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If Obama Cuts Social Security...
The president indicates that funding for the hallmark Democratic program is on the table. Is this the last straw?
Wednesday night, the Washington Post reported that on top of the big cuts to Medicare he's already proposed, President Obama is now considering endorsing cuts to Social Security. In making this announcement (which formally embraces the concept of Social Security cuts first proposed by Obama's debt commission), the White House has lost all credibility in arguing that its 2012 political problems are the result of unfair expectations, particularly on the left. At the same time, the White House has finally exposed the strategy behind what so many of its apologists insisted was deft "three dimensional chess" on behalf of old-school liberalism -- and as we see, these tactics have nothing to do with liberalism and everything to do with Orwell-ism.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
To review: The Wall Street Journal reports that "across a wide range of measures -- employment growth, unemployment levels, bank lending, economic output, income growth, home prices and household expectations for financial well-being -- the economy's improvement since the recession's end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II." In light of this miserable situation, it's no surprise that Gallup's Frank Newport reports that the president's job approval rating "has been hovering near the fault line between probable re-election and probable 'one-term' presidency."
For most of the president's tenure, he, his staffers and his devoted-but-dwindling army of sycophants have insisted that the political fallout from the crushing recession reflects unrealistic expectations of Obama in the wake of George W. Bush's destructive reign. It is, dare I say, an audacious claim, especially coming from a candidate who asked us all to have the "audacity of hope" -- and it's more than a little insulting. After all, much of the complaints about the president have been about campaign promises that he didn't just fail to fulfill -- but that he refused to even try to fulfill.
Indeed, when a political candidate promises to try to pass a public option to compete with private insurers, attempt to crack down on Wall Street abuse, do what he can to stop unfair trade deals, oppose extending his predecessors tax cuts and avoid initiating initiate costly new wars sans congressional approval, and then once in office works to kill a public option, refuses to prosecute Wall Street crimes, presses the rigged trade deals he opposed, supports the extension of his predecessor's tax cuts and starts a new war in Libya with no congressional authorization -- whose fault is it that he ends up in reelection trouble?
I'd say the answer is obvious -- I'd say that if such a politician wasn't in reelection trouble, it would be a sign that our democracy is in a deeper crisis than it already is.
But, then, merely citing this record brings accusations of treason, at least from Democratic staffers, pundits and activists in Washington. In an age of politics that has melded politicians with celebrity and activism with starfucking, to be a rank-and-file progressive and honestly examine a candidate's record during a reelection campaign is to risk being portrayed as a dangerous, seditious, ideologically zealous revolutionary.
After Wednesday night, though, the power of this kind of with-us-or-against-us partisanship will face it's ultimate test. Because while the intricacies of health care, Wall Street regulations and trade pacts can be muddled with esoterica and while Democratic presidents have shown a deft ability to soothe their base by conflating militarism with humanitarianism (the same trick, of course, that Republicans use for their militarist adventures), this Democratic president is aiding a new war on Social Security, the single most popular social program in American history, a program that the Democratic Party has -- both in principle and out of sheer self-interest -- long based its brand on. Whether Obama ultimately champions specific cuts or just floats the general possibility of such cuts, the larger news is that he has now legitimized them as a negotiating chip -- and importantly, he made such a move on his own, not because of circumstantial necessity.
To appreciate this reality, go back and read every Democratic Party press release during President Bush's 2005 failed assault on Social Security. Those press releases reminded us that Social Security is one of the most fiscally sound programs in American history, projected to run surpluses for the foreseeable future. Additionally, what problems it does face can be easily solved -- as just one example of a solution, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that had President Obama refused to extend the Bush tax cuts and instead worked to repeal them, that move alone would generate revenues equal to two and one-half times the entire Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years (yes, 75 years!).
And yet now, like that gruesome scene at the end of "Fargo," Social Security -- a pay-as-you-go embodiment of fiscal responsibility -- is being rammed into the grisly woodchipper of cynical debt-reduction politics. Only instead of a glowering Peter Stormare (or Mitt Romney) doing the pushing, there’s a cheery President Obama insisting that cuts are really just progressive efforts to "strengthen" -- the same Obama who chastised his 2008 Republican opponent for using the same pathetic spin to shroud cuts to the same program.
