Uprising in the Streets? Thom Hartmann Reports on Brzezinski Warning

Among other things, Hartmann reports on a warning from Zbigniew Brzezinski...

The President is trying to pitch a $4 trillion deficit reduction package over the next 10 years – that slashes away at programs mostly affecting the working class and even cuts up the social safety net in America – trimming $400 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. All of these tough cuts will be in exchange for closing a few tax loopholes for corporations, millionaires, and billionaire. Ultimately, President Obama’s deal is heavy on spending cuts, light on tax hikes. But don’t expect Republicans to like the deal – they’d rather crash the Americans economy than see tax rates for their millionaire and billionaire campaign donors go up a measly 3% - to where they were under Bill Clinton when we had a budget surplus and created 23 million jobs. Right now – government revenue in America is at a 60-year-low – and Republicans are refusing to acknowledge that our government is going broke because of 3 decades of Reagan’s “starve the beast” economics and an army of corporate lobbyists that have blown holes in the tax code. We don’t have a spending problem in America – we have a revenue problem – and a debt-limit deal needs to focus on this reality. Roll back the Reagan tax cuts – and make billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street - who pay less in taxes than their janitor – cough up their fair share like the rest of us. That’s what shared sacrifice looks like....

Is wealth inequality in America hurdling our nation toward civil unrest? In a television interview this morning – former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that the growing wealth imbalance in America – now reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression – could lead to civil unrest in the streets. As the middle-class in America falls deeper and deeper into desperation – Brzezisnki said, “we’re going to slide into intensified social conflicts, social hostility, some forms of radicalism, there is just going to be a sense that this is not a just society.” We have a society in which 400 Americans own more wealth that 150 million other Americans. We have a society in which 50% of all the children in America will depend on food stamps at some point in their life before they are 18 – and among African American children that number is 90%. We no longer live in a just society - and if Brzezinski is right - turbulent times could be ahead for America.

Full transcript of this at Truthout.org