December Surprise? From Rubin to Pelosi, Wall Street & DC Dems Push Post-Election Austerity
On a recent Meet the Press face-off between Democrats and Republicans, a politician claimed we urgently need to cut government spending. He embraced a plan to slash vital government programs and gut retirement security, while actually cutting taxes for the rich. The only tax hikes in his plan were targeted toward the already-devastated middle class.
Then it was time for the Republican to speak.You get to be fifty years old in this surrealistic world, and you start to see things you never thought you'd see. In the 2008 elections, I watched as the Labor movement went out and went door-to-door for Wall Street's candidate. Who would have thought I would have ever seen that?
It was obvious before the last election that Barrack Obama was Wall Street's candidate. You just had to see the money that had backed Dubya move over behind Obama in the campaign finance reports to know that. Obama raised nearly double what Dubya and his Pioneers had raised in past elections, over $700 million, while the McCain campaign signed up for public financing because they didn't think they could raise more than about $90 million in the general election. And, Wall Street was the leader on Mr. Obama's contributor lists, especially during the important early days when his surprisingly strong fundraising established him as "anybody-but-Hillary" candidate in a crowded Democratic primary field.
Yet, there were the labor unions out going door-to-door for the candidate heavily backed by corporate and Wall Street money. What did they think was going to happen?
The results have of course been predictable. Wall Street has been given everything it wanted by this Administration, while Labor got stiffed. Modern politicians view money as the key to victory, so its money that rules. Wall Street got their people placed in all the key economic positions in the government, hundreds of billions of direct public bailout dollars, and immunity from prosecution for their crimes. Labor got nothing. Even the weak promises made by Mr. Obama during the campaign were abandoned after the election.
And now, its happening again.
And its about to get worse after the election. The Democrats have been pushing Wall Street's austerity measures for the economy. Except, they've toned it down a bit for the election. That doesn't mean that Obama has seen the light and is about to become the progressive superman that was the mythical image created by Wall Street money in the last election.
It just means that the Democrats will wait until after the election to stick the knife in your back.
