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Obama’s Budget: Freezing the Poor
President Barack Obama unleashed his proposed 2012 budget this week, pronouncing, proudly: “I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years. This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending—domestic discretionary spending—to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.”
Focus on the word “freeze.” That is exactly what many people might do, if this budget passes as proposed. While defense spending increases, with the largest Pentagon funding request since World War II, the budget calls for cutting in half a program called Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.
LIHEAP offers block grants to states so they can offer financial assistance to low-income households in order to meet home energy needs, mostly for heating. Most of its recipients are the elderly and disabled. The program is currently funded at more than $5 billion. Obama is calling for that to be slashed to $2.57 billion—roughly half. This life-or-death program, which literally can help prevent people from freezing to death, represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the proposed $3.7 trillion annual budget.
Compare this with the proposed military budget. “Defense spending” is a misnomer. Until 1947-48, the Pentagon was officially, and appropriately, called the War Department. In the proposed budget released on Valentine’s Day, the Department of Defense request is $553 billion for the base budget, an increase of $22 billion above the 2010 appropriation. The White House has touted what it calls “$78 billion” in cuts that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering. But as the Institute for Policy Studies notes: “The Defense Department talks about cutting its own budget—$78 billion over five years—and most reporting takes this at face value. It shouldn’t. The Pentagon is following the familiar tradition of planning ambitious increases, paring them back and calling this a cut.”
The $553 billion Pentagon budget doesn’t even include war. To Obama’s credit, the costs are actually in the budget. Recall, President George W. Bush repeatedly called the expenditures “emergency” needs, and pressured Congress to pass supplemental funding, outside of the normal budget process. The Obama administration, nevertheless, has given the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan the Orwellian moniker “Overseas Contingency Operations,” and is asking for $118 billion. Add to that the $55 billion for the National Intelligence Program (a budget item for which the amount has never before been revealed, according to government secrecy expert Steven Aftergood), and the publicly revealed military/intelligence budget is at close to three-quarters of a trillion dollars.
Obama’s 216-page budget doesn’t mention “Pentagon” once. He does invoke the name of President Eisenhower, though. Two times he credits Eisenhower for creating the national interstate highway system, and, as mentioned, boasts of the proposed spending freeze: “This freeze would be the most aggressive effort to restrain discretionary spending to take effect in 30 years and, by 2015, would lower nonsecurity discretionary funding as a share of the economy to the lowest level since Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.”
If he is going to reference his predecessor, he should learn from Eisenhower’s prescient warning, given in his farewell speech in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Another Eisenhower speech that should guide Obama was given in April 1953, before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, just two weeks after he was inaugurated as president. In it, the general-turned-president said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
This is one of the coldest winters on record. One in eight people in the U.S. is on food stamps, the largest percentage of Americans ever. More, as well, are without health insurance, despite the initial benefits of the health-care reform act passed last year.
Americans are cold, hungry and unemployed. By increasing military spending, already greater than all of the world’s military budgets combined, we are only spreading that misery abroad. We should get our priorities straight.
64 Comments so far
Show AllHere we are, acting like a third world dictatorship - spend spend spend on the military and to hell with the people who have little, who have no voice in the chorus of wealth, and are expected to just go along silently, unless they are chorusing "We're number one, we're number one!"
Obama has worshipped Raygun ever since the 2008 campaign, so why would Obama pay any attention to Eisenhower's admonitions ?
There was less income disparity in the US during the Eisenhower era than any other period in US history and that wouldn't bode well for the corporate money magnets like Obama.
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Obama's actions perpetuate the Raygun era mantra: GET RICH OR GET OFF !
I think it is the beginning of culling the population. Let the elderly freeze, starve or die from cuts to social programs while the rich continue to get richer. Next, the next generation will have their social programs cut even more.
Add to that the killer pharmaceuticals out there, the tainted vaccines......you see where I am going.
I wish MLK were alive today. To see how his great Civil Rights elected the first black president only to see him turn around and screw the poor people in this country, and kill millions in others. Shame on you Obama
While I agree with your assessment, the solution is to create initiatives which counteract these tendencies, while (hardly) increasing spending above current levels.
A one-time investment of $1000-2000 dollars to improve insulation/weatherization of (selected) houses or apartments would pay for itself in less than 2 years--after which it's residents would no longer NEED subsidies (everything else staying the same).
It would provide work for energy auditors, installers and suppliers instead of being a "hand-out" to the oil companies, which is what the program REALLY is.
The last time I looked, Exxon(M) was paying out more money to lobbyists and "think tanks" than it was to the federal treasury.
Disgracefully, Obummer (aka The Cave-Man) has been ill served by his Energy Secretary, Chooey, who has been the biggest cabinet disappointment other than his "economic" advisers. Progressive Democrats should be calling for his immediate resignation or firing.
"If we can not help the many who are poor, we can not protect the few who are rich."
John F, Kennedy
"Depopulation" is the word that has popped up here and there. The Lord High Mucky Mucks have concluded that most of us are superfluous. Their concern for image and appearances won't let them run a flat out final solution, but why bother? Poverty and health hazard industrial processes should do the job.
"Americans are cold, hungry and unemployed. By increasing military spending, already greater than all of the world’s military budgets combined, we are only spreading that misery abroad. We should get our priorities straight."
As I stated yesterday, I really believe that the elite have moved into a new phase - that of provoking the population into violence so that they can whip out the full blown subjugation/oppression of the American people.
Under Obama, every single day brings yet another more blatant and insulting slap at the American people much like how under W. every day brought ever more brazen violations of the Constitution.
Shock and Awe, indeed.
I agree. They are pushing people to that point. But the teabaggers are too stupid to understand this. They will listen to Beck, or Rush, and blame the liberals. That is another thing the elite are doing. Keeping the peasants divided so we can't join forces. Won't do any good anyway. They have the sonic cannons, and the microwave machines and those good ole FEMA camps just waiting to be filled.
And of course our militant police will go along with it. If they have their jobs. It will be a civil war here in the US. But this time we are literally fighting for our lives, not our way of life.
POLY: You may be right. Since the corporations have gone global, they don't give a hoot about the well being of American citizens; and there certainly are indications of a purposeful culling of the herd. The lack of health CARE access is a widespread, apparent part of that recipe. I never thought about a planned provocation, however, until you mentioned it. You may be onto something!
Just as psychologists are used to determine how much sensory deprivation a mind can take before coming unglued, it seems to me that a similar experiment is underway to see what the American public will accept (as it witnesses depressed housing prices, eviscerated personal security, planned cuts to Social Security, continued environmental disregard, lies in high places, and war trumping every other endeavor as state-sponsored #1 priority, etc.) before going collectively bonkers. It ties in with why so many have already been directed towards mood-altering anti-depression drugs. These take the life and fire out of the human spirit, convince millions that depression is a PERSONAL matter, rather than a very valid response to LOUSY times and a corrupt government doing nothing to lead the way towards genuine opportunity or improvements. "Just Say No to Drugs," except the ones they peddle! Works wonders to keep the masses medicated and artificially complacent.
I think you're exactly right. This is what is happening, and the discovery of Barak Obama as the frontperson was a masterstroke. During the 2008 campaign, I can't say I believed he was for real, but thought it was possible that he could be. I was willing to give him a chance. My cynicism failed me. Lily Tomlin once said something along the lines of no matter how cynical you are, it's impossible to keep up. People say "They're not going to do that" but yes they are, at least they're going to try.
They have found the perfect person to blast all the right wing goals through quickly, one after another. By the time one right or service is eliminated, another one will be under assault, with the population too dizzied by it all to be able to formulate any kind of response.
This may seem like a minor point but how many folks are aware that this country is still in an official state of "emergency" and has been since 9/14/01?
This is renewed every year in September.
Please note that the MSM reported that Egypt had been in a similar declared state for thirty years.
What the hell is this supposed to be for?
It's to allow the government to suspend the Constitution--supposedly as an emergency measure in time of crisis--and call up the National Guard. In fact it's almost never used for any reason other than to persecute the people.
YES, AND WHERE IN THE HELL ARE WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN THIS NEW BUDGET?!
WOMAN ARE UNDER ATTACK MORE THAN EVER. THEY ARE STILL CONSIDERED CHATTEL AND THEIR BODY'S ARE NOT THEIR OWN TO MANAGE. WHERE ARE THE GOOD MEN IN THIS COUNTRY!?
Excellent article while the response from the conservatives and the libertarians would seem to be in echoing the words of Ebenezer Scrooge:
"Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?"
Obama's desire to lay more of an emphasis upon war making than helping the poor may be because he is terrified that he will once again be labeled by that word which is designed to instill fear and hysteria among the American populace and that word, of course, would be socialism. As Ms. Goodman correctly notes, it becomes a matter of priorities as it would appear that Obama seems to believe that he would rather be thought of as a raging capitalist and a warmonger than as someone who might be construed in at least a tiny way as being a [gasp!] socialist.
Will Bernie Sanders denounce Obama on the Senate floor because of Obama's malicious and less than compassionate policies? Or do the rules of the Senate prohibit Sanders, who is the closest thing this country has to a socialist politician, from being honest about what Obama is doing to this country by describing Obama as a knave and a scoundrel?
The new version of Scrooge's complaint: Are there no enlistment centers?
As long as we're referencing "A Christmas Carol", let's not leave out:
"Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed."
And of course,"' If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'"
True, Obummer hasen't even opened any workhouses! nothing, Then Speaker Boners, "let 'em eat cake" statement yesterday. What's left?
>^^<
Historically, the deluge.
Hmmm
SO looking back to 2001 pre 9-11 and the 280 Billion dollar defense budget and ZERO dollars for wall street mortgage/derivative/you name it fraud.......
If you take out the increases in defense/ defense related spending associated with "wars" and the direct pay out to Wall street and banks who are friends of the FED for all their criminal activities guess what people? .....Think hard now
With out the Trillion in defense every year for the bogus war on terror (actually these wars are for Israel's imperialism) and taking out the 14 Trillion the FED ILLEGALLY gave directly to their friends We basically would not have a deficit problem at all!!!!!! HELLO is anybody out there actually thinking this through?
Shut down the WAR and tell the FED to take its private banking cartel and all the associated debt somewhere else people. It really is that simple.
The US citizenry are beginning to see what most of the world have stared at in horror for many years: the supremely horrible face of evil, mirrored by the US and Israel governments
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Maybe Obummer should have been more careful in his choice of Presidents to refer to.
The Defense Department budget no doubt has a lot of fat in it, including:
(i) expenditures for weapons and military bases the Pentagon neither needs nor wants, but are supported by this or that Senator or influential congressman who is thinking about jobs in his or her state/district (e.g., the Seawolf submarine program Senator Dodd protected for many years);
(ii) carrying a large number of people in uniform, as well as civilian employees of the armed forces, who might well otherwise be unemployed and unemployable, or would compete with union workers for construction jobs, etc.;
(iii) carrying "reserve" forces that are neither combat-ready, nor properly trained nor properly equipped -- this has gotten better since Vietnam days, I gather, but is still a problem that persists because of political pressure from the reservists, who welcome the pay.
In each of these cases, U.S. money is going to support people who might otherwise be either unemployed and poor or in significantly worse shape than they are today. Even in the case of money that goes to support armaments -- tanks, planes, bombs, other equipment -- that money typically goes to private companies that hire many thousands of people.
I'm not a fan of governmental waste, but I think the Defense Department expenditures should be looked at in a way that recognizes the extent to which they represent jobs and salaries to working men and women, men and women who might well not be able to be employed otherwise.
In general I agree with much of your post, but seeing that engineers give our nations overall infrastructure a "D", we probably should be steering a fair amount of our defense tax dollars to infrastructure upgrades.
But unfortunately I doubt that will happen because defense contractors apparently have much better lobbyists than the construction industry does, and money, not reality talks in DC.
In general I feel like I'm on a runaway train, thats being piloted by crew of drunks, securely locked away in the trains engine. As a passenger on that train I know things are not going end well, but I have little choice other than waiting to see when the ride ends and how bad the crash will be.
Also good post, nice to see you get away from just repeating talking points. IMHO it makes for a much better discussion.
Nice to hear from you , NC-Tom, but to clear things up I don't repeat talking points but I do challenge much of the uncritical "thinking" that shows up on this website from people who I suspect know and talk only with people who already agree with them.
Horace,
I can smell your stench from here. You suggest that it is a good thing to be a guard at a concentration camp, a good thing to work assembling drones, a good thing to be working killing people, and after all, torturers would be unemployed if not for the cia.
