Spintested: 12/18/12

Fiscal Cliff Talks: Wheels Closer To Coming Off Deal Bus

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Obama has adopted right-wing rhetoric on "entitlement" "reform". Let's remember that this was the guy whose first act in the budget negotiation way back when was to offer up a freeze on WORKER'S SALARIES! Tell me this he isn't cut from the same cloth as every other 1%er CEO.

If you go back and watch Candidate Obama's speeches, interviews and debates in 2008, and listen with what should be now 'experienced ears' (experienced in lawyer-speak, aka Bush-speak, although Bush needed a team of speechwriters to do what Obama's able to do on his own, i.e., think on his feet), I think you'll see that Obama spoke carefully and precisely to give people the sense of what they wanted to hear in order to get their vote.

One of my favorite examples of this was Obama saying in 2008, ""Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests and it's working for corporations"

Not making the government actually work for Americans, but making Americans believe that it is. That's some artful shuck and jive. Lawyer-speak.

In Audacity Of Hope, Obama said of his political appeal: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Obama got into office by misleading Democratic voters. He ran to the left of Hillary Clinton. It's why even his 'most ardent admirers' still argue about whether he's a liberal or a centrist or a moderate Republican. He convinced centrists that he was a centrist. He convinced liberals he was a liberal posing as a centrist. "Privately, Obama describes himself as a Blue Dog Democrat." Do you consider Blue Dogs to be centrists? I don't.

Back in early 2008, when Candidate Obama talked about admiring Reagan and what he wanted to emulate about him, "I think RonaldReagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, RichardNixon did not and in a way that BillClinton did not", do you seriously believe that he was saying that he wanted to go even farther right of the BushCheney administration he was coming in after? Yet that's exactly what he's done.
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Fiscal Cliff Talks: Wheels Closer To Coming Off Deal Bus

Republicans smell blood in the water. They claimed Susan Rice's scalp before she was even nominated and now they've set their sights on Chuck Hagel. Rolling the administration on the fiscal cliff along with these two will give them just the shot in the arm they need right now. They wanted Kerry, they got him. Massachusetts is now in play.

This really isn't all that different from the post-2008 election days when Obama slowed the momentum of winning with 10 million more votes than any presidential candidate in history, deliberately handicapped the People's side, in order to "work in a bipartisan way with Republicans".

At some point Obama's most ardent supporters have to ask themselves if Obama is not who they thought he was, corrupt, or just plain stupid. Whatever he is, he's not doing anything to help the 99%.
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Fiscal Cliff Talks: Wheels Closer To Coming Off Deal Bus

If Obama was a legitimate man of the people, what he's doing is not only disappointing, but strategically stupid. From this day on, Obama can no longer go back to the 250K level, and has to try and hold 400K. Whatever happened to something like..'the numbers don't work if you raise the level above 250K'.

Obama had the majority of Republican voters on his side on this one. If Obama can't win the easy ones, then there is little hope for any others.

"Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others" -Robert F. Kennedy

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Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

Perhaps I can interest you in a limited edition Shepard Fairey Obama Hope poster? ;-)
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Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

The U.S. debt was more than $14.3 trillion during the so-called debt crisis of 2011, when the level of borrowing reached its statutory limit and the president warned of a potential default if the cap wasn't raised.

So who owns all that U.S. debt?

About 32 cents for every dollar of U.S. debt, or $4.6 trillion, is owned by the federal government in trust funds, for Social Security and other programs such as retirement accounts, according to theU.S. Department of Treasury.

The largest portion of U.S. debt, 68 cents for every dollar or about $10 trillion, is owned by individual investors, corporations, state and local governments and, yes, even foreign governments such as China that hold Treasury bills, notes and bonds.

Foreign governments hold about 46 percent of all U.S. debt held by the public, more than $4.5 trillion. The largest foreign holder of U.S. debt is China, which owns more about $1.2 trillion in bills, notes and bonds, according to the Treasury.

In total, China owns about 8 percent of publicly held U.S. debt. Of all the holders of U.S. debt China is the third-largest, behind only the Social Security Trust Fund's holdings of nearly $3 trillion and the Federal Reserve's nearly $2 trillion holdings in Treasury investments, purchased as part of itsquantitative easing program to boost the economy.

To put China's ownership of U.S. debt in perspective, its holding of $1.2 trillion is even larger than the amount owned by American households. U.S. citizens hold only about $959 billion in U.S. debt, according to the Federal Reserve.

