The Pain Consensus

Prosperity for the ruling class, austerity for the rest of you. So declared the two right wings of the Money Party yesterday as they rolled out a budget agreement that made a mockery of President Obama's recent vow to make alleviating the scourge of record wealth inequality the overriding issue of his second term.

A deal which passive-aggressively condemns more than a million chronically unemployed Americans to lives of destitution while it restores most of the Pentagon sequester cuts actually won praise from the fiscally conservative commander in chief --  by virtue of the fact that the pretend-enemy factions were able to come together to make a deal, any deal, ending the "gridlock" which nobody but the wealthy Beltway insiders pretend to care about.

The 113th Congress

The austerians won another round. The Big Money decreed it, the Big Money guaranteed it. And so, while military spending increases, younger veterans will be subject to chained CPI reductions on their future benefits. Federal workers will contribute more to their pension plans, on top of the effective wage reduction occasioned by the president's three-year pay freeze. Airline travelers already abused by stop and frisk tactics will now be charged an extra fee to defray the cost of the groping experience.

The wealthy will pay nothing. Their tax loopholes will enlarge into gaping chasms. If anything, they will get even richer.

And Congress isn't done yet. If you thought the Democrats would be clamoring for an expansion of the food stamp program at a time when an historic number of people are experiencing food insecurity, think again. The two right wings are currently negotiating over how much money to cut from benefits.  

Taking a cue from the double-talking Barack Obama and his crusade to end human misery by imposing more of it, Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow proclaims herself a champion of the downtrodden by dividing the deserving hungry from the undeserving hungry. She is suggesting another $8 billion in SNAP cuts on top of the already $5 billion yanked from the program last month.  In Bipartisan Austerity World, there apparently exists out in the hinterland a secret cabal of lottery winners and other cheats  stuffing their faces with groceries on the public dime. And even worse, some of them are unfairly staying warm in what's looking to be a colder than normal winter. There's apparently a "loophole" that  qualifies people in some states for automatic low income heating assistance, and Stabenow wants to sew it up tight. Her theory must be that people will be shivering so much that they'll forget their stomachs are empty. Oh, and since the Obama budget already had cut LIHEAP by 30% anyway, just think of the added savings when poor families ratchet down the heat from 60 to 55. It'll tie in so nicely with Michelle's Let's Move campaign when the kids have to do jumping jacks just to keep warm.

 Joel Berg, director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, trenchantly observes:

As chair of the Agriculture Committee, she (Stabenow) has it well within her power to propose a farm bill with no additional SNAP cuts whatsoever. The House Republicans have no legal ability to pass additional cuts unless the Senate Democrats and President Obama consent to such cuts. The Democrats should join together in scrapping this horrible bill that slashes food for struggling families while boosting corporate welfare, and instead start from scratch with a brand new farm bill that aids small- to mid-sized family farmers, slashes hunger and boosts rural economic development.

The Democrats are no longer even pretending to represent ordinary people. The only question remaining is how much pain people are willing to endure before they finally SNAP.

Judging from the radio silence, despair reigns over the Feudal States of the Homeland this holiday season.

And here is the third part of the New York Times series on Dasani, the homeless urban child that Barack Obama, Debbie Stabenow and the bipartisan pain caucus want to put on another diet.

Vampires of the Gilded Age

Financial gurus advise never spending more than a quarter of your income on housing, so as to have plenty of cash left over for food, heat, transportation and other niceties. But if you live in certain parts of the country (D.C., New York, San Francisco) that little bromide has always been a joke. Not for nothing does NYC actually have a political party called "The Rent is Too Damned High."

Since the financial meltdown and collapse of the housing market and record foreclosures, we have become a nation of renters. And Wall Street has become a cabal of landlords, buying up all those distressed properties they had a big hand in distressing, and then leasing them out to the same middle class refugees who once owned them. There's a new housing bubble. But instead of giving out subprime liar loans to unqualified buyers and thus inflating home prices, the banks and the wealthy investor class are snatching up housing inventory with scads of easy money provided through the Fed's quantitative easing welfare program/continued bailout of Wall Street.

And so where does that leave the poor, who were always renters? Pretty much in high-rent hell. Even vermin-infested slum properties are desirable these days, prime fodder for a new breed of urban renewalists and gentrification entrepreneurs and landlord investors. And when your landlord is Wall Street and you're late with the rent, they cut you no slack. They're evicting tenants as fast as they're sucking up their last dime as security deposits.

From the New York Times:

“We are in the midst of the worst rental affordability crisis that this country has known,” Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and urban development, said at a conference here (New York) on Monday.

And the less income a household has, the harder the sting. “These are the people with the fewest financial resources,” said Sheila Crowley, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a research and advocacy group based in Washington. “These are the people in danger of becoming homeless.”

The problem is national, and particularly acute among the working poor. The number of renters with very low incomes — less than 30 percent of the local median income, or about $19,000 nationally — surged by 3 million to 11.8 million between 2001 and 2011, according to a report released Monday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. But the number of affordable rentals available to those households held steady at about 7 million. And by 2011, about 2.6 million of those rentals were occupied by higher-income households.

As a result, the share of renters paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing jumped to 50 percent in 2010 from 38 percent in 2000. For renters with incomes of less than $15,000 a year, 83 percent pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent.

During the soon-to-blessedly-end Bloomberg era, the division of the city into the haves and have-nots proceeded at breakneck speed. An example is the Hudson Yards Project, in which low income people were kicked out of their apartments through eminent domain in order to make room for green spaces and nice views for the rich.

The Times may be running a Pulitzer-worthy series of stories on extreme poverty and homelessness, but record wealth inequality is in no way impeding their business-as-usual shilling of lifestyles of the rich and famous. The editorial board just warned public workers and newly-elected Bill De Blasio that they'll have to face reality and stifle their expectations of a more egalitarian Big Apple. The Gray Lady suggests municipal workers contribute more to their own medical costs, but says nary a word about taxing the rich. In the midst of their holiday noblesse-obliging, the vampire elites are still pushing austerity on the masses while sucking up more for themselves.

