The Political Class Attack on Social Programs: The Supposed Social Security Crisis is Fictional But Obama's Debt Commission Says Benefits Need to Be Cut So That the Federal Debt Can Be Paid Off By Taxpayers Rather Than Those Responsible for the Economic Implosion (the Too-Big-to-Fail Banks, Wall Street, Corrupt Politicians and Labor Unions, and Multi-national Corporations in Collusion with Government)

Prominent figures in the US ruling elite have recently made a series of statements that forewarn of massive cuts in social spending, up to and including Social Security, the bedrock federal insurance entitlement for elderly and disabled workers. These comments reveal that they will set the stage for a bipartisan assault, in the name of “fiscal responsibility,” on what remains of the social reforms of the last century. The knives are already being sharpened for a long-awaited attack on Social Security, including raising the retirement age, perhaps to as high as 70, and cutting benefits as well as cost-of-living increases. There is unanimity in the ruling class in favor of the attack on Social Security. Workers are being conditioned to accept what is referred to as “the new normal” typified by low wages and benefits and the total absence of any form of social protection. Or, in the blunter words of Fiat head Sergio Marchionne, US workers must accept a “culture of poverty,” abandoning what he contemptuously referred to as a “culture of entitlement.” The class character of the calls for “sacrifice” and “responsibility” is increasingly naked. - U.S. Ruling Class Prepares Attack on Social Security WSWS.org, September 8, 2010

The U.S. Congress plans to slash social security 'entitlements' at a time when Wall Street has destroyed the home equity and private retirement accounts of potential retirees. Worse, they plan to increase the social security tax, disguised as a “mandatory savings tax.” This added tax would be automatically withdrawn from your paycheck and deposited to a “Guaranteed Retirement Account” managed by the Social Security Administration. Since the savings would be “mandatory,” you could not withdraw your money without stiff penalties; and rather than enjoying an earlier retirement paid out of your increased savings, a later retirement date is being called for. In the meantime, your “mandatory savings” would just be fattening the investment pool of the Wall Street bankers managing the funds. And that may be what really underlies the big push to educate the public to the dangers of the federal debt. - Ellen Brown, IMF-Style Austerity Comes to America, Web of Debt, March 2, 2010

All of the TARP money given to banks did absolutely nothing to help the ordinary consumer. All it did was positively adjust the balance sheets of the "too-big-to-fail" institutions. Most banks are sitting on cash and simply not lending unless they are in an extremely favorable position. This sounds ironic because it was their unhampered lending that created the mess in the first place. Contrary to the thinking of the government economists, banks are not going to lend money, even if it rightfully belongs to the taxpayer, simply to increase the number of nonperforming loans on their balance sheets. Why aggravate the situation? Anyhow, does anyone really think that the bailouts were aimed at helping the consumer? - Fred Buzzeo, The Allure of Real Estate, Ludwig von Mises Institute, January 12, 2011

For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together. - 50 Statistics About the U.S. Economy That Are Almost Too Crazy to Believe, End of the American Dream, June 2, 2010

Around the world, the International Monetary Fund is demanding that governments slash spending and impose the burden of debt incurred in bailing out Wall Street on the working class. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, millions of persons around the world are experiencing unprecedented levels of economic deprivation, resulting in record numbers of home foreclosures, repossessions, and sharply escalating levels of homelessness and hunger. Huge monetary bailouts for high-flying corporate institutions have become commonplace, while draconian cutbacks are targeted at ordinary citizens. Government deficits will be reduced at the expense of workers and the poor by increasing taxes on essentials, slashing social spending, and cutting jobs, wages, benefits and pensions.

Austerity or “Catastrophe” are the Tactics of Economic Terrorism

The feds are still going to collect income taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes, but they're going to reduce our benefits, imposing austerity programs that further erode the middle and lower classes.

The Real Agenda
June 27, 2011

The economic terrorists that caused the current financial meltdown have not stopped at it and continue to threaten countries with two different tactics — austerity and the threat of a catastrophe — if their proposals are not implemented. Since Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Spain and other European countries began to show signs of economic stress, the bankers who designed the system itself have told the public — through their bureaucrat pawns — that it is their way or the highway. Literally!

Although the countries with the most to lose are located in Europe, it was George W. Bush who first rang the debt crisis alarm. Bush’s economic team warned taxpayers that a massive bailout was needed to save the financial institutions that themselves caused much — if not all — of the financial crisis.

As we now know, all of the reported and unreported bailout monies went to European bank accounts in what we know today as the bank bailout of 2008. Although Henry Paulson told the U.S. Congress and the public that there were some entities that we could not afford to let go down, the $700 + billion — actually $24 trillion — were really not used to save anyone but the bankers themselves, who now are using the bailout monies to purchase Greece, Island, Spain and Portugal for pennies on the euro.

Since neither their bailout nor their QE’s worked, they have now moved to phase 3 of their plan. That is a massive reduction in government spending that cuts all kinds of programs which mostly benefit the middle and lower classes in Europe and the United States.

While the bankers and the corporations they own loot everyone, the governments are forced — through the World Bank and the IMF — to cut spending in something they call Austerity. But the austerity only applies to the poor, not to the banks, who as I said, are acquiring infrastructure everywhere they can and paying for it with taxpayer money.

The austerity tactic has enraged millions of people who took to the street to protest and ask their governments to reject IMF austerity policies and simply abandon their membership from this and other globalist financial institutions. Instead, governments like the Greek have decided that they are not accountable to its citizens and that austerity is the way to go. As a response, the Greeks went back out to the streets. While people’s anger grows as they see their pension funds stolen, their salaries cut or frozen and the cost of life growing exponentially, the financial terrorists at the top of the banking industry have decided to once again use their last tool: Financial Terrorism.

Financial Terrorism occurs when the people who engineer the financial crisis — the bankers — in order to consolidate economic power and tighten up their grip on their monopolies, call on their customers — the governments — to pay their debts all at once. Because it is impossible for any government to pay off all its debt to the financial sharks, their institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, the Bank of International Settlements and the Federal Reserve demand that those governments impose austerity programs that further erode the middle and lower classes and that accept new loans with higher interests in order to pay for the older loans.

If a government defies their mandate, the banks impose financial punishments on the debtor countries by increasing the interest rates on their loans and lowering their credit worthiness. That in turn makes it more difficult for the countries to be able to borrow and, as a consequence, they keep on spiraling down into the hole of poverty.

Since countries are no longer able to borrow their way out of debt, the only solution left is to sell their infrastructure — ports, roads, institutions, services, industry and so on — in order to pay for the debt. As you may have guessed it, the buyers of such assets are the banks themselves, who arrive with taxpayer cash in hand to further consolidate their dominion of the borrowing nations.

The scenario that emerges from these actions is not only more ravaged countries with worse economic and financial policies — now under the complete control of the bankers — but also larger groups of poor people, a smaller middle class and a stronger oligarchy. The difference this time around is that the bankers do not only intend to liquidate a third world nation, but the largest more developed western nations including those with the largest amounts of natural resources and military power, which of course will also become property of the bankers.

The ultimate goal the bankers intend to accomplish is to control it all — not that they already not do that. For that, they built the system we now live in. They carefully socially engineered every single aspect of our lives. The result of such engineering is the passive state in which most people live, where they do not even know anything of this sort is happening, while many others simply do not care.

Given this scenario, it is really hard to see how the bankers will have any problem executing their long awaited plan. Even as millions of people rise from their long dormant state, the majority have no idea that their future is ending today. As it happened in the past, it will take a revolution from a minority to make sure that free people remain free. It would be much easier and effective, though, if more folks broke off from their trance and gave them a hand. Although a revolution by the minority may save the majority again, only a revolution from the majority will be able to root the cancer known as the economic and financial Cartel of the Eight Families.

The Big Banks Are Waging Warfare Against the People of the World

Washington's Blog
July 11, 2011

Michael Hudson is a highly-regarded economist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. He is a former Wall Street economist at Chase Manhattan Bank who also helped establish the world’s first sovereign debt fund.

Hudson says:

• The European debt crisis is really financial warfare by the banks

• Indeed, the banks are in warfare against the rest of society
  

In a separate interview, Hudson says:

• What's going on in Greece is exactly what's going to happen in America in a couple of weeks.
  

• The big banks are forcing their bad debts on government

• They are also forcing governments to sell off national assets so the banks can install a "neo-feudalism":
  

As I documented last month in a post entitled "America Is Being Raped ... Just Like Greece and Other Countries", America is in fact being subjected to the same type of plundering as Greece and Ireland.

Professor Hudson explained in 2008:

You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.

I reported last year:

Foreign Policy magazine ran an article entitled "The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism", arguing that the power of nations is declining, and being replaced by corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds of monarchs, and city-regions.

As I noted in 2009, a leading progressive economist that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans is "a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives".

As the wholly non-partisan Australian economist Steve Keen notes:

• "This is the biggest transfer of wealth in history", as the giant banks have handed their toxic debts from fraudulent activities to the countries and their people
  

• The big banks blew bubbles - using fraud - because that's the only way they could make obscene profits (see this for for details)
  

Indeed, this isn't the "Great Recession", it's the Great Bank Robbery. The big banks have pillaged and looted the rest of the world.

And it is not only Greece which is losing its sovereignty ... the big banks have turned America into a banana republic as well. Remember, the trillions in bailouts went to banks, not Main Street ... and a large percentage of the bailouts went to foreign banks (and see this). And so did most of money from the second round of quantitative easing.

Indeed, the warfare by the big banks is global.