Other large foreign holders of U.S. debt include Japan, which owns $912 billion; the United Kingdom, which owns $347 billion; Brazil, which holds $211 billion; Taiwan, which holds $153 billion; and Hong Kong, which owns $122 billion.
About Fiscal Cliff
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Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

In August, Vice President Biden actually explicitly told a group that there would “be no changes to Social Security”:

“Hey, by the way, let’s talk about Social Security,” Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn’t talking about changing the popular entitlement program.

“Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security,” Biden said, per a pool report. “I flat guarantee you.”

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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B': Boehner Floats Alternative Idea To Keep Taxes From Rising On Most Americans On Jan. 1

There's rarely a majority in Congress to pass anything at all until a campaign has been mounted to sell it.

And when a president and his political party are swept into power to deliver on legislation for the 99% as Obama and Democrats were in 2008 and again in 2012, and he and they not only doesn't use his bully pulpit to sell, but unilaterally takes things like single payer and a public option off the table, removes from even discussing it, and puts Social Security (which has no effect on the deficit whatsoever), then the fix is in and that president is corrupt to the core.
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Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

When politicians say that "SocialSecurity is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their CorporateMasters. Let's remember that it was Obama who put SS and Medicare on the table, not the Republicans.

You don't see politicians putting CampaignFinance and ElectionReform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on SocialSafetyNet programs for the People.

To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), WeThePeople are the problem. If only they didn't have to deal with making us happy to get our votes that keep them employed. If only they didn't have to serve us, they'd be able to give large to BigBusiness, privatizing national resources owned collectively to us all, WeThePeople, and deregulate so that corporations wouldn't be constrained by anything, could become profit-making machines on steroids, unobstructed by piddling voter concerns, such as health, safety, environment, etc. And for accomplishing this, politicians would be amply rewarded, perhaps even enter the ruling class themselves.

You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the DemocraticParty, and that Democrats in Congress and in the WhiteHouse have signed on to privatize public resources, utilities and deregulate (Democrats in Congress, despite all their campaign promises, have refused to regulate or perform their Constitutionally-required role of oversight, both in the Bush and Obama administrations -- What little regulating they've put in legislation the last 2 years is ineffective for a whole array of very sneaky moves). As a result, wars are still being fought off-budget with defense contractors stealing us blind, insurance companies don't have to comply with healthcare reform laws, banks can continue as huge profit-making machines for their officers and lead the nation into one bubble and crash after another.

You can choose to think of Obama and his intentions in whatever way makes you happy. What you can't do is explain how any of what Obama's done these past two years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.

What's gotten lost in the news cycles these past months is Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties that means more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. Then there's Obama's CatFoodCommission (and its plan for gutting SocialSecurity and Medicare), along with the renewed push on TheDreamAct, which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages.

WeThePeople are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
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Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

In the VP debate with Paul Ryan just weeks ago, Joe Biden - "Who do you trust with Social Security? Obama or Romney? Use your common sense...who do you trust?"

I guess it was a trick question.
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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B': Boehner Floats Alternative Idea To Keep Taxes From Rising On Most Americans On Jan. 1

Had Obama's and Democrats' victory been by one vote, it would still have been "decisive" and a mandate - That's what winning in a democratic republic means.

But the fact is that the polls overwhelmingly have shown that Americans do not want Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid cuts.
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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B': Boehner Floats Alternative Idea To Keep Taxes From Rising On Most Americans On Jan. 1

Lie number 3) U.S. corporations are over-taxed.

Example: Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty

We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the OECD nations.

Actually, as measured in terms of share of GDP, the U.S. has the lowest corporate tax burden of any OECD nation. While the official tax bracket may seems high -- 35 percent -- if one takes into account various loopholes and tax dodges, the effective tax rate is considerably lower, or around 27 percent, which comes in as slightly higher than average for OECD members. And according to ace tax report David Cay Johnston, the bigger you are, the less you pay -- the effective tax rate for the biggest U.S. corporations is only about 15 percent.

There you have it, for future handy reference. Poor people do pay taxes, the biggest corporations don't pay enough, and the United States, as a whole, has a low tax burden overall.
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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B': Boehner Floats Alternative Idea To Keep Taxes From Rising On Most Americans On Jan. 1

Lie number 2) The U.S. suffers from high taxes.

Example: The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore:

What all this means is that in the late 1980s, the U.S. was nearly the lowest taxed nation in the world, and a quarter century later we're nearly the highest.

Totally untrue. As measured in terms of total tax revenue as a share of overall GDP the average tax burden for countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was 44.8 percent. The U.S. -- 26.1 percent. The U.S. pays less taxes, as a share of GDP, than Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Austria, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Switzerland and Japan.

