Boehner Quits Debt Talks

[Chris Coles]

Republican House Speaker John Boehner quits debt talks

Republican House Speaker John Boehner has walked away from crunch debt ceiling talks at the White House with US President Barack Obama

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14258888

[Chomsky]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

good. The media needs something to hyperventilate about.

This is all kabuki nonsense. The Pres. can raise the debt ceiling himself:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/22/op....html?src=tptw

[pianodoctor]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

I think what's going on here is to make the public so afraid the debt ceiling might not be raised, that when it is raised we will be thankful and relieved and not focus on the punishments middle class and poor Americans are going to take.

[GRG55]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

I think what's going on here is to make the public so afraid the debt ceiling might not be raised, that when it is raised we will be thankful and relieved and not focus on the punishments middle class and poor Americans are going to take.

On that theme, as an outsider looking in, I thought Jesse described it rather well :-)

"...Although a complete failure is not likely, the drama queens, carnies, and thespians in Washington may take the budget deficit talks down to the wire to deeply impress the yokels and the locals of the seriousness of the situation, and be duly grateful that it is in the hands of major players..."

[Chris Coles]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

That is; until they all go into the last meeting each thinking the other will blink first and have no fall back plan to the potential for a loss of face themselves. Accidents happen!

[don]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

Hudson on the debt theater and why he thinks it's being staged:

[don]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

Paul Craig Roberts on the charade:

This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy.

An Economy Destroyed

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government.

There is no budget focus on the illegal wars and military occupations that the US government has underway in at least six countries or the 66-year old US occupations of Japan and Germany and the ring of military bases being constructed around Russia.

The total military/security budget is in the vicinity of $1.1-$1.2 trillion, or 70 per cent -75 per cent of the federal budget deficit.

In contrast, Social Security is solvent. Medicare expenditures are coming close to exceeding the 2.3 per cent payroll tax that funds Medicare, but it is dishonest for politicians and pundits to blame the US budget deficit on “entitlement programs.”

Entitlements are funded with a payroll tax. Wars are not funded. The criminal Bush regime lied to Americans and claimed that the Iraq war would only cost $70 billion at the most and would be paid for with Iraq oil revenues. When Bush’s chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsay, said the Iraq invasion would cost $200 billion, Bush fired him. In fact, Lindsay was off by a factor of 20. Economic and budget experts have calculated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have consumed $4,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. In other words, the ongoing wars and occupations have already eaten up the $4 trillion by which Obama hopes to cut federal spending over the next ten years. Bomb now, pay later.

As taxing the rich is not part of the political solution, the focus is on rewarding the insurance companies by privatizing Medicare at some future date with government subsidized insurance premiums, by capping Medicaid, and by loading the diminishing middle class with additional Social Security tax.

Washington’s priorities and those of its presstitutes could not be clearer. President Obama, like George W. Bush before him, both parties in Congress, the print and TV media, and National Public Radio have made it clear that war is a far more important priority than health care and old age pensions for Americans.

The American people and their wants and needs are not represented in Washington.

Washington serves powerful interest groups, such as the military/security complex, Wall Street and the banksters, agribusiness, the oil companies, the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and the mining and timber industries. Washington endows these interests with excess profits by committing war crimes and terrorizing foreign populations with bombs, drones, and invasions, by deregulating the financial sector and bailing it out of its greed-driven mistakes after it has stolen Americans’ pensions, homes, and jobs, by refusing to protect the land, air, water, oceans and wildlife from polluters and despoilers, and by constructing a health care system with the highest costs and highest profits in the world.

The way to reduce health care costs is to take out gobs of costs and profits with a single payer system. A private health care system can continue to operate alongside for those who can afford it.

The way to get the budget under control is to stop the gratuitous hegemonic wars, wars that will end in a nuclear confrontation.

The US economy is in a deepening recession from which recovery is not possible, because American middle class jobs in manufacturing and professional services have been offshored and given to foreigners. US GDP, consumer purchasing power, and tax base have been handed over to China, India, and Indonesia in order that Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate CEOs can earn more.

When the goods and services produced offshore come back into America, they arrive as imports. The trade balance worsens, the US dollar declines further in exchange value, and prices rise for Americans, whose incomes are stagnant or falling.

This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy.