Postscript: If this sounds like breathless class warfare against the financial sector, remember:

• Inequality largely caused the Great Depression and the current economic crisis

• The father of modern economics - Adam Smith - didn't believe that inequality should be a taboo subject
  

• Warren Buffet, one of America's most successful capitalists and defenders of capitalism, points out:

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war ....

• Conservatives - as well as liberals - are against rampant inequality. But all Americans underestimate the amount of inequality in our country

Huge Deficit-cutting Bill Sails Through GOP House

The Associated Press
July 20, 2011

Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default.

The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and it stood in contrast to calls at the White House and in the Senate for a late stab at bipartisanship to solve the nation's looming debt crisis.

[...]

Democrats said the measure, with its combination of cuts and spending limits, would inflict damage on millions who rely on Social Security, Medicare and other programs.

"The Republicans are trying to repeal the second half of the 20th century," said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Michigan.

Boehner played a muted role in public during the day. He did not speak on the House floor on the legislation, but issued a statement afterward saying,

It "provides President Obama with the debt limit increase he's requested while making real spending cuts now and restraining future government spending and debt that are hurting job growth."

He did not discuss what alternatives he had in mind, although the Senate's top two leaders have been at work on one that would let the president raise the debt limit without prior approval by Congress.

The "Gang of Six" briefed other senators on the group's plan after a seemingly quixotic quest that took months, drew disdain at times from the leaders of both parties and appeared near failure more than once.

It calls for deficit cuts of slightly less than $4 trillion over a decade and includes steps to slow the growth of Social Security payments, cut at least $500 billion from Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs and wring billions in savings from programs across the face of government.

It envisions tax changes that would reduce existing breaks for a number of popular items while reducing the top income bracket from the current 35 percent to 29 percent or less.

The tax overhaul "must be estimated to provide $1 trillion in additional revenue to meet plan targets," according to a summary that circulated in the Capitol.

Some Republicans noted a claim contained in the summary that congressional bookkeeping rules could actually consider the plan a tax cut of $1.5 trillion. That credits sponsors for retaining income tax cuts enacted at all income levels when George W. Bush was president.

The group of six includes three Democrats, Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Mark Warner of Virginia and Dick Durbin of Illinois, a member of the leadership. The three Republicans, all conservatives, are Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, who has a particularly close relationship with Boehner dating to their days together in the House.

In recommending higher government revenues, Republicans in the group challenged party orthodoxy that has held sway for two decades, ever since President George H.W. Bush memorably broke his "no new taxes" pledge to make a deficit reduction deal with congressional Democrats.

In the years since, refusal to raise taxes has become a virtually inviolable article of faith among Republicans, and used by them and their allies in countless political campaigns against Democrats.

Recently, Republicans who voted to repeal a tax subsidy for ethanol production drew criticism from Grover Norquist, a prominent anti-tax activist, for not applying the savings to deficit reduction.

Even so, in the hours after the Gang of Six briefed other lawmakers on their plan, at least one member of the Republican Senate leadership, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, signed on as a supporter. So, too, did Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.

"We have an opportunity to act like statesmen and avoid a debacle on Aug. 2, and it seems to me that all of our efforts should be focused on that," added Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

He and others said the plan was well-received at a weekly closed-door meeting of GOP senators.

Obama stopped well short of endorsing the plan, saying administration officials were analyzing it and not all details were known. But he said it included "a revenue component" along with savings in Medicare and Social Security, making it the sort of balanced approach he has long advocated.

He also noted that the Senate's two top leaders have been cooperating on a measure that would allow him to raise the debt limit without a prior vote of Congress while also setting up a special committee to recommend cuts from federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

"That continues to be a necessary approach to put forward. In the event that we don't get an agreement, at minimum, we've got to raise the debt ceiling," he said.

No Free Pass for Medicare Recipients in Debt Talks

Although Social Security previously had been considered untouchable, one measure under discussion would bring in close to $200 billion through a tweak that reduces benefits and increases the amount collected from payroll taxes. A major proposal that would affect Medicare beneficiaries calls for changing the current cost-sharing rules, a hodgepodge of varying copayments and deductibles. Older people would have to shoulder more of the expense of routine care. Under one version of the proposal, all but the poor would have to pay at least $550 of their annual medical bills.

The Associated Press
July 9, 2011

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A debt-busting deal on the scale that President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are seeking all but guarantees that people on Medicare would feel at least some of the pain.

Low-income people on Medicaid wouldn't escape totally, either. If a deal ultimately leads to overhauling taxes, workers and their families could be on the hook also, facing potential limits on the tax-free status of job-based health insurance.

Health care is a main ingredient on both the spending and tax sides of the elusive agreement that Obama and Boehner, R-Ohio, are trying to reach.

The president has scheduled a meeting Sunday with congressional leaders to keep pushing for a compromise that would reduce future deficits in exchange for lifting the $14.3 trillion cap on the national debt. Action is needed so the government can keep paying its bills beyond Aug. 2.

No decisions have been made. With Congress politically polarized and skittish about next year's elections, it's unclear whether there's any combination of Democratic and Republican votes to pass major deficit reduction that cuts benefit programs and raises revenue.

"This is a Rubik's cube that we haven't quite worked out yet," Boehner said.

But many of the health care options that negotiators are considering have been available for months. Proposals have come from the Obama administration, congressional advisers and bipartisan groups, such as Obama's debt commission. For Medicare, possibilities include higher premiums for upper-income retirees and new copayments and deductibles that affect all but the poor. For example, seniors do not currently face a copayment for home care. That might change if there's a deal.

"It's difficult to imagine a $4 trillion-plus budget package that doesn't include significant measures affecting beneficiaries," said economist Robert Reischauer, one of two public trustees who help oversee Medicare and Social Security finances.

Obama's health care law already cut about $500 billion from projected payments to providers, and some experts say there's not much fat left there.

"It might mean more individual responsibility or a restriction of choices," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of a small bipartisan group that has been dealing with spending and taxes. An across-the-board increase in monthly premiums seems unlikely, Warner noted.

Still, the bigger a deficit-reduction deal, the more likely it is that older people will take a hit.

"We are particularly concerned that a broader deal could include cuts to Social Security benefits and higher costs for people in Medicare," said David Certner, AARP's legislative director.

Although Social Security previously had been considered untouchable, one measure under discussion would bring in close to $200 billion through a tweak that reduces benefits and increases the amount collected from payroll taxes.

A major proposal that would affect Medicare beneficiaries calls for changing the current cost-sharing rules, a hodgepodge of varying copayments and deductibles.

Older people would have to shoulder more of the expense of routine care. Under one version of the proposal, all but the poor would have to pay at least $550 of their annual medical bills.

The idea is to make people think twice before they schedule that test or exam that probably doesn't add a whole lot of information to what a doctor already knows.

But they would get a new benefit from the change. For the first time, Medicare would have an annual limit on out-of-pocket spending, protection against a catastrophic illness.

Further cuts to providers, including drug companies, hospitals, home health agencies and nursing homes also are possible. One proposal calls for seeking billions in rebates from drug companies for medications used by 9 million people covered under both Medicare and Medicaid.

Advocates for the poor are concerned about possible cuts to Medicaid, a federal-state partnership that covers low-income children and parents, the disabled, and many nursing home residents. The administration has proposed replacing an assortment of formulas for the federal share of the program with a single rate for each state. Officials say that could save $50 billion to $100 billion over 10 years, much of it from reduced administrative costs.

Governors are highly suspicious. They see a cut lurking behind the technicalities. Most of the governors believe the rate talk is budget-speak for dramatic cuts, said Washington state Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat who heads the National Governors Association.

Still to be fleshed out is how a debt deal would affect the tax deductibility of job-based health care for workers and their families. The details might be left for Congress to work out later.

So far, Democratic lawmakers don't see much that they can support from the information dribbling out of the budget negotiations.

The explosion in federal debt was caused by the recession, the George W. Bush-era tax cuts, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not by seniors or low-income Medicaid recipients, said Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif.

"I would not vote for something like that," Becerra said of what he's heard so far. "At this stage, unless we learn otherwise, House Democrats are pretty clear we should not balance the deficit on the backs of seniors, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid."

Debt Commission: What Obama's Panel Said

CNNMoney.com
April 13, 2011

Last December, the bipartisan debt reduction commission that President Obama created put out a series of recommendations supported by a majority of its members.

But, to date, those proposals, which would slash $4 trillion from projected deficits between now and 2020, have not been openly embraced by the president himself.

The White House said that Obama will "borrow" from the commission's proposals on Wednesday when he gives what may be a landmark speech on fiscal policy.

The Obama debt commission's final report was approved by 11 of the 18 commission members on an unexpectedly strong bipartisan basis.

Even those who voted for the plan, however, stressed there were parts of it that gave them "heartburn." But they voted for it anyway because they saw it as pushing the national conversation in the right direction.

Overall, the commission's plan would reduce the country's debt held by the public to 40% of the overall economy by 2035, down from the 185% currently projected.

Here's a look at the report's topline recommendations for getting there:

Spending

Set targets: The report recommends that spending ultimately not exceed 21% of gross domestic product. It would also cap 2012 spending at 2010 levels, cut it 1% from there between 2013 and 2015 and then limit growth to inflation.

Rein in spending: The report proposes close to $200 billion in domestic and defense spending cuts in 2015. That's a key way it would meet Obama's goal of working the annual deficit down to 3% of GDP by 2015. In fact, the final report would do one better, getting the deficit to less than 2.5%.

0:00 /07:43How to cure U.S. budget 'stupidity'

Control health care costs: The report recommends capping growth in total federal health spending -- everything from Medicare to health insurance subsidies -- to the rate of economic growth plus 1% after 2020.

It also proposes reforming physician payments, Medicare enrollee cost-sharing, malpractice law and prescription drug costs.