Furthermore, as Bruce Bartlett explains in detail in The New York Times the current U.S. federal tax burden, measured, again, as a share of GDP, is only 14.8 percent -- a 60-year low.

KEEP READING
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Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B': Boehner Floats Alternative Idea To Keep Taxes From Rising On Most Americans On Jan. 1

You don't know what you're talking about.

The Top 3 Lies About Taxes:

Lie Number 1) Poor people don't pay taxes.
Example: From The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

At a hearing last month, SenatorCharlesGrassley said, "According to the JointCommitteeOnTaxation, 49 percent of households are paying 100 percent of taxes coming in to the federal government." At the same hearing, CatoInstituteSeniorFellow AlanReynolds asserted, "Poor people don't pay taxes in this country." Last April, referring to a TaxPolicyCenter estimate of households with no federal income tax liability in 2009, FoxBusiness host StuartVarney said on Fox and Friends, "Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Chuck Marr and Brian Highsmith provide the definitive takedown of this myth.

In 2009, Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation found that 51 percent of households owed no federal income tax. According to Marr and Highsmith, that figure was inflated by special recession-related factors -- In a more typical year, "35 to 40 percent of households pay no federal income tax."

But that does not mean that these households pay no federal taxes at all. Far from it: Nearly all working Americans pay payroll taxes to fund Medicare and Social Security. In 2007, the poorest Americans -- taxpayers in the bottom fifth of income -- paid 8.8 percent of their income as payroll taxes. The next fifth paid almost ten percent. The top 20 percent of earners paid only 5.7 percent. And while the government has that money, they use it and make money off of it.

And of course, these numbers don't include state and local taxes or excise fees like gas taxes, which tend to have a regressive impact that hits poorer Americans harder. Bottom line: only 14 percent of Americans don't pay either federal income taxes or payroll taxes -- and that group is made up primarily of "low-income people who are elderly, unable to work due to a serious disability, or students."

The rich have gotten rich off of the sweat and labor of others and then have taken those profits to buy politicians who've gamed the system so that they wouldn't have to pay taxes through all manner of tax schemes not available to the poor and middle classes. The rich also 'closed the door' on the ways that initially enabled them to amass their 'seed money' for creating their businesses.

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High-Capacity Magazines Targeted By Democrats In New Gun Control Push

High Capacity Magazines Targeted By Democrats in New Gun Control Push

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Great, but it wouldn't have made a difference in Newtown.
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Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

Biden guarantees: 'There will be no changes in Social Security'
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Nancy Pelosi Predicts 'Democrats Will Stick With The President' On Fiscal Cliff Deal

In the VP debate with Paul Ryan, Joe Biden - "Who do you trust with Social Security? Obama or Romney? Use your common sense...who do you trust?"

I guess it was a trick question.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Fiscal Cliff 'Plan B': Boehner Floats Alternative Idea To Keep Taxes From Rising On Most Americans On Jan. 1

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 already is broadcasting he's willing to put safety net and entitlement programs on the table for cuts. He 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 before negotiations even begin.

Now, as in 2009 when he won a decisive victory and mandate of, by and for the People, Obama has stalled the momentum that the election's decisive win gave him in order to satisfy the corporate and rich class. Remember when he was going to take to the road after the election to pressure vulnerable politicians in their home districts, but then stayed home?

Obama needs to let the Bush tax cuts expire.
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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.

Nothing changed.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting Bush-Cheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.

They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".

In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And, we gave them the White House.

Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old r@c!st America, than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. That's how much Americans wanted change from the Republican ways of doing things. Voters did it because of Obama's ability to persuade, that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- Obama was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.

And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election and a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy and Byrd, at death's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises and sloooooowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.

Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation -- Everything was to flow through his operation. If you knew anything about politics, you'd know that this is a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.

Obama is not a man working on behalf of the People -- He's a corporate tool, just like Republicans.

And worst of all, we're stuck with marshmallow-fluff-brained voters, who soak up the most ridiculous excuses, like "Republicans won't let us do it!", when, in fact, Obama and Democrats don't even try. Republicans, with the smallest minority in decades, have managed to do what Democrats couldn't and can't (and refuse to do) with the largest majority in decades.
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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

MADDOW: America, it‘s your tax dollars at work. This is the war economy as translated to land-locked Central Asia. We dump a ton of money thinking that we are paying for our military effort. Everything that goes along with our military effort ends up letting - or in this case, directing like a squirt gun, instead of flooding -

ENGEL: The streets become rivers of mud.

