Bilderberg Attendee, Bill Clinton, has a new Plan to solve Debt problem

Wait no, it is the same old solution: Taxing the people to death.

ABC
June 30, 2011

Former President Bill Clinton sees a possible way past the bipartisan impasse over raising the debt limit: agree to cut spending AND raise taxes, but do neither until later, after the economy improves.

“If they [the Republicans] said, look, that now is not the time for big tax increases to harm the recovery, they would be right,” Clinton told ABC News in an exclusive interview at the Clinton Global Initiative America conference in Chicago. “But it’s also right to say that now’s not the time for big spending cuts.

“What I’d like to see them do is agree on the outlines of a 10-year plan and agree not to start either the revenue hikes or the spending cuts until we’ve got this recovery underway,” Clinton added. “The confidence that the Republicans say would be given to investors with a budget plan, they’d get whether we started this year or next year or the year after that, for that matter.”

For the first time, the former president is focusing his Clinton Global Initiative on creating jobs here in the United States. He suggested waiting for the recovery to take hold before pushing spending cuts and tax increases will make the issues clearer.

“We’ve got to get the jobs back in this economy again,” Clinton said. “The more people we get going back to work, the more businesses we start, that’ll bring up the revenue flow, and it will cut down on the expenses. Then, we’ll see what the real dimensions of our problem are.”

Unfortunately, however, Clinton fears Republicans’ “ideological conviction” about never raising taxes recalls the lead-up to government shutdowns in the ’90s, adding that the pressure on GOP candidates to toe the ideological line could hamstring their bids to unseat President Obama.

“They were in a similar anti-government fever, anti-tax fever in 1995 until, you know, the struggle went on for a year and they shut the government down twice,” Clinton said. “The public made a judgment that that was not right. And then we finally broke through. It wound up with the balanced budget act and forced surpluses and real prosperity.”

Could the dispute this time push past the Aug. 2 deadline when, officials say, failing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling could lead to America defaulting on its loans? Clinton didn’t discount the possibility.

“When I passed my budget in 1993, they routinely said it would bring on a terrible recession, [that] it was the end of capitalism as we knew it,” he said. “And we had the best eight years in our history. But they just kept saying it. You’ve got to give them credit. The evidence doesn’t deter them. … It’s an ideological conviction. So, I don’t know that it can be resolved until there’s some break in the action.”

Bill Clinton Expects Obama Re-Election: Here’s Why

Public opinion, Clinton said, swung against the Republicans when they pushed their anti-tax arguments over the line in the mid-1990s. But the possibility of the same thing happening again isn’t the whole reason he believes that President Obama will be elected to a second term in 2012.

“I’ll be surprised if he’s not reelected,” he said. “I’ve always thought he would be.”

For one thing, Clinton believes the economy will be better by Election Day than it is now, though unemployment still will be relatively high and the improvement in the economy won’t be as dramatic as the emergence from a shallower recession during his first four years as president.

“The circumstances are different,” Clinton said. “When President Obama took office, we were in the midst of avoiding having a financial collapse turn into a depression. So, the unemployment rate was higher and people were scared to death about what was going to happen. The so-called stimulus bill actually outperformed expectations, not underperformed, but it wasn’t big enough to lift this whole economy out of the hole it was in. The auto restructuring is working. And I think he’ll be able to point to that.”

He also believes whichever Republican gets nominated to face Obama will get boxed in by ideology.

“Since they, apparently, ideologically, will not permit their candidates to do some of the things that would be most effective in creating jobs and in balancing budget, I just don’t think they’ll be able to get away with what they got away with in the election in 2010,” Clinton said. “You won’t just be able to say, ‘Vote for me, I’m the non-Obama.’ I think he’s going to be able to point to a lot of very specific things that are better. I think that he’s going to be able to convince people that it takes a little longer after that kind of collapse to recover. It took Japan a decade to recover. … We’re coming back quicker than that.”

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Obama wants the Rich and the Poor to Fight amongst Themselves

‘Divide and conquer’ seems to be the way to go for a president that, in just one term, has managed to fail on everything.

NationalJournal.com
June 29, 2011

Kids versus corporate jets.