Taxes

Set targets: The report recommends that taxes be capped at 21% of gross domestic product.

Reform tax code: The report would lower income tax rates and simplify the tax code by significantly reducing or eliminating the hundreds of tax breaks in the federal code that reduce federal revenue intake by more than $1 trillion a year. It would abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax -- the so-called wealth tax. And it would tax capital gains and dividends as ordinary income.

Raise gas tax: The report would raise the federal gas tax by 15 cents a gallon starting in 2013. It would dedicate the extra revenue to fund transportation and limit spending on projects to whatever has been collected by the increased tax that year.

Social Security solvency

The report aims to make Social Security solvent over 75 years.

Benefits: It would reduce initial benefits for high and medium-income retirees. And it would offer less generous annual cost-of-living adjustments for all retirees.

Retirement age: The plan would slowly usher in an increase in the retirement age from 67 to 68 by 2050 and to 69 by 2075. Over the same period, the early retirement age would increase gradually from 62 to 64. There would, however, those who are unable to work past age 62 would be offered "hardship exemptions."

Payroll tax: The report also recommends expanding over 40 years the amount of workers' income subject to the payroll tax, which funds Social Security. As a result, the amount of one's earnings subject to the payroll tax would rise to $190,000 in 2020, about $22,000 higher than it would be under current law.

Protection against poverty: To prevent seniors from falling into poverty -- a key mission of the Social Security program -- the report proposes creating a new special minimum benefit.

For low-income workers with 30 years of earnings, benefits could never fall below 125% of the poverty line in 2017, a level that would be indexed to wages thereafter. The formula would be reduced for workers with less than 30 years of earnings but more than 10.

In addition, to reduce the risk that beneficiaries run out of funds if they live to a very old age or are disabled for a long time, the report proposes a "20-year benefit bump-up." After 20 years of collecting benefits, a beneficiary would receive a benefit increase equal to 5% of the average benefit paid.

No changes before 2012

The earliest any of the recommended spending measures would take effect would be in 2012. And no tax change would begin before 2013 -- a nod to concerns that the economic recovery is still too weak to withstand any sort of belt-tightening.

"Budget cuts should start gradually so they don't interfere with the ongoing economic recovery," the report said. "Growth is essential to restoring fiscal strength and balance."

President's Debt Commission Releases Final Report

ABC News
December 1, 2010

In a 59-page report released today entitled "The Moment of Truth," President Obama's federal-deficit commission outlined a sweeping plan to cut costs in an effort to nurse the country's ailing economy back to fiscal health.

The president had tasked commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson with devising a plan to reduce the deficits and redirect the country from its "unsustainable" fiscal path. The end result is a wide-ranging and controversial report that its supporters touted as a good start to a tough problem.

But the plan may go nowhere because it needs the support of 14 of 18 panel members to get passed on to Congress.

"Our challenge is clear and inescapable: America cannot be great if we go broke," Bowles and Simpson said in the report from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

After the country racked up a $1.3 trillion budget deficit last year and saw the national debt soar to $13.8 trillion, both Republicans and Democrats agreed that something had to be done; although there is widespread disagreement on what precisely that is.

To dig the country out of debt, the plan put forth by the panel today calls for drastic changes such as raising the Social Security retirement age, making cuts to Medicare and doubling the federal gas tax. It made only minor changes to the earlier draft released by Bowles and Simpson last month.

The plan, according to the panel, would achieve nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020, more than any effort in the nation's history; reduce the deficit to 2.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2015; sharply reduce tax rates, abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax and cut backdoor spending in the tax code; cap revenue at 21 percent of GDP and get spending below 22 percent and eventually to 21 percent; ensure lasting Social Security solvency, prevent the projected 22 percent cuts to come in 2037, reduce elderly poverty and distribute the burden fairly; and stabilize debt by 2014, reducing it to 60 percent of GDP by 2023 and 40 percent by 2035.

"The era of debt denial and the denial of its consequences is over," Bowles said. "We have started an adult conversation that will dominate the debate until the elected leadership in Washington does something real."

Deficit Plan Unlikely to Reach Congress

Just how divisive that debate could be is highlighted by the fact that one panelist -- Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., -- wasted no time in voicing her opposition to the report. Schakowsky said her opposition to the plan stems partly from her belief that Social Security is not a problem connected to the deficit.

A slew of other panelists, including the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, and the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, have yet to state how they will vote.

But the panel's plan did secure the support of two key senators: Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the Democratic chairman and top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, respectively.

"I think this commission has already been a success because it has put front and center before the American people how big this problem really is," Conrad said.

"Is there 14 votes? I don't know, but I will vote for it," Gregg said.

The key vote will come Friday but some analysts think it is a foregone conclusion that the report will fail to garner the 14 votes it needs.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that the Bowles-Simpson plan will not receive the required 14 votes to send the report to the president and Congress," said John Irons, research and policy director of the Economic Policy Institute, a think-tank in Washington.

"The rejection of the proposal should not be seen as a failure to take deficit reduction seriously, but rather that the policy approach adopted by the co-chairs is flawed. Most fundamentally, the report fails to fully acknowledge the current economic crisis. ...Despite paying lip-service to a payroll tax holiday, the plan includes no concrete, immediate action to create jobs or to spur economic growth in the near term."

Obama's Deficit Commission Will Attack Social Security Benefits

Grant Lawrence
July 19, 2010

President Obama has put together this commission that is going to take a look at the federal deficit and then make recommendations.

One of the things this commission will be looking to do is to attack America's Social Security program as too expensive. President Obama has already stacked the commission with leadership that has come out against present social security benefits.

But is the social security system in trouble?

According to economist Dean Baker in an interview on Democracy Now the supposed social security crisis is fictional.

"....Just to be very clear, absolutely nothing needs to be done. If we look at the projections from either the Congressional Budget Office or the Social Security trustees—they’ve yet to come out with their new ones, but in any case, the one from last year—the program could pay all scheduled benefits well into the future, at least twenty-seven years into the future. And even after that, it could still pay the vast majority of benefits, assuming nothing is ever done. Now, somewhere down the road, we’ll probably make changes in the program as we’ve done in the past. But the idea that somehow something has to be done anywhere soon, this is crazy....." (source: Democracy Now)

Still this commission, put together by Obama, will come out and say that Social Security Benefits need to be cut. They will make recommendations for the raising of the age at which benefits can be accessed.

How do I know this?

Well at the recent G-8/G-20 meeting it was decided that the industrialized world was going to cut social programs to pay for the bailout of the rich. They also decided that the elite financial class was to escape any penalty for bringing about the disaster. Instead the working and non-working people around the world were going to have to pay, according to the political puppets in Toronto.

Already this attack on social programs is occurring right now in Britain and other European countries.

Obama, like the Presidents before him, create smokescreen commissions to pretend that they are somehow looking at real alternatives to problems. In the end, it is nothing but a sick joke; and in the case of social security, it is being played on the sick and the aged.

Dean Baker offers his insight on the Obama commission.

"....Well, a commission is very, very worrisome. It’s chaired, you know President Obama picked Alan Simpson, former senator from Wyoming, who’s made a career out of beating up on old people—he thinks it’s cute. I don’t know if he’s delusional or what, but he talks about how old people drive into their gated communities in their Lexuses. Maybe his friends do. We have the data. Very few others do.

And then the Democratic co-chair was Erskine Bowles, who’s getting—he’s a Wall Street guy. He gets over $300,000 a year as a director of Morgan Stanley, a firm that should be famous to everyone, because it would be out of business without the taxpayers’ support. And he, right off the bat, said, "Well, we’re going to have to cut Social Security."

So, President Obama’s two lead appointees, his co-chairs, are both on record saying they want to cut Social Security. This should have people very, very worried. That isn’t a balanced commission...." (source)

But the commission was not meant to be balanced and the conclusions are already known.

President Obama has emerged as an even worse nightmare than George W. Bush. At least Bush could no longer fool the American people. Obama still has his progressive and liberal supporters as he implements the same corporatist, neocon Bush agenda. But that support is drying up and for good reason.

Obama Executive Order to Usher in IMF Styled Austerity Measures for U.S.?

The John Birch Socieity
February 23, 2010

Can the largest debtor nation in the history of mankind remain immune from the type of austerity measures imposed on less prominent borrowers by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? Americans will learn the answer to this question before the year is out.

On February 18th, President Obama made good on his 2010 State of the Union speech pledge to create by executive order a “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” The Commission is required to present its recommendations for improving the solvency of the United States government by “no later than December 1, 2010.”

2011 UPDATE: Review report here.

That is a drop dead date worth noting. If what the commission is plotting is not exposed and blocked, Americans and residents of the United States who have not taken financial counter measures before that date could suffer the full consequences of the work-out plan being concocted to allow the federal government “to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015.”

All options on the table

In a giddy interview with the federal government's official propaganda organ on the day of the commission's creation, co-chairmen of the commission, former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskin Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), spoke frankly. Responding to the first question of whether the retirement age would be increased for social security benefits, Bowles was blunt,

“Everything is on the table.”

Simpson was equally dramatic in addressing the naysayers who suggest his task is a suicide mission,

“There are a lot of bitchers and whiners and snorters out there and we intend to listen to them all and then crush them.”

As the three participants in the staged interview chuckled, Simpson clarified himself,

“I didn't mean that. Must have been a sick thing...”

A better admission of the kind of mind entrusted with resolving our looming sovereign debt default is hard to find. Yet, Simpson attempted to out do himself just a few days later in an interview with Alan Hunt on Bloomberg News. Cutting off Hunt who offered that,

“Voters would have some sense of the panel’s proposals before the November midterm elections...”