This is not real politik, it is not triangulation and it isn't even Bush-ism (that is, taking unpopular positions and then just arrogantly pursuing them without regard for public will). No, we are watching a sort of Orwellian dystopia. Indeed, it is a sight to behold: a regime that believes it can say one set of things over and over and over again, and then do exactly the opposite.
Inherent in that ideology is the assumption that Americans -- and particularly Democratic voters -- are either too stupid to see the heist in process, or if they do see the heist, are too entranced by their president's power/fame/celebrity/charisma to want to do anything about it, even if what's being pilfered is Democrats' Social Security crown jewel.
The assumption, in other words, is that ignorance and fealty will permit a president to serve as an accomplice to the very grand larceny he was explicitly elected to office to oppose. Should the assumption prove true -- should Obama now be cheered on for doing to Social Security what no Republican president has ever been able to do -- the date on the calendar may say 2011, but it will really be 1984.
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59 Comments so far
Show All"Pimp"would suggest that Obastard has power -- the pimps are the one who send him out to work the streets . . .
The pimp metaphor can go either way.
Obama is the Big Dadddy Pimp - he's providing the wealthy MIC the opportunity to fuck the American People, in a most unfriendly fashion, and Obama gets to keep the tip.
He's a particularly nasty pimp and more like the leader of a corporate militarist team of international looters, including looting his own country, and I don't mean Kenya, although Obama & Company may have looted there also.
Libert, Equality and Fraternity!
Let's not forget Obama cut the Social Security payroll withholding tax in December, which appears to be the beginning of defunding Social Security. That was a gold-plated gift to the Republicans.
He did that on his own without asking Republicans. He knew full well that putting the money back would be fought by Republicans and Obama's timid Democrats as a tax increase. The volunteer work President Obama does for right wing Republicans, and against the wishes of the limpest of Democrats, is endless.
Obama didn't eliminate the SS COLA, that was just a routine formulation by the SS administration because the cost of living was down (they have some crazy ass formula for computing the cost of living). The COLA should return next year because there was a spike in gas prices earlier in the year. Obama did drill a hole (about $112 billion??) in SS with his wage tax holiday which will force SS to borrow from the general funds for the first time. There is no doubt that betrayer Obama will make cuts to SS, Medicare and Medicaid. Ralph Nader was right about everything.
JerzyJoe, Ralph is always right about everything, and food and energy are excluded from COLA calculations because they are considered "volatile". Anyway, COLA is on the chopping block.
I do remember Obama announcing there would be a 2 year freeze on COLA, which had me wondering how he was so sure the economy would be stagnant for 2 years. That hasn't been the case down on the ground. Prices have spiked on many nonfood goods. Perhaps because skyrocketing energy prices drove up the costs of manufacturing and delivery? Or just the vultures circling?
Another plan being touted is to extend the wage holiday and to add the employer payroll tax to it. Death by a thousand cuts. The big problem is that the trust fund is full of US IOUs ever since Nixon and - remember? We're broke. Can't pay our bills.
Obama is going after SS big time. I don't have a great deal of faith in the voters. They have shown an uncanny ability to vote against their interests.
Prices haven't just spiked on non-food goods. Why just a month ago I stood in front of the milk, which I just in cooking on occasion, my jaw dropped and I said out loud WTF? A quart of milk jumped from $129 to $189 in two weeks. And that is only one example. I have had a lot of those moments in the last couple of years, as well as the picture of the hamster wheel running faster and faster attempting to keep up with just the basics.
I hope you left out the decimal points-- because if you didn't, no matter where you live you're paying WAY too much for a quart of milk. ;)
"The big problem is that the trust fund is full of US IOUs ever since Nixon.."
Only in the sense that any government bond is an IOU.
You want to sell that idea??
Listen, I have been down the path of IOUs and SS is a Ponzi scheme and it doesn't fly.
When your money goes to SS it is used to buy a Special Series Government Bond.
