Patrick Martin

This will be presented to the American people, either by President Obama or his Republican successor, as a measure providing “equal sacrifice” or “shared responsibility” for the fiscal crisis of the federal government.

The US House of Representatives has adopted a budget resolution that calls for privatization of Medicare and the elimination of Medicaid, food stamps and many other federal entitlement benefits. The resolution is part of a bipartisan campaign to slash spending on social programs.

All but ten of the Republican majority in the House backed the resolution—and those ten wanted even bigger cuts. All Democrats voted against the resolution, while offering their own proposals that called for somewhat less drastic cuts in spending and token tax increases on the wealthy.

Not a single resolution was offered that called for increasing spending to meet social needs as the American economy staggers through a fifth year of economic slump and mass unemployment.

The budget was drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who last year offered the first-ever proposal for the complete abolition of Medicare. It passed the House but not the Senate.

This year’s resolution was even more sweeping and reactionary. It calls for $5.3 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. Part of the savings would be used to reduce the federal deficit, but the bulk of them would go to reward the wealthy with new tax breaks, including abolition of the estate tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax, making the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and lowering the top income tax rate from the present 35 percent to 25 percent.

The major spending cuts in the budget resolution are focused on programs for the poor and the lower-paid sections of the working class. According to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 62 percent of the $5.3 trillion in spending cuts come from “programs that serve people of limited means.” If implemented, the cuts would drastically increase income inequality and poverty.

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Philip Giraldi

It is interesting to note just how well this imperialism thing has worked for the American people. At the end of last year the U.S. was kicked out of Iraq after spending some trillions of dollars and producing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Americans. Al-Qaeda, which was not present in Iraq when the U.S. arrived, has lately been responsible for bomb attacks that have killed hundreds of Iraqis, mostly civilians. As a result of the ham-handed American intervention, Iraq’s closest friend now is not the U.S. It is Iran.

Appalled by the excesses of the U.S. military, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has followed suit, initially demanding that the U.S. restrict its soldiers to their bases, a move that would mean that the American presence in Afghanistan could well end in short order after the loss of another trillion dollars and the deaths of some tens of thousands of coalition soldiers and Afghan civilians. Even if Karzai accepts a continued U.S. presence that is more managed by his own “sovereign” government, the writing is on the wall, and all that is needed is a firm departure date. Oh, and the Taliban will definitely be coming back in one form or another.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Pakistan, the parliament is debating ending all cooperation with the United States because of the continuing drone campaign, which, true to pattern, kills mostly civilians. Pakistan is nuclear-armed and actually has real terrorists roaming its tribal regions. The departure of Pakistan from the game enables the manifest waste of the past 11 years to become completely clear, with Washington leaving Central Asia in far worse shape than it was when the U.S. Army and the CIA arrived.

How can a great nation with vast intelligence and diplomatic resources be so tone deaf and absolutely clueless?

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Stephen Lendman

Political Washington is Wall Street's best friend. Whatever crooked bankers want they get. Their business model features grand theft. Wealth’s amassed through fraudulent double-dealing.

Lawmakers facilitate their racketeering. They're rewarded in kind. Only fleeced households, investors, communities and nations lose out.

Their dirty game continues unobstructed. New legislation enhances what's on the books. Another bill will become law when Obama signs it. Wall Street's again celebrating, and why not. Business is better than ever, courtesy of complicit lawmakers.

At issue is the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (the JOBS Act). On March 8, the House passed it overwhelmingly 390 - 23. On March 22, Senate followed 73 - 26. Doing what he does best, Obama will sign it into law. He'll again betray America's 99% in the process.

When everything comes up roses for Wall Street, ordinary people get scammed. It's the same every time like loaded dice let the house win.

Former bank regulator/financial fraud expert Bill Black explained what's at stake in his article headlined, " ‘The only winning move is not to play’ - the insanity of the regulatory race to the bottom.”

He called the imminent JOBS Act passage reminiscent of the "worst anti-regulatory travesties in the financial sphere (that) had broad, bipartisan support." Don't they all, especially in recent decades.

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Tom Carter

NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland (Wikipedia)

These unprecedented attacks on democratic rights, in which the entire political establishment and both Democrats and Republicans are participating, must be understood as preemptive preparations by the political establishment to meet the coming social upheavals with police state measures.

Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder enacted guidelines that further expand the US government’s asserted powers to collect and store private information, without a warrant, concerning individuals who are not suspected of any crime.

The guidelines constitute a further step by the Obama administration to expand and entrench unconstitutional spying operations on the American people by all levels of government that were spearheaded by the Bush administration.

In the period since September 11, 2001, the US government has secretly compiled vast databases containing private information on the American public. These databases include telephone conversations, the contents of personal emails, visited web sites, Google searches, text messages, credit card transactions, mobile phone GPS location data, travel itineraries, Facebook activity, medical records, traffic tickets, surveillance camera footage and online purchases. The vast quantities of information that are being collected and stored by the US government far exceed what was gathered by the most infamous police states of the last century.

Holder’s guidelines permit intelligence officials to secretly use these databases to profile and track Americans who have no connection to terrorism—alleged or otherwise—for up to five years. The previous guidelines, issued in 2008 by Bush administration Attorney General Michael Mukasey, were understood to limit the retention of such information to 180 days.

According to an article Friday in the New York Times, the new guidelines are expected to result in increased collection and “data mining” of information on ordinary Americans by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

The Electronic Privacy Information Center issued a brief statement denouncing the guidelines: “The change represents a dramatic expansion of government surveillance and appears to violate the Privacy Act of 1974, which limits data exchanges across federal agencies and establishes legal rights for US citizens.”

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