EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
"Super Congress" Designed for One Purpose
Thoughts About the Catfood II "Super Congress" Appointments
1. There are no good choices for this commission. It is designed to protect members of Congress from the electoral repercussions of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, something that 82% of the country vehemently opposes. A full 60% of the country think the wars are responsible for the deficit, but the money for war will not be touched. The committee exists solely to impose the will of a small minority of oligarchical elites on the nation, and rob millions of Americans of the retirement insurance they have been faithfully and honorably been paying into their entire adult lives. The fact that the committee exists at all represents the breakdown of the social contract.
2. The US government is the largest contractor in the world. Lockheed Martin: $16.7 billion in 2010. Boeing: $10.5 billion. Hewlett-Packard: $2.3 billion. IBM: $1.8 billion. These companies spend millions each year bribing elected officials for for pennies on the dollar in exchange for these contracts. They do not want to be the one on the chopping block. Appointing the Chair of the DSCC to the committee — whose job is collecting campaign contributions on behalf of Senate Democrats — is like putting up a “for sale” sign. Democrats would be screaming bloody murder if John Cornyn were appointed. Greenberg-Quinlan-Rossner polling finds that the only message polling well for Democrats right now is “reducing the influence of lobbyists and money in Congress.” Way to go with the optics, Harry Reid.
3. Jon Kyl is the Senate Minority Whip. Kyl walked out of the Biden talks with Eric Cantor in order to force Obama to take ownership of the deal. Toomey is a member of the Tea Party who authored a balanced budget amendment and will vote for increased revenues when hell freezes over. Rob Portman is a former budget director under George Bush. Dave Camp and Jeb Hensarling are Catfood Commission I retreads. Fred Upton’s niece is a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.
4. The Democratic House appointees will be meaningless. With three Democratic “grand bargain” Senate appointees, there is already a strong majority in favor of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
3. None of these 6 Senators is up for reelection soon, and the House members are in safe districts (notice no Paul Ryan). That exacerbates the anti-democratic nature of (1) above.
The only thing these committee members are going to respond to is is their fellow members of Congress who are up for reelection. They need to start telling them that they will be the ones will who bear the burden of whatever decision the committee makes, but they’re all in the throes of an austerity fit. They need to hear from you.
At FireDogLake, we’re running a new round of online ads on Facebook and Google targeted to voters in ey 2012 swing states. Some of these ads are about opposing the coming benefit cuts from the Super Congress, and joining our pledge to oppose anyone who votes for them.
Others are focused on individual members of Congress to pressure them not to vote for the Super Congress’ final recommendations, and let them know members know what the consequence will be in 2012 if they do. Click here to see some of the ads and consider chipping in $15 or more to help us get them online, in front of as many voters as possible.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
18 Comments so far
Show AllDump Obama in 2012. If we can elect progressives to congress, it won't matter whether the greater or lesser evil sits in the White House.
donna,
Excuse me, who are the progressive? Like the progress Democrats?
The Super Congress is a bipartisan Politburo, adopted from Stalin Sovietism, not communist or socialist, Sovietism had it own definition. This Politburo dispels the delusion of the 2 party system, although the pretense of it won't end. This is the formal merging or the supposed 2 parties into the one party they really are complete with Politburo, Stalin style. Remember, the C st. Republicans admire Stalin, Hitler and others.Their goal is for the USA to become an Indonesian type society complete with a military dictator, like Suharto who was installed as the CIA man. ObomberBush lived in Indonesia when Suharto was the dictator. His mother worked for the Ford foundation a known CIA front. Was this ObomberBush on the job training for dictator?
It's time for general strikes, tax resistance, and mass mobilization in the streets. How about a Taxpayers Resistance Union? Get 30 million people to sign a statement saying they will withhold all their federal income tax funds until all troops are out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Pentagon's obscene $1.2 trillion annual "defense" budget is reduced by 90% over a 10-year period.
30 million people withholding their taxes is something the oligarchs will have to listen to. Until the citizens are willing to engage in this kind of nonviolent, direct civil disobedience, nothing will change. The US taxpayers will continue to be looted and pillaged by Wall Street financiers and Pentagon plutocrats.
The history of anti-war tax resistance is a depressing one. Aside from those who engage voluntary poverty so that they don't owe any tax, I have never heard of a case where the IRS doesn't eventually get the money - plus penalty, interest and legal fees, through bank account seizures, wage garnishment, leins on homes and seizure of durable property.
And at any rate, while war machine spending is significant, social programs and regulation is still the greatest part of the federal budget, so even if it worked, you would be just throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
My hunch is if a Congressperson has something to lose, the powers-that-be have a way of controlling them.