Simpson interjected,

“We don’t dare put out a report before Election Day or it’ll be total cremation and we’ll have to move to the top of Mount Somewhere -- Erskine and I -- somewhere living up there like hermits.”

Translation: The arrogant plotters behind this commission have no intention of allowing Americans to know where their representatives stand on the pending austerity measures before they go to the polls. But, as the executive order also dissolves the commission thirty days after it delivers its recommendations, there is a clear intent to have a vote on the pending austerity measures occur during a lame duck session of Congress. This possibility is substantiated by the fact that the original bill in the Senate (S. 2853), which this commission is patterned off of, called for the recommendations to be made no earlier than November 3rd (the day after election day) and that a vote on them would be taken no later than December 23rd.

Though a commission formed by a presidential executive order cannot legally force Congress to vote on its recommendations, Mr. Simpson may have been reminiscing over the do as we say or else crime boss tactics used to force Congress to approve the TARP bill and AIG bailout less than 18 months ago.

As the Homeland Security Act also demonstrated, a real or imagined crisis can be used to force Congress to act legislatively on recommendations coming out of the executive branch.

Getting down to business, here is the short list of austerity measures co-chairmen Simpson and Bolwes and their backers expect to have on their table:

• Extend the retirement age for social security benefits.
• Cut Medicaid and Medicare services and reimbursements.
• Institute a valued added tax (VAT) - a national tax applied to every economic transaction in the country.
• Require all wage earners to deposit a minimum of 2% of their pay into mandatory savings accounts. (slide 27)
• Require a percentage of the funds in IRA's, 401K and new mandatory savings accounts to be held in US Treasuries. (As the smart money bails on US Treasury auctions, Americans will be forced to buy their own toxic debt.)

There is nothing in this list that hasn't been required of hapless marks in other countries that have found themselves on the hook to the credit syndicates running the IMF and The Bank of International Settlements (BIS). The syndicates already own the U.S. Senate. It is not a stretch to imagine that they are working on their end game — the takeover of the rest of our country that they don't already control.

If you're not at the table, you're on the table

But, it doesn't have to be this way. Americans who value their independence need to start organizing now to come up with a competing action plan. We need to be sitting at our own table with our own list of options. Here are the first two suggestions for our list:

• Rather than creating a commission to plot what IMF styled austerity measures Americans are going to be shaken down for, we should demand investigations and trials for the many racketeers who have been operating with impunity within our financial system. (The only reason these people are not already in jail is that they make the laws.) Those convicted, and the organizations they operate out of, should face asset forfeitures of their racketeering gains. These could be put towards paying down the morally legitimate portions of our national debt.


• All current members of Congress should be required to sign a legally binding pledge refusing to vote on any recommendations for fiscal reform during this year's lame duck session. The many needed fixes for our budget crisis need to be debated in the open during a regular session of Congress.

It's time to turn the tables on the accomplices aiding and abetting those who seek to extinguish our freedoms. It won't be easy. But, the alternative is worth avoiding with all of our strength.

Sidebar: It's not coincidental that one of the co-chairs of the commission, Erskin Bowles comes from an investment banking family in the state that is home to the country's second largest banking center. Bowles, who recently announced he is stepping down from his sinecure position as the president of the University of North Carolina, also sits on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley. The commission's connections to the same banking syndicate insiders that have fed off our central government since at least 1913, does not end with Bowles.

U.S. Ruling Class Prepares Attack on Social Security

WSWS.org
September 8, 2010

Prominent figures in the US ruling elite have recently made a series of statements that forewarn of massive cuts in social spending, up to and including Social Security, the bedrock federal insurance entitlement for elderly and disabled workers.

These comments reveal that, whatever the precise outcome of the midterm elections on November 7, they will set the stage for a bipartisan assault, in the name of “fiscal responsibility,” on what remains of the social reforms of the last century.

The knives are already being sharpened for a long-awaited attack on Social Security. In a rude and provocative e-mail to the president of the Older Women’s League dated August 23, former Republican Senator Alan Simpson—appointed by President Obama as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform—revealed his deep hatred of both Social Security and the working people who depend upon it.

Social Security “has reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! [sic],” Simpson said. He blasted its recipients—retirees, those maimed and sickened by their work, and dependent survivors of dead workers—who, he said “milk it to the last degree.”

In an earlier outburst—in June, Simpson was caught on tape berating an independent journalist— he revealed the ruthless logic behind the ruling class drive for cuts:

Workers, whom Simpson dubbed “the lesser people,” live too long. When Social Security was created “they never dreamed that the life expectancy would go from 57 years of age to 78 or 75 or whatever,” Simpson said. “Who would dream that? No one. They just died.”

Simpson’s commission, established earlier this year by an Obama executive order to rein in budget deficits, is reportedly considering several measures, including raising the retirement age, perhaps to as high as 70, and cutting benefits as well as cost-of-living increases. It is expected to announce its recommendations in December—not accidentally, one month after the November elections.

There is unanimity in the ruling class in favor of the attack on Social Security. Co-chairing the Fiscal Responsibility commission is Erskine Bowles, formerly a White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and another long-time advocate of Social Security “reform.” And signaling the trade union bureaucracy’s active collaboration, Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), also sits on the commission.

“I agree with many Commissioners who have said that all entitlement programs should be on the table,” Stern has declared. “We should include as part of our agenda ideas for strengthening the private parts of the retirement security system, reviewing both the adequacy and the solvency of the Social Security system, and the possibility of universal add-on retirement accounts.”

Deepening the fiscal attack on the working class in the US, Europe and internationally was also the primary topic for discussion at the Ambrosetti Forum held last week on the shores of Italy’s elite Lake Como. Attended by political figures such as Spain’s José María Aznar, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Henry Kissinger from the US and Israeli President Shimon Peres, as well as numerous European Union functionaries, top bankers, businessmen and academicians, the forum provides a sounding board for policies that few politicians would dare identify themselves with in public.

In one session, Hans-Werner Sinn of the University of Munich declared that Americans will “just have to go down in their living standards after years in which their living standards soared in part based on foreign credit which is no longer there.” And Jacob Frenkel, chairman of JP Morgan Chase International “urged the United States to rein in entitlements as part of a ‘political deal’ that recognizes reality,” according to an Associated Press account of the conference. JP Morgan has received tens of billions in loans, debt buy-downs, and direct cash infusions from the federal government.

The attack on entitlements and social spending is the second phase in a broad offensive against the living conditions of the entire working class, following quickly on the heels of the unprecedented attack on jobs and wages spearheaded by the Obama administration’s forced reorganization of the auto industry.

Workers are being conditioned to accept what is referred to as “the new normal” typified by low wages and benefits and the total absence of any form of social protection. Or, in the blunter words of Fiat head Sergio Marchionne,

US workers must accept a “culture of poverty,” abandoning what he contemptuously referred to as a “culture of entitlement.”

The class character of the calls for “sacrifice” and “responsibility” is increasingly naked. Even as Washington prepares for drastic cuts to Social Security and all manner of social spending, Congress appears likely to extend or make permanent the Bush-era tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, which have cost the federal government trillions of dollars.

The Ruling Elite Want Our 401(k)s to Pay Down the Federal Debt; Debt Deal Establishes 'Super Committee', Promises Future Cuts, and Includes Constitutional Amendment Requiring the Feds to Balance the Budget

Will government commandeer private pension plans, 401Ks and IRA’s in return for a government guaranteed annuity; will these retirement plans be traded for US Treasuries; or like one bill says, limit the amounts that can be removed and how many times you can remove funds?...Tax loopholes will be closed, Social Security and Medicare will be capped in the midst of roaring inflation, and tax brackets will be adjusted to increase the tax bite. This exercise is called Cut, Cap and Balance. HR 2560 only perpetuates the status quo. The sad fact is there is no balance in this idea. There is no real attempt to cut anything, except Social Security and Medicare so that the military industrial complex can continue to reap profits and kill off our young in undeclared no-win wars, only designed to plunder countries. Of course, the excuse for this is the global war on terror, which has never and does not exist. Wars are to be endless and perpetual in the search of peace. - Economic Recovery Remains Elusive, International Forecaster Weekly, July 23, 2011

HR 2560, the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, only serves to sanction the status quo by putting forth a $1 trillion budget deficit and authorizing a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt limit. When I say this bill sanctions the status quo, I mean it quite literally. First, it purports to eventually balance the budget without cutting military spending, Social Security or Medicare. This is impossible. These three budget items already cost nearly $1 trillion apiece annually. This means we can cut every other area of federal spending to zero and still have a $3 trillion budget. Since annual federal tax revenues almost certainly will not exceed $2.5 trillion for several years, this Act cannot balance the budget under any plausible scenario. Second, it further entrenches the ludicrous beltway concept of discretionary vs. nondiscretionary spending. America faces a fiscal crisis, and we must seize the opportunity once and for all to slay Washington's sacred cows — including defense contractors and entitlements. All spending must be deemed discretionary and reexamined by Congress each year. To allow otherwise is pure cowardice. Third, the Act applies the nonsensical narrative about a "Global War on Terror" to justify exceptions to its spending caps. Since this war is undeclared, has no definite enemies, no clear objectives, and no metric to determine victory, it is by definition endless. Congress will never balance the budget until we reject the concept of endless wars. Finally, and most egregiously, this Act ignores the real issue: total spending by government. As Milton Friedman famously argued, what we really need is a constitutional amendment to limit taxes and spending, not simply to balance the budget. What we need is a dramatically smaller federal government; if we achieve this, a balanced budget will take care of itself. - Ron Paul, Ron Paul's Statement Against HR 2560, the "Cut, Cap and Balance Act", July 20, 2011

Really, what can be done to take down these known criminals in Washington? Even though it would be justified, I don’t see our military ever enforcing and coming against the government for their criminality. What next? Federal Court? That certainly won’t work…the Fed vs. the Fed has never gotten the voice of the people anywhere…so know what? Sure, I think it’s a big mistake by government and Obama to take this position; it could surely move us one BIG step closer to the riots and anarchy in the streets. A Revolution by the people that will bring about Martial Law? I don’t see how this wild beast can/will be brought to justice and reigned in…they’ve been walking all over the people of this country for a long time. As Nancy Pelosi arrogantly said when someone opposed the authority of the government: “Are You Serious”. - Veterans and retired people are held hostage to Washington criminals, comment by David, July 12, 2011

Super Congress: Easy Prey for the Military-Industrial Complex:

Twelve Bought Off Officials Will Make Up the New Super Congress

Super Congress: A Financial Death Panel That Will Help the Banks Loot and Rape America

“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.” – Napoleon

“The government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity. The financing of all public enterprise, and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. Money will cease to be master and will then become servant of humanity.” – Abraham Lincoln

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.” – Thomas Jefferson

The Excavator
August 6, 2011

The power of life and death over what’s left of the American economy and the millions of people who depend on Social Security checks now rests in the hands of twelve bought off officials who will make up the new Super Congress.

