maybe we could take up a collection for bobo...

[sofa king]

i stumbled upon this in dummyland...

Hannah Bell  (1000+ posts)  Fri May-14-10 01:53 AM
Original message

US media demands Greek-style austerity for American workers
   
Edited on Fri May-14-10 01:53 AM by Hannah Bell
In recent days, the US media—led by the standard bearer of American liberalism, the New York Times—has insisted that workers in the US, like their brethren in Greece, have been living the good life for far too long and must accept a drastic and permanent reduction in their living standards.

In a May 9 piece, Times columnist Thomas Friedman denounces workers in the US and Western Europe for believing in the “tooth fairy” and expecting government services without paying for them. In America, Friedman says, the baby-boom generation, which supposedly had inherited the prosperity of the post-war years, had “eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts. After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics.”

Describing what he has in mind, two days later Friedman wrote about his meeting with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in a rooftop restaurant in Athens. Praising Papandreou for defying mass protests, the Times columnists hails the government for carrying out a “revolution,” including raising the retirement age and slashing wages and pensions for public sector workers, imposing regressive consumption taxes and wiping out two-thirds of the country’s publicly owned companies.

Another May 11 article, appearing on the front page of the Times, is entitled, “In Greek Debt Crisis, Some See Parallels to U.S.” Its author, David Leonhardt, led the newspaper’s campaign to promote Obama’s health care overhaul, explicitly supporting limits on medical treatments ordinary people could receive. (“In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life”).

“It’s easy to look at the protesters and the politicians in Greece—and at the other European countries with huge debts—and wonder why they don’t get it,” Leonhardt writes. “They have been enjoying more generous government benefits than they can afford…Yet in the back of your mind comes a nagging question: how different, really, is the United States?... And politicians, spendthrift as some may be, are not the main source of the problem. We, the people, are.”

It is rich to hear demands for sacrifices and lectures about “the people” living beyond their means, particularly from the likes of Leonhardt and Friedman. The latter, who is paid $50,000 per speaking engagement, is married to the heir of a multi-billion dollar real estate fortune. According to the Washingtonian magazine, the couple owns “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house” in suburban Washington, DC, valued in 2006 at $9.3 million...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/pers-m14.shtm...


Friedman & Leonhardt, are course, don't mean themselves when they say "we, the people," nor do they mean the fat, bloated, tick-like capitalists & financiers they work for -- they mean you, & this is part of the propaganda assault LEADING UP TO OBAMA'S CUTS IN SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE.

but the real gem was the post by bobo the hobo at the bottom of the thread...

bobbolink  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)       Fri May-14-10 04:41 PM
Response to Original message

20. Apparently the Obama adminstration is already doing this to people on disability.
   
As a woman I know said, "I expect a lot of suicides."

I wish they would just give us the pills for a peaceful exit.

finally, a good idea from bobo.  i suggest we take up a collection and expand the program to include all dummys.

I'm in for $5.  who's with me?

 


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8333585

[The Village Idiot]

What did they think socialism looked like?

Maybe they never noticed that 98% of the populations in Cuba and North Korea (as was USSR) etc are dirt poor while the elite lived lavishly.

That is the end game of socialism.

[kenth]

What did they think socialism looked like?

Maybe they never noticed that 98% of the populations in Cuba and North Korea (as was USSR) etc are dirt poor while the elite lived lavishly.

That is the end game of socialism.

But Cuba has free education and healthcare. It's non-existent, but that's still free. And look at all those old 50's cars they drive. They're antiques now, so those Cubans have all got to be wealthy.

[LC EFA]

What did they think socialism looked like?

Maybe they never noticed that 98% of the populations in Cuba and North Korea (as was USSR) etc are dirt poor while the elite lived lavishly.

That is the end game of socialism.

They believe that they are the intellectual elite, and that their poetry and bongsculptery will grant them entry into the ruling classes.

It's *other* people who will be eating borscht and drinking vodka in an unheated shack with no plumbing.

[The Village Idiot]

http://brookesnews.com/100305magicalthinking.html

Modern Leftism and Magical Thinking

According to Marx, there is no such thing as a soul or human nature. Therefore, government can reprogram people like robots to carry out tasks. With no human nature it follows there is no soul, and so when godlike leftist regimes decide people need to be disposed of, it is not immoral.
........

