Killing Me Softly With his Re-election Announcement

As expected, President Obama has announced he is running for re-election.  I first heard about it from Michael Shear in the New York Times, who characterized the announcement as "soft and low-key".  I felt bad that I didn't get a personal email from the president to tell me this himself, but silly me forgot to check my spam folder - and there it was, right under the Proactiv message.

I read it through, and predictably gagged.  And mean girl that I am, I couldn't resist rifling through the garbage can of my imagination and picturing what his first draft might have said before his PR flacks cleaned it up for the bland vanilla palates of the voting public.  So here, reading between the lines, is the original Barack email:

Karen --

Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign.

We're doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, just forget about that multi- million dollar fundraiser I had last week that barred the press and public but with you – with chumps people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers, and friends. And that kind of campaign takes chutzpah and an idea-bank chock full of bullshit time to build.

So even though I'm focused on the job you elected me to do, which entails serving my oligarch lords and masters and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, even though I have never really stopped campaigning and wasting billions of gallons of jet fuel campaigning on the government dime the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start arbitrarily, a date we just picked out of mid-air today.

We've always known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does.  And I never really intended it to, at all.  But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we've made -- and make more spin and empty promises – we need free labor and unpaid interns  to begin mobilizing for 2012, long before the time comes for me to begin campaigning in earnest. What I have been doing up to now has been insincere campaigning.  The earnest campaigning involves me trying to pretend I love my Democratic base, and it’s hard.  Change will not come easy.

As we take this step, I'd like to share a video that features some folks like you who are helping to lead the way on this journey. Please take a moment to watch:

(  Ed. note. I am not embedding the video.  It is widely available everywhere.  It is inescapable.  It will make your computer melt  And I am not a "folk", dammit! )

In the coming days, supporters like you will begin forging a new organization that we'll build together in cities and towns across the country.  It is an organization of the imagination, in your own minds.  It will have nothing to do with me. And I'll need you to send me your hard-earned dollars and work for free to help shape our plan as we create a campaign that's farther reaching, more focused, and more innovative than anything we've built before.  It is time to rebuild the Obama is Jesus meme of the 21^st century, to reinvent the Obama Personality Cult to draw in as many unthinking Obamabots as I possibly can.

We'll start by doing something unprecedented: coordinating millions of one-on-one conversations between supporters across every single state, with scripts that we provide and you will stick unquestioningly to,  reconnecting old friends, inspiring new naive ones to join the cause, and readying ourselves for next year's fight.  I still have that valuable email list from 2008.

This will be my final campaign, at least as a candidate. Of course, I am counting on all of you to demand a third term and just do away with any more campaigns.  Just make me king.  But the cause of making a lasting difference for our families, our communities, and our country has never been about one person.  I can’t be number one free world leader without legions of fans. And I it will succeed only if we work together.

There will be much more to come as the race unfolds. Today, simply let us know you're in to help us begin, and then spread the word: like good little culties.

http://my.barackobama.com/2012

Thank you,

Barack

A New York State of Mind

New York Protesters Storm Capital Building, Budget Passed Behind Closed Doors (Mike Groll, AP)

Wisconsin has come to New York, home turf of the Wall Street banksters and faux Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.  In anticipation of a draconian spending package cutting aid to schools and giving huge tax breaks to the rich, a crowd of thousands converged in Albany Thursday to protest. Cuomo and the Legislature cowered behind closed doors to pass the package.  It's one of the rare times in the history of the state that a budget has ever passed before schedule.

And just last week, a crowd of an estimated 5,000 people met at City Hall and marched down Wall Street to protest the budget.  This "Day of Rage" against the state cuts passed by largely unnoticed by the nation at large, because it was not covered by the mainstream media.  The New York Times did not give it any space at all.  I initially found out about it on Al Jazeera, of all places.  You can view a video of the event in the previous post, below.

The New York budget cuts total $10 billion, including $1.5 billion slashed from school aid and $3 billion from health care. 

