The Love Chronicles

Entitlements are funded with a payroll tax. Wars are not funded.
The criminal Bush regime lied to Americans and claimed that the Iraq war would
only cost $70 billion at the most and would be paid for with Iraq oil
revenues. When Bush’s chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsay, said the Iraq
invasion would cost $200 billion, the White House Moron fired him. In fact,
Lindsay was off by a factor of 20. Economic and budget experts have
calculated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have consumed $4,000 billion in
out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. In other words, the ongoing
wars and occupations have already eaten up the $4 trillion by which Obama
hopes to cut federal spending over the next ten years. Bomb now, pay later.

As taxing the rich is not part of the political solution, the
focus is on rewarding the insurance companies by privatizing Medicare at some
future date with government subsidized insurance premiums, by capping
Medicaid, and by loading the diminishing middle class with additional Social
Security tax.

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 have made it
clear that war is a far more important priority than health care and old age
pensions for Americans.

The American people and their wants and needs are not represented
in Washington. Washington serves powerful interest groups, such as the
military/security complex, Wall Street and the banksters, agribusiness, the
oil companies, the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and the mining and
timber industries. Washington endows these interests with excess profits by
committing war crimes and terrorizing foreign populations with bombs, drones,
and invasions, by deregulating the financial sector and bailing it out of its
greed-driven mistakes after it has stolen Americans’ pensions, homes, and
jobs, by refusing to protect the land, air, water, oceans and wildlife from
polluters and despoilers, and by constructing a health care system with the
highest costs and highest profits in the world.

The way to reduce health care costs is to take out gobs of costs
and profits with a single payer system. A private health care system can
continue to operate alongside for those who can afford it.

The way to get the budget under control is to stop the
gratuitous hegemonic wars, wars that will end in a nuclear confrontation.

The US economy is in a deepening recession from which recovery
is not possible, because American middle class jobs in manufacturing and
professional services have been offshored and given to foreigners. US GDP,
consumer purchasing power, and tax base have been handed over to China,
India, and Indonesia in order that Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate
CEOs can earn more.

When the goods and services produced offshore come back into America,
they arrive as imports. The trade balance worsens, the US dollar declines
further in exchange value, and prices rise for Americans, whose incomes are
stagnant or falling.

This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy
seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are
maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy.

The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3%
unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt
burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to
drive the economy.

Washington’s response to this dilemma is to increase the
austerity! Cutting back Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, forcing down
wages by destroying unions and offshoring jobs (which results in a labor
surplus and lower wages), and driving up the prices of food and energy by
depreciating the dollar further erodes consumer purchasing power. The Federal
Reserve can print money to rescue the crooked financial institutions, but it
cannot rescue the American consumer.

As a final point, confront the fact that you are even lied to
about “deficit reduction.” Even if Obama gets his $4 trillion “deficit
reduction” over the next decade, it does not mean that the current national
debt will be $4 trillion less than it currently is. The “reduction” merely
means that the growth in the national debt will be $4 trillion less than
otherwise. Regardless of any “deficit reduction,” the national debt ten years
from now will be much higher than it presently is.”

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Associate Editor of
the Wall Street Journal, and professor of economics in six universities.