so supportive of women going to work. It helped keep wages low.)
Even though I see great amounts of psychic pain in the transition, I believe that deflated housing prices are an ultimate good. Housing simply shouldn't cost this much when we aren't earning enough to pay for them; we shouldn't have to take out equity loans to get by.
Which is why I'd recommend that you read Jesse's entire article. He points out that the bulk of Obama's bailout funds and the thrust of his policies is aimed not at bailing out underwater mortgages for drowning homeowners, but to reinflate the value of the bad housing assets.
In other words, to continue the class war on behalf of the bankers.
...in view of the rising and well-subsidized efforts of Harold Ford and his fellow Corporate Democrats, the actual “bipartisan” aim seems to be to provide political cover for cutting spending on labor and on social services. Obama already has sent up trial balloons about needing to address the Social Security and Medicare deficits, as if they should not be financed out of the general budget by taxpayers including the higher brackets (presently exempted from FICA paycheck withholding).
Traditionally, running deficits is supposed to help pull economies out of recession. But today, spending money on public services is deemed “bad,” because it may be “inflationary” – that is, threatening to raise wages. Talk of cutting deficits thus is class-war talk – on behalf of the FIRE sector.
The economy needs deficit spending to avoid unemployment and poverty, to increase social spending to deal with the present economic shrinkage, and to maintain their capital infrastructure. The federal government also needs to increase revenue sharing with states forced to slash their budgets in response to falling tax revenue and rising unemployment insurance.
But the deficits that the Bush-Obama administration have run are nothing like the familiar old Keynesian-style deficits to help the economy recover. Running up public debt to pay Wall Street in the hope that much of this credit will be lent out to inflate asset prices is deemed good. This belief will form the context for Wednesday’s State of the Union speech. So we are brought back to the idea of economic recovery and just what is to be recovered.
Financial lobbyists are hoping to get the government to fill the gap in domestic demand below full-employment levels by providing bank credit. When governments spend money to help increase economic activity, this does not help the banks sell more interest bearing debt. Wall Street’s golden age occurred under Bill Clinton, whose budget surplus was more than offset by an explosion of commercial bank lending.
The pro-financial mass media reiterate that deficits are inflationary and bankrupt economies. The reality is that Keynesian-style deficits raise wage levels relative to the price of property (the cost of obtaining housing, and of buying stocks and bonds to yield a retirement income). The aim of running a “Wall Street deficit” is just the reverse: It is to re-inflate property prices relative to wages.
Go read the whole thing.
spoke about the family economic changes since women joined the work force in the '60s. The video is here. It's well worth a watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
I'm old enough to have grown up in a single income household and I was able (barely) to stay home until my kids were both in school. Shelter is a basic human need. Our house which we bought for $30K in 1978 is worth about $30K. It's assessed at $105K. Ridiculous.
As Warren points out moving from one income to two incomes per household actually pushed us back. Employers used to realize that pay had to support a family. Now it's only a contribution to that support. So if one employer's contribution isn't enough and the second employer's contribution isn't enough and the cost of a home triples in 30 years ...
In 1972 my parents bought a house in Colorado Springs, CO for $35.000. Ten years later they sold it thru a Real Estate company whose name I can't recall for $55.000. My parenta got some change. I knew that was not normal. I asked my faher, does that mmean that this house might cost $400.000 in 35 years? He looked at me laughed. Guess how much that house cost last year? The land speculators has been exploiting and damaging Americans for years. There is no organization to protect the masses. Of course nobody would accept guilt either. There are millions of excuses to extract every dollars from the people. But they are are stupid. Then, so be it.
This article highlights another example of why Obama's disaterous presidency is worse than a GOP presidency.
Because of his weakness, corruption or incompetence (or any combination of them) many reforms and legislative actions for the average American will be compromised and/or fatally flawed.
As he is the leader of the party that supposedly fights for the working class this means that his coporate sell-out policies will be substituted for the real thing. Where does that leave the working class?
