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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Cuts by any other name

Political movements always employ slogans that represents in a few words the aspirations of those fighting for a new world. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" in the French Revolution or "Peace, Bread and Land" in 1917 Russia. The Occupy movement took as its watchwords, “We are the 99 %.” Some say that the slogan is factually inaccurate but they miss the point. “We are the 99%” is high-lighting “us versus them”, representing a class perspective. The issue here is not the literal meaning of the “1%,” but about power. The 1% own our workplaces and control our labor. They control nearly every aspect of society—government, media, schools, culture—to maintain and increase their dominance over us. What the slogan, “We are the 99%,” has done is bring that power into the open. “We are the many, they are the few” should always remain in the foremost in our minds when we combat our enemies in the class war.

The rich also have their slogans. Last time it was the "grand bargain", the "fiscal cliff", now it is the "sequestration" - made-up media words for budget spending cuts, saying the same thing over and over again, but just differently. In the UK and Europe we call it "austerity".

Americans are being told they cannot decent health care, or Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, and must accept cuts upon cuts to basic services because "we can't afford them" but many poor Americans rely on services the government provides. The President’s “sequester” offer slashes non-defense spending by $830 billion over the next ten years. Obama's cosmetic compromies is the same as putting lipstick on a corpse. He is demanding sacrifice from the elderly, the disabled, the poor, and the young,

Public housing subsidies: $1.9 billion in cuts would affect 125,000 low-income people who would lose access to vouchers to help them with their rent.

Foreclosure prevention: 75,000 fewer people would receive foreclosure prevention, rental, and homeless counseling services.

Emergency housing: 100,000 formerly homeless people could be removed from their current emergency shelters.

Educational programs: Learning programs for poor kids would see a total of $2.7 billion in cuts. The $400 million slashed from Head Start, the preschool program for poor children, would result in reduced services for some 70,000 kids.

Title I Funding: The Department of Education's Title I program, the biggest federal education program in the country, subsidizes schools that serve more than a million disadvantaged students. It would see $725 million in cuts.

Rural rental assistance: Cuts to the Department of Agriculture would result in the elimination of rental assistance for 10,000 very low-income rural people, most of whom are single women, elderly, or disabled.

Unemployment benefits: More than 3.8 million people getting long-term unemployment benefits would see their monthly payments reduced by as much as 9.4 percent, and would lose an average of $400 in benefits over their period of joblessness..

Nutritional Assistance for Women & Children: The government's main food stamp program is exempt from cuts, but other food programs would take a hit. Some 600,000 women and children would be cut from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, which provides nutrition assistance and education.

Special education: $978 million* in cuts would affect 30.7 million children. For example, the scaling back of federal grants to states for students with disabilities would mean that cash-strapped states and districts would have to come up with the salaries for thousands of teachers, aides, and staff that serve special needs kids.

Job training programs: $37 million would be slashed from a job retraining and placement program called Employment Services, and $83 million would be cut from Job Corps, which provides low-income kids with jobs and education.

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