Bernanke Said What?!

Bernanke wants to cut WHAT!? Social Security and Medicare? Really??

I was so sick of hearing from the Right how we liberals are always looking for a government “handout” that I did a little research on the handouts. Big business and the rich get these handouts:

— subsidies and other direct grants;

— tax breaks, reductions, deductions, exclusions, write-offs, exemptions, credits, loopholes, shelters, and rebates even for profitable companies;

— letting corporations be headquartered off-shore and pay no federal income taxes;

— large government contracts of every imaginable kind; some on a cost-plus basis with every incentive to cheat and get more;

— discounted user fees or subsidized use of public resources (land, water, airwaves,e­tc.);

— free government-funded R & D;

— every program from the Department of Commerce, Agriculture and others underwrites it; the FDA for Big Pharma; the FCC for media and telecommunications firms; the FAA for the airlines, the Treasury and Fed for Wall Street;

— individual tax breaks for the rich; billions offshored to tax havens; allowing corporate fraud and abuse

— privatizing more – schools, highways, bridges, airports, prisons, public lands, utilities, parts of the military, mercenaries, and thus far a failed attempt to privatise the most important program for seniors and the disabled – Social Security;

And at the same time, advocating abolishing welfare and other social benefits; rendering organized labor impotent; rewarding the privileged at the expense of beneficial social change and the democratic ideal that government should serve all its people, not just its preferential few.

I don’t want to hear about the “rugged individualism” that this country is based on ever again. That is s myth perpetuated by the elites, who practice corporate welfare. And how dare Bernanke and others claim the we can’t afford the crumbs they graciously let us contribute to.