Amy Goodman plucked away on my nerves in a column she wrote for the Nation of Change!
by Charlie Leck
In an article in Nation of Change, called War, Debt and the President, Amy Goodman builds a solid case that our President has not been able to carry the water for those progressives who supported him.
“President Barack Obama touted his debt-ceiling deal Tuesday, saying, ‘We can't balance the budget on the backs of the very people who have borne the biggest brunt of this recession.’ Yet that is what he and his coterie of Wall Street advisers have done.
“In the affairs of nations, Alexander Hamilton wrote in January 1790, ‘loans in times of public danger, especially from foreign war, are found an indispensable resource.’ It was his first report as secretary of the treasury to the new Congress of the United States. The country had borrowed to fight the Revolutionary War, and Hamilton proposed a system of public debt to pay those loans.”
As I go through Goodman’s piece, she touches on a number of truths that pluck at my nerves and raise my hackles.
She uses the word “compliant” in referring to a Congress that so easily agreed to fund the George W. Bush wars. How did they fund those wars? Reread the second paragraph in the quote above. We relied on our national ability to borrow money from the people and other nations. We’re broke now because of those wars. Every time you hear Ms. Bachmann of Minnesota claim it is because of the expense of Social Security and Medicare, please remember that we had to borrow trillions (that’s trillions with a “t”) of dollars to fund those wars.
As every one of us who uses a credit card knows, there comes a time when one has to pay the piper. Times up!
I’m very unnerved by Goodman’s assessment that the boys (boys becoming men) who fought those wars and paid the price with their life and limbs will be the ones whose care will now not be properly funded
It was like someone was strumming on my nerves when Goodman quoted William Hartung, of the Center for International Policy. Hudson points to Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential warning to us about the “military industrial complex.”
“Essentially, he’s to the left of Barack Obama on these issues.”
Ping! My nerves are vibrating wildly and chills are running up and down my spine. Old Ike knew what of he spoke. Ask yourself: Just who did profit from the trillions of dollars we spent on the Bush Wars? The answer, of course, has to be: Multinational Corporations!
Goodman reminds me, with a dubious shake of her head, just what the recent Congressional legislation on our national debt does:
“The Budget Control Act of 2011 assures drastic cuts to the U.S. social safety net. Congress will appoint a committee of 12, dubbed the ‘Super Congress,’ evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, to identify $1.2 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving. If the committee fails to meet that goal, sweeping, mandatory, across-the-board cuts are mandated. Social services would get cut, but so would the Pentagon.”
Do you think that those corporations and their CEOs who profited so richly from the Bush Wars are going to help us pay the piper through increased taxes on them? Do you think the Republican House, where so many of the Representatives have signed a no new taxes pledge, will allow it? Of course not! We, the people, get the shaft again! I assure you!
Goodman is plucking wildly at my nerves, which are out of tune. The sound in my mind is worse than fingernails on a blackboard. I am rattled!
“President Obama's debt-ceiling deal is widely considered a historic defeat for progressives, a successful attack on the New Deal and Great Society achievements of the past century. Congresswoman Donna Edwards, D-Md., summed up the disappointment, in which half the Democrats in the House voted against their president, tweeting: ‘Nada from million/billionaires; corp tax loopholes aplenty; only sacrifice from the poor/middle class? Shared sacrifice, balance? Really?’”
Ooooooh!
If you’ve got the nerve, go ahead and read her entire column!
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Is there a savior out there? Doesn't look like it unless Hillary gets her hackles up.
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