As Obama has demonstrated in his words and actions throughout the week in defense of his 'Grand Bargain Theft' - what conservative columnist David Brooks rightly called "the deal of the century" for the Republicans: "trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases." - he is hell bent on putting what's left of the entirety of America's feeble social safety net, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - already the weakest in the developed world - on the path to destruction ('privatization'). He had his big plan in place even before assuming office:
Obama Pledges Reform of Social Security, Medicare Programs
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 16, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare "bargain" with the American people, saying that the nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs. That discussion will begin next month, Obama said, when he convenes a "fiscal responsibility summit" before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.
Notice the Republican framing: the economic recovery is "dependent" on reforming "costly"
"entitlements". He already had his marketing plan for putting "entitlements" on the path to destruction in place in early 2009 - note the word "bargain". Obama is of the school that you can sell Americans on anything with the right marketing and "talking points", and (so far) his experience would seem to prove him right. Per his typical mode of operation, he set about accomplishing his Grand Theft in a most determined and devious manner. His first attempt was to bypass a Democratic Congress by establishing a secretive, undemocratic, "bipartisan" Deficit Commission (aka Catfood Commission) consisting of one-half Republicans and the rest mostly Blue Dogs, ensuring it was stacked with right-wingers and with the 2 co-chairs, handpicked by Obama, on record for wanting to privatize Social Security, thus predetermining an outcome for major "entitlement" cuts (or so Obama thought).
After the Deficit Commission self-destructed last fall under the whacky leadership of "Social Security is a milk cow with 310 million tits!" and scorner of "the lesser people" Alan Simpson, Obama refused to gracefully accept defeat and like a dog with a kick-the-little-guy-to-the-curb bone who won't let go, he insisted the views of the chairs were Serious and Bipartisan and that they must be an integral part of the 2011 Deficit talks. To set the stage for maximum entitlement hacking, Obama deliberately and aggressively manufactured the "deficit crisis" by secretly meeting with the Republicans last December to come to a "bipartisan" agreement (less Congressional Democrats) to needlessly extend Bush's tax cuts in exchange for a meager extension of unemployment benefits (already running out) and a cynical payroll tax cut, depriving the Social Security trust fund of the necessary FICA contributions to keep it solvent, when all he had to do - at no political cost to himself or the Democratic Party - was NOTHING and the tax cuts would have automatically expired.
He proactively interfered to ensure that the Bush tax cuts would NOT expire so he would have a "crisis" from which to whip up fear and hysteria and set the stage for lecturing the American people on further "tightening" their belts and setting the wheels in motion to bamboozle them into being good, obedient "children" (versus "whiny", petulant ones) and letting the "sole adult in the room" set the wheels in motion for transferring the remainder of their dwindling assets and their financial security to his Wall Street benefactors. Obama also needlessly and proactively introduced Social Security into the deficit talks - an independently funded program separate from the federal budget that has always paid its own way, has never contributed to the deficit and should never have been allowed to have been entered into the deficit talks. Obama is pulling the Shock Doctrine on the America people and calling it a Grand Theft Bargain.
These cuts would be on top of the already significant cuts he introduced with his freeze on cost of living adjustments (COLA) to Social Security and the $500 million he cut from Medicare with ACCA. Social Security is an insurance program - not an "entitlement" per Obama's Republican framing - paid into by the Americans to ensure they're not living in the streets or eating cat food when they become old or infirm, like so many elderly did doing prior to the New Deal; a raising of the contribution cap is all that was required to keep it fully solvent far into the future; raising the criminally low top tax rate, one of the lowest in American history, or letting Bush's tax cuts expire could have been used to balance the budget - popular support was behind both. But Obama never fails not to listen to the voices of the people nor to those who put him into office; he only listens to those of his fellow plutocrats, corporate lobbyists, Wall Street, CEO outsourcers extraordinaire, Chicago hucksters, and Republicans. An excuse is always at the ready as to why he can never seem execute the will of the American people.
