Budget Deficit Is Expected to Hit $1.48 Trillion

As Obama's teleprompter gave a nice speech... these progressives highlight the U.S. terrorism as what should have been the topics the President was instructed to read.

Meanwhile Credit Default Swaps in the U.S. are doing just fine - as the world's reserve currency is printed to the point of oblivion and hyperinflation creeps into the near future.... 2011 may be the year all the silent mute shaytans in Europe and the U.S. , our so-called brothers and sisters taste of collapse and suffer like those in the countries their parents fled.  

By COREY BOLES

WASHINGTON—The federal government's budget deficit is expected to grow about 14% to $1.48 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year, an increase largely resulting from the extension of lower tax rates, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

The deficit was roughly $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010, which ended on Sept. 30.

The CBO said two weeks ago that the budget deficit had reached $371 billion through the first three months of fiscal 2011.

In fiscal 2012, which begins on Oct. 1, the CBO expects the deficit to drop to $1.1 trillion, still big by long-term historical standards.

The CBO, an agency that reviews congressional budgets and legislative initiatives with budgetary implications, said that as a share of U.S. gross domestic product, the deficit will jump from 8.9% in fiscal 2010 to 9.8% in fiscal 2011 before declining to 7.0% in fiscal 2012.

The tax compromise reached between Democrats and Republicans in December added $858 billion to the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. The deal renewed the Bush-era income-tax rates for all Americans for two years, despite the misgivings of many Democrats, who wanted to see the rates for wealthiest Americans revert to higher rates.

The accord also reinstated the estate tax at a rate of 35% on individuals earning more than $5 million and couples worth more than $10 million. The tax had expired at the end of 2009 and was set to be renewed from 2011 at higher rates.

The agreement also created a one-year payroll-tax holiday for most working Americans.

While both sides acknowledged that the strands of the tax deal would add to the budget deficit in the short term, lawmakers agreed that allowing taxes to increase would have jeopardized the economic recovery.

The CBO's updated forecast came the morning after President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress in the annual State of the Union Address.

The president recognized the necessity of reining in federal spending but at the same time called for further investments in education, transportation infrastructure and renewable energy sources.

Mr. Obama will submit his budget request for fiscal 2012, in which he will outline in more detail his policy priorities for the coming year, in the second week of February.

How successful he will be in achieving many of his domestic goals is unclear, since House Republicans are vowing to pare federal spending rather than agree to new investments.

Republicans took control of the House in November's midterm elections, largely with the help of newly elected lawmakers who advocate cuts to federal spending.

First QE2 now Obama Austerity - Deficit panel leaders' plan curbs Social Security as Liberal Fascist Agenda unfolds

The obvious allusions are that Barack Obama could end up like Bill Clintion.... Clinton suffered during his presidency with low approval polling going into midterm elections. Thereafter he faced a Republican House and Senate and subsequently went on foreign policy that represented globalism while cutting welfare farther than had been done in recent times through his 1996 welfare reform act. His popularity soared and he went on to a "successful presidency. It is obvious that Obama is a corporatist fascist and that this is the kind of policy manipulation that makes a narcissit proud (LINK HERE), his idea, having saved the banks and corporate America and with the Fed printing paper and destroying the middle class is for genocide - cut the Social Security, repeal unemployment benefits, cut all government spending that helps the people and say nothing about the bludgeoning military budget.....

Here is the beginnning of this latest Fascism (link here):

WASHINGTON – Leaders of President Barack Obama's bipartisan deficit commission on Wednesday proposed reducing the annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security, part of a bold plan to control $1 trillion-plus budget deficits.

The proposal also would set a tough target for curbing the growth ofMedicare and recommends looking at eliminating popular tax breaks, such as mortgage interest deduction.

As proposed, the plan by Chairman Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., doesn't look like it can win support from 14 of the commission's 18 members to force a debate in Congress. Bowles is a Democrat and was former President Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff.

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare are making some liberals on the panel recoil. And conservative Republicans are having difficulty with options on how to raise tax revenue. The plan also calls for cuts in farmsubsidies, foreign aid and the Pentagon's budget.

"This is not a proposal I could support," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. "On Medicare and Social Security in particular, there are proposals that I could not support."

The Social Security proposal would change the inflation measurement used to calculate cost of living adjustments for program benefits, reducing annual cost-of-living increases. It will almost certainly draw opposition from advocates for seniors, who are already upset that there will be no increase for 2011, the second straight year without a raise.

The plan released by Bowles is only a proposal put forth by him and Simpson. Members of the commission will resume debate on it later Wednesday and next week in a long-shot bid to reach a compromise.

The release of the proposal comes just a week after midterm elections that gave Republicans the House majority and increased their numbers in the Senate. During the campaign, neither political party talked of spending cuts of the magnitude proposed by Bowles, with Republicans simply proposing $100 million in cuts to domestic programs passed each year by Congress.

"It's a very provocative proposal," said GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. "Some of it I like. Some of it disturbs me. And some of it I've got to study."

Plan B: The Partition of Afghanistan.

With mounting US casualties in Afghanistan and General Petraeus current counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy heading for near certain failure there has been increasing calls for a new plan in Afghanistan. The united states finds itself in an extremely unenviable position, it can not stay in Afghanistan (due to a combination of factors including Taliban military success, US public opinion and the poor state of the economy) yet it cannot afford to leave either (for fear that victory for the Mujahideen would undermine the stability of other key US allies in the Muslim world).

The new strategy?