It is special because it can not be traded and manipulated on the open market by the traders that have caused bond markets around the World to tank. Those bonds earn interest and provide internal funding for the government. They are as secure as any US Government bond. Check our credit rating and the sale of US Bonds to get an idea of how secure. Be honest.
What is going on is the private market is wanting to loot SS and end any financial security for the American People in old age and disability and this lie serves that purpose.
OBTW, SS has worked this way since day ONE. Nixon didn't start anything. I am curious where you got this idea from.
"Obama is going after SS big time. I don't have a great deal of faith in the voters. They have shown an uncanny ability to vote against their interests."
You bet he is and he is serving his fellow mobsters. I will be damned if he gets my vote. Hopefully Democrats will primary this corporate POS and give America a real human being to vote for. I am tired of voting for selected reptilians.
As far as the American voter is concerned I am as pessimissitic as you are but I am betting that self interest will carry the day and Americans will wake up to the screwing they have been getting for many a year.
No, this is not the last straw. That came a long time ago.
For me it came about 30 years ago. That's when I started to vote NADER. I will continue to vote NADER.
Obama's policies are no surprise. After all, he is a Democrat. He is just doing what Democrats do.
Not voting is for suckers. Advocating not voting is for those who are employed by the powerful. Voting works. That's why they destroyed ACORN.
If voting were good for the people, it would be illegal.
One thing we can do: Reject Obama as a President and as a Person. Don't just threaten to vote for a "third party candidate". Reject Obama and the Democrats for what they are; just the other half of the two party duopoly that is robbing us blind, first of our Freedoms, and now of (what's left of) our Wealth.
Whenever he speaks, boo him; wherever he appears, shun him. He has discraced himself and betrayed those of us who (in whatever fashion) supported him. Having been made to play the part of fools, let us not add the trappings of a clown.
The emperor has no clothes--and he's a clueless bastard.
donna,
"clueless bastard". Well said, which I had already knew before he took office. But so many of you clamored, cried believing he's the Messiah. Many Democrats still blaming the Repugs. Have we forgotten Pastor Jim Jones that lead his flock to heaven in Guyana? This Messiah will lead the largest flock to heaven since the beginning of time. Amen.
Obama has demonstrated clearly that corporations are better putting their money into the Democratic party, as they are best positioned to sell out their voters and not even a pretense of opposition is necessary.
Wanna dismantle the last unions and do away with Social Security and Medicare? Democrats are the way to go.
What can Obama give the Right next? Women stripped of the right to vote? I'm actually hard-pressed to find an economic issue he won't give them. Maybe as his final act in office he'll re-institute slavery and leave the White House in leg irons after letting the South secede.
Exactly. How is it that the Dems are even looked at as the lesser of the two evils when it takes a Democrat to accomplish what the Republicans wanted all along. Reagan and Bush failed with NAFTA, but Slick Willy got ’er done, not to mention welfare reform, the telecommunications act, and the repeal of Glass-Stegal. Bush II failed to "reform" Social Security, so here comes Obama to get it past his base.
At least with a Repubican in office, the worst policies are actually opposed by enough people to possible make a difference.
JeffreyK
"At least with a Republican in office, the worst policies are actually opposed by enough people to possible make a difference." That's what I keep on saying. Dubya, tried to privatized SS and the Democrats stop it. If we vote in sister Palin, you will see the Democrats will be up in arms. I bet you Dubya and Cheney are laughing at the stupid Democrats. Obama's a gifts to Dubya and Cheney.
It seems he would wait until after the election but he KNOWS most of you will vote for him no matter what he does. After all, you have no alternative so it doesn't matter what you think. Me, I'm not going to do it. If there isn't a progressive alternative candidate on the ballot, I'll write one in. I will not vote for my own executioner.
Yeah, so much hollow grousing from the daffy Dems these days when you know they'll scurry back under Obama's skirt the moment some Republican bugaboo like Romney or Bachmann is trotted out to scare them back into obedience.
Democrats, Obama's got your number. Thanks a lot for your cowardice and stupidity in not seeing through this huckster. Now the country is hosed.
fake_french,
Wishful thinking. Obama will cut SS, Medicare and Medicaid....and will be reelected again. By the Democrats. Hahaha...
