Category: Austerity Porn

Paul Ryan: Still soulless

~ susie ~ 2 Comments
Rep. Paul Ryan claimed to have run a marathon in less than three hours.
Rep. Paul Ryan claimed to have run a marathon in less than three hours.

Charlie Pierce on the zombie-eyed granny stabber known as Paul Ryan, and reminds us there is little daylight between him and the House Free Dumb caucus:

He isn’t even Speaker of the House yet, but Paul Ryan already is demonstrating that if you’ve been a smiling mass of opportunistic mendacity your entire public career, you probably aren’t going to change much if you take a new job, no matter how influential and important that job is. We already talked about the mock outrage that the zombie-eyed granny starver summoned up over the budget deal negotiated between Congress and the White House. Now, we discover that the mock outrage was even more mockish than we thought it was.

One of its most important provisions makes changes to the Social Security Disability Insurance program, and some of those changes came from the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees Social Security and which Ryan chairs. “Paul Ryan’s staff was involved in crafting the provision for weeks,” a Democratic aide told HuffPost. “His staff signed off on the provision, his staff also signed off on other key provisions” related to tax compliance and Medicare. Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck denied that Ryan’s committee staff crafted the disability provision within the context of the legislation, which was negotiated by the White House with party leaders in the House and Senate. The committee had been working on changes to disability benefits earlier this year; Buck acknowledged that Ways and Means staff were aware the disability provision would be included. “They grabbed off the shelf what we’d been working on for months,” Buck said, adding that Ryan supports the provision. “We were aware of that, but not what all was being traded back and forth.”

​So his staff knew, but he didn’t? That dog won’t stop licking its balls long enough to hunt. Then, there’s immigration, and we see again that the mysterious buried Mason jar that once contained John Boehner’scojones did not stay empty for long.​

‘The Martian’ and the America we used to be

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

I went to see “The Martian” yesterday. Wonderful movie, if about 25 minutes too long, but a really strong Oscar bid for both director Ridley Scott and star Matt Damon.

I always feel guilty about the space program, because when I was a kid and it was in its glory, I paid very little attention to it. (Although the whole neighborhood crammed into our living room to watch the moon landing. We were the only family with a color TV.) And every time I see Ron Howard’s remarkable “Apollo 13” –a movie I stop to watch every time I pass it around the dials—I cringe when I think how little attention Americans paid to that real life life-and-death space drama while it was actually happening.

You know what these two movies — one fiction, one fact– have in common? They show an America that used to dream big, that honored its visions and saw far beyond the horizon. When Americans were known for pluck, and ideas, not for shooting at everything that moved. An America that saw science as a tool to change our destiny, not something to find more places to frack. That was the America we used to have, until the Republicans went batshit crazy and fucked it up for everybody.

We started to cut funding for NASA in the 1980s (guess whose idea that was?) Their funding took a minor bump after Hurricane Katrina, but the Republicans have been careful to shave an already-threadbare budget so we don’t get embarrassing reports on what their energy donors have been doing to the planet.

NASA funding

We’ve gone from being the country that dreamed big to the bare-minimum. Thanks to trickle-down economics and the politicians who enable it, we can’t even fix the bridges and fill the potholes.

It makes me furious. And it makes me sad.

Greece and the economic hit men

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

John Perkins

As always, I urge you to read the whole thing. Author of “Confessions of An Economic Hit Man” John Perkins:

Michael Nevradakis: In your book, you write about how you were, for many years, a so-called “economic hit man.” Who are these economic hit men, and what do they do?

John Perkins: Essentially, my job was to identify countries that had resources that our corporations want, and that could be things like oil – or it could be markets – it could be transportation systems. There’re so many different things. Once we identified these countries, we arranged huge loans to them, but the money would never actually go to the countries; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in those countries, things like power plants and highways that benefitted a few wealthy people as well as our own corporations, but not the majority of people who couldn’t afford to buy into these things, and yet they were left holding a huge debt, very much like what Greece has today, a phenomenal debt.

