Debt Crisis? Radical Left Wants Defense Cuts, Protest in the Streets

December 4th, 2010 8:30 AM

On Wednesday's Democracy Now on taxpayer-subsidized Pacifica Radio, host Amy Goodman presented Jesse Jackson with the good news that the Tea Party and the hard left each want defense cuts. But while the Tea Party may be looking for across-the-board cuts, Jackson wants an endless "war on poverty," which is not exactly a deficit strategy:

AMY GOODMAN: ThinkProgress and the Progress Report have documented that there is a growing coalition between the Tea Party-backed conservatives and stalwart progressives, who are coming together to demand cuts to the defense budget, the coalition given further momentum with the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, released a report that calls for $100 billion in defense cuts.

REV. JESSE JACKSON: Well, between the tax cuts they want—almost a trillion dollars over ten years—the military budget is like sacrosanct. We bail out the banks, but not linked to lending and to reinvestment, and so they’ve been bailed out. The insurance companies, without public option, they, in a sense, have been subsidized, they got more customers—they’ve been bailed out. The Afghan, Iraq war—Mr. Bush admits that it was wrong, a mistake to go into Afghanistan, into Iraq. [??] Not only do we not get an apology, but the cost of lives and honor is involved in this thing and the cost of pure money.

So I would hope that we would take a kind of a Roosevelt look, where we reconstruct banks, not just bail them out, that we need a war on poverty. The growing number of unemployed people—unemployed people. I went to a homeless shelter in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and the people in there were mostly white women, but some people of color, as well. But they work every day, but they can’t afford rent. They’re like working people. And they come at night, and they convene their children on the floor, and they teach them. And there’s a six-month waiting list. Somehow poverty and disparity, these two words do not seem to fit our lexicon anymore.

On Thursday's Ed Schultz radio show, radical-left heiress Katrina Vanden Heuvel saw disturbances of the peace in Europe over spending cuts and she's delighted. She wants some of that action in American streets:

VANDEN HEUVEL: Look overseas, look what's going on with students in the streets of the UK, people in the streets, the Internet does a lot of good, your voice, Ed, the media, I hope The Nation, but we got to get people into the streets, 'cause protest as Rev. (Jesse) Jackson says and we know, moving, marching, speaking out, is what brings transformational change in this country and what makes a good president a great president.