When Income Inequality Is All the Rage

Everybody who's anybody in the ruling media class is all atwitter over Noam Scheiber's New Republic piece, officially introducing Elizabeth Warren as the antidote to the serial inevitability of Hillary Clinton.

With the ascension of mildly progressive Bill de Blasio to the New York City mayorality this month, Occupy has risen from the premature grave that the corporate media dug for it in 2011 in order to make room for the re-election campaign of Barack Obama.

But the president's approval ratings have plummeted to all-time lows. Obamacare is a universally acknowledged mess, not least because it's hitting some affluent Obama supporters right in their wallets.  And now that heiress apparent Hillary has been caught red-handed buck-raking from the universally hated Goldman Sachs, the Beltway pundit class has officially acknowledged Warren as the next big thing, elevating her to rock star status as Populist Goddess.

So it looks like this might be the week that Obama achieves irrevocable lame duck status. Former supporters are openly calling him a liar, both on health insurance and on the security state. Immigration reform is dead. And columnist to the plutocrats Bill Keller penned an op-ed echoing the disenchantment of the moneyed class with the weak politician they were counting on to deliver up the New Deal to them on a silver platter. (Needless to say, the comments were withering, both on Keller and on Obama.)

You know your presidency is a failure when even a Democratic senator is now calling for an investigation of the failed rollout of your signature achievement. The Republicans must be kicking themselves at this point over their misguided government shutdown over Obamacare.

The media hates a vacuum. So now we have an uprising of "The Left". But as per usual, what passes for the left is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Because at the same time they're calling for an Elizabeth Warren challenge, they immediately let you know it's a head-fake. They  see Warren as a scold to nudge Hillary the Inevitable away from her ingrained plutocratic centrism. In other words, the Clintons had better start talking the populist talk if they want their One Percent candidacy to gain any public traction. From The Hill:

The goal of such a challenge wouldn’t necessarily be to defeat Clinton. It would be to prevent her from moving to the middle during the Democratic primary.

“I do think the country would be well served if we had somebody who would force a real debate about the policies of the Democratic Party and force the party to debate positions and avoid a coronation,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, an influential progressive group.

Adam Green, another progressive activist, suggested that Hillary should maybe address income inequality and support the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall while she's collecting her six-figure speaking fees in closed meetings with banks and corporations. 

With such advance notice that she'll be used as a populist prop, I am sure Elizabeth Warren will be eagerly jumping into the presidential ring any minute now. Of course, there's always the chance that she actually will get the nomination despite the passive-aggressive endorsements. Never say never. Also never say never to a third, fourth or fifth party. Or a revolution not predicted or approved by Washington insiders.

As if reading disaffected minds, the centrist think tank known as the Center for American Progress is starting up a special Inequality offshoot to "investigate" the class war. It's headed by lobbyist John Podesta, a corporate Clintonite from way back. They'll be searching for the root causes of wealth disparity, as if they actually think the causes are still a deep dark mystery.

So Hillary will inevitably be following in the footsteps of Boss Obama and talking the populist talk sooner rather than later. Like Obama, she'll be sending her operatives to corporate boardrooms to give them a reassuring wink and nod.

Veterans' Day Links

Here's a sampling of some great writing to mark Armistice Day (which, connoting peace the way it does, has been changed in the Land of Forever-War to Veterans' Day):

The sanctimony of phony politicians paying lip service to vets once or twice a year is pissing Harry Leslie Smith off. He explains why he'll stop wearing the traditional red poppy in remembrance of the fallen war dead: (h/t Pearl.)

However, I am afraid it will be the last time that I will bear witness to those soldiers, airmen and sailors who are no more, at my local cenotaph. From now on, I will lament their passing in private because my despair is for those who live in this present world. I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy.

Come 2014 when the government marks the beginning of the first world war with quotes from Rupert Brooke, Rudyard Kipling and other great jingoists from our past empire, I will declare myself a conscientious objector. We must remember that the historical past of this country is not like an episode of Downton Abbey where the rich are portrayed as thoughtful, benevolent masters to poor folk who need the guiding hand of the ruling classes to live a proper life.

Democracy Now exposes more of what we already knew: that the military-industrial complex treats veterans like crap. They're still committing suicide in record numbers and their mental health issues are going largely untreated.

