Wow. This is the second article today (here’s the first) that I wanted to repost in its entirety and was instructed not to. Do I detect a trend?
(Or have I simply not noticed before and so have often “violated” a rule that I didn’t know about? BTW: lots of other websites have reposted this article, ignoring the copyright. . . Should I do the same? What should be the rules on the internet, especially now, during civilizational collapse, when unvarnished or difficult to discern truth is hard to come by and needs to be repeated as often as possible.)
Once again, I will “obey the rule” and give you only part of the story that one of my mentors from way back in the ’60s, the acerbic and devastatingly insightful Noam Chomsky, now tells about where we are as a nation (nowhere) and how we got to this sorry state. Read the rest here: truthout.org.
America in Decline
by Noam Chomsky
August 5, 2011
Corporate power’s ascendancy over politics and society – by now mostly financial – has reached the point that both political organizations, which at this stage barely resemble traditional parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate.
For the public, the primary domestic concern is unemployment. Under current circumstances, that crisis can be overcome only by a significant government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state and local spending – though even that limited initiative probably saved millions of jobs.
For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72 percent, 27 percent opposed), reports a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Cutting health programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69 percent Medicaid, 78 percent Medicare). The likely outcome is therefore the opposite.
The Program on International Policy Attitudes surveyed how the public would eliminate the deficit. PIPA director Steven Kull writes, “Clearly both the administration and the Republican-led House (of Representatives) are out of step with the public’s values and priorities in regard to the budget.”
The survey illustrates the deep divide: “The biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest increases . . . .
See truthout.org for the rest of this story.