With the GOP Americans could say "enough of this, I'll vote for an alternative", which has been the Democrats for the past 150 years. With Obama and his corporatists now running the Democrats they don't have much of an option, at least not in the short term.
Obama is a complete sell-out, fraud and failure and the Democrats need a real movement by the base to field liberal primary challangers to todays crop of losers who lead the party.
"This article highlights another example of why Obama's disaterous presidency is worse than a GOP presidency."
Nonsense. While Obama's presidency may be "bad", the McCain/Palin ticket likely would have been far, far, "worse". I think the Hoover approach of letting the market sort out the winners and losers would have led to 20% reported unemployment. The salvage of GM and Chrysler has saved many jobs. Think we would be doing better with another Scalea than Sotomayor? Really want a 100 year war in Iraq? Do you think unemployment insurance would have been extended for over a year with McCain? Do you think there would have been a 65% subsidy of cobra payments for the unemployed?
I think certain policies are bad, in particular, the bailout of AIG. But, Obama took office amidst a collapsing economy, two wars, and 8 years of Republican administration, where their Vice-President was running around the country proclaiming "deficits don't matter". And then, since the advent of "free" trade, we don't produce as much as we consume, which was made up for by mortgaging the inflated values of real estate. It will be hard for anyone to engineer a soft landing to these predicaments.
Some one that thinks outside of the traditional box. Great post NoBuddy.
Where do I start?
No argument on AIG. What about the lawless hundreds of billions in tax write off giveaways of the Section 382 heist made legal in Obama's stimulus package.
An engineered collapse in order to extract the last vestige of value from the working class. The Financial Services sector should be cordoned off as a crime scene.
which are continuing. Show me links on the pullout numbers for Iraq. Afghanistan is being escalated. 100k troops and more than 100k in private contractors.
No argument there, the Bush tax cuts and the two illegal wars have put us behind the eight ball.
The National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce have had a propaganda program since the Creel Commission in WWI. Free trade, anti union, anti government and anti concerted action.
No argument there.
In past thirty years the wages of the working class have not kept pace. The seeming increase in prosperity came through the increase in debt. Mortgage debt and credit card debt.
The Treasury and the FED are attempting to reflate the bubble.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Obama's made the decision to keep flying the plane til it runs out of gas. I think commander McCain would have made the same decision (and we all know what a great pilot he was)
Alice sees the
differencesameness between the two parties."The Financial Services sector should be cordoned off as a crime scene."
They probably should be prosecuted under racketeering laws as the financial crime syndicate that they are.
It's especially hard when they aren't even trying. Name one reform that will prevent this from happening all over again further down the road.
Of course Obama is better than Gramps, that's a strawman argument as far as I'm concerned that only tries to cover for the Obama administration's complete lack of "change" of BushCo policies. He's had a year with a complete legislative majority. It's time to DO SOMETHING about these bandits.
No argument here that's he's done way too much dithering. Gramps had other problems, on the military side. McCain was working hard to get Georgia into NATO, which would obligate us to come to their military defense. Bush/McCain did seem to want to reignite Cold War II. Last thing we need is a further trillion dollar engagement.
One thing that I am a bit amazed at is that people didn't fully understand that Obama was corporate owned. If he hadn't been, we would have seen non-stop Reverend Wright on the nightly news.
One thing that does concern me is this country descending into fascism. We now entertain torture, and so forth. We've replaced the Soviet Union as the worlds premier owner/operator of gulags. Joe McCarthy was a good guy, with their parallel view of history? There is something fundamentally wrong with the Republicans, beyond economic policy. I believe that this possibility of going completely fascist is greater with the Republicans in control. So, strawman argument or not, I am much happier that Obama is president.
and all the players know its going to end badly. We will default on our national debt. BTW deficit spending is not a good way out of economic crisis when you are already $12 trillion in the hole even if you put the money in all the right places. The game is even bigger then what Jesse's Cafe talk about and at it's helm is Goldman Sachs.
Take a few moments and peruse these vid's and reads, and you will see what I'm talking about.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
Because of the weakness, corruption or incompetence of the last eight years, America arrived to today's disastrous financial chaos. Twelve months of Obamas policies are not comparable or enough to the eight years of financial raping that America had to suffer under dumb ass Bush. Nice try buddy!
of the last 3 years...
(he used to be a Senator remember?)
when he was a Senator he voted (FOR) the Patriot act, immunity for the wiretappers, a bankster bailout with no oversite, all the war money Chimpy ever asked for...and even helped promote Condoleeza Rice.
...and (as president), the wars, torture, and "financial favoritism" (and other bad stuff) continues...
(nice try buddy)
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
for these votes. You just fling shit out there like it's truth with no backup and we're supposed to believe you? I mean all your favourite MSM sources claim he was the most 'liberal' senator as well. Which is it?
And you are all for the stuff you claim he voted for and supported. He ought to be the guy you vote for in 2012, according to you.
me-oww!
Take from the poor and give to the rich. How exactly are we being helped again? Do you think we have Obama's ear? We're F'ing peanuts in this mess and all his input is coming from Scrooge McDuck. It costs $50,000 to just get and state representatives aid's ear in a large group setting in Washington. You think the guy making $50,000 a year is going to get heard?
Still Obama was the lesser of the evils, McCain would have just turned on the rocket boosters in this effort.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
I feel so, so out-classed. I'm in a state of classlessness.
Mark Thoma Inequality and "Guard Labor" here
after the work of social economist Samuel Bowles - - - by Corey Pein here
The study of inequality, it seems since Marx, no longer is included in the general realm of economics per se.
I find Bowles work as revealed in the Corey Pein piece as extremely insightful.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
I unfortunately forget where...but one of the claims which this person was making is that part of the reason for the increasing gap between the uber-wealthy and everyone else in this country is due to the fact that most people in the middle class have over the past few decades made the mistake of investing in real estate while the uber-wealthy have been investing in the stock market (which seems to have seen far more gains over the last few decades than the real estate market has even despite corrections).
In recent years, I've bee thinking about the house I grew up in for most of my childhood -- a very modest three-bedroom, one-bathroom ranch house like many produced in the late 50's/early 60's -- and find myself wondering why so many Americans these days seem to think that they have to have a whacking huge house in which each room is at least several hundred square feet and every member of the family has their own bathroom! The house in which I grew up was perfectly satisfactory, but you might have trouble selling such a house today because many people in the younger generations would view it as cramped (maybe because it's not sufficient to contain their egos!). I also find myself thinking of the tiny little house in which my grandfather -- one of five children -- grew up. In the name of all that's sacred...what's wrong with so many Americans these days who seem to think they need a mansion in order to be happy?
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
Actually homes have downsized a great deal. I was an estimator in residential construction and some of our models had bedrooms which were like 9' x 9'. Try fitting conventional furniture in that room.
Then again my dad retired to a place that is 9000 square feet. between the two other houses on that compound, and their 4000sf "beach cottage", my dad and step mom have about 20,000 sf of fully furnished, conditioned space to roam around in. And they are still running out of places to put the stuff they buy every day.
edit: Republican/conservatism is a mental illness.
Let's not get too exited about deflating the prices!!!
Once it sells I'm game though.
All of my life I was taught that homes were the best investment you could make with your money, so I bought in. If we can bail out investment bankers making millions a year, you would think we could do something for the average folks that thought they were making a responsible investment and are now upside down on their mort.
in the middle of June, July 2010. Obama is accountable for what happens to America as of July 2010. Any other talk is just righwing nuttery...as usual. By the end of October 2010, America will be on track again, and we'll kick their asses once more. They don't even want to get together with Obama to have televised Healthcare talks because they are going to look the way they always look: STUPID!
Did you mean June 2009?
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
is Back From the Future.
