Randi Rhodes Forums

Bernie Sanders Brings the Anti-Austerity Fight to America
John Nichols on May 7, 2012 - 5:17 PM ET
Bernie Sanders is as focused as any member of Congress could be on the struggles of the state he represents, and more generally on the challenges facing working people across the United States.

But that does not mean that the independent senator from Vermont fails to recognize when things are kicking up around the world—especially when those developments have meaning for the fights he is waging in Washington.

So it should come as little surprise that the news from Europe— of a democratic rejection of failed austerity policies—has caught his imagination.

Sanders knows that austerity is not just a European crisis. It threatens America as well. And he is highlighting what his Senate website recognizes as: " An Austerity Backlash."

The senator is right to be excited that citizens are pushing back. Sanders says Europe's voters are sending a message that America's voters can and should echo: The time has come to reject austerity measures that have unfairly burdened working families while redistributing ever more wealth upward to millionaires and billionaires.(continued)
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167755/be ... ht-america

The 'good' part:

(Snip)Sanders knows. The independent senator from Vermont, who has led the fight to preserve education, health care and social services funding in the face of proposals by House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan and his fellow proponents of an American austerity agenda, says the message sent by European voters can and should be echoed by American voters.

Yes, of course, the accent will be different, as will specific concerns and proposals. America is different
from Germany, Greece and France. But the threat posed by failed and dysfunctional policies is the same.

“In the United States and around the world, the middle class is in steep decline while the wealthy and large corporations are doing phenomenally well," says Sanders, "The message sent by voters in
France and other European countries, which I believe will be echoed here in the United States, is that the wealthy and large corporations are going to have to experience some austerity also and that that burden cannot solely fall on working families."

Sanders is making the connections, recognizing the importance of a democratic push-back against policies that are as cruel as they are economically unsound.

“In the United States, where corporate profits are soaring and the gap between the rich and everybody else is growing wider, we must end corporate tax loopholes and start making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes," the senator explains. "At the same time, we must protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Austerity, yes, but for millionaires and billionaires, not the working families of this country.”

Sander is, of course, correct.

Let's just hope that his message is echoed by other leaders in the United States.(Snip)

Yes, Sanders is correct - along with President OBAMA, he speaks for the people.

I know there are those on this board who do not agree with Sanders......but

Randi made these same observations today on her show, with the acute similarities between the RYAN PLAN and the oppressive AUSTERITY measures that have nearly bankrupt European nations. Probably the best thing Greece and France could do is abandon the Euro, and go back to their own currency. This is why the CONS want to dismantle the Fed and the Dept. of Treasury. If we cannot print our own money, we become Greece, Spain, France and Ireland.



which brings me to this:



Obama and Sanders are on the same page - hear Bernie out. Vermont has socialized medicine for residents. I hear it's $3.00 a month. Montana and California are looking at the Vt. plan. We can only hope.

Of course... generally speaking, conservatives tend to be for the same things in countries all over the world ... here they may call it "fiscal conservatism" or "balancing the budget" but it's the same thing the Europeans call "austerity" ... cutting social programs, eliminating government jobs, and privatization of services. The funny thing is that Keynes said that would be disaster for any economy, especially in a recession, and they keep proving him right. You don't worry about balanced budgets until you get out of the economic hole.

And, as Paul Krugman has warned, if we don't get off that agenda, we're headed for the same "double dip" recessions that many of the European countries have already entered into.

There's only one way out of a recession like ours... INCREASE DEMAND. How? Put more government dollars into the economy, and gradually every private citizen/firm starts to increase their spending as well, and then the economy recovers. This works, but conservatives have failed to understand it since, oh, 1932. They try and do the opposite, and then wonder why recessions are prolonged.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html

While tea partyers — and, increasingly, Democrats and President Obama — focus on reducing deficits instead of reducing unemployment, Krugman says rumors of American insolvency are greatly exaggerated. “There was and is no evidence to support the shift in focus away from jobs and toward deficits,” he writes. “Where the harm done by lack of jobs is real and terrible, the harm done by deficits to a nation like America in its current situation is, for the most part, hypothetical.”

[snip]

Worried that opinion polls have too much sway over lawmakers, Krugman believes that the public would embrace unpopular policies once they saw them in action. “What they notice, and vote on, is whether the economy is getting better or worse,” he writes. “What this says — a lesson that the Obama team unfortunately failed to learn until very late in the game — is that the economic strategy that works best politically isn’t the strategy that finds approval with focus groups, let alone with the editorial page of the Washington Post.”

[snip][end]

I like not only Bernie's analysis which is spot on again, but also his prescription to use austerity as messaging here. We can so often get bogged down in detailed analysis of economic theories even among those who have little background to comprehend them. But spend time laying out the case for what austerity is and it can be a more effective buzzword for when we want to make people aware of the dangers of these (R) proposals.

A European primer: What does austerity look like?

By The Associated Press | AP - 8 hrs ago
Austerity has been the main prescription across Europe for dealing with the continent's nearly 3-year-old debt crisis, brought on by too much government spending.

But what does it mean for the average European? Imagine paying sales tax of 23 percent or more. Or having your wages cut by 15 percent. Or, if you're in Ireland, both. Austerity comes in many forms: higher taxes, fewer state benefits, more job cuts, working longer until retirement, you name it.

Here's a look at some of Europe's austerity pain: (continued with a country by country summation)
http://us.m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/eu ... s&.lang=en