The real composition of the deficit

Michael Collins at the Agonist:

Why do elected leaders hate the citizens? Nihilists at the helm!

The graph to the right is from the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities. It shows the relative contribution of various factors to the deficit. It's not a full exposition, but take it for what it's worth. If we stopped the wars, restored the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest citizens, and ended TARP, we would make a huge contribution to reducing the current deficit.

So why hasn't that happened? Congress and the White House would rather kill people overseas, reward Wall Street failures, and coddle the wealthiest citizens than reducethe deficit.

The solutions aren't that hard. Will they take action? Of course not.

Why do those in charge hate the citizens of this country? It's a fair assumption to say that they do hate us when they avoid obvious and direct solutions to a major problem. Instead, they've put together a stacked entitlement commission to tombstone Social Security. By their actions, their program is clear. "The middle class is being systematically wiped out" by the current leaders.

They ALL know this. Most of them do absolutely nothing.

All but a very few should be fired in 2010, without regard to party. If the next crew does the same, fire them too.

Addition: Have all federal candidates sign a contract - strictly enforced A Contract with the Citizens. Stiff penalties,like walking the plank if they deviate.

...and here is an insightful commenter's answer to the question, "Why do our elected leaders hate the citizens?":

Our Elected Leaders Love The Citizens!

"Why do elected leaders hate the citizens?"

I used to agonise night and day over the relentless hollowing out of American ideals, jurisprudence and governance. It really pained and depressed me to witness it by the decade, to live through it year upon year, helpless to turn us from war and ruin to peace and prosperity. To see where America is headed in its blind and fearful groping for wealth and power and safety and to also know there is no steering or stopping this thing, that it runs on gravity -- cost me so much time wasted on organizing and protesting, working Party politics, reading and studying, writing and marching, crying and thinking and talking . . . if I'd put all that effort into permaculture gardening it would have done far more actual good here on Earth, under the sun and sky.

But I marched and protested and petitioned and voted and agonised over America's penchant for endless war until I couldn't do it any more, because I became numb. Literally wordless. Nothing more to write or say to anyone. Not when all the words in the world can't steer this thing. It is not in our hands, the steering wheel.

In the face of all passion, logic, ideals, humanity -- the American war machine rolls on, right over real lives, right over human beings, in this country and Over There in Eastasia. And Oceania. The whole world is divided into theaters of American warfare. It is the perennial business of America to make war, to make "the world safe for United Fruit Company." (Smedley Butler)

I once heard tell of a Beatnik out in California, in the early Fifties, who plunked down court fees and changed his name to Neil Ism. I laughed at the time, but one morning a couple years ago realized that I knew this man very well, without ever meeting him. And that he was years ahead of me. One fine morning he chose gardening, period.

For it has gradually dawned on me that America IS just a machine, and this has taken the sting out of losing my love, my country. She's not a shining goal or ideal to me anymore; she's not a vision of loveliness. She's a thing with wheels and treads, something you get out of the way of. Or don't.

There is actually no human being or group of human beings in definitive charge, no group of people with a philosophy of Gotterdammerung in mind. As far as human beings go, there is just the pursuit of happiness, to use Jefferson's fine euphemism for human beings seeking wealth, safety, freedom from wants, and power. Nope, the human beings running organizations, institutions, governments and corporations are not starkly different from John and Jane Q. Publick. One pant leg at a time, and all that.

Sure, there are lots more functioning sociopaths and psychopaths in the upper ranks of all large organizations, but their goals and actions are tempered by all the more balanced people within the organization. In a fully pathological organization you would routinely use flamethrowers and artillery on a daily basis against your competitors, even if they only represented a 1% chance of ever challenging you. It would be the logical thing to do, in the simple pursuit of self interest.

Very few modern organizations actually exercise this approach.

No, it isn't the people, putting their pants on in the morning in order to pursue happiness all day, that steer America.

It is the organizations themselves, viewed as persons, that are utterly ruthless, soul-less psychopaths. And they have come to steer America. The human beings, in their pants, are just along for the ride.

Corporations that are organized for profit -- in particular -- are quite insane in this regard. It is not a matter of them following the law -- the law says they are created to seek profit for their own 'self' and shareholders only, and can consider nothing else. Nor is it a matter of writing laws to restrain or regulate them -- they write the laws of the land now, and always have -- because wealth is influence is power.

The wealthiest 5000 families in America also belong in this category, for their lives entire are at the service of their great wealth. And, their wealth is entirely invested within huge, psychopathic corporations. There is no difference in the machinery.

Our original Constitution was heavily influenced to favor wealthy white men -- landowners, slaveholders and bankers -- over the working man, or any woman, slave, or native. These wealthy white men were the feudal lords of the day, their godly superiority over others and their right to write the laws based entirely on the fact and influence of their many possessions. The Constitution and all established law reflected their views before other views. It is so in almost every nation today. Wealth is influence is power, and the grip of wealth upon government only gets tighter over time, like a python's does.

Corporations, especially when legally considered to possess every right and trait of living human beings, are our current feudal lords, our Really Large Citizens. America's laws and government(s) not only favors them, it IS them, for they finance the electees, and the elections, and they write the laws for the electees to vote upon -- very often without reading or understanding them. In State legislatures and in Congress, voting is by Party, and Party answers to electoral power, which answers to funding, which comes from corporations, who have agendas to be put into legal standing.

Agendas that aim to increase their grip on government, and their freedom to operate unregulated, unchallengeable, untouchable, too big to fail. There comes a point when government becomes a nuisance.

Power increases itself, just as wealth increases itself. Right now, the corporations of America hold more power than they ever have before, more than they ever dreamed would be theirs, more than they know quite what to do with. They are drunk with it, and yet want more. There comes a point when government becomes a real nuisance.

It is these 'corporate persons' our government looks out and sees, standing tall between our shining seas. The government sees and serves these Really Large Citizens. As for you and me, ehhh, not so much.

We actual human persons out here, in our pants, are seen as cattle, mere fodder units (as the Bush Family calls us), put here by God or Happenstance to serve as laborers and consumers and debtors for the corporations -- and damn sure for nothing more. If we were algae or germs we would receive the same consideration as homo sapiens sapiens do in America today. We have a role to play in the affairs of the nation -- laborers, consumers and debtors -- and have been granted the latitude to either fit in or be smooshed, no more. And it just gets tighter this way.

Even the so-called voting of we humans is so pre-arranged between corporate-friendly candidates as to be mere kabuki -- we can vote Red Party or Blue Party and no more real choice is offered. Votes aren't even counted any more, just pretend-counted in the digital depths of black boxes no one can ever look into since they belong to a registered corporation which has the inalienable right to privacy. If there were more votes cast than there are people registered to vote there is no recount, and no recourse -- even in the courts.

"Why do elected leaders hate the citizens?"

Your very question is wrong, sir. An unfortunate misperception on your part.

Our elected leaders do not hate the citizens. No no. Dear God, how they love them! They cater to their every whim, they roll in the hay with them at all hours, they take them in and take them on by the half dozen like legendary Shakespearean whores -- as long as those citizens are corporate persons in good wealth well then it's "Roll Me Over And Do It Again!" Leave some money on the dresser.

Corporations are the America's citizens. Human beings are cattle. Your mistake is mistaking human beings for citizens.

OMG that is sooooo 18th Century!

Antifa July 16, 2010 - 5:04pm