The Empire 352

De hoofdaap heeft gesproken, de parlementaire pers en de correspondenten hebben als lakeien gefungeerd en nu het echte verhaal.

'The State of Whose Union?
by Nomi Prins

Earlier this week, speaking for Washingtonia and unburdened by high expectations, President Bush said “all of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people’s business.”
The question remains - exactly which people? And what business, Mr. Bush?
Because if it’s the majority of the population, and it’s life not war, we’re not even close to having it carried out.
He acknowledged, “at kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future.”
The question remains - our? Who do you mean by ‘our‘, Mr. Bush?
Because for three-quarters of the population’s kitchen table concerns are over gas costs, health insurance, debt payments, tuition, and home values. For nearly 24% of the population, depending on what race you are, the issue of paying for one’s next meal and balancing child-care with multiple jobs is center stage.
It turns out that it doesn’t matter. And that it’s easy to engage in bi-partisan synchronized applause, commending the commander-in-chief for well enunciated, yet totally bankrupt, words of empathetic understanding about ‘our’ collective economic plight. Less than 24 hours later, it was equally easy, apparently, for the House of Representatives to overwhemingly approve (385-35) a stimulus package designed to invigorate corporate quarterly earnings (through corporate tax cuts or promotion of public consumption, whichever does the trick), and avoid what the president characterized as the ‘temptation’ to ‘load up the bill’ with sundry items like food-stamps or unemployment insurance expansion - in other words, items that might have a long-lasting helpful impact on people who need it most.
Flanked by Vice President Cheney, who is certain to nab a lush CEO spot by this time next year, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who regretfully capitulated on those sundry items, President Bush unleashed his true legacy wish: to render those oh-so-helpful-to-the-economy tax cuts about to expire, permanent. Otherwise, he warned his fellow politicos under the glare of those camera lights, you’ll have some “explaining to do to the 116 million American taxpayers whose taxes would rise by an average of $1800.”
It’s chilling to witness such an underestimation of American taxpayers - as if their only expense in life is taxes. Here’s an idea - to avoid all that uncomfortable explaining, how about raising taxes on the people and companies that can afford it, like, say Exxon, whose profit more than quadrupled in the past seven years, as the average price of a gallon of gas doubled? Mr. Bush, why not use some of that excess for those alternative energy programs?
To catch a free falling dollar, reduce a one-sided trade relationship with the outside world (with whom America’s trade deficit has doubled during the Bush presidency), and curtail growth in deficit spending to $354 billion in 2007 (from a 236 billion surplus in 2000), Bush talked about cutting 151 government programs, for a grand savings of $18 billion. This, he said, would enable the government to balance its budget - the way he thinks Americans should as well. This president began his first term in office with a $5.2 trillion national public debt, and despite promises in his first State of the Union address to cut it in half, that debt, due to substantive war addendums and reckless tax cuts for the wealthy and private equity funds, now stands nearly doubled, at $9 trillion. So it’s not clear how that $18 billion is going to effect a dramatic about-face in the national books.'

Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/02/6796/