"Inherent in that ideology is the assumption that Americans -- and particularly Democratic voters -- are either too stupid to see the heist in process..."
Paging Mr. Sirota! Mr. Sirota to the clue phone!
Inherent in that ideology is the assumption that "journalists" like Mr. Sirota will continue to placate the corporate elite by engaging in needless analysis looooong after such time as it is necessary and not give voice to the truth which is that the people running this nation are a gang of psychopathic thieves and murderers.
They are killing innocent people around the planet in our name.
They are torturing innocent people around the planet in our name.
They are stealing resources and wealth from people around the planet in our name.
And now, NOW that these criminals have fully turned their serpentine eyes upon us to rape and pillage, Mr. Sirota finally seems to begin to sense - just begin, mind you - that something's not quite right, huh?
Now, Mr. Sirota, are you beginning to see what many, many here have seen for a while now?
Now are you willing to drop all the politico-pretense and engage in true journalism?
Drop the niceties and tell it how it is.
They are killers and thieves and liars all.
Yes, remarks like yours will really get those liberals who are finally coming about to reality on our side.
Yup, better to self-censor so that we can continue the farce.
Shhhh, I won't tell if you won't. Teehee.
Yikes.
Good for you, polycarpe! If those liberals can't figure out they're being had, they haven't been bitch slapped around enough. I loved what you said. All of it!
pjd, It's ridiculous to blame the left for the liberals clinging to Obama.
pjd is just a pro-nuke Obamabot who wandered in a few weeks ago to try our patience.
BeForKids,
Maybe you should blame the Repugs or Nader?
pjd412,
BTW, which side are you on, a Democrat?
polycarpe,
Well said and he'll continue doing exactly what you wrote, while the majority of the Democrats continue to support Obama and the Democrats. Can you imagine what he'll do in his 2nd term? He got away with murder in his first term together with the previous groups of murderers. Obama will be even more vicious! Brothers and sisters we ask for it and we got it!
One more time: So who are we voting for next year, Mr. Sirota?
One more time: So who are we voting for next year, corvo?
Bradley Manning.
Good answer, and I would join you in that vote. Absolutely.
Obama has been a faithful servant of the Owners and will be rewarded with a second term. As Stalin said, “The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”
Do you think he really wants a second term? My guess is that the rich folks have made him a better offer, with much better pay and benefits.
Freezing salaries, cost of living increases and putting SSA and Medicare on the table of ugliness will not get my vote for either PARTY.
The Seniors of this country are being thrown under the bus.
"What a Revolting Developement This Is"
Say NO to cuts and anything else regressive.
Emigrate!
Or let Texas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Utah, Idaho, Kansas, N & S Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nevada, Tennessee, form their own nation plus any other miserable red states.
Or watch this "great nation" only become more unfit for "life, liberty, and the pursuit, of happiness."
God damn you all!
If all the "miserable red states" seceded from the Union, we'd be left with Vermont and not much else.
Face it: most of the country is either deep red, or occasionally embarrassed by its redness but willing to rejoin the fold at the first opportunity.
" it is a sight to behold: a regime that believes it can say one set of things over and over and over again, and then do exactly the opposite."
Something's gotta give. This just can't keep up. So blatantly hypocritical on all counts, foreign and domestic. Something must cave in.
If Obama Cuts Socail Security... he cuts his own throat.
" cuts his own throat"....How so? He's done the bidding of his masters quite well, and will be rewarded with lucrative book deals, speaking engagements, and seats on boards of directorships, plus a pension, health care, and security for life, courtesy of you and I. Michelle will have many of the same perks. His place in the history books as the first African American president is accomplished. Look at how well Clinton and Killary have been rewarded for their contributions to foisting NAFTA on the country, killing Glass-Steagall, and contributing to the growth of the MIC. The same rewards of office await O'bomber.
If he's only a one termer, he gets to enjoy those perks all the sooner, and doesn't have to expend the energy of presenting himself as a Democrat and a moderate. In his position, with all he has to gain after leaving office, I'd jump at the chance of being just a one termer.
.... and most importantly, he can take up smoking again in public.