 Sardonicky contributor Nan Socolow (who used to work in New York real estate) sent along this piece about River House, yet another residential tower for billionaires. The article fondly reminisces about the gilded age of the robber barons, and how it is making a comeback at long last. Property is getting so tight that even rich people are getting squeezed --- a historic luxury bar for wealthy boozehounds in the district is being closed to make room for one more plutocratic apartment. Nan writes in her scathing published comment:

The venerable New York real estate firm, Brown, Harris, Stevens (est. 1873) is offering the River House "residence" for sale at 130 Million Dollars. This egregiously grotesque price for an apartment - no matter the 'mod cons" and 82' swimming pool, right next to the East River (FDR) Drive - beggars comprehension!

This property needs a real go-getter pistol of a broker - someone like Leona Mindy Roberts before she became Mrs."just wild about Harry" Helmsley, and crowned herself Queen of the Helmsley Palace (Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of France). It will be interesting to see who has $130,000,000 walking around money to pay for this offering with its ineradicahble clangour of traffic noise and pall of air pollution. How good it is to see that hubris, chutzpah, and gall are alive and well in Manhattan's real estate market!

For the average billionaire, I suspect that $130 million is spare change, well in keeping with the gurus' advice to spend no more than a quarter of one's income on housing. If you're a Walton or a Koch, it's tantamount to throwing a nickel into a Salvation Army bell-ringers cup for Christmas. Not that these types would ever part with one plug nickel to ease the pain of the lesser people.

On that theme, be sure to read (or better yet, avoid)  scribe-to-the-plutocrats David Brooks's latest effort, a review of economist-to-the-plutocrats Tyler Cowen's latest book. Nobody can agitate for sadism in a more sensible-sounding philosophical manner than Our Mr. Brooks. His last two paragraphs are a veritable ode to Ebenezer Scrooge before his nightmare conversion:

Economizers. The bottom 85 percent is likely to be made up of people with less marketable workplace skills. Some of these people may struggle financially but not socially or intellectually. That is, they may not make much running a food truck, but they can lead rich lives, using the free bounty of the Internet. They could use a class of advisers on how to preserve rich lives on a small income.

Weavers. Many of the people who struggle economically will lack the self-motivation to build rich inner lives for themselves. Many are already dropping out of the labor force in record numbers and drifting into disorganized, disaffected lifestyles. Public and private institutions are going to hire more people to fight this social disintegration. There will be jobs for people who combat the dangerous inegalitarian tendencies of this new world.

My response: (he admits he never reads the comments because of his sensitive feelings)

So now David Brooks is shilling for the Koch Brothers.

Tyler Cowen, author of the book that he's salivating over, runs the libertarian think tank known as the Mercatus Center. Founded and funded by the Koch Family to the tune of almost $30 million, it's been called "Ground Zero for deregulation policy in Washington."

The Kochs' sole aim is extraction -- despoiling the planet as they relentlessly steal from every man, woman and child living on it. They're among just 250 individuals who have more money than the total annual living expenses of almost half the world -- three billion people. Or put another way, the richest 5% own about two-thirds of the $15 trillion gained since the recession.

So all this recent talk of wealth disparity and rising progressivism must be making them nervous. From the Kochs' vault to Cowen's brain to Brooks's Rx pad comes this cheery prescription:

It's a servant economy, stupid. And if you won't toil for the rich at subsistence wages, then you're a lazy low-life. And if you find yourself relegated to the margins through your own fault, there are plenty of your fellow citizens desperate enough to persuade you to get with the Brave New World program. Private for-profit prisons beckon those who can't embrace the joy of poverty and find fulfillment in licking the same boots that won't stop kicking them in the teeth.

It must be hard out there for a columnist needing new ways of preaching Social Darwinism week after stultifying week.

'Tis the Season, Continued

Well, this didn't take long: 

The White House will not insist that an emerging budget deal include an extension of the unemployment benefits program set to expire at the end of the year, press secretary Jay Carney said on Friday.

Carney said that it would be “terrible to tell more than a million families across the country just a few days after Christmas that they're out of benefits,” but that the White House was agnostic on how the extension happened.

So now Barack is an agnostic? And right after he quoted the Pope on the evils of record wealth inequality? So I guess as it pertains to the president, agnostic is that sweet Third Way centrist spot between pretending to care about suffering people and actually not caring about them at all.

While foisting well-deserved blame upon the Republicans for kicking more than a million people off their benefits in a few weeks, Paul Krugman also emits his standard heavy but fleeting sigh over the complete and utter complicity of the Democrats in announcing beforehand that they don't give a shit either. My response: (typos corrected)

When Democrats said they'd be willing to accept a budget deal without an extension of unemployment benefits, my jaw dropped.

The callousness is bipartisan; only the messaging differs. The GOP Caligula Caucus culls the herd with sadistic gusto, while the Docile Dems offer us "ladders of opportunity" to crawl our way out of the wreckage at some TBA date. So much for the president's promise last week "to do everything in his power" to narrow the gap between rich and poor for the remainder of his term.

Reported terms of the budget deal naturally include restoration of military funding so "we" can stay in Afghanistan for at least another decade. This will be offset by regressive taxes on consumers, including an air travel surcharge, as well as by increased pension contributions from government workers. (Not that jobless people actually have to worry about vacations or pensions.) And before we even have a chance to register our dismay, the politicians will have blown town for more bribe-seeking rounds of golf or après-ski with the ruling class elites who fund their campaigns and dictate the policies.