As a result of these unfavourable conditions some policy experts have been calling for what amounts to a de facto partition of Afghanistan, separating the Pashtun south from the north which is populated predominantly by the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara. One advocate of this strategy is former deputy national security adviser under George W. Bush Robert D. Blackwill, who in a recent article in Politico ('A de facto partition for Afghanistan') stated the following:

“After the administration’s December Afghanistan review, the U.S. polity should stop talking about timelines and exit strategies and accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of its historic stronghold in the Pashtun south. But Washington could ensure that north and west Afghanistan do not succumb to jihadi extremism, using U.S. air power and special forces along with the Afghan army and like-minded nations”

The strategy in essence means that the US would cede the south of country to the Taliban by withdrawing to north where they would use their allies from the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras to fight against the Taliban. Supplementing this would be the permanent establishment (similar to Iraq) of between 40-50,00 US troops. From their bases in the north the US forces would then using a mixture of air power and special forces attack the Taliban government (both its military and civilian components) .

“the sky over Pashtun Afghanistan would be dark with manned and unmanned coalition aircraft— targeting not only terrorists but, as necessary, the new Taliban government in all its dimensions. Taliban civil officials— like governors, mayors, judges and tax collectors— would wake up every morning not knowing if they would survive the day in their offices, while involved in daily activities or at home at night”

The Reality on the ground

This strategy ignores the current reality on the ground in Afghanistan. Firstly as pointed out in an article (Empire going mad) by Thomas Ruttig (co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network) there is a significant Pashtun population in the north, which would represent a major obstacle to the successful implementation of this strategy.

“In contrast, for him [Robert Blackwill], the rather large "Pashtun pockets" in the West (Farah, Nimruz, parts of Herat and Badghis) and even the North (Faryab, Balkh, Kunduz, etc.) simply represent a Pashtun "fifth column." He doesn't articulate what he has in mind for them. Does he want to put barbed wire around their villages and bomb them like the rest of the Pashtun South? Or does he envisage a "population exchange," with ethnic massacres as "collateral damage"? “

Furthermore the situation is rapidly changing in the north with decreasing support for the kleptocratic government of Karzai and an increase in support for the Taliban which cuts across the tribal division in the north. A report by Antonio Giustozzi and Christoph Reuter (The Northern Front, the Afghan insurgency spreading beyond the Pashtuns) examined this trend in more detail, the report concluded:

“It seems clear that the attempts of the Taleban leadership in Quetta to destabilise the Greater North is beginning to have an impact.‘Cadres ’from the south are being sent northwards to help train and organise and the IMU [Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan] seems to also be playing a role in this effort. In many parts of the Greater North, the insurgency has advanced well beyond the original phase of infiltration by political agents and in quite a few areas the insurgency is even entering the phase of violent military operations. This does not mean that the destabilisation cannot be stopped, but it does mean that time is running out in order to prevent it from spreading.”

Furthermore:

” The support of the clergy, together with financial and advisory support from Quetta, could be enough to spread the insurgency, particularly in the absence of any effective counter-­‐mobilisation of those sectors of the population most opposed to the Taleban. “

Lastly this strategy like other strategies which envision a permanent US presence in Afghanistan (likewise for Iraq) ignore the perilous state of the US economy. By adopting strategies like this the US plays into the hand of the Mujahideen who have long stated that their aim is to bankrupt the US by engaging it in long drawn out gorilla wars, just like they did, once upon time to another 'superpower' in Afghanistan.

Chalmers Johnson Discusses American Empire and the war Against Al Qaeda in 2004

This is a segment of an 8 part video, but the assessment is still true today as even under Obama these types of governmental practice resemble the end of empire and repetition of imperialist mistakes of the past.

In the same vein, a great editorial from Mark Levine (HERE) informs that Obama is very indistinct from Bush's Terror Policy. It says:

The false choice of human rights vs. national security 

Instead, President Obama has essentially continued almost every major Bush security policy, either by default or design. State secrets, targeted killings, renditions and indefinite detention, opposing the right of habeas corpus, preventing victims of admitted torture from seeking judicial redress, expanding the Afghan war while moving - however gingerly - to secure a long-term presence in Iraq; all these must surely be making Bush, and especially Cheney, happy and wealthier men.

As Michael Hayden, Bush's last CIA Director, put it in a recent interview, "Obama has been as aggressive as Bush" in defending executive prerogatives and powers that have enabled and sustained the ‘war on terror.’ 

But just how close to the dark side Obama has moved became evident in the last couple of weeks, specifically from two angles. 

In the first, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court decision allowing former CIA prisoners to sue companies that participated in their rendition and torture in overseas prisons. In deciding that the plaintiffs could not sue despite an ample public (rather than classified) record supporting their claims, Judge Raymond C. Fisher supported the Obama Administration's contention that, in his words, sometimes there is a "painful conflict between human rights and national security" in which the former must be sacrificed to preserve the latter. 

But this is an utterly ludicrous concept, since a core reason for so much of the frustration, nihilistic anger, radicalisation and ultimately violence involved in Islamist terrorism and insurgencies lies precisely in the long term, structural denial of the most basic human rights by governments in the region, the lion's share of whom continue to be supported by the United States despite their behaviour on the grounds of ‘national security’. 

What neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor the President seems to understand is that there can be no contradiction between human rights and national security, since the absence of human rights can never but lead to a lack of security. 

What's more, the very idea in the globalised era that one country's "national" security (especially that of the global "hyper-power," the United States) can be defined apart from and in contrast to the security of other nations is so ridiculous. One wonders how supposedly intelligent people, like former law school professors - turned presidents, can in good faith imagine and declare it