At the Washington Post, a veteran named Chris Marvin writes about what Bill Moyers aptly calls an "awkward American tradition" -- thanking veterans for their service. He observes that people say it automatically when meeting a vet, and they utter the phrase because they don't know what else to say. Talking to veterans is a lot like talking to the newly bereaved -- it's a largely unused social skill in these United States, but one that Marvin says can be learned:

Post-9/11 veterans are asking to be engaged, empowered and held to high expectations. We yearn to be told by a grateful public that our talents are still needed here at home. This Veterans Day, on behalf of my fellow Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, I say to the country: There’s no need to thank us. You’re welcome for our service. But take a minute to talk with us. Ask us where we served, learn about what we did in the military and find out what’s next in our lives.

Reading that first piece about red poppies by Harry Smith made me think of one of my favorite songs of all time: Marieke by  Belgian composer Jacques Brel. It's a song about lost love and the ghosts of war, and so, in light of Smith's essay, I think it's entirely appropriate  for Veterans' Day. The first verse of the English translation goes like this: In Flanders field the poppies die/ Since you are gone. Here's the Judy Collins version in the original French and Dutch:

Storm of the Century

Let's just say that Typhoon Haiyan makes Katrina look like a gentle rain and Sandy a mud puddle in the backyard. The destruction is simply too huge to comprehend. Estimates of 10,000 people dead are probably, tragically, way too low.

This was a poor country to begin with, with a long history of rotting infrastructure and political corruption rooted in American imperialism. The Filipinos are going to need all the assistance they can get. Starvation is already happening.

You can find ways to help here.

Meanwhile be on the lookout for the tycoons to cash in on the typhoon. They'll find the usual neoliberal ways to profit, and call it philanthropy. (See Rahm Emanuel's nostrum: Never let a serious crisis go to waste.) The Republic of the Philippines is already among the nation-victims of the predatory Trans-Pacific Partnership "free trade" talks now being conducted in secret by transnational corporations champing at the bit to extract blood and treasure from the poorest countries on earth. Filipinos have joined their fellow world citizens in protesting the potential corporate coup.

Meanwhile, while crying crocodile tears for the Filipinos on its front page, the New York Times is also doing its pro-Administration propagandist bit by showcasing a piece about how cheap the Chinese are, compared to the exceptional Americans, when it comes to natural disaster aid. We're sending in the Marines from Okinawa, the island we have occupied since the end of World War II, to trumpet our humanitarian might. The Chinese wrote a check for a measly hundred grand. What gall, to have given more to Pakistan for its earthquake than they're now giving to an island nation in their immediate vicinity.

If I seem cynical, it's because I am cynical.

Suck On This

Is it me, or is President Obama sounding more and more like a vacuum cleaner salesman who shows up at your door unannounced, immediately launching into a spiel about how wonderfully well his product sucks? 

He finagles his way into your living-room before you even have a chance to protest, throws down a handful of his magical pixie dust on your threadbare carpet, and dares you to try out your old clunker. You thought you liked it and could keep it, but once he whips out that $1,000 Kirby of his, you guiltily realize that all this time, you've been endangering your loved ones by allowing hordes of microscopic parasites to multiply, undetected, in your humble abode.

And so it is with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. So buy, buy, buy. Now, now, now. Even though you can't even get on their website to comparison-shop. Your consuming health will thank you, your family will thank you, and most of all, Barack Obama will thank you. He's kind of like that bewigged TV pitchman boasting that he is not only a client of the Hair Club for Men, he's the president. So what's not to trust? Plugging predatory health insurance is like plugging hair plugs.... when you're president.

And he's so good at it, he is once again up for Salesman of the Year, having already won the prestigious award in 2009 for his "Yes We Can" murketing campaign. This time around, his goal is to join forces with the predatory private insurance industry and convince his rapidly dwindling audience of gullibles that he is on their side. Yes He Is. And to prove it, he went to Big D yesterday and urged his unpaid sales force of volunteers for the Insurance Cartel to keep up their good unremunerated work on his behalf, and on behalf of multimillionaire CEOs at WellPoint, United Healthcare, the Blues in the Red States and the Red Bull in the Blue States, and blood-sucking, tax-exempt corporate leeches everywhere. Reuters reports:

Before the fundraisers* in Dallas, Obama met about 100 volunteers who are helping people sign up for health insurance.

Dallas-Fort Worth has 1.1 million people without health insurance, 40 percent of whom are Latino, the White House said.

In his motorcade, Obama passed protesters holding signs saying "LIAR!" and "No Obamacare."

But volunteers with an interfaith group gave him a warm welcome. Obama thanked them for their help and urged them to keep working with the uninsured.