I am judging by the numerous comments made by general society, usually of the republican / tea-bag variety, that in general do not wish a long life for him or his family.
I used to think that was a horrible thing to even hear.
Medicare and Social Security have to be off the table. These two programs are targets of the Right because they actually work.
Its less than a year from the caucuses and primaries. There doesn't appear to be any Democrat who's willing to run against Obama in the primaries and even if there were they wouldn't get the party support. A run against the party's sitting president would be seen as damaging by the party power brokers.
I haven't seen anyone who's even stated they're considering a run either as an independent or a candidate for one of the minor parties. There'll be some candidates by then but without starting now nobody will know who they are or what they stand for. Remember, elections are mostly popularity contests and not decided on the issues.
Bottom line I guess is that as it currently stands we are going to be stuck with either Obama or an equally bad Republican for the next four years.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Yepper. We and our "people's tribunes" have been excluded from even minimal participation in the real power structure and its mass media. We are now just neo-feudal peasants suffering the whimsy of Ayn Rand's fairytale "free market." How many homeless hungry Americans can dance on the head of a pin? It depends on whether they're dead in the streets yet or not.
Government layoffs are accelerating as Obama's weak stimulus fades and Quantitative Easing 2 runs out (that last will help weaken the now hyper-corrupt stock market). Consumer prices for food, utilities, clothes, toiletries,
mass transportation, car repairs, etc., have been slowly and steadily
ticking up for months despite a recent slight drop in gasoline prices
due to Obomber's short-term machinations in the oil market.
His military, ICE, FBI and other "homeland security" spending is up, up
and away through the exosphere. It's more "wars of choice," police brutality & massive deportations from proto-Oceania, er-um, post-Bush Amurka these daze.
Because of climbing food prices I've run out of food earlier and
earlier each month over the last three months. Lost more weight,
though! Thursday the church food pantry I visit every
three or four months was closed so I went to a different one I hadn't
been to in about six months. There were at least four times as many
white people in the line this time. All of them over 50 and many of
them freshly fallen from the middle-class by the look of their newer
clothes and fancy hairstyles. This country's going to be like a hot
grain silo awaiting a spark by this time next July.
Obama's top economic advisor, Timothy Geithner admitted in a closed
door meeting a couple of weeks back that "another meltdown is on the
way." He said the timing of it would be unpredictable. The way his
ilk in the Fed and Wall Street lanced the 2008 Bubble by deliberately
icing Lehman Brothers, "engineering the handling of AIG" and specially
protecting Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, et
al--well, just let's say I don't think the timing will be
unpredictable to the high rollers and their political clowns unless
some other outside market factor(s) unpredictably mess with their
inner circle's pre-arranged timing. They're just waiting for the next
bubble to get fat enough while they concoct which story to use to
extort another tax-payer plus foreign borrowed bailout from the
overwhelmingly ignorant and brainwashed American public.
The order to lance the secondary bubble will be purely for the benefit
of the oligarchy and it's upper-middle-class servants regardless of
which political party is in power. American democracy and its
middle-class have become historically "quaint" to the ruling elite.
Even the cultural memory of the middle-class America I once knew is fading fast. To all you ex-pats who have reason to: Come and see it soon before it's gone.
The Dimcrap Party has shit itself and is both pointless and soul-dead. The best thing we can do is take the responsibility upon ourselves to support the AFL-CIO's call for a national independent labor movement that is no longer shackled to the failed Dimcrap Party: No longer donating to it and no longer knocking door-to-door campaigning for it and getting nothing but more offshoring in return. The unions can still hit these treacherous neo-liberal Dims where they hurt--just when they need them most in the weeks before election day--and they can do it at the State and national level.
The AFL-CIO alone still has over eleven million members. A national cross-union independent labor movement that includes the UAW, public sector unions, teachers unions besides the NEA, nurses unions, skilled trades unions, entertainment unions, SEIU, etc., could potentially include well over 50 million unionized members and their non-union supporters and sway any election it focused on. It could field candidates from the working-class Left to run against any Democrat almost anywhere in the nation and speak truth to power against the current neo-lib/neo-con tri-partisan hydra in Washington D.C.