According to NPR, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid, and Mitch Mcconnell could be tapped to serve as the top destroyers of America, taking direct orders from the criminal bankers on Wall Street.

The Super Congress will use dictatorial powers to bypass constitutional checks and balances and ram a fascist agenda through Congress under the flawed premise that they are bringing the fiscal house in order.

What is not mentioned is that America’s fiscal house was destroyed when Congress was bullied into handing over trillions of dollars to banks that committed fraud in September 2008.

That act of high treason was preceded by another act of high treason seven years earlier, when the Bush administration staged the false flag 9/11 attacks. The attacks were used to justify a manufactured war on terrorism that has channelled trillions of dollars from the American people into a tiny oligarchy that controls the financial-military-industrial complex.

But that history is missing in the corporate media. Instead of informing the American people about the robbery and treason that has taken place, news anchors and reporters are spreading lies and disinformation that Social Security is an unfunded liability and needs to be cut in order for America to have a sound economic future.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is behind a billion dollar propaganda campaign that is injecting these lies into the media to control the political discourse and help the financial parasites and oligarchs to loot Social Security and Medicare.

Back in April 2010, economist Dean Baker exposed Peterson’s trickery and corruption, writing:

The media should be jumping on deficit hawks like Peterson, asking him why anyone should take him seriously now when he was so incredibly and disastrously wrong about the economy just a few years ago. Unfortunately, Peterson doesn’t get questions like that; he just gets praise for his willingness to try to take Social Security and Medicare away from retired workers.

The problem is that Peterson has billions of dollars. To the national media and other actors in national policy debates, Peterson’s wealth matters much more than whether or not what he is saying makes sense.

Who is Pete Peterson and why does he want to kill Social Security?

Peterson is a connected insider and a surrogate for the financial parasites that have occupied and looted America since the creation of the private Federal Reserve Bank in 1913. Peterson served as the Chairman of the corrupt Council on Foreign Relations from 1985 to 2007, following the chairmanship of David Rockefeller. He was also Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2000 to 2004, the most important of the Federal Reserve banks.

Peterson’s aims are the aims of the global private banking cartel that wants to get rid of the social safety net, destroy the American middle class, abolish nation states, and establish a new world authoritarian government that they will control.

On May 25, 2010, Jane Hamsher wrote an article that focused on the political foundations that are funded by Peterson to deliver the false message to the American people that the Social Security System is broken. Hamsher said:

Many of the efforts Peterson funds focus on teaching young people. The message that social security is in trouble, and will not be there for you when you get old unless it is “fixed,” has been a key tenet of Peterson’s campaign. The 990 indicates that in addition to financing the propaganda film I.O.U.S.A., he spent $1,124,987 on MTV advertising. I’ve been told that this is a very compelling message to young staffers in the White House, who support the concept of cutting benefits in order to “save” Social Security.

If Pete Peterson, David Rockefeller, and other criminal financiers have their way, the American people’s pensions will be looted along with America’s national infrastructure as soon as they are privatized and handed over to politically connected banks and corporations. The crooks in the Super Congress will try to sell the massive rip-off to the American people as “fiscal sanity.”

Once the riots begin and martial law is declared, the Super Congress will take over and run Washington while the rest of the Congress will be told to go home for their own safety.

The media propaganda machine might say something like:

“Congressmen and Senators are being threatened with assassination as protests increase in Washington, so for their own safety they have been sent back to their districts with security guards assigned to them. Meanwhile, the Super Congress that was created back in August will stay behind to carry out their congressional duties.”

Can you see the bigger picture? It may not be evident now, but in six months or a year from now we will see the real reasons why the Super Congress was created.

Can you see the death and destruction that awaits America because of the treason that has been committed against the American people and U.S. Constitution?

The reason this new power grab by the Super Congress is so dangerous is because it represents the official end of constitutional government in the United States. Combine the power of the Super Congress with the power of dictatorial executive orders that have been used by Bush and Obama, and what you get is the absolute destruction of freedom, the American Constitution, and the rule of law.

The Super overlords in the new imperial Congress and President Obama will force austerity cuts on the American people, just like the paid-off politicians are doing in Greece. America will go through what Greece is going through right now, and what Argentina went through in the beginning of the last decade except it will be ten times worse in America.

They are not capitalists and representatives of the free-market, they are corporate fascists and oligarchical monopolists. So don’t blame capitalism for America’s destruction. Blame plutocracy. Blame stupidity. Blame media brainwashing. Blame treason.

Investigative journalist Greg Palast covered the IMF rape of Argentina. On August 12, 2001, Palast wrote in an article called, Who Shot Argentina? The Finger Prints On the Smoking Gun Read ‘I.M.F.’:

Next to the still warm corpse of Argentina’s economy, the killer had left a smoking gun with his fingerprints all over it.

The murder weapon is called, “Technical Memorandum of Understanding,” dated September 5, 2000. It signed by Pedro Pou, President of the Central Bank of Argentina for transmission to Horst Kohler, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF vultures have gobbled numerous third-world nations in the last few decades and left millions of human beings to rot and die like animals. But America is different. You can not gobble up a nation where the people have more guns than the government.

Plus, there is a massive political awakening happening in America. The American people are waking up to the fact that America has been financially and spiritually occupied since 1913 by the same parasitic financial system that was defeated by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and the revolutionary American colonists.

There was a counter revolution in the late 19th and early 20th century. America, like most other nations, was turned into a colony of a global financial empire that treats nations in the same way that prisons are treated. The people are worked to death and their wealth is stolen from them through an income tax that goes directly to the managers of the global financial cartel who contribute nothing of value to society.

The money that global financiers lend to national governments through their private central banks is made out of thin air. And when they stop lending, the economy stops and people die.

On May 4, 2010, Palast said on the Alex Jones show that there is an economic crisis and an unemployment crisis because there is no credit in the economy:

Obama made a claim that he saved the financial system. No he didn’t. He saved the financiers, and he doesn’t seem to understand there is a difference between financiers who were bailed out and the financial system. Try to get a loan today. Try to get a mortgage today. You can’t. If you’re a small business you can’t borrow money today. It’s impossible. No one will give you money. There is no credit in the system. That’s why we’re on our knees.

The financiers at the Federal Reserve who are holding America hostage and destroying the American economy can be classified as financial terrorists and war criminals. They are engaging in economic warfare against the American people. Other nations that are ruled by the IMF and private global central banks are also being financially conquered.

“The people of Greece need to stand up to financial terrorism because Greece goes down, Ireland goes down, Portugal goes down, Spain goes down, and they’re going to come to the U.S. And the U.S. is going down by the same financial terrorists,” said financial analyst Max Keiser in June.

The time for resistance to the financial occupation of the planet has come. This is our generation’s fight. We must get rid of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, Federal Reserve Bank, and other private central banks that are looting every country they’re in.

Public banking is an idea whose time has come.

Balanced Budget Amendment to Get Votes in Congress

The only way the feds can balance the budget is to seize private retirement assets. Private retirement assets in the United States grew by 9% in 2010, from $16.0 trillion in 2009 to $17.5 trillion in 2010. However, the market lost $2 trillion in value during the first week of August 2011.

The Associated Press
August 22, 2011

As a "super committee" tries to find $1.5 trillion in new deficit cuts this fall, Republicans will be pressing a far more ambitious goal: passing an amendment to the Constitution to require a balanced federal budget.

The idea is being pushed most forcefully by conservative activists eager to shrink the government and its spending but disappointed with the results they've achieved so far in Washington, where Democrats control both the White House and the Senate.

"Spending cuts and caps are steps in the right direction," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. But a balanced budget amendment is "the only permanent solution to control government spending and end our nation's spending-driven debt crisis," Sessions said.

House GOP leaders — short of the two-thirds margin required to pass the amendment — have held off scheduling a vote. But both House and Senate are required to hold votes this fall as one of the conditions of recently enacted legislation to raise the government's borrowing cap.

It's a decidedly uphill battle, even though Republicans control the House with larger numbers than they had in 1995, when a balanced budget amendment sailed through the chamber with 300 votes. It fell just one supporter short of the required two-thirds margin in the Senate.

There appear to be fewer Democratic backers now than there were in 1995, when 72 House Democrats voted for the amendment. For starters, there are far fewer southern white conservative and moderate Democrats in the House than there were back then.