There has been a slow but deliberate transfer of wealth from working people to the rich, started by Reagan. There was no "trickle-down", it was a "flow-up" plan and it has worked, as planned.
If any Conservatives complain to you about redistribution of wealth, you only need to respond that we are just trying to get back what was taken from us.
Have always been the cannon fodder for the rich. It's been/is class warfare no matter what the brain stream media says.
The House Bill(1207) has 317 cosponsors. The Senate Bill(604) has 32 cosponsors.
Makes cents to me.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I certainly don't recall conservatives being supportive of women going back to work. They kept to the ideal of housewives.
Now service sector conservatives probably like the pool of cheap labor, but not having to give leave for child care, or lose them outright because of marriage. They probably eventually come back to work, but not right away, or for the same business.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR0jKlwE0zI
I remember when yuppies were buying fix 'em ups, and fixing 'em up, and instead of living there, selling it for a greater amount. But I never understood how they got much more than the repairs were worth. And I thought the market was more volatile making such maneuvers risky.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
were based on what the property was actually worth and not its inflated value? When you pay $600 a month in property taxes and it's added to your mortgage payment, Mom and Dad both have to work and still can't make it. It also makes them feel like they are actually paying down the mortgage, when they are not. Like paying the minimum on a credit card. These weasels didn't miss a trick.
That crossed my mind, because property taxes is how they pay for education in Texas, but I wasn't sure how many elses were dependent upon state and city taxes which Texas doesn't have.
So in effect we still have a school system in Texas that's like pre-Brown v the Board of Education, the poorer neighborhoods pay less in actual taxes (but still more as a percentage of their income), so their schools have to struggle, and then suddenly at college level, if they get that far, they're supposed to compete on a "color-blind" basis.
The rich folk will say, dollars don't equal quality education and point out some teacher doing well in a poor neighborhood, so when you ask for some of their dollars for your schools, suddenly every dollar counts.
And then they claim that quality education means getting rid of the DOE, teacher unions, and instituting a voucher system, where as alumni they're already ahead of the game.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
..some RE development and investment let me say the writer is..Absolutely Correct.
I did some profitable resort development back in the 70's and 80's.
BUT..in the early 90's I started warning people that there was a bubble coming, it wouldn't be sustainable and would crash.
Mostly because wages were not keeping pace with building cost and the affordability factor would kick in, leaving only the semi-high end market...which was 90% shoddy McDonald mansions aimed at middle class and upper middle class. It was going to end even without the hokey mortgage financing because you cannot have yearly double digit increase in home values...it knocks out a huge majority of your RE market. Mortgages companies knew that and responded with really criminal, but not illegal, thanks to congress, eye candy mortgages that people should have known better than to fall for...but they didn't...and then we also ended up with a RE 'speculators" industry that further exacerbated the problem.
I have a friend that calls me monthly who bought a beach condo 4 years ago that I told him NOT TO BUY....now he's stuck with a 300,000 mortgage and can't give the condo away.
Painful it may be...but home prices have to come down.
The writer is also right that the gov, adm,Fed is trying to recreate the bubble in housing. Anyone watching the FED policies for the past 10 years has seen micro managing of inflation thru interest rates in order to avoid a deflationary spiral. They have weaved such a tangled web of policies trying to keep "growth" afloat that the web can't hold it's weight any longer.
I could rant further but just realize one truth...Orwellington DC really does believe that WS creates wealth not Main Street....they either don't care or don't understand that MS actually creates the wealth and WS just moves it around.
I expect more crisis.
keep "growth" afloat that the web can't hold it's weight any longer." The new version of the 800 lb. gorilla--the 800 lb. spider.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_UXXtCpkeKiA/R07cbHm...
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
. . . when the 30 Year Treasury bond rate is about 4.5%?
There is no need for deficit reduction now. At this long term rate it makes sense to borrow. But "deficit reduction" has never really been about economics. Deficit fearmongering is just the conservatives' old and reliable excuse to gut to popular programs.
But why is Obama adopting this conservative meme? And why now?
