While we enjoy the holidays, have friends in and eat good food and drink good drink, America’s right wing and monied classes have been either stealing us blind or setting up the mechanisms to steal us blind. Merry Christmas.

First we have the recent ruling in the Detroit bankruptcy case. The city’s public employees did nothing to cause the bankruptcy. These folks went to work faithfully for decades. When they retired they received a modest (very modest) pension of around $19,000 a year on average basically as a deferred compensation. A study by Demos laid the blame for Detroit’s bankruptcy on Detroit’s joining many Americans in investing in the toxic assets being sold by Wall Street. Please read or listen to this DemocracyNow interview with Walter Tuberville on the Detroit situation.

Not one of the banksters responsible for the toxic assets have yet to be charged for anything to do with the collapse. Yet retirees from Detroit’s public sector will be paying for Wall Street’s gambling for the rest of their lives if the legalized theft of their pension is upheld.

To cover Detroit debts it looks like the city will need to sell off municipal assets. This will include treasures from their world known art museum. Now wealthy people with some cash in their pockets will probably be able to pick up masterpieces for pennies on the dollar. No doubt, valuable city land will also be on the auction block. Money raised from these and other endeavors will used to pay debts to, believe it or not, those who sold them the toxic assets.

At almost the same time, legislators assembled in Springfield, Illinois to go about the purpose of stealing the public workers pensions since the state had defaulted on payment into the fund for many, many years.

Right after Thanksgiving ALEC got their puppets together in Thanksgiving to tell them what they will work on in their states. As you know ALEC is essentially a lobbying group for corporations at the state level. Their legislative want list will load up up the pockets of their corporate owners. We here in Iowa have a couple legislators who have pledged to carry out their wishes.
Apparently, ALEC isn’t doing enough to create the ‘atmosphere’ to rob the poor and give it to the rich. Therefore uber-wealthy are sponsoring a think tank that will be working at the state level to attack any social policy in this country. Do yopu remember the part of the revolution where we were fighting to make a better life for the rich? Neither do I. Here from the Guardian is an excerpt concerning the State Policy Network (SPN) yet another group sponsored by the wealthy to steal your money, freedom and future.

“Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers’ compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as “free-market thinktanks”, includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The policy goals are contained in a set of funding proposals obtained by the Guardian. The proposals were co-ordinated by the State Policy Network, an alliance of groups that act as incubators of conservative strategy at state level.

The documents contain 40 funding proposals from 34 states, providing a blueprint for the conservative agenda in 2014. In partnership with the Texas Observer and the Portland Press Herald in Maine, the Guardian is publishing SPN’s summary of all the proposals to give readers and news outlets full and fair access to state-by-state conservative plans that could have significant impact throughout the US, and to allow the public to reach its own conclusions about whether these activities comply with the spirit of non-profit tax-exempt charities.”

But the worst of the worst appears to be the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This is a multi-national trade agreement that is being negotiated in private with special representation for corporations. Little about the TPP has leaked. What has leaked sounds like a corporate wet dream. President Obama is pushing for “fast-tracking” confirmation of this treaty. Anything this extensive needs a thorough going over by our representatives. Be sure to contact your representatives now and tell them that the TPP and its Trans-Atlantic brother need a full and PUBLIC hearing.

It has taken many decades to get the ingredients right to make a full scale attack on public workers. They are about the last guard in the rights assault on America and its workers. Being able to plunder the wealth of the commons for pennies on a dollar is an added plus.