Several unions have been meeting around the country or organize across multiple job fields. Find the local unions near you and encourage them to (1) heed the AFL-CIO's call for a national independent labor movement and (2) organize with other unions in their region to begin to create a national movement that can field its own candidates against treacherous Democrats. The Democratic Party must be replaced by a Labor Progress Party that represents the betrayed American working-class and authentic progressives, socialists and left-libertarians both union and non-union.
Some articles of our times that speak for themselves:
The Breaking Point:
http://firedoglake.com/2011/07/07/the-breaking-point/
Cut the Crap and Create Jobs:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/economy-a-budget/170347-cut-the-crap-and-create-jobs
The FBI's New "Relaxed" Domestic Operations and Investigations Guide:
[You know it's bad when even the corporate media worries enough to
cover it despite all the other assaults on the Constitution by Bush II
& Obama they routinely ignore]:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/13/national/main20070845.shtml
New Documents Reveal Behind-the-Scenes FBI Role in Controversial
Secure Communities Deportation Program [And its link to the FBI's
"Next Generation Identification" project--straight out of Orwell's
1984--metal]:
http://www.ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/new-documents-reveal-behind-scenes-fbi-role-controversial-secure-communities-deportation-program
Joint Onslaught by U.S. and Russian Oligarchs: Belarus Under Siege:
http://www.counterpunch.org/brand07082011.html
The Globe’s Not Only Getting Hotter. It’s More Unjust and Unstable, Too:
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/07/global_turmoil_drives_a_wave_of_environmental_migrants.html
I don't know about you, but I've had all I can stand of this dumbass fascist neo-lib/neo-con globalized suicide pact. Don't mourn: ORGANIZE.
Thanks for this excellent post, Metal. Your thinking is very clear, and you have a mind broad enough to tie a lot of details (and related material) together. I just printed it, so I can give a copy to my sister. She got out of stocks a year ago... she believes the whole thing is about to implode. I figure it's been so decoupled from the measures of GENUINE growth, as to constitute its own 100% fiction.
The less forests, the higher the Dow.
The more human suffering, the higher the Dow.
The larger the numbers of persons perishing in unnecessary wars, the higher the Dow.
The more noxious the outflow of dangerous chemicals into our waterways, soil, and air, the higher the Dow.
The more human economic misery, via the evisceration of the Middle Class, the higher the Dow.
The more reliable the betrayal of political representatives, including "the leader," the higher the Dow.
The more cancer, obesity, drug addiction, and depression, the higher the Dow.
And on and on.
I remember when Michael Moore accepted an Academy Award, and called out Bush's fictitious war based on fictitious evidence. Heck, the entire global economy has been tethered to a market of fictions. So long as the media remains captured, and the dominant voices ASSURE the public that recovery IS happening, a lot of people will neither see nor understand what's going on. I suppose on some visceral level, it has to hit them that all these calamities simultaneously impacting the natural world (and taking many person's homes along for the ride) has to create a blip on the Dow scale. Yet does it?
It's not just Inverted Totalitarianism... it's inverted values, reasoning, priorities, and in most instances... perceptions! Neptune, the planetary ruler equated with the Age we're transiting (Pisces into Aquarius) out of... is directly related to illusions, deception, and chemicals! (Chemicals that mimick nature are, after all, key imposters... that's why GM "food" is termed "substantially equivalent" to the real mccoy) and all of these items are truly washing over us, as Neptune comes full circle back to where it was at the time of its discovery... about 164 years ago.
Hi Siouxrose,
At some point between 1996 and 2007 (during the overlap of the techno/dot.com bubble and the formation of the Housing Bubble), the number of Americans who made most or all of their money from investment & rentier income exceeded the number of Americans who made most or all of their money from actual labor. I'm still trying to get at hard numbers on the difference in size between these two groups and how that difference has changed from late 2007 until now.
As offshoring, domestic job losses and home foreclosures accelerate, there will come an inevitable REVERSE TIPPING POINT where the number of Americans who make most or all of their money from actual labor (or unemployment benefits) will once again exceed the number of Americans who make most or all of their money from investment & rentier income.
