Disappeared News

“Trillions of dollars in national wealth have been funneled to the top economic 0.1%, at the expense of everyone else. Most people know, on a profound level, that their economic and future prospects are grim because of the crimes of a small group of crony-capitalists. Our future has been sacrificed so multi-millionaires and billionaires can keep living business as usual. When vital social services are cut so the richest members of society can get tax breaks and all-time record-breaking bonuses, as our inequality of wealth reaches the most severe level in American history, based on well-established global societal precedents, outbreaks of violence such as this one are inevitable.”

It’s not a prediction anyone wants to read, but I hope you will click over to Horrific Arizona Massacre Is A Sign of Tragedies to Come (daviddegraw.org, 1/12/2011)

“As we have just begun to see, budget cuts to vital social programs on the state and federal levels will become increasingly severe right at the point when many more Americans will need them. …
…
Looking at this from a purely technocratic sociological viewpoint, avoiding mass riots and violence while this many desperate people lose life-sustaining programs appears to be an impossible task, and given our current economic and political environment this seems inevitable.

Under the Lingle administration, Hawaii also began severe cutbacks in mental health services. We may not be immune to the consequences David DeGraw predicts.

We can dismiss and write off all of this as just crazy people doing crazy things and go back to living with our heads in the sand, business as usual, or we can begin the urgent task of fixing a society that is severely out of balance.

For Hawaii, that task will fall to new Governor Neil Abercrombie and his cabinet appointees.

Lingle had it easy, she cut services and left the scene. Abercrombie has to deal with all of it and balance the budget as well.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/12/2011 01:46:00 PM