And Republicans have made the task more difficult by pushing a significantly more stringent tea party-backed version of the amendment now than they did in 1995. The new version would virtually make it impossible for future Congresses to raise taxes by requiring a two-thirds vote in both House and Senate. It also would force a huge shrinking of government programs by capping spending at 18 percent of the nation's total economic output each year. This year, government spending is running about 25 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), the widest measure of the U.S. economy.

Democrats won't back the stricter version. But if House leaders also press a vote on the 1995 version — which permits tax increases by a simple majority vote — they'll run into opposition from conservative activists like Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, who say the old version is a recipe for higher taxes.

"There are lots of reasons not to like the original balanced budget amendment," Norquist said, warning that it could lead to tax increases imposed by lawmakers squeamish about cutting spending, or even by federal courts.

Given the enormity of the nation's fiscal gap, future Congresses facing a balanced-budget mandate would surely consider tax increases as a way to ease cuts to defense, Social Security, Medicare and other domestic programs.

Even tea party-driven House Republicans shunned such cuts earlier this year when adopting a nonbinding GOP budget blueprint that forecast deficits in the $400 billion range for most of the decade. Republican decided against offering a balanced budget because it would have forced cuts on current recipients of Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Lawmakers did have an opportunity to vote for balancing the budget in the form of a much stiffer budget plan offered by the conservative Republican Study Committee, which promised a balanced ledger by the end of the decade.

That balanced-budget plan, however, won only 119 votes in the 435-member House in April and a majority of Republicans opposed it. The balanced-budget blueprint relied on massive cuts to domestic programs like health care and food aid for the poor. It also featured politically implausible proposals like raising the eligibility age for full Social Security retirement benefits to 70.

In 1995, the failure of the balanced budget amendment to pass the Senate propelled then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., to engineer congressional passage of a seven-year balanced-budget plan. It fell prey to a veto by President Bill Clinton but set the stage for a bipartisan balanced budget two years later.

The so-called super committee is required to produce cuts in the range of $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion — too small to satisfy the tea party-driven House. So a vote on a balanced budget amendment is an opportunity to take a tougher stand, even as lawmakers are spared difficult votes on concrete proposals to cut spending further. Should the amendment win two-thirds votes in both the House and Senate, that would negate the requirement for the supercommittee's deficit cuts or an alternative $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts if the panel fails to find a compromise or its recommendation is rejected by Congress.

The proposed amendment also is an opportunity for Democrats to cast a tough-on-spending vote. Sixteen House Democrats have signed on to the version that passed the House in 1995. So far, Rep. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina is the only Democrat to sign on to the tea party-backed version requiring two-thirds supermajorities in the House and Senate to raise taxes.

It would take 48 Democratic votes to pass either amendment, assuming that all 240 House Republicans vote for it as well. Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., a top sponsor of both versions, is optimistic.

"We have folks across the geographic spectrum of the Democratic Party who are supporting the effort," said Goodlatte, citing Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Jason Altmire, D-Pa. "I think there's a good chance that this can be passed."

But Gingrich in 1995 had an advantage that today's GOP leaders lack — recent votes by scores of Democrats in favor of the idea. In 1992 and 1994, the Democratic-controlled House rejected attempts by a coalition of conservative Democrats and minority Republicans to pass the balanced budget amendment, falling less than a dozen votes short each time. When Republicans took over the House in 1995, there was a ready pool of Democratic votes.

The House hasn't voted on a balanced budget amendment since, even though it's been controlled by Republicans for most of that time. The Senate fell tantalizingly short in 1997.

Regardless of how the vote turns out in the House, the amendment's prospects are dim in the Senate, where Democrats control 53 of the 100 seats. It would take at least 20 Democratic votes to pass the measure if every Republican votes for it.

All 47 Republicans, however, are backing a tea party version drafted by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, requiring two-thirds votes to raise taxes and capping spending at 18 percent of GDP. When unveiling the tea party-backed measure in March, top sponsors like Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, declined to say whether they could vote for the old version they so enthusiastically backed in the 1990s.

If any amendment were to be adopted by Congress it would then have to be ratified by 38 state legislatures to become part of the Constitution.

Ron Paul: Freeze the Budget and Stop Plundering the American People!:


On July 31, 2011, Obama and congressional leaders announced an agreement on an emergency deal to avoid the nation's first-ever financial default. Obama said that, if enacted, the agreement would mean "the lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president" more than a half century ago. Obama said there will be no initial cuts to 'entitlement programs' like Social Security and Medicare, but he said both could be on the table along with changes in tax law as part of future cuts. In the first stage under the agreement, the nation's debt limit would rise immediately by nearly $1 trillion and spending would be cut by a slightly larger amount over a decade. That would be followed by creation of the new congressional committee ['super congress' comprising a committee of 12] that would have until the end of November to recommend $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, or overhauling the tax code. Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit. If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed constitutional balanced-budget amendment. The deal would allow the debt limit to rise by enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections. But it appeared Obama's proposal to extend the current payroll tax holiday beyond the end of 2011 would not be included, nor his call for extended unemployment benefits for victims of the recession.

As reported on July 24, 2011 by the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim: “This ‘Super Congress,’ composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers. Under a plan put forth by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), legislation to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by the creation of a 12-member panel made up of 12 lawmakers — six from each chamber and six from each party. Legislation approved by the Super Congress — which some on Capitol Hill are calling the ‘super committee’ — would then be fast-tracked through both chambers, where it couldn’t be amended by simple, regular lawmakers, who’d have the ability only to cast an up or down vote. With the weight of both leaderships behind it, a product originated by the Super Congress would have a strong chance of moving through the little Congress and quickly becoming law. A Super Congress would be less accountable than the system that exists today, and would find it easier to strip the public of popular benefits. Negotiators are currently considering cutting the mortgage deduction and tax credits for retirement savings, for instance, extremely popular policies that would be difficult to slice up using the traditional legislative process.”

The Truth About the Debt Deal: It's Pretty Much Meaningless

Business Insider
August 1, 2011

The "historic, bipartisan compromise" reached to raise the debt limit does not end the struggle to reign in the federal deficit — in fact, it pushes the most difficult decisions off into the future.

More surprising, the debt deal actually cuts almost nothing now--it just promises future cuts that may or may not materialize.

There are very few specific cuts in the deal — and the $1 trillion in immediate cuts are almost entirely constituted of caps on future spending. And those caps are not required to be honored by future congresses.

The "real" spending cuts to current programs will come out of a bipartisan committee of Representatives and Senators, which is charged with finding an additional $1.5 trillion in savings from the federal deficit.

But White House and Republican leaders appear split on exactly what the so-called "Super Committee" can do. In a presentation to his caucus, Speaker of the House John Boehner said it would "be effectively...impossible for [the] Joint Committee to increase taxes," even though it could consider reforming the tax code.

White House officials strongly pushed back on that remark, saying revenue-increasing reform is possible — even though it almost certainly would not be able to get through Congress.

The committee is modeled on "BRAC" or the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, whose recommendations are presented to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote with no amendments allowed. Instead of non-partisan commissioners, each congressional leader will appoint three members of Congress to the committee.

If the Super-Committee can't reach an agreement, or their recommendations cannot pass Congress, deep "real" spending cuts, which are painful to both sides, would take effect. For Democrats, entitlement cuts are at risk, while Republicans would see cuts to defense spending.

Additionally, President Barack Obama has the ability to veto an extension of the Bush tax cuts if he deems the committee's solution insufficiently "balanced."

So, again, other than cuts to federally subsidized student loans to graduate and professional school students, the debt deal actually cuts NOTHING now, and only promises future reductions that may never materialize.

In short, for the past month, Congress has been arguing about little more than an agreement to reach an agreement at some point in the future. Your tax dollars at work.

It's a Deal: Obama, Congress Will Avert Default

The deal would allow the debt limit to rise by enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections

The Associated Press
July 31, 2011

Ending a perilous stalemate, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders announced agreement Sunday night on an emergency deal to avoid to avert the nation's first-ever financial default. The arrangement would cut more than $2 trillion from federal spending over a decade.

The dramatic agreement, with scant time remaining before Tuesday's deadline, "will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America," Obama said.

Default "would have had a devastating effect on our economy," the president said at the White House, relaying the news to the nation and to financial markets around the world. He thanked the leaders of both parties.

House Speaker John Boehner telephoned Obama at mid-evening to say the agreement had been struck, officials said.

No votes were expected in either house of Congress until Monday at the earliest, to give rank-and-file lawmakers time to review the package. But leaders in both parties were already beginning the work of rounding up votes.

In a conference call with his rank and file, Boehner said the agreement "isn't the greatest deal in the world, but it shows how much we've changed the terms of the debate in this town."

Obama underscored that point. He said that, if enacted, the agreement would mean "the lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president" more than a half century ago.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid provided the first word of the agreement.

"Sometimes it seems our two sides disagree on almost everything," he said. "But in the end, reasonable people were able to agree on this: The United States could not take the chance of defaulting on our debt, risking a United States financial collapse and a world-wide depression."

In his remarks, Obama said there will be no initial cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. But he said both could be on the table along with changes in tax law as part of future cuts. That was a reference to a special joint committee of lawmakers [the 'super congress' or committee of 12] that will be established to recommend a second round of deficit reductions, to be voted on by Congress before year's end as part of an arrangement to raise the debt ceiling yet again. That is expected to be necessary early next year.

Pending final passage, the agreement marked a dramatic reach across party lines that played out over six months and several rounds of negotiating, interspersed by periods of intense partisanship.

A final stick point had concerned possible cuts in the nation's defense budget in the next two years. Republicans wanted less. Democrats pressed for more in an attempt to shield domestic accounts from greater reductions.

Details apparently included in the agreement provide that the federal debt limit would rise in two stages by at least $2.2 trillion, enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections.

