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We Chicanas/Chicanos of Aztlán, dedicate ourselves to taking our destiny into our own hands through the process of spreading Chicanismo, in the spirit of carnalismo. We are committed to ending the cultural tyranny suffered at the hands of institutional and systematic discrimination that holds our Gente captive. We seek an end to oppression and exploitation of the Chicano/Chicana community. We proclaim that we are the people of Aztlán and that we recognize our indigenous unity with our brothers and sisters of Ixachitzlan (Alaska to Tierra del Fuego). We declare that we are the descendants of El Quinto Sol. Our fundamental drive is to organize and challenge Chicanas/Chicanos to maintain self-respect and dignity to overcome historical prejudices and discrimination against the Chicana and Chicano Gente.Our historic mission involves a plan of action for the advancement of our people. Recognizing that the strength of our movement is rooted in our barrios,we pledge ourselves to reach out to the community and schools, to establish new opportunities. We also recognize that La Raza is much stronger when they are rooted in and accountable to the Chicana/Chicano community. Consequently we commit ourselves to contribute to the development of the Chicana/Chicano Nation with the ideology of Chicano Nationalism.Finally,we vow to work for liberation.
Democrats conceal post-election austerity plans
19 April 2012While the Obama reelection campaign claims to support higher taxes on the wealthy and oppose cuts in Medicare and other programs on which working people depend, the White House and congressional Democrats are already making plans for a bipartisan attack on social programs after the election. These plans are being concealed from the people behind a smokescreen of demagogy about standing up for the “bottom 99 percent” and making the rich pay “their fair share” in taxes. The cynicism of the Obama campaign underscores the phony and undemocratic character of the entire electoral process.
The Obama campaign has focused on political ploys such as the “Buffett Rule,” a proposal to establish a minimum 30 percent income tax rate for all those making $1 million or more a year. This is an effort to make the American people forget three years of bailouts of the banks and the super-rich and a worsening of income inequality. According to a study released March 2, the top one percent of the American population garnered 93 percent of all increased income in 2010, the first year of economic “recovery” according to the White House. Obama’s pretended attacks on the wealthy have been combined with denunciations of congressional Republicans and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for supporting a budget, drafted by Congressman Paul Ryan, that calls for $5.4 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years, including the gutting of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs.
The Republicans would, for example, cut three million people off from food stamps. The real attitude of the Democrats to massive budget cuts was seen in Tuesday’s decision by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, Democrat from North Dakota, to postpone any action on a 2013 budget resolution until after the November election. Conrad announced that his committee would begin drafting a budget resolution based on the deficit-cutting recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission, appointed by Obama, but that no actual votes would be taken until after the election—i.e., until it is too late for the American people to react at the polls. Conrad said he had made the decision to postpone a vote after it became clear that not enough Democrats were prepared to support a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan in advance of the elections. “I don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election,” Conrad said, indicating action would only be taken in a lame-duck session of Congress.
The Bowles-Simpson plan would slash $5.4 trillion from the deficit over ten years, cutting discretionary domestic and military spending as a percentage of gross domestic product from 8.4 percent this year to only 4.8 percent by 2022, and raising taxes, mainly on middle-income families, through abolishing tax breaks such as deductions for mortgage interest and employer-paid health benefits. The plan envisions reductions in income tax rates for the wealthy as well as corporate tax rates. The result of such policies will be a devastating decline in the living standards and social conditions of the vast majority of working people, who will be paying the price for the ongoing bailout of the financial system, the increase in wealth of the super-rich, and the escalating costs of American military operations overseas.
Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, echoed the concerns of Conrad in remarks ahead of a meeting Friday of the finance ministers of the Group of 20, which brings together the major industrial and trading nations. At the end of this year, he said, “It will be a big test … how Washington deals with those challenges.” He added, “Hopefully, we use it as an opportunity to make another significant step towards long-term fiscal reform at that time.” Geithner was referring to the period after the November 6 election, when the US Treasury again reaches the legal limit on borrowing and the Bush tax cuts expire December 31, as do other stopgap measures adopted over the past two years, including the extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut for working people and the deadline for $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts.
