{"id":83945,"date":"2013-10-15T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-15T07:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?guid=f6cd8961bbcafd350c3e8feadadd4203"},"modified":"2013-10-15T08:12:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-15T07:12:00","slug":"washington-brinksmanship-masks-class-war-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/washington-brinksmanship-masks-class-war-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Brinksmanship Masks Class War"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Washington Brinksmanship Masks Class War<\/b><\/div>\n
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by Stephen Lendman<\/div>\n
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So-called budget\/debt ceiling squabbles mask Washington’s longstanding class war. It’s been ongoing for decades.<\/div>\n
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Post-9\/11 it intensified. Neoliberal harshness explains it. Bipartisan complicity force feeds it. <\/div>\n
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Doing so transfers unprecedented amounts of wealth from ordinary Americans to bankers, other corporate favorites, rich investors, and high net worth households.<\/div>\n
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What began in the late 1970s continues out-of-control. America’s top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 95%.<\/div>\n
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Social inequality defines today’s America. It’s unprecedented or close to it. Poverty, unemployment, homelessness and hunger reflect Depression era levels.<\/div>\n
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Tens of millions of working age Americans are unemployed. Most others are underemployed. Families struggle to get by.<\/div>\n
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Income inequality is greater than in all other developed countries. Over three-fourths of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck.<\/div>\n
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Neoliberal harshness explains why. It bears repeating. Bipartisan complicity demands it. It’s institutionalized. Wall Street wants more. <\/div>\n
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Shutdown squabbles mask political Washington’s willingness to comply. Social America is on the chopping block for elimination.<\/div>\n
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Ordinary people have no say. Popular needs don’t matter. Democracy is a convenient illusion. Monied interests run things. Whatever they want they get.<\/div>\n
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Ordinary people are exploited. Freedom and social justice are disappearing in plain sight. New World Order harshness reflects today’s reality. <\/div>\n
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Its holy trinity is eliminating public services, unrestrained predatory capitalism, and cracking down hard on nonbelievers.<\/div>\n
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Power and privilege are institutionalized. Beneficial social change is verboten. Police state harshness prevents it.<\/div>\n
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Younger generations are worse off than older ones. Deplorable social inequality exists. A race to the bottom continues. Future prospects are grim.<\/div>\n
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Greater dystopian harshness is planned. Obama demands it. He’s Wall Street’s tool. Toing and froing debates mask what’s ongoing.<\/div>\n
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Both parties are fundamentally in lockstep. Destroying social America is planned. It’s on the chopping block for elimination. Vital safety net protections don’t matter.<\/div>\n
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Venal politicians don’t care. Predatory finance is policy. It’s a new form of warfare. It’s more destructive than standing armies.<\/div>\n
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It’s wrecking millions of lives. It’s turning America into a dystopian backwater. It reflects a declining empire’s waning throes. America’s ship of state is sinking.<\/div>\n
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Austerity fails ethically and morally. It’s bad economics. Cutting back when stimulus is needed is madness. Doing so assures decline.<\/div>\n
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Workers need good-paying jobs. Social programs improve millions of lives. They lift all boats. <\/div>\n
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Prosperity produces jobs. When people have money they spend it. Economic growth follows. Hard times forces belt-tightening. It’s a slippery slope to decline.<\/div>\n
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It’s simple economics. US policies are reckless. They’re self-destructive. They’re out-of-control. They wreck millions of lives.<\/div>\n
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High-paying\/good benefit jobs are disappearing. They’re offshored to low wage countries. Deregulation lets bankers and corporate crooks rape and pillage. <\/div>\n
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They do so unrestrained for profits. They want as much money as they can get. It’s manipulated to make more of it. Endless wars explain. So does predatory finance.<\/div>\n
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Kleptocracy defines today’s America. Gangsterism reflects it. Personal freedoms, democratic values and general welfare don’t matter. They’re disappearing in plain sight.<\/div>\n
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Expect much worse ahead. Back room dealmaking assures it. Privileged elites want everything for themselves. They’re stealing it from ordinary people to get it.<\/div>\n
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Democrats and Republicans are in league with corporate bosses. Shared sacrifice is code language. Ordinary people sacrifice to let business, political bosses, and rich elites share.<\/div>\n
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The American dream is more illusion than reality. George Carlin once said you have to be asleep to believe it. <\/div>\n
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Class war is official policy. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other vital protections are targeted for elimination.<\/div>\n
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Doing so frees up more money for imperial adventurism and corporate enrichment.<\/div>\n
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America is the world’s richest country. It isn’t broke. It misuses its resources. It hands them to Wall Street, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites.<\/div>\n
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Reverse Robin Hoodism is policy. Grand theft America reflects it. Milton Friedman’s over-the-top ideology explained. It’s US ruling class dogma.<\/div>\n
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He said markets work best unfettered of rules, regulations, onerous taxes, trade barriers, “entrenched interests” and human interference.<\/div>\n
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The best government is practically none at all, he believed. Whatever it does business does better so let it. <\/div>\n
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Government of, by and for everyone equitably is blasphemy. Unrestrained profiteering is good policy, he claimed.<\/div>\n
