Here is part of our predicament. The Tea Party-Republican wing of the political space is filled with lunatics--they want to turn the country back to the 1920s. Too many Democrats have forgotten what it once meant to be a "Democrat". But, the plague of disinformation and stupidity that will cost people their lives is carefully masked by the seemingly innocuous call by the corporate media to embrace a "balanced approach".
So, some of this infection has already made too many people who should know better believe in the phony debt and deficit "crisis". There has been a relentless hammering by the corporate-owned traditional media, which is framing the future as a choice of a "balanced approach" of cuts and tax hikes. For example, The New York Times today:
What the country needs to get its fiscal house in order, without stalling the fragile recovery, is increased relief-and-recovery spending in the near term, coupled with a credible plan for deficit reduction — including spending cuts and tax increases in equal measure — to be implemented as the economy recovers.
And:
But until both sides are able to put tax increases and entitlements on the table, there will be no lasting deficit reduction.
So, when I say, intentionally provocatively, that that kind of editorial will cost lives, here is what I mean:
Cutting "entitlements"--which should be called "our social responsibility programs"--would mean fewer people would get proper health care--and would die sooner (obviously, we know the insurance industry doesn't care about that).
Cutting Social Security--please, do not fill up this space with the idiotic defense of the president's "reform" of Social Security as something other than a cut--would mean some seniors would end up with less money and, then, likely less of a safety net and, then, earlier death.
Touching any of the vast array of other programs will mean will mean more poverty and more poor health for younger kids and, well, a long list of attacks on the well-being of the people--which will cost lives.
There is no "balanced approach" which calls for anything that touches a program that is not corporate welfare or the funding for the war machine.
No working person in America should have to live with a "balanced approach" after 30-40 years of a robbery of the country which was an entirely unbalanced distribution of the wealth.
I understand that the editorial board of The New York Times is entirely clueless when it comes to the vast jobs crisis in America. So, WE should be demanding that not a single dime be taken from any program other than corporate welfare and defense-wars. Not. One. Single. Dime. Period.
Instead, we should be demanding an investment of $1 trillion in an emergency jobs program--a 21st Century WPA, which some of us have been pushing via the Job Party--which would do more for the country than any of this stupid obsession about the debt and deficit (and, as an aside, it seems to be simple economics that people who work pay taxes and...then, the government's deficit declines).
Stop the talk about "balanced approach". It's criminal.