The protest was organized around several demands, including no cuts to social services, job creation rather than layoffs, improved access to affordable housing, protecting workers' rights, ending school closings and mayoral control and firing Cathleen Black, the controversial chancellor of New York City public schools. She was appointed to the post last year by her friend, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, despite having no prior education experience and never having sent her own children to public schools. 

The marchers called for extending the millionaires' tax, reinstating the stock transfer tax and closing corporate tax loopholes. Extending the millionaires' tax would have raised between $1 billion and $5 billion. Reinstating the stock transfer tax--which is already on the books but is returned every year to the banks it is collected from--would have raised $15 billion per year, enough on its own to eliminate the entire budget deficit and create a surplus instead.

But Cuomo, citing a threat by banks that they would leave the state unless they got their concessions, caved like an Obama clone. Rich New Yorkers currently pay a lower portion of their income in state taxes than those in lower-income brackets. Under current rates, the richest one percent of New Yorkers pay 8.4 percent of their income in state taxes, while middle-income workers (such as state university adjuncts and faculty) pay 11.6 percent. Once the millionaires' tax expires, the state tax rate of the richest 1 percent will drop to just 7.2 percent.

The projected impact of the budget cuts on New York City varies widely. At the low end, Cuomo claims the city would lose $659.4 million, including $579.7 million in education aid.  Bloomberg, on the other hand, claims the city will lose closer to $2 billion, adding that the budget "does not treat New York City equitably" because it cuts a higher portion of aid to the city than other localities, which are facing a mere 2 percent reduction. Shades of that famous Daily News headline "Ford to New York City: Drop Dead!"  -- only this time it was Cuomo giving the Big Apple the shaft.

 But Bloomberg is not getting much sympathy from working people. For one thing, he is threatening to lay off teachers, which is never a good idea.  For another thing, he's a Forbes billionaire and a big friend to Wall Street. You don't hear him griping about the tax breaks given to the banksters.

Last weekend's protest, which lasted about two hours,  was organized by a new coalition calling itself "New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts: Students-Labor-Communities United". Participants included the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents New York City transit workers; AFSCME District Council (DC) 37, which is New York City's largest municipal worker union; and the CUNY Mobilization Network. Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (CUNY's faculty union), the United Auto Workers regional office, and Teamsters Local 808.  Other key supporters were the Freedom Party, formed by City Councilmember Charles Barron after he left the Democratic Party, and the recently formed South Bronx Community Congress, as well as the Green Party. You may remember Barron as one of the slew of gubernatorial candidates challenging Carl Palladino and Cuomo last fall.

We knew we were in trouble when The Tea Party factions in New York State actually sent out emails earlier this year urging support for Cuomo and his budget.  Some of us knew we were getting a Republican in Democratic clothing, since Cuomo as attorney general did little to nothing to go after Wall Street crooks.  The new governor rarely speaks to reporters, another warning sign.  Will our next step be a recall?  We can always hope  --  and better yet, march and clamor.  The next big event will be on May 1, with several smaller rallies geared against Cathie Black and college funding cuts scheduled before then.

*  Update (4/3) -- Doug Singsen, of New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts, confirms in an email that his group notified all local and major media outlets of the event, which like Wisconsin, suffered a news blackout: 

" We sent out a press release to all the major media outlets in NYC as well as many of the smaller ones. The reason for the lack of coverage is that America's mainstream media is simply biased against covering any struggle for progressive change (regressive movements like the Tea Party get coverage aplenty, on the other hand), especially if it doesn't involve elected officials or the Democratic Party. (Since the budget cuts are coming from the Democratic Party, we naturally were not working closely with them, although two anti-cuts Democrats did speak at the rally.) We did get some media coverage."

Among the outlets either covering or acknowledging the event were Al Jazeera, the iconic Amsterdam News, News 1 (a 24-hour NYC TV Station) and Telemundo, the Spanish language TV network.  And of course, not a few independent blogs.



New York's Day of Rage



March 24, 2011 DAY OF RAGE: Thousands Of Students & Workers United March...

