"The way is now clear for a just contribution from the banking and financial sector for financing the burdens of the crisis."
Writing in hopes the President supports incremental steps including a stimulus package instead of marching to a grand bargain.
As many of us know, Boehner isn't the only power player, Bowles-Simpson's Fix the Debt campaign has more than 100 one percenters--the who's who of Wall Street hedge-fund managers, bankers and CEO's--leading and financing a corporate, special interest agenda.
Take a moment and click here:http://www.fixthedebt.org/....
Occupy Fix the Debt anyone?
Bowles/Simpson are opening chapters across the country. Click here: http://www.fixthedebt.org/....
One must ask why?
They are rapidly becoming a new ALEC and it appears that the Bowles/Simpson propaganda campaign is working... the Washington Post today and other outlets, NPR this morning, are spinning their corporate catfood agenda.
Bowles and Simpson, the gang of eight and their who's who of Wall Street are the real foes. They want to dismantle the New Deal, cut corporate tax rates, too. When the effective corporate tax rate is really around 17 percent, they don't have a case.
So, we have a fight on two fronts, Boehner and Bowles.
~more~
The President knows what Erskine Bowles said about him; backhandedly blaming the President for his catfood not passing out of committee.
Bowles supporting Ryan's budget...
"I’m telling you, this guy [Paul Ryan] is amazing. I always thought I was okay with arithmetic. This guy can run circles around me. He is honest, he is straightforward, he is sincere. And the budget he came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did by four trillion dollars," Erskine Bowles, Sept. 2011.
Bowles and Simpson also supported several candidates during the election--in effect, purchasing congressmen who support their corporate plan, many lost.
But the support of a teabagger in NH over a good progressive candidate takes the cake.
"In their attack on Annie Kuster (NH), Bowles and Simpson praised her Tea Party opponent, Congressman Charlie Bass, for supporting their plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. Their attack ad is appearing in three local newspapers: the Concord Monitor, New Hampshire Union Leader, and the Nashua Telegraph"
And we know that Bowles is a failure at investing, according to Dean Baker's index analysis.
Why are they targeting good progressive programs in their grand bargain instead of going after the money? Need money in life, look to those who have it. Their bailout cost us $16 Trillion dollars. It time for the one percenters to pay the citizens of the U.S. back.
And it's not over, we are spending an additional $40 billion a month from the Fed to purchase more of the gambler's bad debts and they still are not satisfied.
In their quest for every possible source of savings, Bowles and Simpson seem never seriously to have considered a financial speculation tax that would target the country's bloated financial sector. The United Kingdom has imposed taxes on its financial sector for centuries, and much of the European Union is considering a tax that could go into effect as early as next year. A tax comparable to the one the UK has on stock trades, but applied to all financial assets, could raise close to $1.5tn over the course of a decade. http://www.guardian.co.uk/....
Is a transaction tax even on the White House radar?
Eleven euro zone countries agreed on Tuesday to press ahead with a disputed tax on financial transactions aimed at making traders share the cost of fixing a crisis that has rocked the single currency area.
The initiative, pushed hard by Germany and France but strongly opposed by Britain, Sweden and other proponents of free markets, gained critical mass at a European Union finance ministers' meeting in Luxembourg, when more than the required nine states agreed to use a treaty provision to launch the tax.
Commonly known as a "Tobin tax" after Nobel-prize winning U.S. economist James Tobin proposed one in 1972 as a way of reducing financial market volatility, it has become a political symbol of a widespread desire to make banks, hedge funds and high-frequency traders pay towards a wrenching debt clean-up.
"This is a small step for 11 countries but a giant leap for Europe," Austrian Deputy Finance Minister Andreas Schieder said. "The way is now clear for a just contribution from the banking and financial sector for financing the burdens of the crisis."http://www.reuters.com/...
Screwing with Social Security, and defunding Medicaid, Medicare and other needed saftey-net programs for the poor and working middle-class citizens will not be embraced by the public.
But, rest assured, fuck with the New Deal and Republicans will win in 2014 and probably years to come.
The Gang of Eight and Simpson/Bowles must think we are like the people of Iraq and will welcome their intrusion into our life-long investments with open arms.
We will not!
Paul Krugman says it best...
First, despite years of dire warnings from people like, well, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, we are not facing any kind of fiscal crisis. Indeed, U.S. borrowing costs are at historic lows, with investors actually willing to pay the government for the privilege of owning inflation-protected bonds. So reducing the budget deficit just isn’t the top priority for America at the moment; creating jobs is. For now, the administration’s political capital should be devoted to passing something like last year’s American Jobs Act and providing effective mortgage debt relief.
Second, contrary to Beltway conventional wisdom, America does not have an “entitlements problem.” Mainly, it has a health cost problem, private as well as public, which must be addressed (and which the Affordable Care Act at least starts to address). It’s true that there’s also, even aside from health care, a gap between the services we’re promising and the taxes we’re collecting — but to call that gap an “entitlements” issue is already to accept the very right-wing frame that voters appear to be in the process of rejecting.
Finally, despite the bizarre reverence it inspires in Beltway insiders — the same people, by the way, who assured us that Paul Ryan was a brave truth-teller — the fact is that Simpson-Bowles is a really bad plan, one that would undermine some key pieces of our safety net. And if a re-elected president were to endorse it, he would be betraying the trust of the voters who returned him to office. http://www.nytimes.com/....
Contact the White House and congress critters, especially the new gang of eight:Democrats Mark Warner of Virginia, Dick Durbin of Illinois, retiring Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Republicans Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and Mike Johanns of Nebraska.
Tell them, we won, circumstances have dramatically changed and we don't want nor does the country need an austerity program that conveniently lowers tax rates.
Support a Wall Street transaction tax.
"The way is now clear for a just contribution from the banking and financial sector for financing the burdens of the crisis."