Was that too uncritical for your thinking?
Buck
"money is going to support people who might otherwise be either unemployed and poor ..."
Good points, perhaps, however, the same case can be made for a slave labor plantation. Actually, the plantation might be better, in that it at least produces something useful, instead of just work to do. The military, beyond that which is actually needed to adequately defend the country (and we have been way beyond that since the fall of the USSR), is total waste. It would be less wasteful to just give the workers in question money for nothing, since that is essentially what is already happening.
"I'm not a fan of governmental waste, but I think the Defense Department expenditures should be looked at in a way that recognizes the extent to which they represent jobs and salaries to working men and women, men and women who might well not be able to be employed otherwise."
These same expenditures could be put to other uses like development of alternative energy implementation employing the same people now building bombs, drones, cruise missle, duplicate aircraft engines, etc. The employment remains. The items produced change.
Horace, for once you got your thinking in order and decided to be a little reasonable. Now that you understand the fact that wasteful war spending is being defended via the MIC holding employment hostage to put it best, what say you to ideas on getting jobs away from the war machine? Jobs tied to the war machine can't hold off much longer and sooner or later unemployment will get worse especially if there's no more oil to keep the war machine running.
HORACE: It's amazing how your cold calculus completely leaves out the fundamental right of OTHERS' LIVES in your tidy, little business/finance equation.
If Defense were really about defense, as opposed to using taxpayers to finance (and lend their sons to) elite operations entirely aimed at resource exploitation beneficial to a few, then you might have the beginnings of a moral case.
The Defense Department is the fist in the glove... it is completely beholden to corporate interests intent upon the illegal plunder of others' fields and precious resources. It has NO mitigating positive quality... although having so "successfully" made enemies, it's inevitable that the U.S. will NEED defense of its borders in the near future. (And I'm not talking about the jingoistic ruse that so redundantly targets at "illegal" aliens.)
You need further study. Even a staunch conservative like Milton Friedman noted that money spent on defense does not return to the economy as effectively as money spent on infrastructure, education and other ,necessary, parts of our nations needs.
With the enormous overpricing, huge profit margins, and waste the defense budget is far more costly than the jobs provided might indicate. These folks currently employed in building tools for war can be far more effectively used in peaceful, and economically profitable endeavors.
We were told that "they" hate us for our freedoms. And as we begin 2011 we no longer have any doubt that this is true. They have clearly demonstrated this time and time again. We know they hate us for our freedom of speech, they hate us for our right to privacy. They hate that our women have a right to their own reproductive destiny. They hate that we have/had the right of habeas corpus. They even come right out and publicly demand the murder of people all around the world that disagree with their political views. They execute their targets without a trial, and they have little regard for innocent bystanders who just happen to be in general area when they execute their execution by explosion orders.
Not only do they hate us for our current and former freedoms, but they hate us for our very life style. They hate that we tolerate religions other than the one they believe in. They hate us for wanting a living wage, they hate us for our minimum wage, hell they hate that we have jobs at all.
The fact that our elderly have a small level of security in their old age, causes them a nagging rage that keeps them awake at night. As a matter of fact ANY security the average American has goes against their religion, and that includes their ability to heat their homes during a brutally cold winter.
Why is this so? Because theirs is a religion that states that almost all security average Americans have should be legally taken from them by the merciless leaders of their tyrannical religion.
So who are these people that hate us for freedoms, and our middle class life styles and is actively doing everything in their power to take those freedoms, and that lifestyle away? Is it the Taliban? How about Al Qaeda? Maybe the Muslim Brotherhood? It must be Osama bin Laden, or Ayman Al Zawahiri, right?
No, in my humble opinion it is Washington Politicians, especially Republicans, but also many Democrats. It is the US Chamber of Commerce run by Tom Donohue. It's the Obama White House, and John Boehner's House of Representatives. It's the Right wing SCOTUS. It's the Koch brothers and the liars they employ at their think thanks. It's Goldman Sachs, and Lloyd Blankfein, and his financial WMDs.
IMHO you have much more to fear from these home grown financial and political terrorists than you will ever have to fear from a "terrorist" from the middle east. These people will never rest until they have all the money and we have no rights, in other words until we have NOTHING.
