buffalo wrote:
People here on OPP do not seem to understand that it has, for quite some time, not really mattered which party was voted into power in America. Not really. As corporations, the deep state and their media apparatchiks have gained greater and greater control of both sides of the political and legal processes in the US, as they have stacked both sides of every election with their chosen candidates, as they have owned ever greater numbers of politicians at every other level in the political system, so the differences between the "2" parties have become merely the left and right arms of the "1" corporate party. Voting is like one choosing between vanilla or chocolate ice-cream. You choose the flavor you prefer, but what you are really eating is essentially the same thing. In the same way it has, for quite some time now, not really mattered which arm of the "corporate party" was voted into power.
The 2 arms of the corporate party act in concert to create divisiveness with false left/right spectrum among the easily duped sheople while keeping control of the political and economic agenda.
I know many will reject this contention outright. Truly mind-boggling amounts of money and effort have been expended in polarizing the American sheople into these political camps. And so, many of you have allowed yourself to be labelled by this imposed political affiliation and then you have allowed yourself to believe that the ills of your nation are because of the opposing faction.
My recognition of this false left/right paradigm and trying to see the real motives that lie behind is what makes it difficult to accurately place me in either the left arm or right arm of the corporate party because I am neither. I strive to think outside of the constrictive box of left and right that politicians and their apparatchik media have lulled the sheople into. In other words, not supporting a candidate, a policy, or taking position, just because they are considered to be âleft-wingâ or âright-wingâ but rather on the basis of the actual merit OR destructiveness, ie, continual illegal, unConstitutional, immoral warmongering to promote the spending of TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars/debt for defense of democracy or national security when, in actuality, those wars are being conducted for the benefit and enrichment of the military industrial complex corporations and/or to protect the profits of giant conglomerate corporations and/or to ensure the hegemony of the petrodollar.
Then the lie that the time has come to cut Social Security, Medicare, and welfare to reduce the expected $1 trillion deficit, created by those very tax cuts. When in reality the massive deficits will be created by the tax cuts to the wealthiest 1% and big corporations. Politicians are never fiscally conservative when it relates to military spending, but when it comes time to talk about spending on the millions of poor, elderly and disadvantaged they become tighter "than bark on a tree"...fiscally conservative.
I gotta go for now...
People here on OPP do not seem to understand that ... (
show quote)
To continue:
Speaking of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social safety net programs, why is there no talk of reducing the coming massive budget deficits by eliminating the 100s of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars spent on corporate welfare which dwarfs social welfare spending? While politicians and their apparatchik media love to portray AND stigmatize social welfare as parasitic while promoting corporate welfare as an integral part of economic progress.
Jon Kofas writes on his blogspot in 2014:
"How humane, how compassionate, how democratic, and how civilized is a society that opts to shift resources to the wealthy from lower income groups, impoverished mothers and children, the elderly, the disabled and the mentally ill unable to care for themselves, while permitting the wretched of the earth to die of starvation, lack of medical care, housing, and the basic necessities of life, while at the same time celebrating the âsuccessâ of the rich becoming even richer because of corporate welfare?
Most people are dismayed and shocked when they hear on TV or read about some welfare recipient cheating the system of a few thousand dollars or euro. By contrast, they easily brush aside news that hundreds of billions are given to bail out large banks and subsidies to corporations, or tax breaks as part of a corporate welfare system designed to support a capitalist economy insisting that it is still a âfree enterpriseâ system, presumably standing on its own without government handouts. This means that in the minds of most people there is a lack of legitimacy for social welfare, indeed a stigma. By contrast, there is a sense of rightful ownership and legitimacy to public funds distributed to banks and corporations. When it comes time to reduce budgetary deficits, (regardless of their cause) therefore, the target is not corporate welfare but social welfare.
Conclusions (text in () are mine:
1. Should a modern society under the existing state-supported market political economy have a credible social safety net to avoid cases of extreme poverty and people dying in the street benches where the homeless sleep, or should it simply focus on strengthening the corporate welfare system using taxpayer money with the hope that this will take care of all problems in society? (TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS?)
2. Is greater economic growth and development achieved under the corporate welfare state vs. a weakened social welfare system, or does the trend of massive capital concentration with the stateâs help lead to economic contractions that create deep structural economic problems?
3. What engenders greater social and political harmony in society? A very strong corporate welfare system coexisting with a weak social welfare system, or a mix where the social safety net balances the massive capital concentration?
4. Has the advocacy of corporate welfare and opposition to social welfare entailed that centrist and center left political parties and groups embraced the right wing (Social Darwinist) agenda, elements of which include racism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia?"
Full blog:
http://jonkofas.blogspot.com/2014/04/corporate-welfare-vs-social-welfare.html