The Real Crisis: When Everything Decent Is `Off the
Table'

By Carl Davidson Beaver County Blue August 1, 2011

http://beavercountyblue.org/2011/08/01/the-real-crisis-when-everything-decent-is-off-the-table/#more-4034

Leave it to the New York Times to look for a silver
lining in the dark cloud of a Wall St-right wing
victory on `The Deal' over the phony budget crisis.

"Democrats can look forward to the expiration of the
Bush tax cuts next year," says their Aug 1, 2011
editorial, "and will have to make the case in the 2012
elections for new lawmakers who will undo the damage."

In other words, the bondholders will be paid on time,
the markets will be stabilized for a short time, and
matters will continue to get worse for the jobless and
the rest of us. Tighten your belt another notch and get
used to it. As for 2012, you have `nowhere to go', so
don't expect much.

No thanks.

This `deal' belongs to those at the top who benefit
from it. The rest of us have no choice but to organize
and keep fighting.  Demanding an end to tax breaks for
the rich will be part of it. So will throwing out
useless politicians owned by Wall Street and the banks.

So the Times editorial has a minor point.

But we have a better platform to stand on-the `People's
Budget' of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep.
John Conyers Full Employment Bill to supply jobs where
they're needed most, Medicare for All, the Employee
Free Choice Act and ending three wars. Fund it all with
a financial transaction tax on Wall Street's
unproductive speculation.

What's interesting about this package of demands is
that they have all been declared, by our supposed
betters, `off the table.'  It means we are outside
their circle of manufactured consent called `neoliberal
hegemony.'

Never mind that each one has majority support among
voters. Never mind that the largest caucus in Congress
supports them. And never mind that they would actually
work, and build a progressive path out of prolonged
austerity.

Instead, our leaders are owned by finance capital. They
have taken a position of circling their own wagons,
which makes the crisis deeper and longer for everyone
else. To sell it, they repeat the mantra that this is
going to create jobs by `confidence building,' i.e.,
making business people feel better about themselves and
their bank balances.

They're fooling themselves as well as the rest of us.
Jobs are created by increasing demand. But the deal
will lay off government-funded workers and cut demand
everywhere. Our current wars, in addition to being
unjust, are making us less secure and less prosperous,
not more so.

Getting a seat in the dining room where we've been
declared `off the table' is no good anymore. We need to
start building a new table. That means vastly expanding
grassroots organization with a fighting capacity, at
the polls and in the streets, and the sooner, the
better.

___________________________________________

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