Reply #16: War is a catalyst for the tranference of wealth.

[Octafish]

Thanks, wildbilln864! I know you understand this, but for the many who never have seen the "Why?" spelled out:

The wealth transfer scheme

Bush's budget uses deficit as excuse for massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich

Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com 02.18.05 -

Everyone saw this one coming. But that doesn't make it any better.

President Bush's FY 2006 budget proposal, unveiled in detail last week, is the other shoe dropping.

It's not quite fair to say that this is a budget designed to reduce the deficit. There's still plenty of expansive spending; the Pentagon's budget increases again in this cycle, and pork for favored Republican projects still abounds.

But what it does do is use the deficit, created in four short years by this administration, as an excuse for targeting all the programs Republicans don't like. The Department of Education -- which Republicans once wanted to abolish -- takes a $4.3 billion hit. Money for health care, $1.7 billion in reduced or eliminated programs. $2.5 billion in agriculture. Half a billion in federal housing expenditures. Even aid to local and state law enforcement gets a $1.5 billion reduction. Regulatory agencies from the EPA to the Forest Service will have to make do with less.

SNIP...

Bush's budget is just as telling for what it omits. Costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- let alone any prospective wars in Iran or Syria or North Korea -- aren't included. Neither are the massive transition costs attached to Bush's plan for partial privatization of Social Security.

In both cases, when the feds spend money, it winds up in very deep pockets -- the military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, banks and Wall Street for Social Security.

Follow the money. This is not fiscal prudence; it is a massive wealth transfer scheme, an effort to use the power of federal spending to benefit the economic elites who are George W. Bush's core constituency. This is the thank-you for the hundreds of millions poured into Bush's re-election campaign.

CONTINUED...

URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18583

When it comes to money, all is forgiven.