The right wingers rail against the War on Christmas even as they cheerlead endless wars on the make-believe terror battlefield. They serve Christmas dinner to the troops at the same time they throw kids off food stamps. They get their preening pictures taken in church and demand that God Bless America.

If I were God seeing them pray, I think I would lose my faith.

* * *

For those of you without a Times subscription, use this link to read a rare and excellent in-depth look at how a homeless child named Dasani and her family actually live in the richest city in the world, which also happens to be the income disparity capital of the world. The irony, of course, is that the poor are not even allowed read about themselves, because it costs money to jump the Gray Lady's pay-wall. 

The same newspaper is also running a fun feature on how obscenely rich grandparents can give the gift of financial savvy and instill the joy of receiving in their heirs this holiday season. A woman whose specialty seems to be getting kids ready for the Ivy League while  still in utero is the source of the story. She suggests that doting fogies give four piggy banks to each little trust fund piggy -- one for savings, one for spending, one for investing, and one for charity.

So, while Dasani sleeps on a mattress with protruding rusty springs in a homeless shelter, don't expect the city's ultra-rich to come to the rescue.  Here's how a retired banker and Episcopal minister (!) used the four-pig gimmick with his granddaughter Morgan (how apt):

When she was 8, he said, he brought up the idea of giving away some of the money in the donate part of her bank. She had $30, and he threw in $100 for the “Morgan/Papa Philanthropy Fund.” He then gave her a copy of the Episcopal Relief and Development catalog, which lets people pay for specific things to help people in developing countries, like a flock of chickens, mosquito nets or vocational training.

At their next breakfast, she told him she wanted to donate a latrine. “I was dumbfounded,” Mr. Fisher said. “I thought she’d want to buy a cute little goose.”

Gramps goes on to explain that she hit up other family members for cash and ended up with more money than she needed. And the lesson in all this? “Now she’s 14, and it’s in her bloodstream,” he said. “You don’t get carried away, but you give.” (bold italics mine.)

It's the neoliberal way. No unemployment insurance extensions or food stamp restorations or a living wage or guaranteed decent housing for every man, woman and child in the richest nation on earth that now ranks 27th in life expectancy in the "civilized world."

But you give. Within reason. And if you're really lucky, you get your noblesse-oblige written up in the New York Times, and your grandchild has a built-in college admission résumé-padder.

The American ruling class learns young that one must not get carried away in narrowing the income gap so much as to actually engender equality. Noblesse oblige has its limits. As long as the poor people they never have to see or meet have a place to crap, then all is right with their world.

The Eternal Hypocrisy of the Obamian Mind

Just as the Occupy movement spurred a nervous Barack Obama to deliver his phony populist speech in Kansas in 2011, so too does the papal exhortation against capitalist greed and its continuing role in global human suffering now nudge the president to issue yet another Major Speech on income inequality.

Obama has always prided himself on his nonexistent transparency, but this time around, his usual well-cloaked hypocrisy couldn't be more glaringly transparent. After five long Wall Street-groveling years in office, the luster is definitely off the Obama Brand, probably for good.  The bulk of his remarks were, on the surface, a quasi-plagiarized pastiche of Pope Francis, Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.

Tellingly, the talk was delivered at the Center for American Progress, that "liberal" think tank founded by Clintonite lobbyist John Podesta, who recently rolled out a tanklet dealing primarily with income inequality -- primarily, some suspect, to grease the skids for the candidacy of fellow Clintonite and Wall Street "New Democrat" Hillary Clinton.

The speech was, in fact, yet another dog whistle to Obama's Wall Street paymasters. Because after reciting a long litany of how the scourge of wealth disparity is destroying Democracy, he recited a litany of the same neoliberal solutions guaranteed to make things a whole hell of a lot worse for the majority of people both here and around the world. As is his pattern, the Drone President droned on and on about the crappiness of the system of which he pretends not be an integral part. And then, just as the audience had reached its star-struck apogee, he stealth-struck with a vengeance:  

And many of the ideas that can make the biggest difference in expanding opportunity, I’ve presented before. But let me offer a few key principles, just a road map that I believe should guide us in both our legislative agenda and our administrative efforts.

To begin with, we have to continue to relentlessly push a growth agenda. And it may be true that in today’s economy, growth alone does not guarantee higher wages and incomes. We’ve seen that. But what’s also true is we can’t tackle inequality if the economic pie is shrinking or stagnant. The fact is if you’re a progressive and you want to help the middle class and the working poor, you’ve still got to be concerned about competitiveness and productivity and business confidence that spurs private sector investment.

This is pure obeisance to the debunked Reaganesque mantra of trickle-down economics, as well as a veiled threat to lefty purists to leave his poor billionaires alone. The rich are gonna have to get a whole lot richer before you peasants even have a prayer of catching a few crumbs. And that goes for you, Elizabeth Warren and your letter to the banksters demanding to know what they pay think tanks like Third Way to advance their inhumane agendas. Read Obama's lips: no new taxes on the plutocrats. It will be business as usual.

And despite right wing propaganda proclaiming that Obama is a big government welfare state Marxist, Wall Street openly adores him. Black Rock Chairman Larry Fink recently gushed that Obama had reached out to business "more than any White House in modern times." More corporate-friendly than Reagan and Bush and even Clinton? Oh, the humanity. But wait. It gets worse. Because Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett revealed at the same plutocratic confab that Obama has a lot more work to do to please the MOTU. Three more years of it, to be painfully exact.

But let's get on with the bullshit he's shoveling at the rest of us:

And that’s why from day one, we’ve worked to get the economy growing and help our businesses hire. And thanks to their resilience and innovation, they’ve created nearly 8 million new jobs over the past 44 months. And now we’ve got to grow the economy even faster, and we got to keep working to make America a magnet for good middle- class jobs to replace the ones that we’ve lost in recent decades, jobs in manufacturing and energy and infrastructure and technology.