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Public wealth should be in private hands, he said. Abolish corporate taxes. Slash social services. Economic freedom is a be all and end all. It’s “indispensable” to achieving “political freedom.”<\/div>\n
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Friedman and his acolytes opposed Medicare, a living wage, most other social protections and public education.<\/div>\n
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He called unions “of little importance (in advancing US) worker” rights. He cited supply and demand fundamentalism. “The higher the price of anything, the less people buy.”<\/div>\n
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“Make labor of any kind more expensive and the number of jobs of that kind will be fewer. Make carpenters more expensive, and fewer houses will be built.”<\/div>\n
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“Raise wages of airline pilots (and) there will be fewer jobs for them (because) air travel will (cost more and) fewer people will fly.” <\/div>\n
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High wages and good social benefits harm everyone, he believed. They raise prices. They lower demand. They destroy jobs. Prosperity depends on cheap labor, he claimed.<\/div>\n
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He said Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme on earth.” <\/div>\n
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He called it “an unholy combination of two items: a flat-rate tax on earnings up to a maximum with no exemption and a benefit program that awards subsidies that have no relation to need.” <\/div>\n
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He ignored America’s most successful poverty-reducing program. It’s the most fundamental of social protections. It’s on the chopping block for elimination. Handing it to Wall Street profiteers is planned.<\/div>\n
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Friedman wanted it privatized, saying:<\/div>\n
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It’s “hard to justify requiring 100% of the people to adopt a government-prescribed straitjacket to avoid encouraging a few lower-income individuals to make no provision for their old age.”<\/div>\n
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Millions of poor and low income Americans benefit. Their numbers grow exponentially. Friedman ignored them.<\/div>\n
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His “free to choose” manifesto advocated:<\/div>\n
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“To each according to what he and the instruments he owns produces.”<\/div>\n
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In other words, everyone should be on their own sink or swim. Human wreckage doesn’t matter. Poor people are responsible for their own impoverishment, he claimed.<\/div>\n
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Friedmanism reflects today’s policies. He opposed market-interfering democracy, egalitarianism, and most government provided social services.<\/div>\n
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He advocated unfettered economic freedom, limited government, and unrestrained profit-making. Friedman helped establish Chicago School fundamentalism.<\/div>\n
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Pinochet’s Chile became his first cutthroat capitalist laboratory. Hardline shock therapy was instituted. South America’s most vibrant democracy was transformed into laissez faire hell.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Technocrats ran economic policy. “Caravan of death” justice followed. So did dystopian harshness. Inflation exploded.<\/div>\n
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In the first year, it hit 375%. Mass layoffs cost thousands of jobs. Social safety net protections disappeared. Economic contraction caused mass suffering. Cheap imports flooded the country. Local businesses died.<\/div>\n
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Free market paradise meant unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness, and brutal crackdowns on resisters. By the late 1980s, nearly half of Chilean households were impoverished. <\/div>\n
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Massive amounts of wealth were transferred to elite private hands. Unions were targeted for destruction. Dissenters disappeared. They were detained, tortured and killed.<\/div>\n
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Inside the bubble was paradise. Outside was dystopian hell. Chile remains one of Latin America’s the most unequal societies. Longstanding policies shifted wealth upward. <\/div>\n
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One percent of the population benefitted hugely. It has over one-third of Chile’s wealth. Inflation adjusted pay for 90% of society declined. It rose 150% for its 1% and 300% for its 0.1%.<\/div>\n
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Chicago School fundamentalism creates wastelands. Chile remains a model of economic unfairness. Crony capitalism reflects out-of-control corruption, inequality and injustice. <\/div>\n
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Neoliberal harshness robs millions of futures. It’s suffocating Americans. Bipartisan complicity intends much worse. <\/div>\n
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Shifting virtually all public wealth to elite private hands is planned. Shutdown squabbles mask what’s going on. <\/div>\n
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Details alone remain to be finalized. Heart of darkness viciousness explains them. Millions more will face impoverishment.<\/div>\n
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More good jobs will disappear. People needs increasingly will go begging. Institutionalized inequality will be worse than ever. <\/div>\n
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Human misery will increase. America already is unfit to live in. Expect the worst of all possible worlds ahead. The fullness of time will explain.<\/div>\n
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. <\/div>\n
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His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”<\/div>\n
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http:\/\/www.claritypress.com\/LendmanII.html<\/div>\n
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Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. <\/div>\n
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Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.<\/div>\n
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It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.<\/div>\n
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http:\/\/www.progressiveradionetwork.com\/the-progressive-news-hour<\/div>\n
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http:\/\/www.dailycensored.com\/washingtons-brinksmanship-masks-class-war\/<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Brinksmanship Masks Class Warby Stephen LendmanSo-called budget\/debt ceiling squabbles mask Washington’s longstanding class war. It’s been ongoing for decades.Post-9\/11 it intensified. Neoliberal harshness explains it. Bipartisan complicity …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1217,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-83945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news","7":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}