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.
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 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!
If you're afraid of snakes, Science has found a visceral cause. There exists in our primate brains something called a pulvinar -- clusters of neurons specifically designed to make us fear the slithering legless reptiles.
So I ask myself: do our brains also contain special neuronal pockets making us fear spiders, bears and sabre-tooth tigers? And before Homo sapiens goes entirely extinct, will evolution go into speed-dial emergency survival mode and gift us with a special place in our cerebral cortices which enable us to spot a slimy politician from a mile away?
While you're pondering that one, I hope you've decided what to give out to your trick-or-treaters tonight. Since I am personally partial to Three Musketeers, I bought several bags of the "Fun Size" in anticipation that the usual lone child from my apartment complex will show up at my door and daintily pick out only a few from my 10-pound decorative pumpkin bowl. (I live on a busy highway with no sidewalks, not amenable to pedestrians, unfortunately.)
I was going to give out Kludgies in honor of Obamacare, but couldn't find any at ShopRite. Turns out the little goodies are still under development in the Neoliberal Confection Lab. From what I hear, the preliminary tests are not going well. For starters, the fake sugar they're using leaves a bitter aftertaste. And tasters are paradoxically reporting that the candy either melts in their mouths too quickly, or gets stuck in their throats, making them gag. Maybe the glitches will be worked out in time for next Halloween. People will have different reactions. Some will think they've been tricked. Others will be abjectly grateful for the treat, any treat. Still others will nod sagely and pontificate that the Kludgie sensation was always designed to be a different experience for different people. The poor person's poison is the better-off person's candy.
One thing's for darn certain. Kludgie portions will be pitifully small, but the marketers will try to fool us by calling them "fun size."
Oh well. They couldn't possibly be worse than Candy Corn and its close relative, Pumpkin Boobs (those orange sugar globules with the telltale green nipple), or Mary Janes, (which you could only possibly crave after first indulging in some real Mary Jane), Other most-hateds are Bit o'Honey and Tootsie Rolls. And watch out for those Whoppers. They might just remind you of your favorite worst politician.
And if these images aren't scary enough for you, 60 Minutes ran a segment that actually includes pornographic footage of Dick Cheney's ex-heart lying in an O.R. emesis basin like a slab of rotten bloated meat. You can see it here while gorging yourself on your imaginary Kludgies.
This week's edition of inside-the-Beltway angst centers around the pressing question:
Is Temp Emp (temporary emperor) Obama ignorant, detached, or just plain mendacious?
Look at the following four crises, and examine how they are affecting you personally in your own daily slog. What did you know about them, and when did the corporate media let you know it? (hint: #4 has not yet been deemed officially pressing) Look into your souls, Proles, and decide whether, in the grand scheme of things, the resolution of any of these crises would make your lives even one smidgen better.
1) Barack Obama was either aware or he wasn't that the renegade NSA is a shadow state unto itself before Angela Merkel called to complain. Reports that he initially couldn't hear what she was kvetching about because of the annoying echo feedback effect from those hidden Oval Office speakers could not be confirmed. But we can confirm for you that while not upset that the NSA is vacuuming up billions of our phone call records and emails, Intelligentrix Dianne Feinstein is hopping mad that the crème de la crème is being unfairly targeted. She could be next, heaven forfend.
2) Despite millions of subscribers getting cancellation notices, Barack Obama is still out there telling people that if they like their health insurance, they can keep it. Pundits are divided as to whether he's deliberately lying about this, or is simply as dumb as a box of rocks. Worst of all, are his handlers giving him plausible deniability on this too? The White House insists that he meant that if you like the insurance provided by predatory profiteers, you will never, on his neo-liberal watch, be forced into Medicare for All or even given the option of a public option. Also, who'd want to keep crap insurance anyway since O-Care forces some of the crappiness out, like kicking you off for getting sick. Plus, incisive legal eagle that he is, Obama also could have meant that if you like the way your shiny Blue Cross card looks in your wallet, by all means keep it for old times' sake. The plastic card police will not be raiding your house with scissors to make you cut it up into a million tiny pieces. As he has stated time and time again, your need for privacy is extremely important to him. Keeping a crap insurance card does not interfere with national security, after all. (defined as the overweening need for corporations and plutocrats to feel secure in their personhoods and their own wallets.
