Twig at Corrente is getting a letter to the editor published in the Los Angeles Times:

We, the Enemies?

The editorial “Debt & Taxes in DC” fails to mention proposed entitlement reforms that are being discussed in Washington right now. Cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will devastate the poor and sick in this country. For people already living on the edge of financial ruin, taking away even a small percentage of their income is a recipe for disaster. And yet that’s what both parties are discussing.

In the interests of honesty, let’s call this what it really is: The US government is imposing economic sanctions on its own citizens. As we have done to populations in Iran and other “enemy states,” a huge segment of American citizens will be unable to afford decent food, shelter, or medical care if President Obama’s Grand Bargain/Great Betrayal includes cuts to the social safety net.

So millions of people who have been paying into the system for decades will not get what was promised when they could use it most. At least now we know how the richest nation in the world treats those in need – the same way it treats its enemies.

Politicians keep bringing up China when they talk about the deficit, how we are ‘borrowing money from China’ to pay for programs. That is garbage. China parks a trillion dollars in Treasury bills so it can do business in US dollars because its own currency isn’t convertible on the world market. They need to keep it somewhere, and they aren’t going to put it in a passbook savings account or leave in a checking account.

I have already posted a graphic showing the 2010 Treasury Bond Holders and China holds 7.5% of the ‘debt’. The people they want to cut in the ‘Grand Bargain’ own a good deal more: Social Security 17.9%, Civil Service Retirement 6.0%, and Military Retirement 2.1%. This ‘Bargain’ is a way of defaulting on 26% of the ‘debt’ because the Village doesn’t want to pay for its excesses by raising taxes on the people who made all the money. Stealing from the poor to give to the rich.