"I just want all of you to remember that as challenging as this may seem sometimes, as frustrating as healthcare.gov may be sometimes, we are going to get this done," Obama said.

And by getting it done, he means doing you in. He means getting more business for the health insurance industry, which apparently just can't help falling back into its old predatory ways, gaming the system and screwing subscribers. But rather than calling them out on their perfidy, Obama and the whole neoliberal team are joining forces with them. As usual, imposing hardship on the masses and pretending it's a gift is a huge "challenge."

Obama and Big Insurance are now joined at the H.I.P., so to speak. And it seems like it was only yesterday, circa 2010, when Nancy Pelosi castigated the industry by calling them "immoral villains!"

Some people, according to The Hill, are actually kind of shocked and disappointed that Pelosi and the Democrats, having gone to bed with the villains, no longer feel so comfortable posturing about morality: 

But the White House has appeared reluctant to attack the insurers now, in part because they’ve sought their help in repairing the floundering enrollment portal.The insurers and the White House have formed “alpha teams” to prevent errors and duplications on ObamaCare applications, and the two sides are keeping in close contact as officials race to fix HealthCare.Gov.

(snip)

Millions of Americans have received cancellation letters in recent weeks informing them that because of ObamaCare, they will not be able to retain their health insurance — dealing a blow to the president’s credibility.

Allies of the president say insurance companies played a role in the cancellations, and argue the president should do more to highlight that.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said she did not understand “for the life of me” why Democrats didn’t blame the “fantastic enemy” they have in front of them.

“We ought to say, ‘The insurance companies are absolutely undermining this,' and they don't want to have policies that meet the minimum requirements and we're not going to stand for it,” she said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

Celinda did not say that Democrats should be absolutely calling for the ouster of the "Fantastic Enemy" and insisting on Single Payer or Medicare for All. I guess nobody's clued her in to the inconvenient truth that it's not in the Democratic Party's interest to bite the hand that feeds it.



* To raise money for millionaire politicians, not the hungry, sick, and destitute, millions of whom are now going without a week's worth of food because of Democratic embezzlement.
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Senate Shocker

Well, all I can say is that it's about time. A few Senate Democrats appear to be struggling to break loose from the gilded gridlock of Washington groupthink, boldly suggesting (in so many words) that the talented Mr. Obama's plan to cut Social Security benefits is a plan hatched in sociopathic hell.

It seems it was only a month ago that the debate was not over whether to inflict more misery on the old, the disabled, widows, orphans and veterans, but over how much pain to dish out. A Senate bill turning the whole fraudulent deficit scold argument inside out had been moldering in obscurity since last spring. But Iowan Tom Harkin's plan, called the Strengthening Social Security Act, has suddenly started picking up sponsors. Maybe the Democrats are realizing that Obama's centrist coat-tails are getting a tad frayed, given the plummet in his approval rating down into that magical minus-40 territory. They're probably afraid for their own re-election chances if they go on record impoverishing the poor even more than they have already. Maybe they've noticed that a left-of-center upstart crashed  the preapproved-by-Wall Street gates and just won the New York City mayoralty in a landslide. Maybe they're catching a whiff of the smoke from the peasant torches, finally hearing those faint faraway cries of anguish coming nearer and nearer to the Washington bubble-dome.

Politicians never do the right thing out of the goodness of their hearts. They do the right thing out of fear. A bottom-up earthquake is starting to tickle them in their Birkenstocks. A zephyr from the left
is starting to ruffle their coiffures.

Harkin's bill, now co-sponsored by Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mark Begich of Alaska, would do three things to strengthen Social Security:

 Strengthen Benefits by Reforming the Social Security Benefit Formula: To improve benefits for current and future Social Security beneficiaries, the Act changes the method by which the Social Security Administration calculates Social Security benefits.  This change will boost benefits for all Social Security beneficiaries by approximately $70 per month, but is targeted to help those in the low and middle of the income distribution, for whom Social Security has become an ever greater share of their retirement income.

Ensure that Cost of Living Adjustments Adequately Reflect the Living Expenses of Retirees: The Act changes the way the Social Security Administration calculates the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA).  To ensure that benefits better reflect cost increases facing seniors, future COLAs will be based on the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E).  Making this change to Social Security is expected to result in higher COLAs, ensuring that seniors are able to better keep up with the rising costs of essential items, like health care.

Improve the Long Term Financial Condition of the Trust Fund: Social Security is not in crisis, but does face a long-term deficit.  To help extend the life of the trust fund the Act phases out the current taxable cap of $113,700 so that payroll taxes apply fairly to every dollar of wages.

