Ed Pearl: Dean Baker: Time to Retake Politics From the 1% in Both Political Parties, 3 News Briefs

Democracy Now covers the massive strike in England, extensively, and the LA and Philadelphia Occupation closures well. Those interested in the LA ongoing strugle should tune-in to Margaret Prescod's show, now starting. She has been at OLA often and covered it well, knows who to interview, etc. -Ed

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government

30 Nov 2011

http://www.legitgov.org

All links are here:

http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

Breaking: Los Angeles police dismantle Occupy protesters' tents 30 Nov 2011 More than 100 Los Angeles police officers, including dozens in white protective suits, surrounded the Occupy L.A. camp on the City Hall lawn early Wednesday and began to dismantle tents and other shelters. Officers in riot gear and armed with night sticks closed off streets around City Hall. Police used bullhorns to threaten protesters with arrest. "This has been declared to be an unlawful assembly. You have seven minutes to gather your belongings and decide to leave," one officer said. Dozens of Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics and firefighters were also standing by on sealed off downtown streets. "This is what a police state looks like!" Occupy protesters chanted at the officers in riot gear.

Senate OKs Gov't to Keep US Citizens in Military Custody, Indefinitely and Without Trial 30 Nov 2011 Defying the Obama administration's threat of a veto [Yeah, right!], the Senate on Tuesday voted to increase the role of the military in imprisoning suspected members of 'Al Qaeda' and its allies -- including people arrested inside the United States. By a vote of 61 to 37, the Senate turned back an effort to strip a major military bill of a set of disputed provisions affecting the handling of terrorism cases. The most disputed provision would require the government to place into military custody any suspected member of Al Qaeda or one of its allies connected to a plot against the United States or its allies. A related provision would create a federal statute saying the government has the legal authority to keep people suspected of terrorism in military custody, indefinitely and without trial. It contains no exception for American citizens. [Arming the Left: Is the time now? By Charles Southwell 21 Oct 2003 As long as we pose no REAL threat to the powers-that-be, to what is shaping up into [is] a dictatorship, we will continue to be ignored. Right now, we are ignored because we present no organized power to fight this onslaught of anti-democratic, totalitarian government that we are up against...]

Day of strikes as millions heed unions' call to fight pension cuts --Disruption across UK as many services come to virtual halt -- Airports, schools, rail services and hospitals affected 30 Nov 2011 The UK is experiencing the worst disruption to services in decades as more than 2 million public sector workers stage a nationwide strike, closing schools and bringing councils and hospitals to a virtual standstill. The strike by more than 30 unions over cuts to public sector pensions started at midnight, leading to the closure of most state schools; cancellation of refuse collections; rail service and tunnel closures; the postponement of thousands of non-emergency hospital operations; and possible delays at airports and ferry terminals. Hundreds of marches and rallies are due to take place in cities and towns across the country.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/28-7

Published on Monday, November 28, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Time to Retake Politics From the One Percent in Both Political Parties

by Dean Baker

The country is still celebrating the inability of the supercommittee to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it is important to move on from this victory to retake control of the political debate from the One Percent. As it stands, the One Percent are insisting that the country genuflect over the non-problem of the budget deficit, at a time when tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed, millions of people are facing the loss of their homes and tens of millions of baby boomers are approaching retirement with little other than their Social Security to support them.

The deficit is the agenda of the One Percent. There is no reason that the rest of us should be concerned about budget deficits when the rest of the country is struggling with the economic disaster created by the greed and incompetence of the One Percent.

This is not a statement of morality; it is a statement based on economic reality. Budget deficits can be a problem when an economy is near full employment and the deficit can be pulling resources away from private investment, thereby slowing growth. However, it is not a problem with large numbers of unemployed workers and vast amounts of excess capacity.

This is what the financial markets are telling us every day as interest rates on long-term government bonds hover near 2.0 percent. If deficits were really crimping the economy, we would be seeing interest rates of 6 or 7 percent, or even higher. The deficit hawks do not have an economic case to support their argument, just money and influence.

In the longer term, the deficit hawks can point to projections of outsized deficits, which they invariably attribute to Social Security and Medicare. The first part of this story is completely untrue.

Under the law, Social Security is financed from its designated tax. It, therefore, cannot contribute to the deficit unless Congress changes the law. (The payroll tax credit in 2011, which was replaced with general revenue, is an exception to this rule.)

According to the most recent projections from the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security benefits will be fully funded through the year 2038. After that date, if Congress does nothing to increase revenue, then the program would pay a bit more than 80 percent of scheduled benefits. (This would still be about 10 percent more than current retirees receive since benefits are projected to rise by approximately 1 percent a year.)

The real story of the soaring long-term deficits is exploding Medicare costs, which are in turn driven by our broken health care system. We already pay more than twice as much per person for our health care as the average for other wealthy countries, with little to show in the way of outcomes. This gap is projected to continue to grow in the years ahead.

To anyone who looks at the facts, the obvious answer to our deficit problem is fixing the health care system. This is difficult to do given the enormous political power of the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, highly paid medical specialists, and the other members of the One Percent who profit from the waste in the system as it exists now.

If we can't immediately change the system, then why not take advantage of the gains from trade? If we change rules to make it possible for Medicare beneficiaries to buy into the health care systems in other countries or make it easier for patients to have medical procedures done at far lower cost elsewhere, it should be an enormous win-win, offering gains that could be in the trillions of dollars. And what free-market fundamentalist can argue against the principle of giving people a choice?

In fact, conservatives and self-described free traders run screaming from the idea of opening medical care to trade. They want trade that will lower the wages of auto workers and textile workers by putting them in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world; they hate trade when it threatens to reduce the income of the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, and others in the One Percent.

It's time to expose the lies for what they are. The One Percent have rigged the deck over the last three decades to accomplish the most massive upward redistribution in the history of the world. These are not people who care about budget deficits or free trade or free markets. They care about making themselves richer at the expense of everyone else.