“[Indebted countries] become servants to what I call the corporatocracy … today we have a global empire, and it’s not an American empire. It’s not a national empire … It’s a corporate empire, and the big corporations rule.”

And once [they were] bound by that debt, we would go back, usually in the form of the IMF – and in the case of Greece today, it’s the IMF and the EU [European Union] – and make tremendous demands on the country: increase taxes, cut back on spending, sell public sector utilities to private companies, things like power companies and water systems, transportation systems, privatize those, and basically become a slave to us, to the corporations, to the IMF, in your case to the EU, and basically, organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, are tools of the big corporations, what I call the “corporatocracy.”

And before turning specifically to the case of Greece, let’s talk a little bit more about the manner in which these economic hit men and these organizations like the IMF operate. You mentioned, of course, how they go in and they work to get these countries into massive debt, that money goes in and then goes straight back out. You also mentioned in your book these overly optimistic growth forecasts that are sold to the politicians of these countries but which really have no resemblance to reality.

Exactly, we’d show that if these investments were made in things like electric energy systems that the economy would grow at phenomenally high rates. The fact of the matter is, when you invest in these big infrastructure projects, you do see economic growth, however, most of that growth reflects the wealthy getting wealthier and wealthier; it doesn’t reflect the majority of the people, and we’re seeing that in the United States today.

“In the case of Greece, my reaction was that ‘Greece is being hit.’ There’s no question about it.”

For example, where we can show economic growth, growth in the GDP, but at the same time unemployment may be going up or staying level, and foreclosures on houses may be going up or staying stable. These numbers tend to reflect the very wealthy, since they have a huge percentage of the economy, statistically speaking. Nevertheless, we would show that when you invest in these infrastructure projects, your economy does grow, and yet, we would even show it growing much faster than it ever conceivably would, and that was only used to justify these horrendous, incredibly debilitating loans.

Is there a common theme with respect to the countries typically targeted? Are they, for instance, rich in resources or do they typically possess some other strategic importance to the powers that be?

Yes, all of those. Resources can take many different forms: One is the material resources like minerals or oil; another resource is strategic location; another resource is a big marketplace or cheap labor. So, different countries make different requirements. I think what we’re seeing in Europe today isn’t any different, and that includes Greece.
Continue reading “Greece and the economic hit men” →

The emperor has no clothes

~ susie

GREECE-ECONOMY-POLITICS-EU-IMF

You have to read the entire piece that ran in the Irish Times:

It surely doesn’t mean that Europe is proud that little Ireland was forced to bear the cost of a bank bailout put last week by Patrick Honohan, governor of the Central Bank, at €100 billion and rising. At the level of reality, it doesn’t actually mean anything at all. But that doesn’t mean that it’s a harmless fiction. “The Pride of Europe” is a makey-up story that is intended to take the place of the realities it displaces. It’s not a stand-alone narrative. It has an evil twin: Greece. It belongs to a particular genre of fiction: the morality tale. Ireland is the pride of Europe because it is the anti-Greece. We are good because we play along with the bigger stories of the euro zone crisis. Greece is evil because it stopped doing so.

One of those stories is that the crisis had nothing to do with reckless lending (by, for example, German state banks) and was created purely by reckless borrowing. The other, even more fantastical, is that so-called austerity (in reality a programme of sucking citizens dry to transfer their resources to private banks) produces economic growth.

These stories are as patently false as Enda’s fairy tale, but Ireland is the pride of Europe because it has gone along with them and Greece is the shame of Europe because it has not been able to sustain the suspension of disbelief.

Greece’s membership of the euro zone was always a fiction – a story that everyone agreed to believe because it was more convenient than reality. Greece never met the fiscal criteria for membership. So how was it allowed in? By cooking the books. A right-wing Greek government worked with Goldman Sachs to hide its debts using massive currency swaps at fictional exchange rates. Euro zone governments went along with the story.

