Jim Messina, Obama Campaign Manager, To Senate Democrats: President Will Lift You Too
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Not if Obama uses Simpson-Bowles as the template.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
America in 2012 Is Not Germany in 1930's
I wish I could agree, but I can't.
There's are two books that I read about 30 years ago by Raoul Hilberg that I think probably prepared me more for this period in our history than anything else I've ever read or studied. They help explain how government leaders manage to get citizens to accept that which the citizens would never grant permission for, and to do the unspeakable, unthinkable, to fellow human beings.
Hilberg, a historian, was writing about Nazis and WWII, but the methods are strikingly similar to what Democrats and Republicans in the US have been up to. Hilberg set out to try to understand how and why so many J3ws went to their deaths seemingly without resistance, and how they didn't see the writing on the wall until it was too late.
Edicts curtailing their rights and movement (everything from limiting the amount of money they could have to where they could actually be in public, banning them from being in public squares or shopping at stores, and sending their children to school) didn't happen all at once, but one at a time, and their response each time was, "This has to be the worst that will happen; we can live with this", until they were rounded up and put on trains to death camps. And their neighbors, who had lived among assimilated Jews, as friends and family, did nothing as the net was closing around the J3ws.
It's an eye-opener, about how it can happen to any people (and has since), and how so many of the same tactics used by the Nazis are used by modern day politicians.
The only weapon against these tactics working is an informed electorate that see these tactics coming.
The Destruction of the European J3ws
&
Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders by Raoul Hilberg
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Mitt Romney: 'My Campaign Is About The 100 Percent'
When the Big Debate Is Over Taxes, Progressives Have Lost
Ever since Romney’s comment about the 47% who don’t pay federal income tax became public, news stories and opinion pieces have been dominated by discussions of who does and doesn't pay taxes. This is great news for the 1%.
The obsession with taxes means that the 1% are playing a game that they can only win. The vast majority of the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades has been in before tax income. This has been brought about through a variety of changes in laws and institutions that had the effect of restructuring markets in ways that redistribute income upward.
For example, we have a trade policy that's designed to put downward pressure on the wages of manufacturing workers by putting them in direct competition with low-wage workers in the developing world. (Highly paid professionals like doctors and lawyers are still largely protected from such competition.) This downward pressure is amplified by the over-valued dollar, a policy that had its origins in the ClintonAdministration.
The implicit government insurance provided to too big to fail banks transfers around $60 billion a year to the shareholders and top executives at the big banks. Patent and copyright monopolies redistribute hundreds of billions a year from consumers to drug companies and the tech and entertainment industry.
Anti-union laws weaken the power of workers trying to organize for collective action, thereby reducing their ability to secure wage increases. (ChicagoMayorRahmEmanuel was going to court to have union leaders thrown in jail the teachers continued their strike.) And a FederalReserveBoard that throws workers out of work to meet inflation targets protects the wealth of creditors at the cost of undermining workers' bargaining power.
These and other areas of public policy are the key factors determining the relative well-being of the rich and the rest of us. As long as we're obsessed with a discussion of whether the Bush tax cuts will continue, the policies responsible for the bulk of the upward redistribution over the last three decades will never be discussed. The current debate may be good news for Obama’s reelection prospects, but it's not a positive development for those who don’t like to see the perpetuation of government policies that redistribute money upward. (Yes, this is all a plug for my free book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.)
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Interest Rate Manipulation Extends Far Beyond Libor, Secret Survey Reveals
A Rare Look at Why The Government Won't Fight Wall Street by Matt Taibbi/Rolling Stone
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Tim Kaine Breaks With Obama On Bush Tax Cuts
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told Andrea Mitchell that Obama’s going to use Simpson-Bowles as the template for budget talks.
Simpson-Bowles (Catfood Commission) plan cuts Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security (Social Security wasn't even on their plate to be considered) and puts the burden on the poor and middle classes, and lets the rich keep their ill-gotten booty.
At the Democratic Convention two weeks ago, Bill Clinton embraced Simpson-Bowles and not long ago Nancy Pelosi said she will support it.
Today's Democrats are yesterday's Republicans.
There should be tax HIKES on corporations and the rich. There should be massive cuts to the military. Banks should be threatened with nationalization unless they begin lending to small businesses. There have been more than 3.5 million home foreclosures but there are 11 million more in the pipeline — There must be principal write-downs.
Democratic politicians should be beating this drum, loudly, constantly, and pushing the People’s Budget instead of working off of a set of corporate lobbyists’ plans.
Why aren’t Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Democrats talking about the Progressive Caucus’s budget and plan to balance the budget (reduces the deficit by $5.1 trillion)? It beats Obama’s AND Republicans’ plans.
As Krugman has said, the Progressives’ budget:
“balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall on higher incomes, raising the cap on payroll taxes (takes care of Social Security’s solvency forever)... and unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense.”But Obama takes solutions that work for the People, the vast majority of Americans, off the table. Obama kneecaps and handicaps the Democratic voters who put him and Democrats into power. He’s the grifter leading off the second half of the con game, which is to squeeze the rest of the dimes from the poor and middle classes. It began with part 2 of Bush’s Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (high-priced junk health insurance that has no cost controls), continues with more *AFTA treaties (outsourcing more Americans’ jobs) and “payroll tax ‘holidays’” that lead to the end of Social Security.
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