Are we vomiting yet? From Day One, he surrounded himself with the architects of the meltdown, rewarding Wall Street and ignoring Main Street. The jobs created have been low-wage and part-time. And when he says we need to make America a "magnet" for jobs, he means that we need to keep those wages just low enough to make his suggested belated measly uptick in the minimum wage (which hasn't a snowball's chance of getting through the GOP House) sound like a good deal.

And that means simplifying our corporate tax code in a way that closes wasteful loopholes and ends incentives to ship jobs overseas. (Applause.) We can -- by broadening the base, we can actually lower rates to encourage more companies to hire here and use some of the money we save to create good jobs rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our airports and all the infrastructure our businesses need.

Corporate welfare and backdoor bailouts will continue unabated. G.E., for example, will continue to receive handouts at the Fed window after having its lawyers write the tax code for its own benefit. The gains that continue to be sucked up by those at the very top will continue to be hoarded. And since the gains will not be taxed, Obama's claim that those "savings" would be used for the public good is laughable on its face. This politician is really slipping in the rhetoric department, big-time.

It means a trade agenda that grows exports and works for the middle class.

This claim is so monstrously ugly and mendacious that he had to slip it in in just one sentence. Because of course he is talking about the ultra-secretive corporate coups ensconced in both the Transatlantic and Transpacific "partnerships" whose sole purpose is to divert what little wealth and resources the common people still own to those at the very top of the heap. These trade deals, if passed, would make wealth disparity even worse. Barack Obama truly has no shame. If anything, he is worse than the Republicans, because they, at least, are open in their disdain for common people.

It means streamlining regulations that are outdated or unnecessary or too costly. And it means coming together around a responsible budget, one that grows our economy faster right now and shrinks our long-term deficits, one that unwinds the harmful sequester cuts that haven’t made a lot of sense -- (applause) -- and then frees -- frees up resources to invest in things like the scientific research that’s always unleashed new innovation and new industries.

This is pure Third Way centrist drivel, albeit cloaked in the usual Obamian Newspeak. Chained CPI is still on the table. The Grand Bargain of safety net cuts (shrinks our long term deficits) is still simmering on the back burner. Glass-Steagall will not be making a comeback if Obama has anything to say about it, because it involves regulations that would be "too costly" to his Wall Street backers.

Step two is making sure we empower more Americans with the skills and education they need to compete in a highly competitive global economy. We know that education is the most important predictor of income today, so we launched a Race to the Top in our schools, we’re supporting states that have raised standards in teaching and learning, we’re pushing for redesigned high schools that graduate more kids with the technical training and apprenticeships, the in-demand high-tech skills that can lead directly to a good job and a middle-class life.

This paragraph reads like it was lifted from a Thomas Friedman column, doesn't it? Let's see... public schools in poor neighborhoods will continue to be closed in order to make room for privatized for-profit charters. Standardized testing will still be the excuse to get rid of unionized teachers whose students don't perform up to snuff because they are hungry and poor. Priority will be given to tech skills in order to provide private businesses with cheap labor trained on the public dime. Courses in the arts and the humanities will not be prioritized, because they tend to develop independent thinking skills. Literature and civics courses might actually empower the masses. And that is a very dangerous thing in an unequal society on the verge of fascism. 

We know it’s harder to find a job today without some higher education, so we’ve helped more students go to college with grants and loans that go farther than before, we’ve made it more practical to repay those loans and today, more students are graduating from college than ever before.

We’re also pursuing an aggressive strategy to promote innovation that reins in tuition costs.

We’ve got to lower costs so that young people are not burdened by enormous debt when they make the right decision to get higher education. And next week, Michelle and I will bring together college presidents and nonprofits to lead a campaign to help more low-income students attend and succeed in college.

The federal government and the financiers who run it will continue to unconscionably profit from the student loan program. Costs will be reined in for institutions still charging high tuition for internet courses (the neoliberal catch-phrase for this theft is innovation.) Michelle, whose own political capital is still relatively robust compared to hubby's, will be joining the campaign to get more poor kids into college. And by the time the poor kids graduate as debt slaves, the Obamas will be out in the world, cashing in.

And as we empower our young people for future success, the third part of this middle-class economics is empowering our workers. It’s time to ensure our collective bargaining laws function as they’re supposed to -- (applause) -- so unions have a level playing field to organize -- to organize for a better deal for workers and better wages for the middle class.

It’s time to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act so that women will have more tools to fight pay discrimination. (Applause.) It’s time to pass the non -- Employment Non-Discrimination Act so workers can’t be fired for who they are or who they love. (Applause.)

This is fine as far as it goes, which is about one inch in the grand scheme of things. Obama could, with an executive order, immediately stop workplace discrimination by federal contractors, and raise the pay of both workers employed directly by the federal government, and for low-wage McWorkers used by federal contractors. (federal workers are the lowest paid in the country, on average.) But he has chosen not to do so. He again suggests minimally raising the minimum wage and praises companies who are voluntarily doing right by their employees. Remember.... as a free market guy, he will never force CEOs to act against their will. 

Number four, as I alluded to earlier, we still need targeted programs for the communities and workers that have been hit hardest by economic change in the Great Recession. These communities are no longer limited to the inner city. They’re found in neighborhoods hammered by the housing crisis, manufacturing towns hit hard by years of plants packing up, land-locked rural areas where young folks oftentimes feel like they’ve got to leave just to find a job. There are communities that just aren’t generating enough jobs anymore. 

So we’ve put new forward new plans to help these communities and their residents because we’ve watched cities like Pittsburgh or my hometown of Chicago revamp themselves, and if we give more cities the tools to do it -- not handouts, but a hand up -- cities like Detroit can do it too.