Lounging With Laura


The New York Times Magazine is running (for paid-up subscribers and content thieves) a blessedly short puff piece titled "Laura Bush is Back at the Ranch."  Why so short?  Well, it was originally a little longer, but as you will see from this rough draft somebody rescued from the garbage can, there is a kindly editor who prettied it up a bit.  Remember -- the New York Times is a willing and eager spinner/enabler/PR tool of all presidential administrations: past, present and future.



I Had No Idea How Stressed I Was


GOOD RIDDANCE, WASHINGTON: There is a stark contrast between life in the White House and life at home. I didn’t really know I was stressed until I moved home and started taking massive doses of Valium I wasn’t.

 

HOME ALONE: Barney and Miss Beazley had a harder time adjusting than we did. They miss the large staff and have gotten clingy.  They started peeing in George's shoes when he took them off, and then squish.

NEW DISCOVERY: I found how incompetent I am around the home. For 14 years, I never cooked. This last Christmas, when the last of the help finally quit I cooked lunch for my mother and our daughter Barbara. I just roasted the turkey breast. The whole turkey seemed too difficult. Life is too difficult.

FAVORITE DEMOCRAT: Hillary Clinton. She and I have a lot of the same interests in helping women around the world.after we invade their countries and having annoying husbands. I am My secretary is still in touch with her publicist, and periodically our minions staffs talk.


GRANDKID PREP: We put a secret door from our bedroom that opens into the girls’ part of the house, in the hope of one day I can escape this living hell having to leave it open so that we could hear a baby or babies.


FAVORITE OBJECT: I have walking canes made by Roosevelt Wilkerson, a formerly homeless man in Dallas. He finds these great sticks and carves the Ten Commandments in them. We gave one to Pope Benedict that said Suffer the Little Children and No Child's Behind Left.


CHERISHED RUG: The one I got for free bought through ARZU, a company that an American woman started for Afghan women as a tax write-off, to help them find employment -  help, not actually find, mind you.


A TOUCH OF GORE: We built this house during the 2000 campaign. We knew we wanted it to be energy efficient. We have geothermal heat and air. We built a big cistern, and water runs off the roof into a trough into the cistern.  We put lots of Dow chemicals in the water to kill off all those Giant Texas skeeters and if the neighbors' pets trespass and take a drink, too bad.


FAVORITE CHORE: I love cleaning. The girls love to make fun of me about this. I just like for things to be orderly. My husband is pretty orderly, too.  We have untreated OCD.  We’re both ruthless about getting rid of clutter. We're both ruthless, we're both ruthless, got to wash hands...


ENTERTAINMENT CENTER: We loved “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network,” but what I watched this year, which became an addiction besides the pills, was an old BBC series called “The House of Eliott.”  The help My staff had given it to me for my birthday, and when we had those long snow days, when George screamed if I tried to leave the room  I never got out, I watched all 34 episodes. It is about two sisters who are left by their father penniless, and they develop into fashion designers. Of course, I was never left penniless, haven't had to work in years and I am set for life because of George's investments in Middle Eastern oil and the Bush Crime Family's many and varied business ventures.


FANTASY CAREER: I would have made a very excellent book editor, because I am interested in writing and in words, and I like red pencils.  And orange pencils and purple pencils and green pencils and kaleidoscopes and the smell of glue and


COUPLES RETREAT: George and I do everything together, really. We read at the same time. We go to bed early and I read The Hardy Boys to him very single night. We have all of our breakfasts and dinners together. The ones the help cooks.


PRESIDENT BUSH'S MOST ANNOYING HABIT:  Smack. "Smacking on chewing gum."


ON THE PRESIDENT’S MIND: He’s always worried about our small lake that is stocked with bass, because he loves to fish. There’s always some concern: It’s too hot. It’s too cold. Too soft.  Too hard.He has to have everything just so. He's the decider..  Are the fish not getting enough feed? That’s what he worries about. Oh, and the frogs.  He has to have those frogs on the Fourth of July to stick firecrackers into and blow up, like the neighbor boy told Nick Kristof at The Times that time.  What a cute story that was.


SIGN OFF: I actually just got a BlackBerry message from George that said "jdsdseihfgye8ddg", “Where are you?”

