European Commission Demands Budget Increase - Brutal Austerity for You, More Opulence for Us

by Scott Creighton

The European Commission is an unelected body of neo-liberal technocrats who effectively tell the member states of the European Union how to run their respective nations.

Thanks to the global recession caused by institutions like Goldman Sachs, the EU, and JP Morgan Chase, these bean-counters and mergers and acquisitions ghouls are now in the process of forcing further austerity measure cuts for all their member states while unabashedly also demanding a 6.8% increase in their own budget for 2013.

If Rockefeller’s words aren’t echoing somewhere way back there in the dusty part of your mind, allow me to remind you…

“The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller, 1993

Surely it’s preferable if you happen to be one of those “intellectual elites” (don’t take that literally… does anyone still believe that these soulless money junkies and their ass-kissing sycophants are actually the “smartest men in the room”?) and world bankers but for the rest of us, it sucks ass.

Take a look at how Mats Persson breaks it down over at the Telegraph:

Average cut to UK government departments: -19%
Total cuts in public spending in Greece: -20% (as share of GDP)
Number of Greek civil servants fired under austerity programmes: 150,000
Overall cuts to Government spending in Latvia: -22%
Cuts in Latvian civil servants’ pay: -25%
Proposed increased to the EU’s 2013 budget: 6.8%.” Persson

This is the same case all across Europe. As the economic noose tightens around our collective throats, there are protests breaking out everywhere you look. Spain… Greece… England… Czechoslovakia… basically all across Europe they have been demonstrating against these punitive measures leveled at the people of once free and independent nations by these greedy, corrupt technocrats. It’s even moved the the United States as of late… what do you think the Occupy movement and all the student protests are about?

This is neo-liberalism and by it’s nature it’s extremely antidemocratic.

We have spent decades secretly imposing these economic and political “reforms” on various nations around the world usually to horrific results. Horrific for the majority of the people of the targeted nations, but wholly profitable to the individuals who helped bring about the changes and the corporations and financial institutions who fund the American politicians who impose them.

If you look at the austerity measures being implemented by the global elites as a reaction to the global economic collapse that they themselves deliberately caused, you will find that they are, point for point, the guiding principles of the economic ideology called neo-liberalism.

This is how the ideology is explained over at Corporate Watch…

1. THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating “free” enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers’ rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say “an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone.” It’s like Reagan’s “supply-side” and “trickle-down” economics — but somehow the wealth didn’t trickle down very much.
2. CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply — again in the name of reducing government’s role. Of course, they don’t oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.
3. DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminish profits, including protecting the environment and safety on the job.
4. PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
5. ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF “THE PUBLIC GOOD” or “COMMUNITY” and replacing it with “individual responsibility.” Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves — then blaming them, if they fail, as “lazy.”

You might notice that these principles have been adopted in our own country by several political parties including the “New” Dems (and the rest of the DNC by now), the “Neo” Cons (and the rest of the republican party including the hijacked Tea Party), and of course the “alternative” conservative party, the Libertarians. As you can see, this list is what Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney, and Ron Paul all have in common. Thus sometimes it’s referred to as the Washington Consensus or the “Centrist” ideology. Other times it’s called corporatism or the One Party system.

But as we can see from the European Commission’s flagrant disregard for the public perception of this latest insult (more for us, less for you) the “supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers” has absolutely nothing to do with repairing the global crisis they created but rather taking advantage of it to impose a “Global Consensus” much like our existing Washington Consensus.

And they are clearly well on their way to doing just that.

This blatant offense to the suffering people of the European Union is not by accident nor is it an oversight needed as the Commission claims to help the poorer nations of the world. It’s designed to anger, to incite. It’s designed to let people know who rules and what is going to be expected of them in the near future.

In spite of what Libertarian Ron Paul and many other neo-liberals of the past have claimed (like Bill Clinton and General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen when they also called for “smaller government” back in the 90′s), “smaller government” does not actually mean “smaller” government. It means a bigger police state, more surveillance, more intrusive government, and higher taxes paid by you being handed out to crony companies under the mandate of the law such as this Obamacare plan being given the stamp of approval by the Supreme Court (don’t kid yourselves)

Neo-liberalism is simply the reorganization of government into a tool of various corporations and financial institutions. It used to go by another name… fascism.

The European Commission’s latest demand further exemplifies the fascist nature of this transition. They want more money at the people’s expense to hand over to their various pet institutions.

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