There have always been Democrats feebly "fighting back" against Chained CPI -- simply defending the status quo. For example, last spring some House progressives penned yet another mealy-mouthed letter to Obama, politely asking him to cease and desist. They made no demands of their own. They only asked that impoverished seniors not be forced to eat cat food. They didn't  have the chutzpah to actually demand that the living standards of retirees be improved. Until now.

So, what could be next? The Democratic sponsors of Medicare for All  having the chutzpah to speak up for their own legislation instead of half-heartedly defending Obamacare? Liberals administering a litmus test, threatening to withhold their donations and votes unless their Democratic reps make a severe left turn away from the big money of their big corporate austerian donors?

Anything's possible in a world where another big city mayor is publicly complaining that he can't remember smoking crack because he was in an alcoholic stupor at the time.
 

The Talented Mr. Obama

Patricia Highsmith wrote the book(s) on charming homicidal sociopathy when she invented a character named Tom Ripley. "Suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral" he was the consummate con artist, able to fool most of the people all of the time. He lied, he cheated, and he stole. And on the unpalatable occasions when he had to kill for security reasons, he cried crocodile tears in public and profited in private. Paradoxically, he absolutely detested having to murder people, Highsmith explained, unless it was absolutely necessary. When he did confess his crimes to sympathetic friends, they glossed over it. He was just so damned adorable, and he looked so cute when he smiled.  

Roger Ebert described Ripley as "charming, literate and a monster," devoted to his wife, offended by the bad manners of others less intelligent than himself, but polite and friendly to a fault. Oh, and understandably secretive and paranoid.

Explaining his personality disorder, Ripley told a confidante (and future victim), "I always thought it was better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody."

And now we come to the latest entry in the growing genre known as Inside the Beltway Gossip. It could be the long-lost Highsmith novel where Tom Ripley enters national politics, and the hordes of sycophants are so enthralled that even when they do notice his psychopathic tendencies, they don't care. It's because such tendencies and the actions that follow them have become absolutely normalized. The country has become as sick as the perpetrator leading it. 

We knew, of course, through "controlled leaks" that we have elected a man who personally selects his drone assassination victims on "Terror Tuesdays." When he deigns to publicly discuss the assassinations, he is always careful to disclaim "collateral damage" of innocents and insists that predator missiles are a necessary "tough choice" he has to make to keep America safe. He absolutely detests having to do it.

But now, out of the blue, we're discovering that our urbane president shockingly sheds this politesse when he's behind closed doors. He's bragged to his closest aides and confidantes about what a good killer he is. Dare we say that he enjoys what he professes to despise?

The book, "Double Down" by Mark Helperin and John Heilemann, isn't out yet, but a CNN reporter named Peter Hamby scored an advance copy and wrote a review for the Washington Post. The only thing more invidious than Obama bragging about assassinating people is that the writer buried the lead. He doesn't even get around to quoting the president saying "I'm really good at killing people" until the middle of his three-page review.

Of course, Patricia Highsmith does not get around to letting us know that the personable Tom Ripley is a maniac until the middle of the first novel in her series, either. The difference, of course, is that her narrative is fictional.

Before we get to pleasurable homicide-by-president we have to be told that Mitt Romney rejected Chris Christie as his running mate because he was too mean, too fat, and maybe just a little bit crooked.

But what really has the group-thinkers in a tizzy, and the White House scrambling to deny, is the snippet that Obama mulled dumping Joe Biden from the ticket like Ripley dumped his best buddy in Lake Como. Not true, the White House protests. And one of those "close aides," Dan Pfeiffer, even went on TV Sunday to announce that "the president is always frustrated about leaks."

"He hates leaks. Everyone hates leaks!" Pfeiffer shrilled, glancing over his shoulder nervously. (Okay, so I made the glancing part up. But how would you feel if your boss had told you in utmost confidence that he thinks he is very talented at killing people? Wouldn't you be a little antsy, and go out of your way to defend him in public?)

Pfeiffer made no mention of Obama's kill skills. So, I'm wondering if Obama's bragging to his entourage about his homicidal prowess is just one of those "controlled leaks" designed to establish his sociopathy cred to Dick Cheney, currently on his own book tour and still bragging about how he loved ordering torture. He remembers it fondly, with gusto, and he has no regrets. But flying in the face of all fact, he is still out there calling Barry a wimp and a nobody. And that cannot stand unchallenged. Better to be a somebody who drones than a nobody good guy.