So in a few weeks we’ll announce the first of these Promise Zones, urban and rural communities where we’re going to support local efforts focused on a national goal, and that is a child’s course in life should not be determined by the ZIP code he’s born in but by the strength of his work ethic and the scope of his (dreams ?). (Applause.)

Privatize, privatize, privatize. Public-private partnerships, here we come. More profits for the obscenely rich, here we come. That's a Promise. Using Chicago, whose public labor force has been crushed and infrastructure sold out under the iron heel of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel (Mayor One Percent), is hardly a great example of progress. And thanks, too, Mr. Prez, for throwing Detroit under the bus. No federal bailouts like we gave the auto industry. Their public pensions may be kaput, but Obama will offer a "ladder of opportunity" to retired cops and teachers to work till they drop (with Bronze Obamacare to replace the lifetime health benefits they were promised in exchange for working for below-market rates all those years.)

And we’re also going to have to do more for the long-term unemployed. You know, for people who’ve been out of work for more than six months, often through no fault of their own, life is a Catch- 22. Companies won’t give their resume an honest look because they’ve been laid off so long, but they’ve been laid off so long because companies won’t give their resume an honest look. And that’s why earlier this year I challenged CEOs from some of America’s best companies to give these Americans a fair shot. And next month, many of them will join us at the White House for an announcement about this.

There will be no legislation protecting the rights of the abused labor force. However, the very same miscreants who destroyed the economy in the first place will again be invited back to the White House for their umpteenth photo op and a tacit  guarantee that not only will the Obama administration never prosecute them, they will be allowed to continue their marathon theft of the American people unimpeded.   

Fifth, we’ve got to revamp retirement to protect Americans in their golden years, to make sure another housing collapse doesn’t steal the savings in their homes.

We’ve also got to strengthen our safety net for a new age so it doesn’t just protect people who hit a run of bad luck from falling into poverty, but also propels them back out of poverty.

Today nearly half of full-time workers and 80 percent of part- time workers don’t have a pension or a retirement account at their job. About half of all households don’t have any retirement savings. So we’re going to have to do more to encourage private savings and shore up the promise of Social Security for future generations. And remember, these are promises we make to one another. We -- we don’t do it to replace the free market, but we do it reduce risk in our society by giving people the ability to take a chance and catch them if they fall.

This is a definite dog whistle to Pete Peterson and the Third Way Wall Street Democrats. By weasel-wording the phrase "strengthen the safety net for a new age," Obama buys into the generational theft canard which states that the old are stealing from the young, rather than the truth that the One Percent is stealing from everybody. He still wants to cut Social Security. He even cracks open the door to privatization. He has not changed his tune one single bit -- Pope or no Pope. 

  One study shows that more than half of Americans will experience poverty at some point during their adult lives. Think about that. This is not an isolated situation. More than half of Americans at some point in their lives will experience poverty. That’s why we have nutrition assistance, or the program known as SNAP, because it makes a difference for a mother who’s working but is just having a hard time putting food on the table for her kids.

He does not mention that even Democrats have agreed to cuts in the SNAP program, and that he "borrowed" stimulus funds to the tune of $5 billion from food stamps to help fund Michelle's healthy school lunches -- resulting in the current loss of a week's worth of meals to the average client. But credit where due -- he does tepidly ask Congress to extend federal unemployment assistance to the more than one million people being kicked off the program come January.

Now, progressives should be open to reforms that’s actually strengthen these programs and make them more responsive to a 21st- century economy. For example, we should be willing to look at fresh ideas to revamp unemployment disability programs, to encourage faster and higher rates of reemployment without cutting benefits. We shouldn’t weaken fundamental protections built over generations because given the constant churn in today’s economy, and the disabilities that many of our friends and neighbors live with, they’re needed more than ever. We should strengthen and adapt them to new circumstances so they work even better. But understand that these programs of social insurance benefit all of us, because we don’t know when we might have a run of bad luck. (Applause.) We don’t know when we might lose a job.

Beware the words "reform," "strengthen," "fresh ideas," "revamp," and "adapt." It's neoliberal doublespeak for cuts, for the sole benefit of the billionaire rent-seekers. He even wants to cut disabled people off at the knees. SSDI cuts are Obama's hoped-for next stage in Clinton's welfare reform package. The odious 60 Minutes set the propaganda stage recently with a piece insinuating that most disabled people are malingering cheats. So they'd better adapt.

(Obama then goes on to defend the Affordable Care Act. Enough has been written about that kludge sludge already, so I'll desist for now.)

So let me end by addressing the elephant in the room here, which is the seeming inability to get anything done in Washington these days. I realize we are not going to resolve all of our political debates over the best ways to reduce inequality and increase upward mobility this year or next year or in the next five years.

But it is important that we have a serious debate about these issues, for the longer that current trends are allowed to continue, the more it will feed the cynicism and fear that many Americans are feeling right now that they’ll never be able to repay the debt they took on to go to college, they’ll never be able to save enough to retire, they’ll never see their own children land a good job that supports a family.

Obama assures Wall Street that he will not even bother. In lieu of leading, he again suggests a debate. Which, judging from the "debate" he suggested over the illegal American spy campaign against the people of the world, will consist of appointing billionaires to think up even more ways to rob, cheat, lie and steal their way to ever greater prosperity. Until, of course, the fetid bubble bursts and the Obamas are safely out of town. 

And that’s why, even as I will keep on offering my own ideas for expanding opportunity, I’ll also keep challenging and welcoming those who oppose my ideas to offer their own. If Republicans have concrete plans that will actually reduce inequality, build the middle class, provide moral ladders of opportunity to the poor, let’s hear them. I want to know what they are. If you don’t think we should raise the minimum wage, let’s hear your idea to increase people’s earnings. If you don’t think every child should have access to preschool, tell us what you’d do differently to give them a better shot.

