Austerity by the numbers
by digby
That's via Krugman who quips:
The conclusion is inescapable: Republicans have a mandate to repeal the laws of arithmetic.
This is the very essence of free-lunch conservatism, no taxes, no cuts --- only foreigners need pay for our sins.
I suspect that this doesn't present much of a problem to most Americans who don't really pay attention to the details and would sit idly by while the poor are decimated, blaming them for failing to be properly "entrepreneurial." But this change s when the middle class gets hit.
You've undoubtedly heard about UnCut, which is a very impressive populist protest happening all over the UK in response to Cameron's draconian austerity measures. But this is where populism really starts to take hold among the bourgoisie:
Save Our Libraries Day: find your nearest protest
This Saturday, 5 February, libraries around the country will be playing host to read-ins, author appearances and story-telling events to protest at the threatened closure of 400 branches.
This isn't a bunch of anarchists. These are middle class moms and elderly voters who are becoming activists for the first time in their lives:
One of the libraries slated to be closed is in a picturesque little town northwest of London called Stony Stratford. The library is right in the heart of town, on a street with brick homes and little shops.
Sarah Richardson was on her way to return a bag of books. But for her, this was not just any bag of books. It was her small part in a public uprising. The residents of Stony Stratford organized last month and, together, checked out all 16,000 books from the library. The bare shelves, they hoped, would send a message that the place had to stay.
Richardson, a single mom, says she relies on the library's free computers. There's no Internet at home. "We did have [it], and then me and my husband split up, so the computer went," she says.
Officials in Milton Keynes, the region that includes Stony Stratford, will make their decision about the library on Feb. 22. A spokesman for the regional council said deep cuts in funding from London have put "unprecedented pressures" on elected officials, forcing painful decisions. Still, among all the austerity measures being proposed, this one seems to have generated the most widespread emotion.
Lauren Smith is helping to run a national campaign called Voices for the Library.
This is the message she says she hears from people: " 'I've never, ever campaigned against anything before; I've never gone out with placards; I've never marched; but do you know what — this, this is important, and this is what we need to stand up against, because this can't happen.' "
Smith said politicians in London don't appreciate the role libraries play — as gathering spots for young children to read ... "all the way to a 93-year-old lady whose husband had died, she only spoke to one person on a Tuesday, when she went to the library, and that was the person in the library branch, behind the counter."
Austerity sounds very character building in the abstract. But people don't really "want" it when they see what it means in their every day lives. And if these wealthy political celebrities and plutocrats keep talking about how "everyone" needs to sacrifice, they are likely to find out that most Americans don't agree with that. They want the wealthiest to sacrifice first, something that hasn't been on the table up to now.
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