The current deficit hysteria is another manifestation of "disaster capitalism", whereby a crisis in the public sector (created by corrupt governance) is used as an opening to transfer even more taxpayer $ from government programs to private corporations/Wall Street and too often now in America as payback to the corrupt politicians who are working hand in hand with them. Along with it, more deregulation and more power for the plutocrats at the expense of everyone else, with one nearly nonexistent set of laws ("deregulation", "don't look back") for the plutocrats, and another set of laws for the little guy (e.g., Obama's ruthless and historically unprecedented crackdown on whistle blowers). This is the essence of neoliberalism, of which Obama is the prime proponent and which is a leading cause for the growing inequality, expanded corporate control, and massive environmental disruptions worldwide, and of the uprisings in the Mideast and Europe. To be fair to Obama, he is largely acting in accordance with the (unstated) neoliberal platform of the Democratic leadership/DLC, which over the past couple of decades has lost its core principles and become almost entirely focused on amassing the corporate $$ at the expense of the public good.
Obama's legacy
- Joblessness and a weak stimulus heavy on trickle-down tax cuts (current demand/supply equation "coincidentally" benefits Obama's major corporate donors, allowing them to further reduce ever dwindling wages and benefits)
- Homelessness (Obama's HAMP program a scam designed to trick distressed mortgage holders to keep paying their mortgages until the banks are ready to foreclose on them)
- Outsourcing on steroids (Obama the personal global salesman for)
- Obama's healthcare "reform" essentially a mandated transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rapacious insurance monopoly with no cost controls. Tens of thousands continuing to die/will likely continue to die under his Unaffordable Care Act due to lack of adequate health coverage (unaffordable with no cost controls - the only "uniquely American", privatized, FOR PROFIT, non-universal healthcare system in the developed world); millions continuing/will continue to go bankrupt from out of control and ever escalating medical costs.
Obama shut out any and all remotely progressive voices during the healthcare "debate" and worked intensely behind the scenes with Max Baucus to let an insurance executive craft a bill entirely friendly to the insurance industry with no public option - the minimum compromise position left that would have done anything to control costs - while pretending in public to still support a public option and to be open to "better ideas if anyone has them"; worked vigilantly behind the scenes to keep his backroom promise to the hospital and insurance lobbyists that no public plan of any sort (no single payer, no expanded Medicare, no public option, no public option opt-out/in) would be enacted in exchange for their "support", ensuring more power to the medical industry (and Obama), no dent in their mega-profits and no real healthcare reform
- Cut a backroom deal with Big Pharma to kill an amendment that would have lowered out-of-control drug costs by as much as 60%, ensuring Americans will have to keep paying through the nose for the medicine they need to stay alive
- Worse income and wealth disparity ever, rapidly worsening under Obama
- Adopted the proven failed and disastrous policies of neoliberalism and trickle-down and appointed as the top economists in his cabinet the same neoliberals who were responsible for the global housing and financial collapse
- Tax cuts for the wealthy needlessly extended by Obama, allowing him to whip up deficit hysteria (Shock Doctrine) and to steal even more $ from the vulnerable
- Another big financial crash likely within 10 years with the repeal of Glass-Steagall and Too Big to Fail left intact under the toothless financial reforms that Obama helped to derail
- One set of laws for the plutocrats, another for the "little guy" (e.g., no accountability, transparency or restrictions on for massive TARP/various bank bailouts with Wall Street bonuses at record highs as payback for crashing the worldwide economy; cruel and finger-wagging austerity for the "little guy", already punished by the crash brought about by the same government officials who failed to regulate the banks that they in turn freely threw trillions to; historically unprecedented and ruthless crackdown on whistleblowers who would expose government corruption)
- Worked to undermine the elections of progressives and to support Blue Dogs [effectively Republicans], e.g., going to extraordinary lengths to get Blanche Lincoln re-elected over a progressive as a reward for her role in killing the public option
- Eroded civil liberties
- Expanded corporate control of the Internet
- Expanded "executive privilege"
- Torture normalized
- Indefinite detention normalized
- Environmental degradation and global warming continuing unchecked (Obama's Interior Department - deemed "Bush's 3rd term" by employees - and headed by Big Oil tool Ken Salazar who made a court appearance to argue for allowing BP's Deepwater Horizon rig to bypass an environmental review, colluded with BP to hide the evidence of the massive oil spill by same rig, and ramped up off shore drilling to unprecedented levels before and after spill, etc)
- 5? 6? (who can keep count anymore?) pointless and costly wars
- Corporate lockup of America nearly complete
- And now, little in the way of a viable or secure social safety net if Obama gets his way
Next up: School privatization; Obama's softening us up for this one by pushing Bush's "race to the top" and encouraging the demonizing of teachers and unions. Is to make schools better? Not likely - evidence is that privatization makes schools worse and more unequal; it's because public schools represent one of the last remaining government bastions protecting the average American (along with Social Security) and one of the last huge pools of public taxpayer $ left to be raided by Obama's Wall Street and corporate benefactors, whose greed knows no bounds. Teacher unions and collective bargaining represent a major roadblock to a corporate takeover, thus the demonization to get them out of the way to replace them with temporary teachers with low pay/no benefits who teach to the test and the needs of the corporations (The Corporate Dream: Teachers as Temps).