Big cuts in government spending would be phased in over a decade. Thousands of programs - the Park Service, Labor Department and housing among them - could be trimmed to levels last seen years ago. No Social Security or Medicare benefits would be cut, but the programs could be scoured for other savings. Taxes would be unlikely to rise.

Without legislation in place by Tuesday, the Treasury will not be able to pay all its bills, raising the threat of a default that administration officials say could inflict catastrophic damage on the economy. If approved, though, a compromise would presumably preserve America's sterling credit rating, reassure investors in financial markets across the globe and possibly reverse the losses that spread across Wall Street in recent days as the threat of a default grew.

Officials familiar with the negotiations said that McConnell had been in frequent contact with Vice President Joe Biden, who has played an influential role across months of negotiations.

1. In the first stage under the agreement, the nation's debt limit would rise immediately by nearly $1 trillion, and spending would be cut by a slightly larger amount over a decade.


2. That would be followed by creation of the new congressional committee that would have until the end of November to recommend $1.8 trillion or more in deficit cuts, targeting benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, or overhauling the tax code.
   


3. Those deficit cuts would allow a second increase in the debt limit.


4. If the committee failed to reach its $1.8 trillion target, or Congress failed to approve its recommendations by the end of 2011, lawmakers would then have to vote on a proposed constitutional balanced-budget amendment.


5. If that failed to pass, automatic spending cuts totaling $1.2 trillion would automatically take effect, and the debt limit would rise by an identical amount. Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps would be exempt from the automatic cuts, but payments to doctors, nursing homes and other Medicare providers could be trimmed, as could subsidies to insurance companies that offer an alternative to government-run Medicare.

Officials describing those steps spoke on condition of anonymity, citing both the sensitivity of the talks and the potential that details could change.

The deal marked a classic compromise, a triumph of divided government that would let both Obama and Republicans claim they had achieved their objectives.

As the president demanded, the deal would allow the debt limit to rise by enough to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections.

But it appeared Obama's proposal to extend the current payroll tax holiday beyond the end of 2011 would not be included, nor his call for extended unemployment benefits for victims of the recession.

Republicans would win spending cuts of slightly more than the increase in the debt limit, as they have demanded. Additionally, tax increases would be off-limits unless recommended by the bipartisan committee that is expected to include six Republicans and six Democrats. The conservative campaign to force Congress to approve a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution would be jettisoned.

Congressional Democrats have long insisted that Medicare and Social Security benefits not be cut, a victory for them in the proposal under discussion. Yet they would have to absorb even deeper cuts in hundreds of federal programs than were included in Reid's bill, which many Democrats supported in a symbolic vote on the House floor on Saturday.

As details began to emerge, one liberal organization, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, issued a statement that was harshly critical.

"Seeing a Democratic president take taxing the rich off the table and instead push a deal that will lead to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefit cuts is like entering a bizarre parallel universe - one with horrific consequences for middle-class families," it said.

While politically powerful business groups like the Chamber of Commerce are expected to support the deal, tea party organizations and others have looked disapprovingly on legislation that doesn't require approval of a balanced-budget amendment. If they keep to that position, it could present Boehner a challenge in lining up enough votes to support a compromise, just as Obama may have to stand down rebels within his own party.

Your Private Wealth Is Threatened By Government Revenue Needs and Treasury Debt

This is Part 2 of Ron Holland's speech Down Argentine Way presented on the recent FreedomFest Untitled 1 financial cruise down in South America during November.

By Ron Holland
January 18, 2011

There is nothing very complicated or prophetic about forecasting how Washington plans to steal much of the remaining private wealth of most American citizens over the next decade or so. This is the norm in history and politics throughout world history and this has always been the major function of governments.

While the Anglo-American establishment has whitewashed this part of history, politics and information over the last 150 years, today with the internet, the truth of our history is apparent to anyone willing to do the research.

Just as the citizens of America and Great Britain have in the past financially benefited from living under the Anglo-American Axis in many ways, today in these twilight latter-days of the empire so we will suffer under the wealth confiscation and likely retribution from the rest of the world due to the accident of our birthplace and citizenship.

As the American national debt grows larger, here are 15-plus probable attacks on your wealth over the coming ten years.

Your assets, benefits and future prosperity will be forfeit to Washington's elites as they try to buy time to right a sinking ship -- and to no avail. The impact on our wealth and future prosperity will likely dwarf what has happened before in Argentina, during the Russian collapse and in Germany with the post First World War Weimer republic.

This essay will discuss the threats and possible new taxes, penalties and controls designed to transfer wealth from the private sector to the federal government.

• Social Security Theft - As we see today in France, Social Security retirement ages will be further extended into the future. Wealthy Americans will be "means tested" and entirely forfeit their benefits, and Washington will eventually end cost-of-living adjustments for all but the poorest Social Security recipients.


• Manipulate Cost of Living Adjustments & Statistics To Steal Your Wealth - Even those receiving existing benefits will find their cost-of-living adjustments dramatically reduced over time with false inflation statistics just as we see today.


• The End of Capital Gains - The severe depth of the recession has bought US investors a couple of years extension of capital gains, but this will not be a permanent benefit regardless of the party in power. First, favorable capital gains treatment will likely be ended for all privately-owned investments except for US domestic stock and bond investments. Foreign stocks and bonds will be taxed at regular income tax levels while domestic securities, other than (non-productive assets) including mining and natural resource companies, will still be provided favorable capital gains treatment. If they are able to manipulate the stock market to new highs, then expect an eventual end to capital gains for US equities.


• The Probable Imposition of a Non-Productive Asset Gain Tax - Americans with highly-appreciated precious metals investments (including numismatics and collectibles) will find a substantial amount of their gains charged with an emergency non-productive asset gain tax. Not only will you lose capital gains treatment but expect an additional high penalty tax on gains as the last thing the establishment wants is hard money investors benefiting while the rest of population find their investments collapsing in value.


• This Tax Will Likely Be Extended to Mining and Natural Resource Stocks - Another reason to take your profits sooner rather than later in a crisis situation where the public with conventional investments will clamor for this type of retroactive tax.


• A Two-Tier Gold Price Structure - At the very least, there may well be a government enforced set or internal price for precious metals sales that operates outside the free-market pricing outside the jurisdiction of the United States. This could be handled by the non-productive asset tax mentioned about or used during a time of government gold confiscation to pay lower prices to American investors than the price outside of America. This is what happened during Roosevelt's earlier gold confiscation; and don't expect Congress to help you.


• The Risk of Private Gold Confiscation Will Continue To Increase - When the dollar and Treasury market crashes, Washington will enact legislation or use Presidential Executive Orders against gold investors to curtail your profits, add a confiscatory non-productive asset tax or confiscate your gold with some type of fiat currency exchange. In any case, they plan to end up with your gold as this will be the basis of a fake gold standard which may be used as the pretense to confiscate your gold. This will take place during the coming bond and dollar crisis by Presidential Executive Order. (Next month's letter will have a discussion on Presidential Executive Orders past and future.)


• The Fed & Washington Might Manufacture A Fake Gold Standard - Free-market public and private currency competition should replace the failed fiat currencies in use around the world today, But Washington will not give up their monopoly on currency creation without a fight and fraud against the American people; and in the latter stages of a dollar crash we can expect some type of complicated, fake gold standard or backing as a final fallback position. Just plan on this happening and it may well be the excuse used for outright gold confiscation.


• Washington Will Confiscate Large Private Retirement Fund Balances - Hungry, Bulgaria and Poland are already seizing private retirement funds to meet budget shortfalls. This will take place in the United States. Read the current report on the European pension seizures later in the newsletter under "What You Might Have Missed in the Press".
  
  The long-term confiscation and control idea is to eventually force all retirement benefits under the new automatic/mandatory IRA program where everything will be combined with and managed like your Social Security benefits. Wealthy and productive Americans will find their retirement benefits used to support the trillions in underfunded union, state and local government employee plans.


• Remaining Retirement Funds May Be Forced Into Mandated US Treasury Obligations - As in Europe, you can expect a percentage of your remaining retirement funds, and new required contributions in the proposed Automatic IRA accounts, will be forced into government bond obligations; and your funds will become the buyer of last resort of US Treasury debt. While the Chinese, Japan and offshore nations, central banks and investors are dumping Treasuries, your retirement security will be sacrificed to provide liquidity for investors selling the debt obligations.


• All Productive Working Americans Will Be Forced Into A Mandatory, Automatic IRA Scheme With Required Annual Contributions - Americans with limited or no savings may actually benefit with this program while those of us with substantial retirement assets will find our benefits stolen to prop up the retirement programs of cities, states and unions.


• Home Values May Continue To Decline From the Bubble Levels - There are still substantial levels of foreclosures and short sales on the market, which will be followed by more homes (currently held off the market due to low demand ) being listed for sale during any temporary price upturn.


• An End to the Home Interest Deduction - Proposals in Congress are already putting the home interest deduction on the table of deduction to be reduced or eliminated in the future. I project the home interest deductions will first be eliminated for wealthy homeowners and later expanded to the middle class. This will create further downward pressure on real estate values; and the current weakness may buy some time for homeowners.


• Rising Income & Estate Taxes - We have already seen this play out during the Lame Duck session of Congress. Estate taxes have been restored; and the only question is, will the rate remain at current levels or go up. Second, the Bush tax cuts have been extended for two years due to the bad economy, but both parties will soon raise income taxes due to revenue needs.


• A National Sales or VAT Tax Is Coming - Most western nations already have a VAT tax, and this is also already in discussion stages by Congress. Expect an initial tax rate of 5% or more in addition to existing state, county and city sales taxes; and the rates will only go up from there.


