The details of the compromise that finally kept the government open and made deep cuts to the federal budget for fiscal year 2011 are finally beginning to emerge--and they're not pretty. Millions and even billions from education, labor, the EPA--all for what economist Richard Wolff says is a negligible impact on the actual deficit.
Is there an upside to this mess? Richard joins Laura in studio, along with strategist Karen Finney from Washington, D.C., to break down the budget plan and the politics behind it. They also offer some solutions for ways to really fix the deficit.
Our problem is rights of wage earners are not protected equally as rights of capital owners. SCOTUS got away with going along with the Madisonian principles of the Constitutional Conventions that protected slavery as “private property” over individual rights of all US citizens.
We are not going to get anything from this Congress to reverse this situation. Well placed litigators and litigants put cases forward over the last 40 years to reverse the democratic institutions that came into place since the New Deal. We had better get these rights enshrouded in the Constitution through Amendments, or we face more of this destruction of our rights and our society.
History tells us exactly what happens when wealth and political power is this concentrated, and poverty and misery so widespread. We face that with Citizen’s United and the Koch Bros whims of putting Reactionaries in any office. This is the same situation in 1933 with Thyssen/Schacht/Schroders et al.
We are playing roulette with our world by our willful ignorance and indifference, and the people with all the political power will not feel any of the pain so have no reason to vote for change. We’ve got to take this to the constitution. That movement has to start in our minds, and on programs like this one first!
By planckbrandt on April 13th, 2011 at 1:07 pm