3) The White House is blaming the Republicans are blaming Kathleen Sebelius is blaming the contractors are blaming the White House for Obamacare website glitches. (The estimated 31 million Americans potentially being left out of the ACA? They are not part of the official circular firing squad, as far as the corporate media are concerned. Are you among the 8 million denied entry to the segregated Obamacare Pool in red states just because you're poor enough to qualify for expanded Medicaid? What do you know about this, and when did you know it? Or, are you so glued to your electronic gadgets and TVs, that you remain still blissfully unaware of your own slow boil in the simmering neo-liberal pot?)
4). Beginning Friday, almost 50 million people receiving assistance under the SNAP (food stamp) program will automatically lose the equivalent of 18 meals a month because neither right wing of the Money Party gives a flying f**k. Most importantly, the corporate media conglomerates controlling 90% of everything that you see and hear do not even consider the imminent starvation of a fifth of the population in the richest country on earth a crisis of the magnitude of Dianne Feinstein's angst, or Glitchgate, or even Benghazi. It's not on the Times' homepage anyway, where Beltway heartburn over Obama's personal remoteness trumps the hunger pangs of the masses.
Snatching food from the mouths of real people is the real crisis, people. The reason you're not hearing about it is the media are just having a hard time framing it around the needs and wants and interests of the rich. They can't frame it around political personalities. It's not a contrived Dem vs. Pub thing amenable to dueling talking heads.
And there's a reason that the Temp Emp himself is stonily silent about it, and that very few Democrats are bothering to raise a stink about it. They're complicit. You see, part of the stimulus funding allocated for SNAP after the financial crisis was later "borrowed" to help pay for Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative of healthier school lunches. It was Democrats robbing one poor segment of the population to give to another. And it's a given that the poor themselves always end up paying in the end.
And here's a scandal on top of a crisis. Guess who else is benefiting mightily from the first lady's healthy choices public relations campaign? Big business and corporate lobbies. As I have written about before, Flotus's current public-private partnership spiel is telling "folks" to drink more water -- preferably bottled water that you purchase from such corporate welfare giants as Coke and Pepsi. (their soda sales are down.) Go to the grocery story looking for beverages, and you're immediately assaulted by the sight of Evian and Poland Spring in toxic petroleum-based bottles bearing Michelle's Drink Up! imprint.
Apparently, testifying before Congress on national TV for the purpose of publicly shaming them into restoring food stamp funding is not on her neo-liberal agenda. Let Them Drink Water, meanwhile, is a recipe for a reprise of 1789.
Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor-turned-columnist, devotes an unprecedented seven digital pages to his most recent piece, an apparently unedited email exchange with Glenn Greenwald on the role of contemporary journalism. Read the whole thing and see if you don't agree that Greenwald comes out the more lucid, fair-minded and even-handed.... despite Keller's pretty laughable claim that Glenn espouses a "partisan point of view."
So, journalism is activist.... who knew? I always thought the stories just kinda wrote themselves. And of course, every reporter in America has a duty to squelch his/her inner, inborn allegiance to one of the two right wings of the American uniparty, and fairly present the two equal sides of every argument. And Greenwald does not fall into this category, and Keller is out to find out why, why, why.
If you don't have time to read the whole thing, here's a brief synopsis:
Keller: So, you're an activist journo, who came into our exalted territory by way of lawyering and blogging. Ecccchhhhh!!!!! And now you're hypocritically going to work for a billionaire foreigner who started an internet marketplace (EBay) for the lower classes. Ewwwwww.
Greenwald: Establishment journalism can be toxic, suffocating, neutering, boring, and conceited. Journalists are human beings with points of view. Get over it. All journalism is activist. The only things that count are accuracy and reliability.
Keller: We're more serious than you. We have editors in suits. We often respect our government. And ditto for national security (whatever that means.) So Nonny nonny boo boo.