As a hardcore conservative himself, he will continue offering us up on the free market altar, continue trying to lick Republican boots even as they pretend to kick him in the teeth, all part of the never-ending saga that is "Leave Poor Obama Alone" status quo tribalistic kabuki. 

Look, I’ve never believed that government can solve every problem, or should, and neither have you. We know that ultimately, our strength is grounded in our people, individuals out there striving, working, making things happen.

It depends on community, a rich and generous sense of community. That’s at the core of what happens at the THEARC here every day. You understand that turning back rising inequality and expanding opportunity requires parents taking responsibility for their kids, kids taking responsibility to work hard. It requires religious leaders who mobilize their congregations to rebuild neighborhoods block by block, requires civic organizations that can help train the unemployed, link them with businesses for the jobs of the future. It requires companies and CEOs to set an example by providing decent wages and salaries and benefits for their workers and a shot for somebody who’s down on his or her luck. We know that’s our strength: our people, our communities, our businesses.

As a hardcore conservative in liberal identity politics clothing, he echoes the conservative communitarian mantra of inviting faith-based entities and charities to solve an overwhelming humanitarian crisis. Those many millions down on their luck in the here and now will only be "linked to the jobs of the future." He echoes the hardcore conservative dogma of personal responsibility, agrees that government is not the solution. He relies on the sociopathic, criminal financial class to magically and suddenly grow a conscience and lead by example. There will be no massive federal jobs program, and no New New Deal. There will, however, be a lot of pie in the sky. Remember the Obama administration's "Win the Future" PR campaign? It's simply been rebranded.

He is Ronald Reagan with a D after his name. As they say over at Black Agenda Report, he is the more effective evil. 

Oh, and I almost forgot:

Thank you, everybody. God bless you. God bless America. (Applause.) Thank you. (Cheers, applause.)

********************************************************************

P.S. New York Times pieces, here and here; you can scroll down a-ways under "reader picks" to read my comments, which pretty much echo what I wrote here. I was happy to note that Obama's speech went over like a lead balloon with most of the hoi polloi.

And the Band Droned On

I'd missed the much-ballyhooed Amazon infomercial on 60 Minutes Sunday night, being so enthralled with CNN's Death is Fun and charity extravaganza specials as I feverishly engaged in my standard seasonal Luddite activity of hand-crocheting Christmas gifts for friends and family.

So, after reading in the headlines that Amazon will make humans even more redundant than they are already by using drones to deliver packages, I felt compelled to play catch-up and watched the replay of Charlie Rose fellating interviewing yet another multibillionaire with a mission. In this episode, the rich guy is Jeff Bezos, that turbocharged Brave New World combo of internet retail whiz kid and mass media mogul.

Suffice it to say that Rose gushing, in his intro, that he'd been "granted unprecedented access" to the inner workings of Amazon gives us our first clue that this is not going to be the hard-hitting anti-capitalist exposé that 60 Minutes used to be so famous for. They've been blurring the line between shilling for the military-industrial complex and journalism for quite some time now. And this segment did not disappoint. Enter the drones publicity stunt, just in time for Cyber Monday. From the transcript:

But during our visit to Amazon’s campus in Seattle, Bezos kept telling us that he did have a big surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time…

Jeff Bezos: Let me show you something.

Charlie Rose: Oh, man…Oh, my God!

Jeff Bezos: This…

Charlie Rose: This is?

Jeff Bezos:…is…these are octocopters.

Charlie Rose: Yeah?

Jeff Bezos: These are effectively drones but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles. Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.

Charlie Rose: All right. We’re talking about delivery here?

Jeff Bezos: We’re talking about delivery. There’s an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not.

Charlie Rose: Wow!

To give Charlie credit, he does elicit the fact that besides plans to fill the skies with delivery drones in the not so distant future, Bezos is right this minute building a "private cloud" for the CIA --  because for some reason it doesn't want to be on the public cloud. But Rose doesn't even say "Wow!" or ask a follow-up question. Wow.

Needless to say, the delivery drones are getting an outsized share of media attention and are fodder for comedians. I had already been feeling faintly nauseous from the other news of the week: the horrific train derailment, the obsession with the Obamacare website and the media's head-rolling guessing game, the bankruptcy of Detroit seemingly giving new impetus to the nation-wide gutting of public pensions and the safety net. So, when Maureen Dowd posted a very witty column on "Mommy, the Drone's Here," I kinda snapped. My response:

How can you tell that fascism has finally come to America?

When the ruling elites refer to us as consumers instead of citizens. When health insurance reform is couched in terms not of wellness but of neoliberal aggression.

We get War Room briefings on the status of the ACA tech surge. They're "ruthlessly prioritizing at private sector speed and velocity and efficiency."

They're talking about our health as if we are mindless drones ourselves, seeking out the best deals for the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that have become products to be bought instead of basic human rights.

And don't get me started on "60 Minutes." One week they spread the lie that people on disability are cheats, another week they showcase "philanthropic" billionaires who want to privatize our schools, cut our safety net, and repatriate their own offshore stashes of cash at no cost to themselves. And just in time for CyberMonday, free advertising for another billionaire retail/media hybrid. We pay for the privilege of hearing the rent-seekers yammer, while our own voices are drowned out.

People were killed and maimed because the government couldn't be bothered to install a safety device on their train. Next month, more than a million people will be kicked off federal unemployment insurance. Detroit went bankrupt, and Illinois cut public pensions on the same day.

And the news regales us with Amazon drones, and a website, and Black Friday sales riots. It's more Orwellian than Orwell.

 

'Tis the Season for Noblesse-Obliging

That most blessed season of heartwarming rags-to-riches Hallmark and Lifetime specials is upon us once again. The same moralizing plots are foisted upon us year after year. One favorite is the debunked conservative prosperity gospel, in which the poor mom working three jobs is rewarded for her toil with a millionaire hubby from Santa. The other is the Scrooge legend, in which the millionaire boss fires everybody, they suffer, he notices in the nick of time, and he hires them back with a one-time bonus and a one-time-only party in the mansion.