Never forget you have much more in common with the average Arab who just wants to live an honest, simple life, and raise their families in peace, than you have with the rich arrogant SOB's that are currently running the US Kleptocracy.
Never forget that.
Well said.
That was spot-on! You are so correct.
Well & wisely stated. Bravo, Tom.
Right on, Amy! I wish more newspapers would publish your editorials. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to be planting a big garden and cutting a lot of firewood this summer.
"Why is this so? Because theirs is a religion that states that almost all security average Americans have should be legally taken from them by the merciless leaders of their tyrannical religion."
What do you whant?
I feel like the US is the Titanic. The poor and middle class are in the bottom. The rich have all the luxury suites at the top.
All part of the collapse (http://globalcollapse.wordpress.com/).
The Shock Doctrine has come home to roost.
Corporatism, the anti-life (planetary, including humans) ideology, has triumphed.
Only by our dismantling of our economic-political-social system will our grandchildren have any slim chance at a sustainable future.
But the current U.S. worldwview of relentless exploitation, domination, and imperialism, will not allow that.
Future genrations will curse us for our many failures - political, economic, social, and, above all, environmental - to avert collapse, and we richly deserve their condemnation.
Amy,
This man went to Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School in order to become a Community Organizer - meanwhile writing a book about his Off-shore Father Figure Problems. He tells us that in the communities he organized (name two) there were something called churches. The people in these churches worshiped something they call God - and one sect posits their God impregnated a Jewish virgin who gave birth to a boy 2,043 years ago. Far out.
Aligning himself with this set of Believers gave him the most Illinois bang for the Illinois political buck. His tacky entrance into state politics is a matter of national and international myopia, subordinated to the father-son relationship of this man to Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity Church who, for all his occasional wackiness, is openly opposed to freezing poor people unless they are white. This falls within the finest tradition of the umbrella institution called the United Church of Christ - from one of whose Illinois colleges I undergraduated as Vietnam cannon fodder.
If the Presidents of Harvard University and Columbia University had an iota of sense, they would make a public request that Barack Obama return their academic credential in protected, firm wrapping. Each day, His Philosophical Emptiness is an embarrassment to both institutions.
Also - we need a national commitment WRT handling dead bodies of people whose death is provably related to the Obama budget. America needs large wooden catapults, anchored outside the fence of the White House South Lawn. We should agree right now to load naked corpses into those catapults, request that John Cleese and/or Eric Idle pull levers to release the devices, and hurl dead bodies onto the site of the vaunted Easter Egg Hunts, except upon Easter Day of course.
From outside the box,
Trylon
Wry. Tragicomic. Thank you. As always, netminnow
Amy,
Having slept upon this, my question is: What little things could the federal government hide from Jewish children, laughing at them as they run around pell mell searching the South Lawn for them?
Trylon
It seems that Amy left out of her calculations the billions scheduled for the Dept. of Homeland Security, which is a form of "defense" spending for which no cuts are planned. So the imbalance is that much worse.
-30-
DHS has to be seperate, I guess nobody in the Pentagram wants to manage the FEMA Camps! That and the fact they spend most of their time outside the rule of law.
>^^<
Yes, a vast majority on both the right and the left recognize that the US economy is in serious trouble, and is not producing near enough wealth to sustain our citizen's appetite for protection and/or services.
Governmental spending is out of control, and has been for at least the last 10 years. The combination of military budget, wars, bail-outs and entitlements put together have gotten us to a point where our economy is in serious decline from the strain of our spending.
If you are on the right you will think the problem is bail-outs and entitlements, if you are on the left the problem is military budgets and wars. The politician's response has been "I'm still running for office" fund it all and I don't see that changing any time soon. I feel bad for all of us, but especially for our kids. My opinion is that there are fewer opportunities for our young, and that we have lost our competitive advantage. As we increased our money supply to pay for our rising debt the prices of energy and fuel have risen dramatically, but years ago we stopped calculating that into inflation because it was inconvenient for our elected officials to have to explain why. Any party (far right, right, center, left or far left) that gets in power will want to stay in power and will sell their soul to do so.
Obama is the one of the worst Republican presidents of my lifetime. The first presidential candidate, I was old enough to vote for, was Jimmy Carter.