Belief: Economics is easy if people would not be so greedy, and just share what they have with others. If any undertaking reveals the modern penchant for Magical Thinking, it is the liberal approach to economics. In the first place, consider recent fixations with Keynesian economics, touting deficit spending to create growth. Obama's "Stimulus" package was meant to cause growth, simply by being named and implemented, highlighting Frazer's Law of Similarity.

Reality: Perpetually increasing tax rates lowers standards of living, creates more government waste, bloated bureaucracies, loss of rights, and activist governments. But since everyone deserves health care as human rights, if government decides to provide this, we can afford it, because it is the moral choice, and therefore cannot backfire. Arguments for socialism defy common sense, science, and history. Will all people continue to work diligently when property rewards are removed by the state? Communism posits human problems vanish when private property is abolished. But history proves these ideas never work. Further, the worst hells on earth have resulted from application of this exact theory.

[zeitgeist]

http://brookesnews.com/100305magicalthinking.html

Modern Leftism and Magical Thinking

Yoink!!  Great find FGL, I am sure I will send it to someone somewhere sometime soon.  Thanks for posting it.

[Tucker]

From OP.

In America, Friedman says, the baby-boom generation, which supposedly had inherited the prosperity of the post-war years, had “eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts.

No you DUmb shit. The funds were raided to cover all the social entitlements that the democrat party wanted to buy the votes of the poor and lazy.

[Ballygrl]

But Cuba has free education and healthcare. It's non-existent, but that's still free. And look at all those old 50's cars they drive. They're antiques now, so those Cubans have all got to be wealthy.

I had a Canadian tell me once how beautiful Cuba was, I asked him if he ventured out of the resort areas and saw the poverty? of course he said no, then when I yapped about all the poverty, of course he turned around and blamed it on the US. The left has a hard time blaming anything on Castro.

[NHSparky]

I had a Canadian tell me once how beautiful Cuba was, I asked him if he ventured out of the resort areas and saw the poverty? of course he said no, then when I yapped about all the poverty, of course he turned around and blamed it on the US. The left has a hard time blaming anything on Castro.

Of course, when you tell them Castro is worth nearly a half-BILLION dollars while the average Cuban makes about $20 a month, and is rationed to about 3 pounds of meat per month, they don't want to hear that either.

[The Village Idiot]

Of course, when you tell them Castro is worth nearly a half-BILLION dollars while the average Cuban makes about $20 a month, and is rationed to about 3 pounds of meat per month, they don't want to hear that either.

and now they are having problems supplying even that meager amount of food. They subsidize rice, the main staple, to the point where its a couple pennies per pound but you are limited to not too many pounds.

[Chris_]

and now they are having problems supplying even that meager amount of food. They subsidize rice, the main staple, to the point where its a couple pennies per pound but you are limited to not too many pounds.

but... but... Castro gave them all rice cookers (about 15 years ago).  Where do you plug in an electric rice cooker if you got no electricity?

[Ballygrl]

Of course, when you tell them Castro is worth nearly a half-BILLION dollars while the average Cuban makes about $20 a month, and is rationed to about 3 pounds of meat per month, they don't want to hear that either.

And the rationing is constantly getting worse, and if their health care was so good then why did Castro have to go to Spain for life saving surgery? For whatever reason the left has it in their head that there's a utopia out there where everyone is equal, it doesn't exist, there's always going to be a 2 tiered system, 1 for a majority of the people who are equally poor, and 1 for the Government elites. At least the poor in the US have access to good quality health care, for now at least.

[LC EFA]

Of course, when you tell them Castro is worth nearly a half-BILLION dollars while the average Cuban makes about $20 a month, and is rationed to about 3 pounds of meat per month, they don't want to hear that either.

The steaks I buy are bigger than 3lbs...EACH !

[Duchess]

Quote
bobbolink  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)       Fri May-14-10 04:41 PM
Response to Original message

20. Apparently the Obama adminstration is already doing this to people on disability.
   
As a woman I know said, "I expect a lot of suicides."

I wish they would just give us the pills for a peaceful exit.

Typical-hobolink won't even off herself on her own dime.

[The Village Idiot]

Typical-hobolink won't even off herself on her own dime.

Oh don't worry, like that woman in Oregon found out, they WILL INDEED pay for suicide pills, the letter will say this in the next line after "We do not cover the life-saving surgery/meds you are asking for".