The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3 per cent unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to drive the economy.

Washington’s response to this dilemma is to increase the austerity! Cutting back Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, forcing down wages by destroying unions and offshoring jobs (which results in a labor surplus and lower wages), and driving up the prices of food and energy by depreciating the dollar further erodes consumer purchasing power. The Federal Reserve can print money to rescue the crooked financial institutions, but it cannot rescue the American consumer.

As a final point, confront the fact that you are even lied to about “deficit reduction.” Even if Obama gets his $4 trillion “deficit reduction” over the next decade, it does not mean that the current national debt will be $4 trillion less than it currently is.

The “reduction” merely means that the growth in the national debt will be $4 trillion less than otherwise. Regardless of any “deficit reduction,” the national debt ten years from now will be much higher than it presently is.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and professor of economics in six universities.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07222011.html

[don]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

Orwell, via 1984, on the role of never-ending military spending:

According to Orwell, large-scale production for the arms industry allows those in power to keep the working class busy, without having to worry about creating demand (in essence, raising wages and allowing the workers to buy more) since all that is produced is eventually destroyed. Thus, the working class becomes more productive without raising its standard of living.

A point Orwell makes is for the first time in history productivity is great enough to meet the population's needs. If that were fully implemented at some point the relevancy of the elite would come into questioned. A reason he cites for the ever-larger budget of the Ministry of Peace.

Of course in the debt debate we're hearing plenty of doublethink . . .

The concept of doublethink as described in Orwell’s 1984 is being used effectively by politicians today:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

Karl Rove understood what journalist Walter Lippman noted in 1922 about the average American:

Elites can manufacture consent because the average American is like a deaf spectator in the back row at a sporting event: He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen.

If George Orwell thought politics were manipulative in the 1940’s, imagine what his thoughts would be if he were alive today. With 17,000 lobbyists, hundreds of PACs, thousands of PR leeches, and thousands of sleazy lawyers running Washington DC, orchestrating the actions of 550 elected officials, the game of politics has never been at such a low point. The best job in Washington is at the Ministry of Slogans & Acronyms. The use of acronyms fits into the Orwellian concept of Newspeak, “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.”

The aim of The Party is make thoughtcrime or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom or rebellion. The dumbing down of concepts before they are sold to the American public is how this is accomplished today.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1153...pening-in-2009

[shiny!]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

Paul Craig Roberts on the charade:

This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy...

What a great editorial! He said what I've been thinking for a long time, only better than I could ever say it. The only quibble I have is his reference to the "American consumer". I think of myself not as a consumer but as a Citizen. Consumers are pathetic pigs at a trough eating slop while getting fattened for slaughter. Citizens, on the other hand, are the owners of this country and the bosses that government is supposed to serve, not the other way around. It's time we all remember that.

[don]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

What a great editorial! He said what I've been thinking for a long time, only better than I could ever say it. The only quibble I have is his reference to the "American consumer". I think of myself not as a consumer but as a Citizen. Consumers are pathetic pigs at a trough eating slop while getting fattened for slaughter. Citizens, on the other hand, are the owners of this country and the bosses that government is supposed to serve, not the other way around. It's time we all remember that.

You are indeed an anachronism, as are many of us here on the 'tulip

[shiny!]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

You are indeed an anachronism, as are many of us here on the 'tulip

When I grow up I want to be Mammy Yokum sitting on a porch, shaking my finger at all the young whippersnappers and cackling about about how it used to be in the good old days. I'm only 53 but being an old crone takes practice so I'm starting early.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

Thanks, Don. Glad to finally see Michael Hudson reappear on Democracy Now. Had to laugh when I went to the Washington Post's website and saw their clock ticking down to the August 2nd doomsday. Currency traders must be drooling. Move out of dollars on Friday. Move back in on Monday. Gold is for whimps.

[lektrode]

Re: Boehner Quits Debt Talks

When I grow up I want to be Mammy Yokum sitting on a porch, shaking my finger at all the young whippersnappers and cackling about about how it used to be in the good old days. I'm only 53 but being an old crone takes practice so I'm starting early.

eye hear that - been polishing my 'kranky ole f__k' persona the past few years..
altho the impression has been made that we get to learn from some of the best 'round here

signed: another '58 edition