Greenwald: Unquestioning fealty to authority is a clear and present danger. We should not value American lives more than non-American lives, and not mistake national security (whatever that is) with a government's desire for secrecy.
Keller: Stop pretending that nationalism and patriotism are dirty words! Stop it, stop it, stop it! And Julian Assange is a callously indifferent indiscriminate dumper and I can prove it! And by the way, how does it feel to sell out and become a star, a brand, for a foreign upstart?
Greenwald: WikiLeaks didn't dump all that false info on Saddam's WMDs. Or help elect Bush by withholding the story on his illegal wiretaps. Our new venture will operate on the premise that the purpose of journalism is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted and treat the powerful not with reverence, but with skepticism. By the way, your own reporter, James Risen, is being threatened with prison over his refusal to name names. By the way, our new venture will include both liberals and conservatives, but not in the vein of David Brooks.
Keller: Leave my David alone!! He is a compassionate plute in a suit. Your scorn for fraudulent moderation is quite telling.... and extreme. Now I'll let you have the last word, because I am a standup guy and unlike some people around here, reasonable and reasoned. Good luck in your venture selling out to a foreign billionaire who caters to the underclass.
Greenwald: Brooks, like the paper that hired him, is a tool for the military industrial complex and the plutocracy controlling it and enriched by it. ("And with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less 'activist,' subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.") This so called email debate was so much semantic gymnastics and weasel-wording on your part. But thanks anyway for wishing me luck.
My (somewhat ironic) comment:
I have to compliment Bill Keller for printing verbatim his exchange with Glenn Greenwald, when he very easily could have turned his column into another establishment smear job on a non-traditional journalist. (see the Julian Assange story by Keller from a few years ago, in which Assange's skipping and socks and personality quirks trumped his whistleblowing and leaks in the public interest.)
The conversational framing of this column is an indication that the Times is taking to heart some of the recent criticism about its proclivity to act as a mouthpiece for the government, too often giving unwarranted anonymity and protection to elected officials, the better to spread their propaganda.
Much of the credit for this seeming turnabout is also due to the Times's outstanding public editor, Margaret Sullivan. She has been at the forefront of criticizing everything from the paper's coverage of drone strikes, to the NSA revelations, and yes -- even David Brooks, when in a recent column he referred to mixed-race families as "mutts." (he said it was OK, because biracial people sometimes refer to themselves as mutts.)
Brooks had also attempted to pettily marginalize Edward Snowden as a misfit with girlfriend issues as soon as Glenn Greenwald broke the first NSA story. If anything, Glenn's criticism of him is way too mild. Brooks is a menace in centrist clothing, and a disgrace to journalism.
For further reading, here's a piece on Greenwald's de facto exile and the distinct possibility of his arrest should he ever venture back to the mainland of the Homeland. Were it not for Edward Snowden and Greenwald's reporting, Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world, would never have learned that the United Stasians are listening in to her conversations. The international reputation of Barack Obama has been left dangling like a severed land line.
When is a Grand Bargain not a Grand Bargain?
When the movers and shakers of the Beltway realize that "Grand Bargain" is now one of the most loathed phrases in America. When the bipartishits realize that the whole country is on to their collusion to defy the wishes of 80% of the American public by "reforming" the great social insurance programs of the 20th century. When they resort to weasel words and to Grand Bargain Denialism to throw the AARP and various progressive groups off the scent.
The liberal blogosphere was orgasming today over the news that Majority Leader Harry Reid has finally grown a pair and vowed to protect Social Security and Medicare from the budget chopping block!
“If you give a bully a dollar today, they ask for a dollar and a half tomorrow,” he said in a radio interview with Nevada's KNPR. “It has taken a while for all my caucus to come to that understanding. And quite frankly, the president, wonderful man that he is, he doesn’t like confrontation and he likes to work things out with people.”
“I was too lenient. Don’t blame it all on him,” Reid added.
He also ruled out the possibility that a budget conference committee convening next week will reach a "grand bargain" that would cut entitlements, raise taxes and reduce spending.
“We are not going to have a grand bargain in the near future,” he said.