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Why is it deficit reduction is always exclusively about reductions in social expenses (barring Wall Streetl?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
. . . and taxing the very wealthy.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Are there any kind of social Pentagon expenses?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Tailhook?
Corruption favors the wealthy.
What about those parties where the mercenaries were drinking shots out of each others asses. Somebody had to buy the booze.
. . . but it is a good example of when it is wise to look forward and not back.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Because if you keep feeding them they will breed?
Poor people just muck up the scenery.
A media blitz that overcame the Clinton Machine?
We should have seen this one coming. (I did but nobody listened.)
President Obama is a charming, handsome, eloquent man, and a minority to boot.
He was sold to us as a dream team to break from society's woes.
In fact he is a place holder for the Wall Street Machine. He is sent there to diddle away more of our precious time until we are as poor as the people we bomb in Iraq.
They want us on our backs so our wages will be as low as, say, India. THEN they will bring back the jobs at 25 cents a day.
Our nation is loosing BADLY in this war. And it is a WAR.
When will WE THE PEOPLE stand up and fight? We still have the power to cut off their money flow. Let their entire country fall. We can build a new one and leave them out.
with: If you see someone on the edge and your first instinct is to pull them back, don't do it. Push them over, as once they hit bottom, there's only one way to go. Up.
Blah...blah...blah...
Lots of us saw it coming who weren't Obama true believers
He doesn't have to work for Wall Street, just be out maneuvered.
So no need to pat your own back
You'll dislocate your shoulder.
On to the Ignore List you go.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
This 1962 song my Malvina Reynolds still resonates:
"Little Boxes"
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,1
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there's doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.
And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
We are a stupid people.
I see no cure in my lifetime for the disease that is conservativism.
I hope for the those younger than me, that a cure is found.
There's some truth to this 'class war' theory, but it's really a bunch of bullshit.
Take a look at a chart of the US national debt over the past 50 years or so. In 1980, the angle of the debt line steepens - the magnitude of the annual deficit started to increase. This was in spite of the so-called 'Reagan Revolution', which was supposed to turn deficits into surpluses and actually pay down the national debt. No Republican talks about this anymore, but that was the primary goal of Reagan's fiscal and monetary policies. They achieved the opposite.
Reagan tripled the national debt during an economic boom, when it should have fallen - quite a feat. Bush 43 and his 'fiscally conservative' majority congress doubled it again. During the next 30-odd years to the end of the Bush/Cheney administration, GDP increased 5 times (in nominal terms, before inflation is taken into account), while the national debt went up 11 times.
Think about that. For almost 30 years, under mostly conservative presidents and congresses, the US national debt was allowed to compound at more than twice the rate of economic growth.
This the real story of Republican tax cuts, and it's been an economic disaster. Tax cuts with no offsetting spending cuts (such as those enacted by that supposed 'tax and spend Liberal', Bill Clinton) are the root cause of the economic mess the US is now in - that, and financial deregulation.
Blame conservatives? Sure. They violated every principle they claimed to stand for. But blame voters more. Endless debt, deferred forever into the future with no consequence, is that the people voted for. Well, the bill has come due, and there are no easy solutions - other than higher taxes, real spending cuts, and a permanent reduction in the standard of living.
The real 'Class War' began under Reagan decades ago, and the rich people won. They were aided and abetted by the middle class who voted against their interests. What's happening now isn't a class war, it's a feeble, reactionary death throe.
When Republicans are out of office, they talk about deficits. However, when in office, they proclaim that Reagan proved that "deficits don't matter". Like socialized medicine/Medicare, they have it both ways.
Anyway, taking care of the deficit is easy - simply print up $13T and distribute it. We're doing a little bit now, called "quantative easing".
...but unfortunately (as I know only too well), just try telling the average Middle American that! Not only will they completely refuse to listen, they'll accuse you of being an socialist subversive.