Looking at this year's line-up, I think I'll skip "A Nanny for Christmas" which appears to be lifted straight from the unctuous "The Help" script. We really need another story seen through the lens of the witchy workaholic who finally recognizes that her overqualified babysitter is not only intelligent but a human being with a heart, and thus for about ten minutes racism and classism are overcome forever and ever Amen.  

It's also the special season when the exalted New York Times deigns to notice how the other half lives. While most of the coverage of the poors is geared toward affluent paying readers who may not have a clue, and the paper has gotten some well-deserved criticism for its dearth of poverty coverage this year, there are signs of improvement. To her credit, the Gray Lady Bountiful seems to be going well beyond her traditional Neediest Cases charity series and actually featuring front-page stories about poor people and covering the recent labor actions by minimum wage retail and fast food workers. Whether this is a mere seasonal fluke, or whether this trend continues into January remains to be seen.

 Meanwhile, the unemployed and underemployed cracking the Times paywall are faced with the same old "it's the time of year to reflect on those less fortunate than oneself" bromides by what many consider to be the paper's most liberal columnist, who ends his latest effort with the usual heavy sigh of "of course, raising the minimum wage to an insulting $10 an hour is politically impossible" in this fraught climate, etc, etc.

But do not despair, Other Half. Because this is the season of CNN Heroes, advertised as a "star-studded" extravaganza even as it purports to celebrate the marginalized.  This show is in the genre of the traditional holiday Sugar Crumbs propaganda, in which the rich and famous assuage the guilt of possessing obscene wealth by showing up in their designer duds to give us the warm glowy pleasure of watching the lesser people grovel before them. It's a combination of the Cinderella legend and a beauty contest.You go to the ball, compete with other paragons of virtue for the grand cash prize, and then it's back to rags and pumpkins and selfless toil.

This show was preceded last night by another holiday standard: other people's misery, sugar-coated. In "To Heaven and Back" CNN  cashes in on the current heaven craze by showcasing near-death experiences. The moral of these stories is that we should feel better about sickness and death because going toward the light is a totally awesome experience. There was one particularly vile segment about a woman whose cancer miraculously went away when she saw the Light and she finally realized that getting sick was her own fault. I strongly urge you to avoid this show like the plague. It is guaranteed to destroy your joy and make you feel guilty for daring to complain about any personal pain you may be experiencing.

 It's the season of a deluge of celebrity emails in which "Madonna has graciously allowed us to use her name in our LGBT human rights in Russia appeal" and Beyoncé gushes "I don't usually write to you, but," and politicians from our 9% approval rating Congress demand payment based solely upon the other side being worse than they are. Don't like food stamp cuts? Incensed about the mean people trashing Obamacare? Send Senator X a donation and he'll see what he can do. And click that "Send the Republicans a message!" petition link at your own risk. Because I don't have to tell you that these people always share your name most generously within their own fund-raising cohort.

It's the very short season when those same politicians jostle for position in the PR campaign of empathizing with regular people. This year, the go-to scene is the encampment of fasting immigration reformers on the National Mall. (It always helps when protest movements tie in ever so nicely with your own legacy legislation, geared toward increased militarization of the border and attracting more international low-wage labor to our shores.)

And lest you're worried that the rich don't do enough to celebrate each other, you'll be pleased to know that based on the feat of producing twins herself and being a "parent role model supporting women giving birth to healthy babies after full-term pregnancies," Jennifer Lopez will be receiving the Grace Kelly Award from the March of Dimes at a star-studded luncheon in Beverly Hills this coming Friday.

Hey, it's only December 2. We've got a whole month of noblesse oblige yet to stomach. So stay tuned, and keep the antacids handy.

Meanwhile, in keeping with the theme du jour, here are some comments I posted to the Gray Lady over the long holiday weekend. First, to Charles Blow's excellent personal piece on how it really feels to be marginalized. (some readers accused him of pivoting at the end to that odious "personal responsibility" mantra so beloved of conservatives, but I didn't read it that way at all. His point is that working hard against all odds is a worthy goal in and of itself.):

You nailed it, Mr. Blow. This constant attack on the poor by the plutocrats and the right wing politicians controlled by them is finally becoming the subject of a counter-attack... in this column, in progressive blogs, in labor protests against big box gulags, in the refusal of Seattle machinists to accede to Boeing, in a group of passengers who walked off an airplane in solidarity with a blind man bumped from the flight because his service dog interfered with corporate decorum. Oh, and let's not forget Pope Francis's epic put-down of the capitalist Masters of the Universe and their sadistic crusade against the human race.

The MOTU have constructed for our climbing pleasure more of a mountain than a hill. There are hordes of zombie propagandists and deficit scolds at every pass, who'd sooner throw us off one of their many manufactured cliffs than look at us. And when we talk about reaching the promised land, let's not strive for the same tippy-top inhabited by the Forbes 400. The struggle should not be to join them, but to beat them. We must build a new society based on humanitarianism, not consumerism.

In the words of Orwell: " Until they become conscious they will never rebel. And until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

So please keep writing columns like this one. While your words may not penetrate the alleged consciences of the Beltway elites, I think you just raised the consciousness of more than a few incipient rebels out here in the real world.

And Nick Kristof, widely admired for his niche beat coverage of third world poverty and human rights violations, proclaims himself mystified that people have turned on him for writing about abuses closer to home -- for noticing that America is a banana republic too, and how shocking it is that readers of his columns are actually castigating their fellow human beings for the "character flaw" of being poor. My response:

Six major media corporations control 90% of what is broadcast in the USA. And all we hear is that the country is going broke, that we can't afford a safety net, and we have a Nanny state culture of dependency.

