Robert C. Koehler writes—
The Collateral Damage of Austerity:
The austerity packages Greece has endured as its condition of economic bailout over the past half-decade — dictated by those who wielded financial power and were determined to profit enormously off the suffering of Europe’s economic losers — have not only further gutted the country’s broken economy and prevented any sort of recovery toward self-sufficiency, but have shattered the socioeconomic structure of life for a huge segment of the Greek population. All of which is . . . you know, too damn bad. Money is as money does. The creditors have no choice but to impose severe restrictions on Greek social spending.
As Robert Kuttner wrote recently at Huffington Post, Greece’s economic comeback, including needed governmental reforms such as more effective tax collection, “would be so much easier and more effective in the context of a recovery program as opposed to a debtors’ prison.” [...]
The collateral damage of Greece’s austerity includes:
• An unemployment rate of more than 25 percent, and nearly double that for young people. “Meanwhile, our future flees. A quarter million university graduates have abandoned our nation. They have no choice: unemployment for those under 25 has hit 48.6 percent,” Michael Nevradakis and Greg Palast write at OpEd News.
• Pensions slashed multiple times, “two-thirds of pensioners live below the poverty line,” according to Nevradakis and Palast.
• Devastating cuts in healthcare, leaving nearly a million people without any, the U.K. Independent reporter last year. The article quoted Dr. David Stuckler of Oxford University, lead author of a report on the crisis in the medical journal The Lancet: “The cost of austerity is being borne mainly by ordinary Greek citizens, who have been affected by the largest cutbacks to the health sector seen across Europe in modern times.” The consequences of have been particularly devastating to the most vulnerable, with infant mortality rising by 43 percent between 2008 and 2010, and stillbirths up 21 percent, according to the article.
• “And, for the first time since World War II, widespread starvation had returned,” Nevradakis and Palast write. “500,000 children in Greece are said to be malnourished. Students fainting from hunger in frigid schools which cannot afford heating oil is now a common phenomenon.”
• Debtors’ prison, indeed. “Imagine,” Kuttner writes, “if the Europeans came bearing genuine technical assistance, investment capital and debt restructuring as opposed to more austerity demands.” [...]
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—Sen. Kennedy Saves the Day on Medicare:
There was good news, very good news, out of the Senate today courtesy Sen. Ted Kennedy, who returned just in time to cast the deciding, veto-proofing vote on the Medicare bill. He fittingly received a standing ovation on his return.
Here's his statement:
I return to the Senate today to keep a promise to our senior citizens and that’s to protect Medicare.
Win, lose or draw, I wanted to be here. I wasn’t going to take the chance that my vote could make the difference.
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This is a critical bill that among other things, blocked a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. Those cuts would very likely have driven more doctors and hospitals to refuse Medicare patients. The Senate attempted to vote prior to the July 4 recess, and came within one vote of cloture.
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today's Kagro in the Morning show, technical difficulties kept us off the live "air" today, but we dove in anyway, with
Greg Dworkin helping us cover the Jeb! economic plan and how nonsensical it really is. More on Greece. Trumpmentum & the polls. Scott Walker's collapse. Unsurprisingly, media types aren't Feeling the Bern. Aaron Schock shamed into yet another globetrotting vacay. As the SC House relents on the flag, the US House moves, reverses & reverses again. Clinton vs. Benghazi nuts on subpoenas. Two shot in Nashville, but TN gun nuts actually hold out against criminalizing celebratory gunfire!
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