These deadlines will be used to create a crisis atmosphere and claim that sweeping austerity measures are unavoidable. The measures that will be brought forward after the election will go far beyond anything proposed publicly by either party.
According to New York Times columnist David Brooks, Obama administration officials have given private assurances of support for major spending cuts after the elections and have already proposed, in the most recent budget, to cut discretionary domestic spending from 4 percent of US gross domestic product to only 2.2 percent, far below the level of the Reagan administration. The 2012 election is a political fraud, used by the big business politicians of both parties to give the American people the illusion of choice, while behind the scenes the two parties are preparing measures so unpopular that they cannot be discussed openly for fear of a public backlash.
The American two-party system is a political conspiracy against the working class. The two parties defend the interests of corporate America and the super-rich. The people have no say in the policies that are carried out.
Alert working people to the dangers they face and build a mass popular movement in the working class in opposition to the two big business parties, the Democrats and Republicans, and the profit system which they defend.
We tell workers the truth: the only way to defend jobs, living standards and democratic rights and put a stop to imperialist war is to fight.
Patrick Martin
What is Neoliberalism?
A Brief Definition for Activists
(written in 1996 but applicable to Obama and the Democratic Neo-liberal elite which controls him.)
by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. "Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas.
In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism. "Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism.
So what was the old kind? The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, an Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop. Such ideas were "liberal" in the sense of no controls. This application of individualism encouraged "free" enterprise," "free" competition -- which came to mean, free for the capitalists to make huge profits as they wished. Economic liberalism prevailed in the United States through the 1800s and early 1900s.
Then the Great Depression of the 1930s led an economist named John Maynard Keynes to a theory that challenged liberalism as the best policy for capitalists. He said, in essence, that full employment is necessary for capitalism to grow and it can be achieved only if governments and central banks intervene to increase employment. These ideas had much influence on President Roosevelt's New Deal -- which did improve life for many people. The belief that government should advance the common good became widely accepted. But the capitalist crisis over the last 25 years, with its shrinking profit rates, inspired the corporate elite to revive economic liberalism. That's what makes it "neo" or new. Now, with the rapid globalization of the capitalist economy, we are seeing neo-liberalism on a global scale.
A memorable definition of this process came from Subcomandante Marcos at the Zapatista-sponsored Encuentro Intercontinental por la Humanidad y contra el Neo-liberalismo (Inter-continental Encounter for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism) of August 1996 in Chiapas when he said: "what the Right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there ...." and he might have added, children, immigrants, workers or even a whole country like Mexico."
The main points of neo-liberalism include:
THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone."
It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.
PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."
Around the world, neo-liberalism has been imposed by powerful financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. It is raging all over Latin America. The first clear example of neo-liberalism at work came in Chile (with thanks to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman), after the CIA-supported coup against the popularly elected Allende regime in 1973. Other countries followed, with some of the worst effects in Mexico where wages declined 40 to 50% in the first year of NAFTA while the cost of living rose by 80%.
Over 20,000 small and medium businesses have failed and more than 1,000 state-owned enterprises have been privatized in Mexico. As one scholar said, "Neoliberalism means the neo-colonization of Latin America." In the United States neo-liberalism is destroying welfare programs; attacking the rights of labor (including all immigrant workers); and cutbacking social programs. The Republican "Contract" on America is pure neo-liberalism. Its supporters are working hard to deny protection to children, youth, women, the planet itself -- and trying to trick us into acceptance by saying this will "get government off my back." The beneficiaries of neo-liberalism are a minority of the world's people. For the vast majority it brings even more suffering than before: suffering without the small, hard-won gains of the last 60 years, suffering without end.
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