Instead of hearing the truth that the 400 richest Americans have as much wealth as the bottom 150 million combined, and that the plutocrats are largely sociopaths who'd just as soon the rest of us disappear, we are assaulted with propaganda that pits the middle class against the poor, the middle class against immigrants, the younger middle class against the older middle class, and ad infinitum.

Then, around this time of year, these same billionaires ooze faux empathy and get themselves photographed at soup kitchens. Pete Peterson, who has already spent half a billion of his multibillion-dollar fortune in an effort to slash Social Security, had the nerve to go on "60 Minutes" a few weeks ago to brag about his philanthropy. Walmart, whose heirs own as much wealth as 30% of the American population, but whose workers are so poorly paid that they are on food stamps and Medicaid, is spending a fortune on TV ads showcasing their happy workers.... who then have the nerve to go on strike when they're forced to work on Thanksgiving!

And so, when you write about the poor, you get pushback from people who simply can't believe that a 20% poverty rate in the richest country on earth is the direct result of sadistic policies dictated to our elected officials by the obscenely rich.

Fifty Shades of Greed

 Since so many retail behemoths are starting their traditional Black Friday sales a day early to get a leg up on the competition, what once was a shocking anomaly is now the new normal. Somebody even suggested that we do away with the whole Norman Rockwell feel-good theme, and rename Thanksgiving "Gray Thursday."

What sacrilege. It has the traditionalists seeing red while the retailers see the ever-dwindling green of the American consumer. Of course, this uniquely American holiday has long been devolving from that whole mythical over the river and through the woods scene. Because let's face it. Grandma either lives in a condo (Charlie Brown's), a nursing home owned by a lawsuit-immune consortium of Wall Street investors,  or in your basement because Wall Street wiped out her retirement account. Thanksgiving.... er, Gray Thursday, is more about the getting over on the traffic jams and through the parking lots in search of the latest piece of cheap Chinese electronics.  With underpaid workers and equally desperate consumers congregating en masse in Big Box Empire, a few purists are noticing that besides the War on Christmas so long bemoaned by Sarah Palin and the rest of the Fox gang, there's now a War on Thanksgiving too!

Remember that religious campaign to "Put Christ Back in Christmas" and stop the heresy of calling it Xmas? Well, we need to put the "Thanks" back in Giving, too. Because tragically, Thanksgiving has turned into Yanksgrabbing.  Oh come all ye faithful descendants of the Mayflower and let us restore the true meaning of the holiday! 

 

And it's not only noxious retail that is ruining Thanksgiving. The Obama administration wants you to become an unpaid salesperson for the predatory health insurance industry and talk your friends and relatives into buying health care "product" as they attempt to enjoy their food. They even supply you with a disgusting sales brochure to bring to the table. It's enough to make you hurl your pumpkin pie and go shopping at Walmart.

It goes without saying that we should boycott Walmart in solidarity with the striking workers, who seem to be finally getting under the skin of the loathsome Walton billionaires. Because they just got rid of their $11,000-an-hour CEO, and the National Labor Relations Board is bringing them to court for illegally retaliating against last year's Yanksgrabbing walkout. And have you seen their recent spate of greed-washing TV commercials, using associates to tell you how much they love working in Walmartisan? Apparently, you can get $40-a-month health insurance to supplement your Medicaid. I would hazard a guess that this junk insurance is good only for discounts on Walmart pharmacy purchases, or to partially pay for eye exams and glasses in Walmart's in-house optometry booth, or for flu shots and blood pressure checks from a moonlighting paramedic in one of those SuperCenter walk-in clinics. This is just a cynical guess on my part, mind you. Tell me if I'm wrong, and I will personally apologize to Sam Walton's ghost.


Meanwhile, the ThinkProgress War Room has put together a handy War on Thanksgiving guide for your hating and boycotting pleasure. I am not hopeful, though, that the American masses will Just Say No to Gray Thursday, Black Friday, Shoddy Saturday or even Cyber Monday. We can look forward to injuries or even death by Doorbuster. There will be at least one pepper-spraying incident over the last half-price Xbox. The scenes of desperate shoppers will be indistinguishable from scenes of desperate refugees in far-flung lands.

 

 

 

 Winston Smith, hero of George Orwell's 1984, mused that "if there is hope, it lies in the proles."

 

But in a scene that presages the Yanksgrabbing holiday extravaganza, he is quickly disabused of the notion that scarcity and poverty translate into social activism.  If only the oppressed masses "would rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies," the Party might be defeated from without.

 

Instead, one day when Smith is walking around the neighborhood and he hears a group of people wailing, it turns out to be a mob of hundreds, in despair not because of want and repression, but because there are only one or two cheap saucepans left in a bargain bin. Their faces are "as tragic as if they had been doomed passengers on a sinking ship."

 

What would happen, he asks, if all that raw human power translated into fighting over something that really mattered? "Until they become conscious they will never rebel," Smith writes in his journal. " And until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." 

 

Fast forward to 2013, and the crowds are still fighting for the wrong things. And it's even more Orwellian than Orwell, because  those coveted "smart TVs" will be spying on the lucky consumers who out-stampeded their fellow shoppers to own one just in time for Xmas. (h/t Fred Drumlevitch.)  As Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism puts it in her regular Links feature, Big Brother Is Watching You Watch. Even if you turn off the TV's digital collection mechanism, it will continue transmitting information and data on your viewing habits. So watch what you watch. (Or do what I do with Netflix, which does share your viewing habits. Tune in to stuff you hate, mute the sound, and go to sleep while Big Brother confusedly calculates all your hopes and dreams. In my case, it's a marathon of Deadly Women  interspersed with a binge of Extreme Couponing and a few old episodes of My Little Pony.)

 

On that cheery note.... Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! And joyful Hanukkah too.