Austerity Wins?

Over and over again. We hear the old saying, true insanity is doing the SAME thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Europe's debt crises, and the recent reaction of voters who are appalled that after austerity measures, they are BACK in a recession has resulted in a massive repudiation of the conservative approach.

The "German Plan" for deficit reduction, a little scary when you think about it, has plunged Europe back into the Great Recession. Now this is no big deal to Germany, whose economy has survived better than any other the past few years.

Germany suggested, in fact demanded in exchange for its loans, severe austerity. So, Greece, Italy, France and England cut government spending, immediately producing higher unemployment, and the recession recovery was stopped dead in its tracks.

And, if we look closely enough, behnd the austerity was a thinly veiled plan to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

This is the same effect the conservative agenda has brought to the United States. The past ten years we have witnessed the decimation of the middle class, with billions of dollars flowing to the richest Americans. Social welfare programs are cut, on the local, state and federal level, while tax rates for the rich were cut. This results is deficits at all levels, which call for more cuts and shifts of wealth from everyone to a few.

This is the game they are playing. The austerity plans have little to do with healing a sick economy, but everything to do with making the greedy more greedy.

In Europe, people have had enough. I think they may be getting it. But the sad thing it is probably too late. Austerity has done it magic, and gutted the middle class, leaving an economy ripe for another right wing reaction. And this time, more radical like the Tea Party in the United States. This is the same environment that existed in Europe in the 1930s.

And here comes Hitler!