Obama Gets Ironic Transparency Award Behind Closed Doors





Keep Out

 

Maybe  politicians have vestigial consciences after all.  Even as President Obama was insisting to a gullible nation that there would be no actual military boots on the ground in Libya, there have, in fact, been shiny CIA boots on the ground all along.  In retrospect, this is no big surprise, or even a small surprise. Who else could have armed and trained those rag-tag bands of rebels who conveniently popped up out of nowhere, to seize our undivided attention just as Bahrainis were being slaughtered by their oily U.S. puppet- king  and his Saudi pals?

  Maybe that's why, when the president was awarded a prize for White House "transparency" on Monday by a coalition of open government advocates, it was done in secrecy, without notifying the press.  The president was honored for his so-called honesty behind closed doors, without so much as an MSNBC stenographer-journalist to record the event.  He was probably hoping against hope that nobody would even notice the prize, given the heights of hypocrisy he was about to scale in his Libya speech the following evening.  There wasn't even a mention of it in "West Wing Week", the daily propaganda email that usually misses no opportunity to gush about every feel-good, staged PR event at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Attendees of the awards ceremony -- originally scheduled for March 16 to mark "Sunshine Week" -- were understandably miffed and no doubt suffering a bad case of awarders' remorse when they discovered the media lock-out. “It’s almost a theater of the absurd to have an award on transparency that isn’t transparent," Garry Bass of OMB, a public policy group, griped to The Washington Post. “The irony is that everything the president said was spot-on. I wish people had heard what he had to say.”

(They apparently never will. No official transcript of the sit-and-chat has been released, if in fact it even exists.  Ascribe it to the plausible deniability doctrine).
 

Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight was even more critical, telling The Post that the White House's failure to announce the awards ceremony or allow reporters in to cover it was "crazy stupid", and that she is not about to defend President Obama for his behavior.

Press Secretary Jay Carney actually had the chutzpah to tell the uninvited press right before the postponed meeting earlier this month: "This President has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past, and he’s been committed to that since he ran for President and he’s taken a significant number of measures to demonstrate that."

 

Now, the Sunshine Law advocates are kind of walking back their purpose in giving Obama the award in the first place, calling it "aspirational"   --  in other words, to give him a nudge in the right direction.  That makes more sense given that the president did his utmost to hide the little event. He really has no intention of being any more transparent than he has been - which has not been very transparent at all.  He likes to talk the honesty talk, but it's becoming evident that truthiness matters more to him than truth. It must be the opacity of hope.

For example,  according to "The Hill," Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation has called the actions of the Obama Administration a disappointment.  Emails have come to light showing it has actively sought to delay release of documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.  The AP obtained the emails, showing that Homeland Security Department workers were accusing some senior officials in the Obama Administration of delaying the release of files.  Some emails described the president's appointees as "meddling"  -- and echoed Danielle Brian in their calling the unnamed Obama staffers stupid, though not  crazily so. 

We got our first clue about transparency and lack thereof when the president reneged on his campaign promise to broadcast healthcare reform negotiations live on CSpan. Not only didn't that happen, Obama was making backroom deals with Big Pharma to back off reimporting drugs from Canada and drug price negotiations in exchange for their backing off on his own efforts at cosmetic insurance company reforms.  At the same time he was advocating for a public option and urging his volunteers to go door to door for the DNC in the name of his cause, he'd quietly taken the public option off the table without letting us know.

Now, out-Bushing Bush as he embarks on what is variously being called a third war, or a temporary selective humanitarian effort, or a limited kinetic military exercise, we can expect even more secrecy in the name of all-important national security or protecting troop movements.  Hypocrisy in this president is now a given.  When are we going to start adding mendacity to the list?

Let Them Gum Cake

In an altruistic outreach to states feeling the burden of increasing Medicaid expenses -- on top of all the salaries they have to pay those greedy teachers and cops -- the Health and Human Services Secretary has written a letter to all 50 governors reminding them that several optional programs covered by Medicaid are.... well, optional.

