tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post7025922693372860791..comments2024-03-28T16:08:29.578-04:00Comments on Sardonicky: Soaking the PoorKaren Garciahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15612731479365562803noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-20986212291553766432012-02-23T10:21:51.235-05:002012-02-23T10:21:51.235-05:00Coming soon to America?
“We shall squeeze you em...Coming soon to America? <br /><br />“We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” – George Orwell, 1984<br /><br />“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...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." – Thomas Jefferson<br /><br />Michael Hudson, on the Greek experiment, “The Greek crisis is being used to find out how far finance can drive down wages and privatize the public sector.”<br /><br />“For the last five years in Latvia, the neoliberals have lowered wages by about thirty percent. The basic premise of today’s model builders is: you don’t know how far you can lower wages and pensions until people begin to press back. Well, in Latvia they still haven’t begun to press back when they’ve lowered by thirty percent. Now they’re moving towards Greece on the way to Spain and Portugal and Italy, and they’re trying to figure out how much can wages be lowered, how much can an economy be drained until there is unrelenting pressure from the afflicted population…Greece is being used as a laboratory experiment to determine the results when labor is squeezed very hard. It’s like trying to feed a horse less and less and see whether it’s really going to be more efficient until it keels over dead.”<br /><br />http://michael-hudson.com/2012/02/greek-strategy/<br /><br />Alexander Abad-Santos, The Atlantic Wire, adds this to our vocabulary, "negative salary,"<br /><br />“It's being called the "negative salary": Up to 64,000 Greeks will go without pay this month, and some will have to pay for having a job.”<br /><br />“Salary cutbacks (called "unified payroll") for contract workers at the public sector set to be finalized today. Cuts to be valid retroactively since November 2011. Expected result: Up to 64.000 people will work without salary this month, or even be asked to return money. Amongst them 21.000 teachers, 13.000 municipal employees and 30.000 civil servants."<br /><br />Paul Mason, just returned from Greece, "What makes the headlines are, of course, the riots. What doesn’t make so many headlines is what is happening to real people... We are living in a time where the world has, in the last couple of years, erupted in a way that many people thought they would never see again since the 1960s...The underpinnings of this new global unrest are that...people are sick of seeing the rich get richer during a crisis." <br /><br />http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/22/<br />as_greece_erupts_bbcs_paul_mason<br /><br />“Shelve the abiding fiction that disasters do not discriminate – that they flatten everything in their path with ‘democratic’ disregard. Plagues zero in on the dispossessed, on those forced to build their lives in the path of danger.” – Hein MaraisDenis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-3869573977917994722012-02-22T17:58:02.283-05:002012-02-22T17:58:02.283-05:00The idea that the poor that don't vote Democra...The idea that the poor that don't vote Democratic are not voting in their self interest is getting to be a more and more ridiculous argument.<br />Anyway, I just want to emphatically second what DW2000 said.<br />Valerie, I clicked on my paper thru your link and what should come up but:<br /><i>Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, along with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis made their first stop on the Community College to Career Tour, looking to draw attention to successful partnerships between businesses and community colleges. The mission: to develop the most “competitive workforce in the world,” said Biden.</i><br /><br />I think they meant "compliant" workforce.Katnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-68323312040875672012012-02-22T17:23:44.077-05:002012-02-22T17:23:44.077-05:00“Religion is a defense against the experience of G...“Religion is a defense against the experience of God." - Carl Jung<br /><br />For all the “Christian” rhetoric of all the Republican candidates, and even President Obama, none have much to say about the special duty government owes to protect and aid poor, weak, and vulnerable people in our society. Where are the moral values of these so-called “Christians”?<br /><br />The poor are unwanted and unseen by most politicians. The poor are all too often stereotyped as lazy and/or drug abusers. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?<br /><br />“If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions – if he continues to be just as snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his conversion was largely imaginary. Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behavior better.” C.S. Lewis, Mere ChristianityDenis Nevillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-77111805982707452702012-02-22T17:03:42.330-05:002012-02-22T17:03:42.330-05:00Valerie,
Thanks. Did that.Valerie,<br />Thanks. Did that.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-3258941001526892252012-02-22T16:49:35.652-05:002012-02-22T16:49:35.652-05:00The man's a shit.The man's a shit.James F Traynornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-39445781308074247542012-02-22T15:42:33.165-05:002012-02-22T15:42:33.165-05:00Great commentary Karen. The gratuitous nature of t...Great commentary Karen. The gratuitous nature of these cuts...the fact that they will have zero effect on the national financial situation but devastating effect on so many people in the most extreme situations...this is really an abomination.<br /><br />Matched with the call to cut corporate tax rates....and the endless expansion of military adventure...<br /><br />Appalling..<br /><br />Reich on the tax rate<br /><br />http://robertreich.org/post/18079650906DW2000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-12193710232700819012012-02-22T14:58:08.177-05:002012-02-22T14:58:08.177-05:00I don't in any way want to distract from this ...I don't in any way want to distract from this post and will comment on it in a minute, but I just got an e-mail from Free Speech for People appealing to all of us to write to our local newspapers to publicise a slight chance that the Supreme Court would revisit Citizens United. Justices Ginsburg and Kennedy just issued an extraodinary statement, calling on their fellow Justices "to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway." [http://j.mp/GBstmt] <br /><br /><br />They even have an easy letter where you just click on the paragraphs you want to include and the e-mail is automatically addressed to your local papers. It took me about five minutes to add my own comments to the letter. I really think this is worth doing. Go to http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/7003/letter/?letter_KEY=492<br /><br />Note - You need to click on the box next to the name of the newspapers to get this option. If you click on the name of the newspaper it will just take you to the website of the newspaper.Valerienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-974773076690597683.post-86167853870903619032012-02-22T14:54:13.347-05:002012-02-22T14:54:13.347-05:00"We owe a rooster to Asclepius. Please, don&#..."We owe a rooster to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the debt." – Socrates’ last words<br /><br />Life isn't fair. <br /><br />Vulnerable people are being callously consigned to a metaphorical dustbin.<br /><br />“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C.S. Lewis<br /><br />During these difficult and discouraging times, I recall the great Russian author Vasily Grossman, who said, “In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.”Denis Nevillenoreply@blogger.com