This seems to be the only logical explanation of why so many representatives flip flop and go bad.
There has to be another way, but not sure what that is.
Regardless of what you think about the wars, consider the fact that "troops", mostly from working class families, are willing to give their lives for this country but the wealthy won't even give up a tax cut.
Sad.
This is the Corporate Junta. Only the death of corporate "personhood" can save us now.
Where are the powers of this gang of 12 as described in the Constitution? Who elected them? As woeful as our Congress is, at least it maintains a veneer of legality. This junta is a big step towards making official the ongoing coup of democracy by corporate interests. Most of the control has been behind the scenes using money and threats. Now we are in an era in which elected bodies are, in essence, adminstratively dissolved.
Republicans such as Kyl and Toomey are the assassins of any measure that benefits the general public. They will oversee the shoveling of national wealth to the corporations and military contractors. Baucus will help them. Democrats such as John Kerry will anesthetise us with his meanderings while facilitating some illusion of being "fair and balanced".
People have come to accept any form of usurpation of democratic rights. The frog is boiled.
This is the Politburo, the formal merging, although unannounced, of the supposed 2 parties into the One party they really are. The 2 party illusion can officially end now and it won't be announced on TV.
interesting: 82% of the country VEHEMENTLY opposes cutting social security and medicare. well i thought the US is ruled by its majorety plus 1. they teach the world that about western democracies. but aren't these 82% of the voters the ones who put the tea partyers and republicans in congress who demand these cuts? do these voters know now the crimes they committed against their own poeple.well, these voters deserve what is comming to them. they'll suffer.i am not happy, but face it, such as life. one harvests what one plants.
The term majority rules, really means those who have the money majority rules.
This is what happens when the education system is turned into a baby sitter obedience training institution. There are yearly obedience training tests to determine the proficiency of the obedience training. The gutting of the education system started with Nixon and Reagan who ran on the anti education platform to become governor of Calif. This is a society instilled with mindlessness by design.
It is time to tell the Democrats that it is over. No money and no votes in 2012, period. Tell them that the campaign will be to NOT VOTE for any incumbents to return to office. We keep electing Republicans running as Democrats, people like Cantwell and Murray and others. We have to demand REAL Democrats or no votes! No matter what, I'm not voting for Obama in 2012, I'd rather seen a real Republican in office than a fake, a liar and a betrayer.
"Life, like politics or anything else is a schooling", rapped-up in processes and phases of processes. It is an intriguing case of our realities, easy to understand why some people revolt or protest in as many ways as possible. They have the right to do so, but then when all is said and done many do often find reason and return to a "painstaking process" of understanding why things are 'complex' as they can sometimes be.
For many distant and near observers, this is going to be the "make-up" of our modern day political challenges, so instead of closing oneself or getting buried in anger hence danger of more things getting out of hand, the painstaking route, not easy though, often bears the needed good results. Citizens and or voters should deeply study its technicalities, master the phases and processes if they are to "steer" the paths of modern politics: 'gradually' reforming into what they most want and stand by. In the process both open debates and free expression of emotions are absolutely right and understandable, for they need a kind of healing - an effective one for that matter. That healing, many would agree, is a full not partial responsibility of today's politicians, going by what we all have seen so far!
People might have different attitudes to above stated common saying. Even so the Super Congress members might eventually surprise positively, in spite of some of the pessimistic arguments about the likely outcome of their task. The emotions and angers of voters in their constituencies and across the land are not unknown to them, whether they seek return or not to the Congress through elections. Should they seek, then they would mistake badly if they underestimate sentiments, misread and try to play down. Politics as chosen profession is the means of survival for them (short or long-term), and they know what it means in practice at the time they are in with the people crying aloud about priorities, choices and directions of government policies across all national sectors. Let's wish the Super Committee members the best, for the responsibility, challenges and views of the majority about the structure of the outcome of their task. It would pay if they show more understanding and greater awakening for unity this time.
You've got to be kidding.This Super Congress is a Soviet Stalin inspired Politburo. This country has been instilled with mindlessness by the propaganda of happy talk,psychobabble optimism, exceptionalism to brainwash USAn'ers to be narcissistic, consumerist, gluttons.Your insistence on using the same propaganda tactics that has made this a nation instilled with mindlessness and is institutionalized by the government, business, pretend christians which gives it legitimacy with peer pressure.
Please do all of us a favor and state your notion of the way out! It is a mess, all of us agree and have discussed in detail of the ways out. Tell us your own, but make sure you look across many of past weeks' papers and comments!