Pssst.... says Kathleen Sebelius.  Just between us - you don't really have to cover people for dental work, physical therapy, all those expensive drugs, eyeglasses.  You can even drop people from coverage entirely! Or make them help pay for things themselves!  So much health care is just so darned wasteful. The letter reads, in part:

".... States have substantial flexibility to design benefits, service delivery systems, and payment strategies, without a waiver.  In 2008, roughly 40 percent of Medicaid benefits spending – $100 billion – was spent on optional benefits for all enrollees, with nearly 60 percent of this spending for long-term care services.  The enclosed paper identifies a range of State options and opportunities to more efficiently manage Medicaid, many of which are underway across the country.  Some of the key areas of potential cost savings are described briefly below:  

•Modifying Benefits. While some benefits, such as hospital and physician services, are required to be provided by State Medicaid programs, many services, such as prescription drugs, dental services, and speech therapy, are optional.  States can generally change optional benefits or limit their amount, duration or scope through an amendment to their State plan, provided that each service remains sufficient to reasonably achieve its purpose.  In addition, States may add or increase cost sharing for services within limits (see attachment for details).  Some States have opted for more basic benefit packages for higher-income enrollees (e.g., Wisconsin provides benefits equivalent to the largest commercial plan offered in the State plus mental health and substance disorder coverage for pregnant women with income between 200 and 250 percent of poverty).  A number of States charge beneficiaries $20 for non-urgent emergency room visits or use cost sharing for prescription drugs to steer individuals toward generics or preferred brand-name drugs." 

Translation: You just heard it from the top. Guvners - get out your axes and your chopping blocks, and get to work instead of asking for waivers and bitching to me!  We all need to tighten our belts, except for me and other high-ranking government officials and  rich people and multinational corporations.  Poor people don't have clout, so they shall be the first to suffer, saith the Obama Administration. 





Kathleen Antoinette





Needless to say, some people who are still considered true Democrats are stark raving livid over the Sebelius missive. 

"When you consider that – in a for-profit healthcare system, about 30 percent, and as much as 33 percent, of all spending goes for corporate profits, stock options, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, processing paperwork – it's cruel!" said Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, of the Sebelius letter. Kuninich is a longtime proponent of Single Payer Health Care, or Medicare for all.

Sebelius had written in response to an earlier letter last month from 33 governors asking her to lift a provision of the new reform law – called the maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement – preventing states from trimming Medicaid rolls ahead of the Affordable Care Act's broad 2014 expansion.

Mary Kahn, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS),  issued a denial that the letter was a barely disguised set of instructions to states on how to drop people from coverage.

Regarding dental coverage, what  is covered varies widely from state to state. In New York, Medicaid will not pay for root canals. Poor people on Medicaid who can't come up with upwards of $1000 for that procedure instead have to opt for an extraction of a tooth that could otherwise be saved. In California, Medicaid no longer pays for dentures. And since the majority of Medicaid recipients are the elderly (not the mythical Reagan Cadillac welfare queens the politicians love to rail against), there are going to be an awful lot of people walking around who literally can no longer eat.  But maybe that's the plan.  Despite the health care reform act, more people are uninsured now than when the law took effect. Benefits are decreasing and premiums are skyrocketing.  But  the insurance companies  who sell the junk policies are posting record profits, as are the drug companies. The president agreed not to negotiate lower prices with Big Pharma in exchange for their not fighting him on health care legislation - or, more accurately, private health insurance practices legislation. 

And what does Obama think about the government covering dental procedures under health care reform? During a town hall in Las Vegas last year, a dentist asked him that very question. His response, accompanied by his million-dollar smile, was "Everybody floss!"

WTF.  As far as I'm concerned, everybody's been fleeced.



Look Ma, No Cavities! (and No Principles)



This Just in from the White House....

I just received my daily email briefing from The White House, containing this announcement:


The Deapartment of Education's TEACH campaign is an initiative to encourage talented Americans to become teachers.


Those who can, teach.  Those who can't, write White House press releases without feeling the need to use SpellCheck or proofread.  Winning the Future?  Out-educating the rest of the world? Well, at least they didn't put out a blurb urging us to support pubic education.