The corporate controlled White House, corporate controlled Capitol Hill, and the corporate controlled media constantly try and bamboozle the American people, especially when the people are disgusted, fed up, and angry with business as usual by their elected officials, especially in Washington; especially when they voted for change to promote and support the common good and got scammed by those who promote and support the wealthy few; especially when this country is "becoming a country of serfs ruled by oligarchs."

Well, government of, by, and for all the people has become government, of, by, and for only the wealthy few including corporations.

Which explains why Obama had the audacity to say that Americans don't begrudge Wall Street gazillionaires their wealth and bonuses. With all due respect, he's full of crap.  Regular Americans are damn well are angry when these Wall Street crooks lie, cheat and steal causing an economic meltdown that cost us our jobs, living wages, and a decent life, and brazenly steal our money disguised as a euphemistic "bailout" with the help of their bought and paid for puppets in Washington.

Remember one of those biggest bamboozlements: gigantic tax cuts for the rich?  It was promoted as trickle down economics, but was actually GOP enabled pissing on the rest of the 90% of Americans.

An unfair burden falls on regular Americans who continue paying for those tax cuts for the rich.  And the wealthy aren't paying their fair share of taxes because GOP administrations and members of Congress cut their taxes and gave them other perks, aided and abetted by DINOs (Democrats In Name Only). 

A repeat of history....serfs struggling under the burden of paying taxes because the oligarchs don't.

Dave Johnson at Blog for Our Future reminds us: "Today's new York Times has a front-page story (really an editorial) that promotes cutting the Social Security pensions of Americans and other things that we as citizens are entitled to.

" 'Many analysts say the president and Congress could send a strong signal to global markets by agreeing this year to a package of both long-term tax increases and spending reductions, especially in the popular entitlement programs, that would not take effect until 2012.' "

"Let's remember how we got here.

For decades following the depression and WWII the country had operated with a budget that was in or nearly in balance while maintaining our infrastructure and investing in our future. Past concentrations of wealth were decreasing, the middle class was expanding, and we led the world in growing prosperity.

"The trouble all started when we dramatically cut taxes on the rich. For decades the top tax rate was 90%. Then we cut it to 70% and then 50% dramatically from there all the way to around 30%. The budget immediately went completely out of balance. The tax cuts created a "structural deficit."

"At the same time as we cut taxes for the rich we raised taxes on everyone else, saying the money would be used to pay for peoples' retirement. However, that money instead was used to defer the damage caused by the tax cuts for the rich.

"And we started to dramatically increase the military budget. Today we spend about $1 trillion a year on military, veterans, intelligence, nukes, and the share of debt interest from past military spending -- more than every other country in the world combined.

"And we started cutting everything else back. We cut back investing in R&D, schools, transportation, you name it. We stopped even maintaining the existing infrastructure. The very investment that could have led to economic growth was cut because of those tax cuts.

"And now because the debt and continued borrowing -- caused by those huge tax cuts for the rich and huge increases in military spending -- has gotten SO bad, the corporate and media elite demand that we ... cut back the pensions of old people, further decrease infrastructure maintenance and investment, etc. ? As the SNL Church Lady used to say, " "Isn't that conveeeeenient?'

"They are trying very hard to keep the public from noting that we spend more on military than the rest of the world combined, and that the budget and economy worked so much better when tax rates at the top were very much higher. If you want to fix the borrowing you need to fix the cause of the borrowing. You need to get the money from where the money went."