If President Obama’s news conference accomplished anything on Wednesday afternoon, it underscored, in striking tones, his strategy for winning the debt ceiling fight with Republicans: Make it a clash of classes.

  • Rich versus Poor.
  • Us versus Them.
  • Those who support children, food safety, medical research and, presumably, puppies and apple pie versus the rich fat cats who don’t.

In Obama’s world, Democrats are for kids and Republicans are for corporate jets. That is a sharp distinction that could help put the GOP on defensive, but it may not be enough to persuade Republicans to change their posture on the debt-ceiling talks.

The deceiver in chief will blame everyone else before assuming responsibility himself. -The Real Agenda

Republicans have cast Obama as a tax-raiser and a Big-Government spender. This was his jujitsu move to turn their arguments against them. With a hint of disdain, Obama even dredged up the death of Osama bin Laden to score a political point.

“I’ve been doing Afghanistan, bin Laden and the Greek crisis,” Obama said, jabbing Congress for being out of session so much. ”You stay here. Let’s get it done.”

(WATCH: Obama’s Frustration with Congress on Display at Press Conference)

In his first full-scale news conference since March, the president insisted that Democrats had compromised in private talks by agreeing to billions of dollars in budget cuts that would hurt their voters. But, he said, Republicans were refusing to bend by not agreeing to eliminate tax breaks to owners of corporate jets and profit-rich oil companies. If Republicans get their way, Obama said, the end result would be unbalanced deal that lifts the debt limit but forces the government to make deeper-than-necessary cuts.

“If we do not have revenues, that means there are a bunch of kids out there who do not have college scholarships,” Obama said. ”[It] might compromise the National Weather Services. It means we might not be funding critical medical research. It means food inspection might be compromised. I’ve said to Republican leaders, ‘You go talk to your constituents and ask them, “Are you willing to compromise your kids’ safety so some corporate-jet owner can get a tax break?” ‘ ”

Just in case any viewer missed his class-clashing message, Obama referred to corporate-jet owners at least three more times before he took his second question.

This was not the first time Obama has spoken in grim terms about the consequences of cutting too deeply in order to strike a bargain that wins enough votes to raise the debt ceiling. But his rhetoric was sharper, even harsher, than in the past — and it threatens to anger Republican leaders just as he’s supposedly reaching out to them in compromise.

(RELATED: Obama Comes Close to Endorsing Gay Marriage)

Obama is gambling that public pressure will force Republicans to bow to his demand. But Republicans face pressures of their own; the influential tea party movement won’t accept any tax increases and wants draconian budget cuts. Obama’s rhetoric may only back them into a corner.

Normally, the constitutionally pragmatic Obama seeks a middle road in his rhetoric, keeping his options open and burnishing his image as somebody always willing to find a bipartisan solution. Look at his response in the same news conference to a New York law allowing for gay marriages. With liberal activists demanding that he support the measure and make gay marriage a cause of his presidency, Obama demurred. It’s a states-rights issue, he said.

“Each community is going to be different,” Obama said. “Each state is going to be different.”

Obama and GOP leaders in Washington must soon come to grips with the fact that the nation’s sluggish economy will almost certainly take a major hit if Congress doesn’t soon increase the amount of money the U.S. can borrow. Raising the debt limit was once a routine affair, but it’s been caught in the increasingly partisan Washington maw. Republicans are demanding steep budget cuts and no tax increases as the price for a few votes in favor of raising the limit. Obama hopes to save face, as well as some government programs.

“The question now is, are we going to step up and get this done?” Obama said. He knows the answer is yes, and the only question is how.

“Call me naive,” Obama said, “but my expectation is leaders are going to lead.” Obama is naive only if he thinks a single news conference is going to change the political paradigm.

 

Massive Austerity causes Wave of Protests in Europe

Is this the beginning of a mass wake up against the tyranny and irresponsibility of the bankers and elites of the planet?

AP

Anti-austerity protests erupted across Europe on Wednesday – Greek doctors and railway employees walked out, Spanish workers shut down trains and buses, and one man even blocked the Irish parliament with a cement truck to decry the country’s enormous bank bailouts.