Not so fast with the congratulations to Give Em Hell Harry, liberals. Read the fine print. By "near future," Reid means in the next six weeks, or until mid-December when the latest bipartisan gang has deadlined itself into striking another nibbler of a deal to only temporarily stave off disaster.
There's always early next year. The government could shut down again on January 17th, and the debt ceiling is again in danger of being breached right before Valentine's Day. And thus, in only a few short months, Reid will again be open to some grand-bargaining on "entitlements":
The Democratic leader signaled that he could be open to minor trimming of some Medicare or Social Security spending as part of deal that involves tax revenue. Obama in his last budget included more means testing for Medicare and lower Social Security benefits as part of a new inflation calculation.
“The president has stuck his neck out ... there has to be some reciprocity here,” he said.
Asked about entitlements, Reid said: “I am happy to do that on some grand bargain ... that is not going to happen this time.”
Reid said this even while admitting that Social Security is "the most successful program in the history of the world. It's not about to go broke."
Thus does Harry Reid echo the sentiments of chief GOP budget negotiator Paul Ryan, who has once again pivoted from Tea Party Crazyville and is safely back in Third Way New Democrat (centrist plutocrat cult) territory. Remember, it was only a couple weeks ago that Ryan, too, was heavy into Grand Bargain denialism. Of course, it's just a matter of employing the right semantics and weasel words. Although, like Reid, he proclaims himself opposed to a Grand Bargain, he, too, still wants a grand bargain of entitlement cuts in the not-so-distant near future:
"If we focused on doing some big grand bargain, like those prior efforts ... then I don't think we'll be successful because we'll focus on our differences. Each party will demand that the other compromises a core principle and then we'll get nothing done."
Ryan, who will lead Republicans on the 29-member negotiating panel that convenes on October 30, said there is a better chance of finding common ground with Democrats on "smarter" spending cuts to replace the across-the-board reductions to discretionary spending. He said these include reductions and reforms to expensive federal benefits programs known as entitlements, such as Social Security, Medicare and some farm subsidy programs. (Karen here: he means cutting food stamps to starve people, but is too cowardly to say so right out loud.)
And don't despair, all ye who entered here in hopes of finding a stocking-full of cat food for Christmas. Because President Obama is suddenly agreeable to cutting reforming Social Security Disability in the current negotiations. (I knew there was a reason 60 Minutes just ran a propaganda hit piece falsely claiming that hordes of malingerers are bilking the system.)
And now I know what Obama really meant when he appeared before a group of disabled people last year and promised he would "have their backs."
As an antidote to the Grand Bargain propaganda campaigns of Plutopundit Tom Friedman and his pluto-pal Stan Druckenmiller, and all manner of Doomsday Coots in Suits, Paul Krugman has written a great column ripping them all a new one. My response:
Druckenmiller belongs to the Forbes 400 billionaires who now possess more wealth than 150 million other Americans combined. Yet there he goes, touring the country, whining to college kids and scapegoating Grandma as the Cruella DeVil stealing their hopes and dreams and puppies. Not he and the austerian masters of high finance!
They've got a bad case of plutocratic paranoia -- fear that the old, the disabled, poor families, and veterans are scraping by at their expense.
Druckenmiller, Pete Peterson and the whole gang of media-dubbed "thought leaders" think they own the place. Well, actually they do own the place. And they want to own the people inhabiting the place. They're the ideological descendants of feudal lords, plantation owners and robber barons. They want their labor free or cheap, and they want the right to discard it when it's outlived its usefulness.
And the people at the bottom are starting to get restless. McWorkers are demanding a living wage. Retirees are refusing to accept chained CPI cuts to their earned benefits. Teachers and students and other victims of privatization are striking. The SEC is threatening to enforce a Dodd-Frank rule that CEOs must reveal the obscene gap between their wealth and the peanuts they pay in wages. (average ratio is now 350 to 1 and climbing.)
The paranoid plutocrats know they've gone too far, but they're powerless to overcome their own addictions. It's past time to give them some hefty taxation therapy, wouldn't you say?