If the Democrats go along with Social Security and/or Medicare cuts, say goodbye to what's left of the Democratic Party, which will demonstrate once and for all that it no longer stands for anything - not their own "Third Rail", not the American people, not the environment, not the Constitution, and not democracy itself. Tragically, the Democrats keep handing power back to the Republican Party to dig the knife even further into the back of what little is left of the government "of, by, for the people" by giving it more juice to capitalize on the growing distrust of government and the increasing sense that it is corrupt and exists to steal $ from the little guy in exchange for little that is good, and much that is bad. No worries for Obama though if America continues down the path toward 3rd worlddom and if the Republicans needlessly regain power in 2012; by continually selling out the American people, he's ensured himself a cushy retirement with millions in speaking and other 'fees' (see: Bill Clinton's $30 million post-retirement bonanza), a taxpayer funded and guaranteed lavish pension and healthcare for life (no cuts and no puny and ever-dwindling SS or Medicare for him!) and permanent standing among the plutocratic elite.
A party that stands for nothing cannot stand. A Democratic party that stands only for the interests of the corporations and the top 2% while pretending to stand for the people, cannot last; "You can fool some people all the time and all people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time." If the Democratic Party doesn't turn its ship around and start standing for the other 98% of Americans, it will sink into the ocean of corruption and irrelevancy.
The Tale of the Democratic Ship [tbd] Titanic (from Wikipedia)
The high loss of life, the media frenzy over Titanic's famous victims, the legends about the sinking, the resulting changes in maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck have all contributed to the enduring interest in Titanic.
...The Titanic's design and construction featured luxury and opulence. There was a telephone system, a lending library and a large barber shop on the ship.[22] The First-class section had a swimming pool, a gymnasium, squash court, Turkish bath, Electric bath and a Verandah Cafe. First-class common rooms were adorned with ornate wood panelling, expensive furniture and other decorations while the third class general room had pine panelling and sturdy teak furniture.[23] The Cafe Parisien offered cuisine for the first-class passengers, with a sunlit veranda fitted with trellis decorations...On the maiden voyage of Titanic some of the most prominent people of the day were travelling in first class. Among them were millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and his wife Madeleine Force Astor, industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, Macy's owner Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, Denver millionaires...
As news of the disaster spread, many people were shocked that Titanic could sink with such great loss of life despite all of her technological advances.[76] On the morning of 15 April 1912, the White Star Line headquarters in Liverpool were besieged by press and relatives of passengers, officials feared leaving the building and therefore updated the crowds from the fourth floor balconies.[77] Newspapers were filled with stories and descriptions of the disaster and were eager to get the latest information. Many charities were set up to help the victims and their families, many of whom lost their sole breadwinner, or, in the case of third class survivors, lost everything they owned.
Even before the survivors arrived in New York, investigations were being planned to discover what had happened.. The chairman of the inquiry, Senator William Alden Smith...wanted to investigate any possible malpractices by railroad tycoon J. P. Morgan, Titanic's ultimate owner.[108]
...Men and members of the 2nd and 3rd class were less likely to survive. Of the male passengers in second class, 92 percent perished. Less than a quarter of third-class passengers survived.[83] All of the children in first and second class survived, whereas less than half were saved in third class.
Lord Mersey was appointed to head the British Board of Trade's inquiry into the disaster ...The investigations found that many safety rules were simply out of date. The investigators also learned that Titanic had sufficient lifeboat space for all first-class passengers, but not for the lower classes. In fact, most third class passengers had no idea where the lifeboats were, much less any way of getting to the upper decks where the lifeboats were stowed.[32] U.S. immigration regulations of the time required complete isolation of third class passengers. As a result, the route to the boat deck through the higher classes of accommodation was quite inefficientâso much so that third-class steward John Hart had to guide E-deck passengers up to the boat deck in two trips, leaving many passengers still below decks when the ship sank.
~The End~