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
you're saying.
with others, "deficit reduction" is code for eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile corporate welfare, obscene defense spending, subsidies and lowered tax burdens for rich corporations and individuals will continue and accelerate. If thats what america wants, give it to em.
...that "democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
This is what the majority of American voters will keep on getting as long as they insist on voting for "pie in the sky"...an empty plate.
Never trust anyone who insists that patriotism requires you to blindfold yourself with the flag.
Go here: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McC...
It tears me up inside to know how badly people have been brainwashed over the years. I find it difficult to argue with folks who think they are conservative because I realize how easy it is to believe you know something so absolutely you would bet your soul that you were right. When every day for years on end you get a message, and that message changes subtly over time. History is rewritten one myth at a time. It gets hard to know where we've been just a few months ago much less decades ago. I don't blame them. There is active manipulation going on designed to misinform the masses.
The enemy makes dirty words out of terms the masses use against them. Class War is a dirty term, Liberal is a dirty word, Socialism is a dirty word - the enemy, the Rich & Powerful have redefined these terms so they may not be used against them in the future.
Example: The Tea Party movement is now a fraud, 'Tea Party' has become a dirty word. How? Dick Armey and his corp masters corrupted any movement this might have been (yes and baited the liberals into decrying it). If you think the Tea Party is viable just look at how badly the repubs are trying to assimilate it INTO them not vice versa. Just like they confiscated the anti-gov crowd of the sixties. The repubs LOVE government baby, you been had former counterculture children! Just look at the progression before Nixon to the Reagan-Democrats ("I'm from the government, blah,blah,blah"). I don't believe most people are conservative, they have been told they are for so long a time they don't remember that liberal is NOT a dirty word.
History is repeating itself. The 1700's, the 1800's, the 1900's, today not much has changed. Howard Zinn (the media washed his resent death away like gossamer tissue) and Charles Beard are two honest historians who wrote the truth behind America's myth. They were not partisan. They just wrote an objective analysis as it was. The rich vilified them for pulling the curtain, just ask any conservative who these men were to see the hate generated.
Read Zinn and Beard for starters. Know the constitution was written for the Corporations by the early economic ruling class. Class war is real, is being perpetrated on us - all of us, libs & conservs alike - and we are losing. Losing by our own hand.
In a way I blame the public for being so gullible and easily led.
But then I think about the hard working people who aren't fully educated or lack curiosity or access to the truth or facts thru no fault of their own and understand how they are so misled by the media.
What we need more than anything in this country is a ..pardon the pun.."patriotic" press...that isn't corporate owned or run by some ideologue's with an agenda.
Truth is found through "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail" - a marketplace where there is a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources".
Almost all media has an agenda. The thing is in acquiring the "multiplicity of sources". That way, the BS from one source can be offset by the others.
Take for instance, the U.S. The progressive wing of the Democratic party has no access to the U.S. corporate media. But, you can see progressive opinions on RTTV (Russia).
http://www.youtube.com/russiatoday
Want to find out what Kucinich is thinking? Well, Dennis has access to foreign media, but no access to domestic media.
But this is not a blanket endorsement of RTTV. To get an informed opinion of Russia, I suggest Al-Jazerra. And, it goes on and on. The idea is "multiplicity". Diversify your sources. And, fill in others of thing learned that they may be oblivious to.
... Obama could take single payer health reform "off the table" only if the corporate media also took it off the table. The government and corporate media operate in lockstep.
And seeing that we don't see any. The dollars come in. No one gets to see where they go. Used to be stuff like war and aerospace but that's becoming old hat as the government electronically gooses the spreadsheet numbers on Wall Street's balance sheets while we have no right in return to see how they smear them around among themselves. Satan forbid that any of those tax dollars should be returned in things like infrastructure repair and health.
"Any dollar returned in services is a dollar wasted." Remember that. It's the new motto of our corporate sponsored government. The formula for creating history's largest third world country.
if real estate is merely "shelter" and the stock market is a glorified casino? Does Susie keep her money in her mattress or what?
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