The corruption and volatility of the stock market that is still recklessly speculating in sub-prime mortgages, sub-prime auto loans, sub-prime student loans, black market derivatives, sold-off foreign State assets, oil and food (creating food shortages and rising unemployment in the Third World) could suddenly implode a secondary asset bubble in the U.S. That would drive tens of millions of Americans out of the stock market and back towards (or into) the under-employed working-class. Their tri-partisan neo-liberal fairytales will have no answers for their predicament. The U.S. government will find it tough sledding to ram through a second TARP/TALF/QE bailout for Wall Street and the super-rich on the backs of the poor, working poor and public sector workers without setting off widespread civil unrest.
At that point the current political and economic paradigm will experience structural (and possibly systemic) upheaval. I can only hope that upheaval moves in a positive and not more negative direction. None of the prevailing "answers" to the country's woes proffered by the current dominant political parties will have any answers to the very real and personal problems that will then be experienced by a majority of citizens.
I hope that a new national independent labor movement that unites as many labor unions as possible will be able to free itself completely from the failed Democratic Party, unite Americans to the Left of the DLC, and ride the wave generated by that reverse tipping point to create an effective opposition Party to unbridled plutocracy.
Looming, interrelated biospheric and over-population crises demand far better social values in the U.S. and EU than their neo-liberal plutocrats will tolerate while they remain in over-concentrated oligarchical power.
A populist progressive independent labor movement should regard the existing U.S. plutocracy and its Fed/"too big banks"/corporate mass media structure as what it functionally is: An upper-class anti-democratic, political, economic and information CONTROL monopoly. The same thing applies to its neo-liberal counterparts in the UK and in the EU plutocracy, EU Central Bank, EU Commission, "too big" French and German banks and corporate mass media who comprise a similarly anti-democratic, political, economic and information monopoly there--with senior elected plutocrat/officials like Silvio Berlesconi actually owning outright most of the media in Italy. We've seen the effect of this plutocratic information concentration in Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal in Britain this week.
The goals of a post-reverse tipping point Labor Progress movement or Party in the U.S. should be to replace the U.S. branch of that Western neo-liberal upper-class monopoly with (1) national and State-owned banks (with dedicated and substantial annual loan quotas to loan for the purposes of small- and medium-sized business development and green public sector jobs of all kinds), (2) a restoration of an upgraded Fairness Doctrine that applies to all mass media (and is enforced this time), (3) publicly funded elections that eliminate private & corporate campaign donations, and (4) government subsidized public, non-profit news media of all kinds focused at the local level.
Labor has to start organizing on a global level to meet global challenges to the continued survival of the human (and many other) species that the plutocrats will only continue to exploit by using "free trade" and war to pit human populations against each other to weaken their political systems while they accelerate their unsustainable plundering.
The biosphere's turning point will arrive all too soon after America experiences its coming domestic upheaval. Either the U.S. will be preparing for accelerating global warming and related bio-crashes or it will be steamrolled worse by biological reality than it soon will by the implosion of the Ayn Randian/Friedmanite neo-liberal fairytale back into fiscal reality.
I have respected David Sirota since the day I first read/heard him and this article does not disappoint. He is on point as usual. The problem is, the deal has already been cut, the Dems in Congress will cave as well and POOF, the Democratic Party as we know it is gone. (Am I the only one who thought for a bit after 2008 that the Republican Party was the one that was going to disappear? I guess silly me.).
I spent yesterday calling my elected officials (Keith Ellison and Al Franken), pondered what a Michele Bachmann presidency would look like and then realized the old saying: Change happens when the pain is bad enough.
Perhaps this pain will now be bad enough and from the death of this Democratic Party will come a new one. Van Jones for President anyone?
I watched Bill Maher last night to see if there would be any discussion of particularly The Washington Post article. Two weeks earlier Maher seemed to have really given up on Obama finally and was starting to see the light. But it was premature. Last night it was back it's all the Repubs and the "beleaguered-black-man-in-the-White-House theory. Not a peep about any of this news. And further he had the repugnant Coulter on -- which really says it all.