When the crisis hit in 2008, there might have been a moment of truth. Instead we had the classic dynamic of a lie spawning more lies. The banks that lent so recklessly were bailed out by transferring their debts to European taxpayers and the IMF – their culpability disappeared from the story. A new fiction was invented – that Greece could simultaneously have its economy shrunk by relentless austerity and pay back hundreds of billions of euro.

Continue reading “The emperor has no clothes” →

Too frail to work, too poor to retire

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

I love this rant from Athenae over at First Draft:

This is where we’re at, what we’re doing: We give you a deal, and you take it, because … why the fuck wouldn’t you? You worked hard for these institutions all your damn life. You worked hard for them because they promised to take care of you and up until recently, they mostly did.

(And I know it’s like arguing with a stuffed animal, but who the fuck is asking for MORE GOVERNMENT here? Let’s start asking for MORE CORPORATION, as in do for your employees what you promised them you would do, you selfish fucks.)

I don’t understand what we get as a society out of creating thousands and thousands of desperately elderly people. My grandfather’s pension took care of my grandfather until he died and afterward, that pension kept my grandmother in their home. Which she and her children could afford to keep up, thus saving the neighborhood from blight, while she shopped at the local grocery store and bakery, got her local paper delivered, and paid local taxes which fixed the roads and schools and kept the streetlights on.

What would society have gained if those two people had been kicked out of their home? What does society get out of telling people like them too bad, so sad, know how we promised you a pension well fuck you, Shadow President Paul Ryan says we can’t afford that anymore and every Democrat within shouting distance is afraid Chuck Todd will call them mean, plus the company has to think of the shareholders and you’re just a guy who ruined your knees and eyes and hearing making money for those shareholders so it’s not like we owe you jack shit?

You know what we get? Starved schools and unfilled potholes and the smallness and meanness that comes from fear, ordinary animal fear that we have for us and ours won’t be enough, that we need to build walls around ourselves and man the parapets with guns, fence out the Other and glare at those within.

Right the fuck on.
Continue reading “Too frail to work, too poor to retire” →

Rape and pillage

~ susie

As you may know, Detroit’s unelected city manager is overseeing water turnoffs in the city. Please read the story and familiarize yourself with the tactics and rationale, because you may rest assured it will eventually be used in your state or town.

By the way, they used a military acoustic device to disperse this rally. Apparently we no longer have the right to peaceably assemble and petition our government for the redress of grievances. Shut up and take it!

The real scroungers

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

The BBC political shows are so much more interesting than ours, aren’t they?

Salma Yaqoob called Tory bigwig Iain Duncan Smith a “scrounger” on Thursday’sQuestion Time, attacking the secretary for works and pensions over austerity measures that have left “13 million Britons living below the poverty line”.

“I’m sitting next to Iain Duncan Smith who labels poor people as scroungers when you {IDS} claim £39 for a breakfast, like you can’t afford your own breakfast, and you live on your wife’s estate and have taken a million pounds of taxpayers’ money, that’s what I call scrounging,” the Birmingham chair of Stop the War and the former leader of the Respect party said.

“What a load of old nonsense,” replied the angered Tory, before dismissing his attacker with a wave of the hand. “I have never, ever labelled them as scroungers at all,” he said, shaking his head. He also denied that he had claimed the money for breakfast.

Earlier, Yaqoob had called Duncan-Smith “patronising” when he spoke about poverty.

“There are people in this country, 13 million people, who are now below the poverty line. People in one of the richest countries in the world face the indignity of relying on food banks,” she said.

“My full-time job is in mental health and I have seen myself how people have become suicidal. I have counselled people who have lost members of their family who did not want to go on, because they didn’t want to be a burden after having their support taken away. These are very, very real issues.

“We have this drive on people called ‘scroungers’ but half the people on welfare benefits are pensioners. Our pensioners are not scroungers. And 60% of people claiming benefits are in work, because their wages are not paying enough.

Oh, and here’s the receipt for the breakfast he insists he didn’t claim: