I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Congressional focus on the deficit at a time of severe economic malaise is downright foolish and dangerous.
And, as Dean Baker points out, it also is just one more example of how deformed our politics has become. The existence of a supercommittee, first, demonstrates a distortion in priorities. We need a rebirth of the commons, a sense of common good and shared sacrifice that has disappeared.
That means wrestling the economy back from the legalized criminal enterprises that control our economic lives. Corporations control our economy and our political system and they have used their power to rig things — to create, in Dylan Ratigan‘s words, “a platinum citizenship” — and protect their own prerogatives.
The supercommittee’s focus on “entitlements” — it’s not should we cut Social Security, but how much should it be cut — even as both sides avoid going after the bog boys just shows where Congress’ loyalties lie.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 