The Shutdown Showdown

From the Ramparts

Junious Ricardo Stanton

The Shutdown Showdown

In case you haven’t heard a compromise was reached amongst the White House, Republican and Democratic legislators, which avoided a government shut down of operations at Mid-night Friday April 8, 2011. A shutdown would have been an unprecedented situation which could, if taken to the extreme eventually lead to the US government coming to a grinding halt. If there had been shut down thousands of government employees will be furloughed, those not furloughed will be forced to take on additional responsibilities at half pay. Of course the departments deemed essential like the military, the “Justice” Department, Homeland Security, the web of intelligence agencies, the air traffic controllers and FEMA will be kept operating. In other words the police state will keep rolling right along. Museums, parks and other facilities will be shut down.

The Congress critters would still have gotten paid as would Social Security beneficiaries, the mail would still be delivered but there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding this whole situation. One thing for sure the right wing is sending a clear message they are willing to gum up the works for a PR exercise. They are playing a game of chicken not with the Mad Bomber in the White House and the Democrats but with us. They could be doing this just to see how passive and lethargic we will be as they posse, posture and strut before the cameras? After all it’s nothing to them, they still get paid, they have a life time pension and top flight health care no matter what; even if they only serve one term.

If the Republicans and Blue Dogs were really serious about resolving the budget crisis, they would call a halt to all the wars, they would close down all but the most essential US military bases and bring all the troops home. If they were really concerned about the US moral standing and our fiscal footing they would stop propping up dictators and all the repressive regimes around the world and they would stop bribing Israel and Egypt to act like they want peace. How much could the government save if they stopped corporate welfare, stopped all the subsidies the government gives to the already rich?

If they were genuinely determined to cut costs and put this country on the right track fiscally, they would start enforcing the laws against insider trading, fraud and bribery, they would prosecute white collar crime on Wall Street and make them all pay their fair share of taxes and the operative word here is fair. It just doesn’t seem fair that GE paid no federal taxes whatsoever in 2010! If they were serious about fiscal sanity they would go after the Medicaid fraud and the crooks in Congress but nooo they don’t care about that.

This threat of shutdown was all a bluff as is the hoopla about the budget. What the fascists really want is an excuse to cut and gut social programs to the bone, not just abortion (it never ceases to amaze me that the same people who say they support the sanctity of life, who say they want to ban abortions, vote for and support wars.) They want to keep cutting taxes for the rich (most US Senators are millionaires) and they want to radically restructure Medicare and Social Security! Granted these programs are a huge drain on the treasury but there are reasons for this: mainly because the government has been raiding the Social Security Trust Fund for over forty years and taking the trillions that would be there if Uncle Sam didn’t have his sticky fingers in the vault. So we are being penalized for their larceny and poor management.

The Republicans and their Democratic colleagues don’t care about us. All they want to do is further their fascist agenda and complete the greatest swindle and transfer of wealth in the history of the world. It’s all a scam and a hoax and both parties and the president are in on it. Keep in mind they will still get paid! Keep in mind the wars will continue unabated and fully funded.

Is AmeriKKKa broke? Are we in a fiscal crisis? As Sara Palin would say, “You betcha .” But the fact that broke behind AmeriKKKa paid out trillions of dollars to Wall Street con men and is paying another trillion to the imperial war and security apparatus neither the President nor our Congress Critters, even the Teabaggers, can’t be too concerned about the deficits and the possibility of default. But wait, that’s all part of the scam. When the government’s back is against the wall, the bankstes will have to come in a bail us out. In exchange, they’ll either take all our assets as collateral or crash the economy even more and buy them for pennies on the dollar! That’s the long range goal anyway.

It’s a scam the Congress critters are being played by the elites as they play brinkmanship politics and fiscal fear mongering game so we will beg them to do whatever they have to do to get the government up and running the things back to “normal”. Of course “doing what they have to do” will mean imposing draconian austerity measures on us like upping taxes, gutting social programs like they do in third world nations and stealing our assets and wealth. It’s the same game plan from the same play book the IMF and World Bank use. They keep running it like Vince Lombardi ran his power sweep, because it works!

Don’t fall for the okey doke. Fight back and resist. An E-mail buddy shared an article whose headline had the right idea, it said, It’s Time for the Villagers to Get the Pitchforks. You know like in the old sci fi movies when the harassed and beleaguered towns people finally had their Popeye moment (that’s alls I can stands and I can’st stands no more) and they got the torches, tar and feathers and ran the mad scientist, the monsters and vampires (in our case the bankers politicians and media liars) out of town. Wonder if we’ll ever have a Popeye moment?

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