• State, Municipal & Union Bankruptcies & You Pick Up the Bill - Note that these costs, which will be bailed out by the federal government in many cases and ultimately by the taxpayers, will be in addition to the coming bailout on their existing retirement and health benefit plans. Note that there is finally some good news on this front as many Democrats and Republicans are attempting to curb the growth and powers of parasitic public employee unions.

What Should Americans Do About Washington's National Debt?

Everyone with any intelligence in the US and around the world knows that there is no way for Washington to manage the tens of trillions in debt and unfunded liabilities short of ultimate repudiation or hyperinflation. Thanks to Wall Street, bankers, and the Anglo-American financial elite, our ruinous debt-financing Ponzi scheme has been exported to most Western nations as their politicians have made a compact with the devil in delivering vote-buying programs and postponing the interest and debt reduction to future generations.

Watch the cuts and subsequent riots in Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and you'll see just a little of the future for the United States with its faltering world reserve currency status.

The question is, should the citizens and the formerly sovereign states of the United States wait for Washington's foreign creditors to seize the remaining government and private assets left after our politicians have finished with us?

Our politicians are in the process of totally bankrupting the country, individual states and municipalities; and in a less than a decade will have confiscated most private wealth and placed tens of trillions of more debt on future generations. Should we act now before Congress and our politicians loot our personal, retirement and real estate wealth; destroy our Treasury obligations; and kill the dollar? Should we democratically take matters into our own hands before the looming dollar and debt crisis?

One alternative is for Americans in the individual states to organize and work toward a "Washington National Debt Constitutional Amendment" and repudiate much of the Washington government debt before it bankrupts every private American citizen. Otherwise, the massive increase in the level of indebtedness due to the meltdown and depression may first bring down the Treasury market followed by the US dollar; and this will destroy the American economy for decades to come.

The American people need to meet the problem on terms which will make the best of a difficult situation for the nation and our personal financial security instead of allowing foreign creditors, our financial establishment, and Washington to buy more time for them through the confiscation of our private wealth, financial security and liberty.

Only a grassroots effort by the American people through state-nullification or the constitutional amendment process have any hope of success. The alternative is to expect those who are destroying our economy and nation to solve the problem they created without sacrificing us in the process. This is just wishful and foolish thinking.

On December 21, 1913 the New York Times stated,

"New York will be on a firmer basis of financial growth, and we shall soon see her the money center of the world."

This was one day before the Federal Reserve Act was hurriedly passed and signed into law with limited debate by a Congress controlled by Washington and banking special interests.

These undemocratic tactics were designed then -- just as today -- to thwart the will and overwhelming opposition of the American people to expensive handouts for Wall Street and those shadowy few who stand behind the banking system.

Now, Washington's illegitimate national debt is growing exponentially due to the bailouts and stimulus bills as Congress tries to jump-start a depression threatened economy. This additional debt load will, within the next decade, bankrupt our nation and impoverish most productive, working Americans.

The Federal Reserve, together with the above financial elites, essentially manufactured the credit and real-estate bubble. The result: continued enhancement of foreign investment in their Treasury debt Ponzi scheme along with obscene profits for Wall Street at the expense of the American people.

This scam by our financial establishment makes Bernard Madoff's despicable actions look like Mother Teresa's charity operation in comparison. An unintentional consequence of these actions was the meltdown in markets, the credit crisis and spreading global depression when the bubble finally burst.

Now there is a cover-up of the cause and coming global run, crash and probable collapse of US Treasury obligations because of the dramatic increase in Washington's national debt to unsustainable levels. This economic tidal wave threatens the financial security and wealth of every American along with their savings, real estate, retirement plans, investment portfolios as well as their promised Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Concerned Americans must bypass a corrupt Congress and the leadership of both political parties often controlled by special interests at the national level and seek a debt solution through the constitutional amendment and nullification process starting at the state level.

Repudiating the illegitimate national debt of Washington politicians and special interests will allow existing treasury-debt-obligation owners and investors time to dispose of the unlawful debt created only to profit special financial and corporate interests. They own and control majorities in the House and Senate, much of the party leadership positions, and the Federal Reserve System ...

Bankrupted States = Constitutional Convention and the Proposed Constitution for the 'Newstates of America'

NewsWithViews
December 24, 2008

The strategically planned and forthcoming Constitutional Convention, which will address “a balanced budget,” is quite a cover story. Therefore, let us consider the truth behind this elaborate usurpation scheme.

As the country is failing in every direction -- from the former individual in America to each and every individual state in the country, the total economic crash of EVERYTHING -- and all converging at the very same time and as we speak -- is, let us say, extraordinarily convenient.

Add this convenience to the fact that on March 27, 1969, President Richard Nixon divided the country into 10 regions via the Government Reorganization Act. Then with Nixon’s Executive Order 11647, the nation was divided up into 10 administrative regions on February 14, 1972 (Federal Register February 12, 1972, Vol. 37, No. 30), which also established the Federal Regional Council for the newly designed 10 regions.

Now, why did former President Richard Nixon redefine the United States? He did so because the United Nations passed a resolution that the United States must reorganize into 10 regions. Can you name your regional directors? Who are these councils, and where are their office buildings? Actually, you don’t know because they were not “elected,” nor are they mentioned on your tell-a-visions. Your regional councilmen are “appointees.” Can you tell me who appointed them to regional power? Bet you can’t.

And the reorganizing of our former nation, achieved more than 25 years ago, and of which you know nothing, certainly suggests that “government” as we knew it changed a long time ago. With all this information now in hands, ask yourselves what would happen in the event of a really big, national “crisis?” What powers do your states hold, or for that matter, your counties or local governments hold -- especially since they are all bankrupt AND have regional managers.

Add this to your plate: now that you know your nation has been redrawn and redistributed, what if I told you that a new constitution was written at the same time the country was divided into 10 regions? Ever heard of the Proposed Constitution for the Newstates of America?

In 1964, the Ford Foundation funded an outfit called the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions to write a new constitution for our nation. After 40 drafts, a staff of 100+ people, and at a cost of 2.5 million dollars a year, a decade later (1974) the Proposed Constitution for the Newstates of America was finished. Mind you -- a ten year, $25,000,000.00 project…let us therefore assume that the funding foundation(s) were very serious about this investment. And two years later, in 1976, Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, who at that time was the president of the Senate, introduced HCR 28, which called for an unlimited Constitutional Convention -- the perfect tool whereby to dissolve our current constitution and implant the handily written new constitution -- and all without congressional oversight or public knowledge.

Didn’t go well for Nelson in 1976, but guess what? A new Constitutional Convention is right around our corners again -- with 32 states requesting the Con-Con, and with only 34 required for it’s convening -- and with most American states now totally, conveniently, bankrupt.

Look at it this way: the Feds can not possibly bail out 50 states because they’ve already given all our money away -- right? And we can’t pay taxes anyway because we have no jobs. Gosh…what can the Feds possibly do to rectify this horrible situation?

Dialectically speaking, they’ve had their answer of choice in the wings for decades. It’s called dissolving state, county, and local powers for centralized power. Gosh…it’s the United Nations mandate for one world government and regionalization of the United States -- as commanded in the 1960’s. Do tell, folks…do tell.

The current economic “crisis” is the tool, the highly planned and patient tool, to set up the global governing bureaucracy for real and for certain with the second convening of the Constitutional Convention in the wings. The big wigs tried it before in 1976, and they are trying again, but this time having manufactured national bankruptcy as public fear-based appeasement.

I suggest you read your forthcoming constitution, which is also your forthcoming nightmare. Here is just a taste of your global privileges from your Constitution for the Newstates of America:

Article 1A Sec. 1 - 'Freedom of expression shall not be abridged except in declared emergency."

Article 1A Sec. 8 - "The practice of religion shall be privileged."

Article 1B Sec. 8 - "Bearing of arms shall be confined to the police, members of the armed forces, and those licensed under law." See the note below from a respected teacher [and friend] in the UK:

"Britain is already divided into regions. The region of Kent includes a bit of France. Most of our laws now come from Brussels. We have never agreed to this. After Heath lied to get a 'yes' to the Common Market in 1879 or so, Lib Lab Con in the house of Commons have steadily, traitorously handed over government of our land to Brussels. We do not elect the officials in the regions. Most people are unaware they exist.... MPs have given up representing us. Many people are just TV fodder."

Check Out These Important Links:

IMF and CFR Insider Recruited by Obama White House
Peter Schiff on the IMF – ‘They don’t help the countries’
Argentina and the IMF – Michel Chossudovsky on The Corbett Report

Alex Jones – Bankrupting Us is The Goal!!
Austerity Fascism Is Coming And It Will Be Brutal
Greg Palast Tells How The IMF Set-Up Iceland & Greece on Alex Jones Tv
Greg Palast: “Remove the Bloodsuckers”
John Perkins Lecture at the University of Iceland in April 2009
John Perkins: Economic Hitmen – Understanding NWO Mafia Corporatism Warfare

Keiser Report – ‘U.S. Going Down Next After Greece’
Gerald Celente: ‘IMF – International Mafia Federation’
Keiser Report: Michael Hudson: IMF Assassins to destroy Greek economy
Paul Craig Roberts – Stealing from Social Security to Pay for Wars and Bailouts
(MUST SEE!) Catherine Austin Fitts: The Looting Of America
Ellen Brown – Restoring Economic Sovereignty: The Push for State-Owned Banks

Ron Paul: Constitutional Amendment Needed to Limit Taxes and Spending
Ron Paul Issues Budget Statement
Washington Times — Rand Paul: Spending cuts must include Pentagon
Ron Paul: My Plan for a Freedom President