And let's be clear. Washington insiders, Congress, Republicans and Democrats, citizens willingly in thrall to political somebodies who are nobodies, don't give a crap about murder-by-drone when the victims are out of sight, out of mind and "the other." When a group of survivors of Obama's drone-killing spree testified on Capitol Hill recently, only five congress critters even bothered showing up to listen. There was little to no coverage of their appearance by the corporate media.

We need a comeback for that other Ripley... the one who did the "Believe It Or Not" comic strip. He wouldn't have to look far to find  grisly new source material in the Age of Obama. 

The Caligula Caucus

The politically correct are calling it a class war, or even a war against the poor. But that's putting it too mildly. Because the assault of the plutocrats on the body politic is now actually reaching the level of extermination -- or, if you prefer, culling the herd, slow starvation, and legalized homicide. Here are a few of my recent New York Times comments addressing this largely ignored crisis*. First, in response to Charles Blow's piece on the partisan hammering that the neoliberal health insurance reform known as Obamacare is now receiving:

Lost in the circular blame game media hype of the GOP vs. the White House vs. the contractors vs. HHS are an estimated 30 million people who'll still be uninsured even if the website worked like a charm from Day One. This includes the 8 million desperately poor people deliberately barred from expanded Medicaid in GOP-controlled states.

These same 30 million are joining nearly 20 million others who, starting Friday, will have their SNAP benefits cut by an average of $32 a month for a family of three. That's a week's worth of thrifty meals. And since most Food Stamp households contain children, it kind of does bring the political malpractice up to the level of felony-grade child abuse.

The looming cuts don't even factor in the $4 billion already agreed to by the full Senate. That's peanuts, compared to the $40 billion the clinical sadists of the House GOP want to inflict, just to hold up poor people as Old Testament pariahs deserving of scorn.

So where's the outrage over the deliberate slow starvation of a fifth of the population? Where's the anger over the fact that half of all public school children now live below the poverty line, and that a third of all adults are deemed officially poor in the "one exceptional nation?" How about the insanity of both parties even discussing chained CPI for retirees when the level of extreme elder poverty jumped another 16% in the last year alone?

A website glitch is the least of it. Where are the jobs? Where's the humanity?

And continuing in that vein is my response to Paul Krugman's piece on "War on the Poor":

War on the poor? It's looking an awful lot like a planned annihilation of the poor.

Starting today, SNAP benefits for more than 45 million people are being slashed for the first time in history. It amounts to the loss of about 16 meals a month per person.

Is Congress done yet? Of course not. The Caligula Caucus won't rest until they literally snatch an additional $40 billion worth of sustenance from the mouths of children, the old, the disabled, veterans and working poor families.

And not content to simply starve people, the Grand Inquisitors of the GOP demonize them, demanding they be drug-tested before consuming their rice and beans. And, they proclaim as they thump their Bibles, if you want to eat, go get a job. They callously ignore the fact that it's the lack of jobs created by their own political malpractice that's forcing record numbers of people onto food stamps in the first place.

Are they done yet? No way. Unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless will expire in two months, throwing even more millions into outright destitution.

It's not only a war on the poor. It's a counter-revolution against the New Deal. Wall Street gets billions every month in quantitative easing (a/k/a corporate welfare for greedy hoarders.) The downtrodden get a kick in the teeth. Or should I say gums, because poor people can't afford to see a dentist. And if people can no longer chew, food becomes a choking hazard.

And that is probably all part of the grisly GOP plan.

Mind you, I'd been watching The Pit and the Pendulum, part of TCM's Vincent Price-Edgar Allan Poe bloodbath Halloween marathon at the time Krugman's column came up. Nothing like Grade B cinematic horror to make you realize how tame it is compared to the real thing.

My only regret is that I didn't sufficiently chastise complicit Democrats in my Krugman comment. (Blame it on the 1500 character count allotment and my chocolate sugar buzz) They are the wimpish, craven technocrats feebly trying to control the plutocratic monster by petting it and calling it Fluffy. Rather than control the beast, they strive to placate it. And of course, we know what historically happens when those ineffectual types working in the laboratories of democracy fail to do their jobs:

 

* The Times finally got around to writing an article on the subject and placed it prominently on the homepage. For the time being. Let's see if it's just a one-off or part of a continuing series on Down and Out in America. Of course, they make sure to appease the consciences of the plutocrats by headlining mass slow starvation as "trims to the program." Gotta watch those waistlines, poor folks!