The Two Stooges

I.e. Republicans and the press.

So, Congessman Boehner has now presented his "proposal" on the budget, pretty much summed up at Daily Kos as follows: 

"It's neither principled, nor moderate, nor a compromise. It's just more bad Republican math being passed off as a plan."

In fact, it is nothing but the same old pandering  to the ultra-rich at the expense of all of the rest of us, juiced up with the usual avalanche of feigned outrage over the fact that the President is sticking with the proposals that just won him re-election.

Well, here are a couple of mainstream media responses to this charade.  Forget the links- this kind of dishonesty doesn't deserve one any more than the fools I quote in Wingnut Wrapup:

Luke Russert, NBC News:  "GOP offers own proposal to avert 'fiscal cliff'...In a letter to President Barack Obama, House Republican leaders outlined the contours of a deal they said would achieve a net savings of $2.2 trillion. The plan, which is based on fiscal commission Democratic co-chairman Erskine Bowles’s proposal to the super committee, would achieve these savings through revenue from tax reforms, health savings and discretionary spending cuts."

As Mr. Russert knows perfectly well, despite their claims that the deal would achieve savings, everyone knows that it would achieve savings for no one except the rich, which the rest of us would be required to pay for.  And as Mr. Russert also knows perfectly well, Erskine Bowles immediately denounced this plan, and disavowed any connection between it and his own proposals.  Yet he blissfully goes on, repeating Republican propaganda which he knows to be false.

Los Angeles Times:  "Boehner makes counteroffer on 'fiscal cliff'...House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his GOP leadership team sent the White House the three-page offer Monday afternoon...Details of the proposal remain to be worked out, but Republicans suggested a two-part framework, with some of the tax-and-spending changes happening this year and the rest being made in 2013."

"Details of the proposal remain to be worked out."  Sound familiar?  Remind you of a certain losing Presidential candidate and his oh-so-serious running mate?  Everyone who is sane knows that "details of the proposal remain to be worked out" is translation for "Democrats give up on their end in return for Republican promises that will never be kept."  And yet, there goes the Los Angeles Times, repeating Republican lies without a qualm.  Hint, L.A. Times:  Lying is not journalism, even when you are repeating someone else's lies.

Atlantic Online:  "Boehner Sends Republican Fiscal-Cliff Counterproposal to Obama...House Speaker John Boehner's fiscal-cliff counteroffer on Monday boots the ball squarely back into President Obama's court."

Booting the ball back into Obama's court by offering up a patently meaningless and dishonest response to Obama's proposals.  That's right, when Republican intransigence and greed force the United States into another recession, it will be all Obama's fault.

Washington Post:  "The framework Boehner unveiled Monday serves as a counteroffer to the plan Obama put on the table last week, which was essentially a reprise of his most recent budget request...Republicans were outraged by the president’s proposal, calling it a step backward. On Monday, Boehner referred to it as the president’s “la-la-land offer.”   Instead, Boehner began last week rallying top Republicans around the Bowles framework, which was presented in November 2011 to a special deficit- reduction “supercommittee” of Congress."

Republicans were outraged by Obama proposing what he campaigned on, and what the American people voted for.  But Republican "outrage," no matter how synthetic and self-serving, must be catered to.  And once again, the Post repeats the Republican lies about Erskine Bowles, without a second thought.

I could go on to a few more of the over one million hits I got when I googled "Boehner fiscal cliff proposal," but I guess you get the idea. 

The fact is that Boehner's proposal represents nothing but one more chapter in the endless Republican quest for giveaways to the rich, the last chapter of which caused the near depression we are now in.  Every person in the mainstream media knows this perfectly well, and yet they insist on cramming Republican proposals down the American people's throats as though they are actually honest attempts to solve this country's problems.

Now to the real truth.  The near depression which still cripples our economy was caused by one thing and one thing only:  the greed of the rich, enabled by Republican deregulation and tax breaks, and secondarily by a miserable excuse for a national press, which is content to collaborate with Republicans in their dishonesty. 

The rich people to whom Republicans have sold their souls are nothing but criminals, and like any common mugger or burglar, they are not going to stop their behavior until they are punished.  What is needed desperately in this country is for the rich to be forced to pay for all of the damage they have caused, and then more on top of that.  They must be made to suffer and suffer badly.  I propose this not out of revenge, but out of self-defense. 

We are constantly propagandized in this country to believe that rich people got that way because they are smarter and harder working than the rest of us.  Sure, there are Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and some others for whom this is true.  But the overwhelming majority of really rich people in this country, like Mitt Romney, are sociopathic parasites who amassed their money primarily through overwhelming greed and indifference to the damage they have caused others.  In this they are like any petty criminal, and they must be treated the same way.  If we do not make them suffer, they are never going to stop, and they are going to go on enriching themselves at the cost of trillions of dollars of damage that they are going to demand the rest of us pay back.