Re: Edward S. Herman: Big Government, Budget Deficits, Entitlements and the "Centrist" Ploy
Subject: Re: Edward S. Herman: Big Government, Budget Deficits, Entitlements and the "Centrist" Ploy
From: "Sir Arthur C.B.E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A." <science@zzz.com>
Date: 04/04/2010, 19:18
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.alien.research,alt.paranet.ufo,sci.skeptic,alt.conspiracy

On Apr 4, 7:18 am, Global Research E-Newsletter <crgedi...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
Big Government, Budget Deficits, Entitlements and the Centrist Ploy

By Edward S. Herman

URL of this article:www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18447

Global Research, April 2, 2010 Z Magazine - 2010-03-30

There are words that come into prominence whenever the right-wing
and business community go on the offensive. Big Government was not
featured by the right-wing or business during the recent (2001-09)
Bush years because although the federal government and budget were
growing it was via an enlargement of the military and police budgets
and an attack on the privacy and civil rights of ordinary citizens
in the alleged interest of national security. In the Reagan years
also the size of government grew, but this was not objectionable
to the elite establishment because the growth was in military
expenditures, with social budgets, organized labor, and environmental
protections under attack. During George W. Bushs term, there were
a number of encroachments by the federal government on states rights;
e.g., allowing the feds to override state authority on matters such
as environmental rules (the EPA disallowed Californias attempt to
limit auto tailpipe emissions in 2007) and medical practice (the
Department of Justice sought the overturn of an Oregon law legalizing
physician-assisted suicide in 2002 and later).

There were no Tea Party-like campaigns to protest this growth in
government and attack on constitutional (and states) rights in the
Bush years because the growing and encroaching government was in
the right hands. It is only when it gets into the wrong hands and
there is the threat that government will serve the undeserving poor,
or even the middle class, and neglect the corporate community and
National Security that business, the military-industrial complex
(MIC), and right-wing protest cadres get agitated about Big Government.
I refer back to my old definition of Conservatism: An ideology whose
central tenet is that The Government Is Too Big, except for the
police and military establishment.

This differential treatment naturally also applies to concern over
budget deficits. Bush inherited a $230 billion budget surplus from
Clinton, which he quickly turned into large deficits. But he did
this by cutting taxes in a highly regressive way and generously
servicing the MIC, so the business-financial-MIC communities were
happy, and this fed into the Free Press keeping expressions of
concern over budget deficits at a low key. With Obama, there has
been a new surge of worry over budget deficits. Admittedly these
deficits are large, but their large size results mainly from the
effects of the severe recession and the inheritance of tax cuts and
wars from the Bush years (although the wars continue and even expand
under Obama). And they dont really worry the financial community
much, as evidenced by the very low rates of interest on government
securities.

Reagans deficits almost tripled the national debt, but the outcries
from the establishment were muted in light of his service, and there
were no Tea Parties. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in
2004 that a continuation of Bushs policies would triple the national
debt by the end of fiscal 2013, with a ten trillion dollar increment,
matching the performance of conservative Ronald Reagan. But like
Reagan he was an effective class warrior, hence the muting of deficit
fears.

In a classic illustration of the double standard based on fear of
positive Democratic responses to the needs of ordinary citizens and
faith in Republican commitment to the business-financial elite,
back in 1978, in the Carter years, former Citibank CEO Walter Wriston
said that federal deficits were diverting available capital from
productive private investments to finance public expenditures. Only
a reduction in the federal deficit would reverse this trend. But
with Reagan in office in 1988, Wriston said that we must distinguish
between capital and operating budgets, and that the normal household
does not treat its home as a current expense, so that we need not
worry as  there is near balance in the operating budget. There had
been no distinction between operating and capital budgets with
Carter. The business-trustworthy Reagan could run deficits, Carter
should not, and the rationalizations followed accordingly..

Obama, like Carter, or Clinton, is not trustworthy, even though,
like his predecessor Democrats he leans over backwards to prove his
reliability to the election-funding community and rejection of
populism and any substantial action that meets the needs of his
popular base. But this never suffices, as a Clinton or Obama will
have to do something for their base beyond feeling their pain and
vowing real action, however skimpy that something and promised
action may be. With a George W. Bush or a Reagan in office the
service to what Bush, speaking to an elite fund-raising audience
of Haves and Have Mores that he only half-jokingly called my base,
is more assured. So is the neglect of, and systematic attack on,
the underlying population. Hence, the renewed focus on the threat
of government deficits.

Entitlement is another word that has taken on negative connotations,
suggesting claims that may be excessive and at the expense of
hard-working tax-paying real Americans. Money for the varied
components of the MIC is never referred to as an entitlement even
though a very large part of it is wasteful, fraud-ridden, and
pointless or even perverse in relation to any supposed defense
function. It represents capture by a segment of the powerful  the
real and important special interests  in the same fashion as does
the TARP money that flowed so quickly and massively to the banksters
who engineered the current economic crisis. But the phrase national
security is a marvelous protective cover that rules out the use of
a word with negative connotations like entitlements. Welfare mothers
got entitlements, but not military contractors, fat-cat military
officials, or bailed-out bankers.

The current prize entitlements demanding attention are Social
Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Of course, the Social Security
entitlements were paid for by those who are currently, or will be
later, getting payments, but those surpluses were used by the
political elites to fund ordinary expenses, including vast outlays
for MIC weapons purchases and wars, not to build an infrastructure
that would enhance future productivity and help provide the resources
for entitlement payouts. But the main reason these social programs
are entitlements is that they service the general citizenry, not
just the elite, and in the evolving system of class war the elite
targets such programs for cost savings to themselves (and profits
to Wall Street with the hoped-for privatization of Social Security).

Another choice word linked to these politically loaded word usages
is centrist. A centrist may be defined as one who recognizes and
presses establishment perspectives on Big Government, Government
Deficits and Entitlements. A centrist regularly supports de facto
MIC entitlements, and any wars in hand or contemplated, but worries
about the solvency of Social Security and the need to get it and
the Medicare-Medicaid programs under sound fiscal management. Of
course, the centrist will not support a single-payer health care
financial program, or even a public option, because government is
not a good manager and such proposals are not politically feasible.
We must curb Big Government, but not at the expense of National
Security. We must work hard on eliminating the Budget Deficit, but
not by raising taxes  and the centrists uniformly supported the
great Bush (regressive) tax cuts of 2001-3.

The mainstream media love centrists and constantly call on the
Democrats to move toward the center in order to win elections
(notoriously, after they have lost them) or to get legislation
passed in a bipartisan fashion. The media did not press Bush to
move to the center; presumably he had a mandate (from the Republican
majority of the Supreme Court). Could it be that what Bushs base
wants is the center that the media also want? And that the centrists
they love struggle to achieve those same Bush-base ends, fending
off or just ignoring whatever the underlying population wants?

Obama recognizes this call and has behaved accordingly. One of his
responses to the threat of Big Government, Deficits and Entitlements
has been to support the establishment of a commission to study
entitlements. Not the massive and nationally debilitating and
unaffordable entitlements of the MIC, but those benefiting the
underlying population. The class war goes on.

Edward S. Herman is an economist and media analyst with a specialty
in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy and
the media.

Originally published in the April issue of Z Magazine.

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