Now we have our very first Republican Democratic president openly chastising Republicans, that their cuts to Pentagon spending will endanger our national security.
We now have our very first Republican Democratic president, adopting every Republican "fiscal conservative" mantra, uttered over the last 30 years.
Obama is a complete disaster.
If you think I'm somehow attacking a "progressive", in Obama, then I would assert , that your brand of "progressive" used to be considered right wing.
The austerity measures and Obama's budget cuts to move toward a "balanced budget" are code words similar to Reagan's saying the problem with the U.S. is big government. What Reagan really meant is that he and his fellow conservative, rich old white men in charge of corporations should be the government--and they could as BIG as they wanted to be.
Today's “powers-that-be,” which include Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and, above all, the Cheney task force (the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group), and now the well-meaning, but corporate-funded and -staffed, Obama administration agree with Reagan and ALREADY have a plan for solving the crises of overpopulation, climate change, and peak oil.
It’s called the “Great Die-Off.” The elites who have been stripping the carcass of the middle and lower classes since "Saint" Reagan in 1980 are now going to let the rest die by the millions in the U.S. and the hundeds of millions worldwide until this little planet again can support whoever remains. The planet and laws of physics do not compromise. They will force an economic paradigm change from constant, infinite growth to a no-growth, status-quo economy ASAP.
In 2005, a Goldman Sachs report said, “Ultimately, we agree that the energy bull market will roll over once ‘demand destruction’ really begins. We simply do not believe we have arrived at that point.” Perhaps, they await the results of America’s oil grabs in Iraq and Afghanistan (which manifests mainly in its natural gas pipelines connecting Europe to Russia). The plan began with deregulation of banks in the 1990s, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the transferral of money from the common taxpayer to the big banks in 2009. It continues with more media mergers pending, the establishment of “NorthComm,” a U.S. military base in America designed to squelch terrorists AND U.S. protestors, and the tightening of American bases worldwide in preparation for resource wars.
Common people are in denial. But when they realize what's happening to them, it could look like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” in which a man and his son wander south down the eastern U.S. seaboard scraping for food and hiding from cannibals.
I’ve asked, in new-york-commoners-law.com and dons-review.com, "Where have all the green jobs gone?” “The solar panels?” “The conversion of GM, Ford, and Chrysler plants for production of electric cars or hydrogen-run cars? The emission restrictions? The inspiring speeches to help people break through their denial and confront the crisis? Why did Obama bring so many Goldman Sachs and Citigroup mates to his staff? With a smart guy like Obama, you know that there’s a plan and that he either has signed on to it as the most reasonable plan or someone is holding a gun to his head.
I think he has signed on to “demand destruction.”
Michael C. Ruppert in “Confronting the Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post-Peak Oil World” (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vt., 2009) lays bare what "austerity measures" really means. It is the "die-off". I believe Ruppert because his book describes one of very few logical reasons for Obama’s lack of action.
I take actions based on this because I believe, too, this is what the PTB would have in store for us. I've always had the same sort of life style which my family is on board with as far as actions/consequences but they are in total denial about why I feel it is essential. They DO NOT want to hear it and consider me a nut. Luckily, their opinion of me is none of my business but it does get lonely being the one hand clapping in the forest off-line.
We haven't had an energy policy in my lifetime! Not like we haven't been warned! From the middle east embargo in the 70s to the current running around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to put the Military within 5 min of any oil producing area, to safe guard the profits. We also have had hints we don't need all this oil, the GM EV1 a very good electric car, people were clamering to buy them. But were not allowed to. Honda showed a few years ago Hydrogen Fuel Cells worked fine in a 4dr production car. Again They were pulled?? why???. The EU has taken over in Nuclear Power and have built safe power reactors, and a system to recycle the used elements only need in to dump the waste after dozens of cycles thru the power plants, and back thru the recycleing process. We just before Carter shut down the program developed a reactor that recycles as part of the power-cycle, IT WORKS!
But instead of going ahead with processes that work, Clean Nuclear, Solar, Geo-Thermal, our government wastes time arguing over global warming! and carbon tax's none of which do a thing to solve the current coming problems.
>^^<
How brave does a congressperson need to be to try to cut another rep's pork? not that it matters but the public would love a pork cutting budget. what's the problem? is it the same war contractors lobbyists that wrote the all war all the time budget?