Brussels International Airport stop to a halt on September 26. (AP)

Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into Brussels, hoping to swell into a 100,000-strong march on European Union institutions later in the day and reinforce the impact of Spain’s first nationwide strike in eight years.

All the actions sought to protest the budget-slashing, tax-hiking, pension-cutting austerity plans of European governments seeking to control their debt.

In an ironic twist, the march in Brussels comes just as the EU Commission is proposing to punish member states that have run up deficits to fund social programs in a time of high unemployment across the continent. The proposal, backed by Germany, is expected to run into strong opposition from France.

“It is a bizarre time for the European Commission to be proposing a regime of punishment,” said John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, which is organizing the Brussels march.

“How is that going to make the situation better? It is going to make it worse,” Monks said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.

Unions fear that workers will become the biggest victims of an economic crisis set off by bankers and traders, many of whom were rescued by massive government intervention.

Several governments, already living dangerously with high debt, were pushed to the brink of financial collapse and have been forced to impose punishing cuts in wages, pensions and employment – measures that have brought workers out by the tens of thousands over the past months.

Transportation has been affected in Spain, where workers decided to protest against cuts. (AP)

“There is a great danger that the workers are going to be paying the price for the reckless speculation that took place in financial markets,” Monks said. “You really got to reschedule these debts so that they are not a huge burden on the next few years and cause Europe to plunge down into recession.”

In Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist government is under severe pressure because of the hugely unpopular measures put in place to save Europe’s fourth-largest economy from a bailout like one that saved Greece from bankruptcy.

The cuts have helped Spain trim its central government deficit by half through July but the unemployment rate stands at 20 percent, and many businesses are struggling to survive.

The strike Wednesday was Spain’s first general strike since 2002 and marked a break in the once-close relationship between unions and the Socialist government.

Whistle-blowing picketers blocked trucks from delivering produce at the main wholesale markets in Madrid and Barcelona. Strikers hurled eggs and screamed “scabs” at drivers trying to leave a city bus garage in Madrid.

The salary cuts for civil servants, pension reforms and new laws that make it easier for companies to fire workers were rushed into law quickly in Spain, without traditional negotiations between management and workers.

Greece, which had to be rescued by the euro-nations this spring to stave off bankruptcy, has also been forced to cut deep into workers’ allowances, with weeks of bitter strikes and actions as a result.

Bus and trolley drivers walked off the job for several hours while Athens’ metro system and tram were to shut down at noon. National railway workers were also walking off the job at noon, disrupting rail connections across the country, while doctors at state hospitals were on a 24-hour strike.

Greece has already been suffering from two weeks of protests by truck drivers who have made it difficult for businesses to get supplies. Many supermarkets are seeing shortages, while producers complaining they are unable to export their goods.

Truck drivers’ unions voted late Tuesday to continue their protests against plans to liberalize their tightly regulated profession, despite a government threat to force them back to work or cancel their licenses.

Greece’s government has imposed stringent austerity measures, including cutting civil servants’ salaries, trimming pensions and hiking consumer and income taxes. Several other EU nations are also planning actions.

In Dublin, a man blocked the gates of the Irish parliament with a cement truck to protest the country’s expensive bank bailout. Written across the truck’s barrel in red letters were the words: “Toxic Bank” Anglo and “All politicians should be sacked.”

Police arrested a 41-year-old man but gave few other details.

The Anglo Irish Bank, which was nationalized last year to save it from collapse, owes some euro72 billion ($97 billion) to depositors worldwide, leaving Irish taxpayers with a mammoth bill at a time when people are suffering through high unemployment, tax hikes and heavy budget cuts.

Many experts say, no matter what unions try, the towering government debt across the continent will force drastic changes in Europe’s labor situation.

“The party is over,” said former EU Commissioner Frits Bolkestein at the financial Eurofi conference in Brussels. “We shall all have to work longer and harder, more hours in the week, more weeks in the year, and no state pension before the age of 67.”

The unions say, however, the party was only there for society’s upper crust, and workers are being forced to pay the bills. The crisis has left 23 million people unemployed in Europe, Monks said.

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