MADDOW: But the money doesn‘t go to the country and trickle down its economy. It just goes to the elites and power brokers who can keep it for themselves.

ENGEL: A war lord system. There is a lot of money in war - contracting, supplying, shipping. And if you have been in power, you keep those contracts for yourself and you build neighborhoods like this. And maybe, you don‘t even live here. You live somewhere else, in a foreign country.

MADDOW: This is what it is like in Kabul. This is the exact same dynamic that we saw in Kandahar where you‘re talking with these counterinsurgency doctors and soaked military officers who are incredibly smart and have far reaching thinking about this sort of thing and they can because of that, they can see the basic contradiction at work that we‘re trying to do.

If the whole effort, all the money and everything, is to establish governance and - if the whole effort is to establish governance, all of our money, all of our spending here is only supporting the elite, the warlordism -

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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

ENGEL: Exactly. And the reason the streets are still unpaved is that these government officials refuse to pay any taxes to the government. They are in a fight so the government won‘t come and pave the roads or connect it to any kind of sanitation system at all because the same government ministers won‘t pay to register the neighborhood.

MADDOW: So they won‘t throw their weight around to get their neighborhood taken care of, because they don‘t live here anyway.

ENGEL: They don‘t live here anyway. So you have these large homes, and some of these homes - you see this building right behind you?

MADDOW: That looks like a hotel.

ENGEL: No. No. No. They are all private homes.

MADDOW: This is a private home?

ENGEL: It‘s a private home. It probably has 25 bedrooms in it and garish, colonnades and unusual architectural features. And then, they‘ll rent that out to some western client and they‘ll charge either by the bedroom or by the floor or for the whole thing. And if you were to build this one - it‘s obviously under construction - that is a $1 million plus house in Kabul with no paved streets.

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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

ENGEL: Because this was originally just empty land. You can see there is no real pavement or anything like that. When the Americans came in with the northern alliance (the northern alliance, which was the allies against the Taliban) took this land and then gave it away to all their cronies. They created a new war wealth neighborhood out of nothing.

MADDOW: And so we‘ve still got open sewers and we‘ve still got no pavement, but we have rococo castles. Nouveau riche castles.

ENGEL: That lease for $10,000 to $25,000 a month, because it‘s a safe area. But here‘s the irony. Most of the government officials - and these are almost all owned by government officials - don‘t live in them. They rent them out to foreign companies, contractors. And they live in Dubai or have their families in Islamabad. So they are purely investment properties.

MADDOW: There‘s a sign right there in that one. It says, “house for rent.”

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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.

Obama should be adding to the list of wants - Like Medicare for all, single payer, healthcare for the millions that ACA doesn't cover. After all, we won.

But Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.).

If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.

Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?

Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.

The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.

Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

Why is there no mention of cutting the president's, our congressmen and senator's paychecks?

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Because, truth be told, very few of them rely on their congressional paychecks for support. Most have wealth beyond most people's dreams.
About Fiscal Cliff
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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

Cuts to Social Security and Medicare? But continued wars?

Not long ago, Rachel Maddow walked the dusty, garbage-strewn streets of Afghanistan with RIchard Engel to see what exporting US-style democracy means, and what US nation-building actually builds. Watch this to see where are our tax dollars going, and learn how we are not "nation-building", not making us safer, and not helping the Afghans or building their nation at all (or a democracy). Learn how this has all been just a huge rip-off of the American people:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR5BHnN__5M

Here's the transcript:

RACHEL MADDOW: There are very few countries in the world poorer than Afghanistan where abject poverty is almost everywhere. The keyword there is almost. There are super rich folks here. We visited their neighborhood in Kabul. They‘re garish, bizarre. What it looks like to be rich in poor, war-torn, land-locked Central Asian neighborhood.

MADDOW: So we are in a neighborhood now. Kabul. Talking about the distribution of wealth, in Kabul and the effect of -

RICHARD ENGEL: There is a distribution of wealth. This is where it is distributed. This is where it ends up. All of the money from contracts and association with the government and association with the U.S. military has ended up here.

MADDOW: Why?

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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

For the last forty years, workers have seen their wages suppressed and kept stagnant, while their productivity soared. CEOs pressed for lower income tax rates and were successful in securing the lowest income tax rates in a century for themselves. There is rumbling that the rich need more… like raising our Medicare age from 65 to 67. Like lowering your Social Security benefits through a chained CPI. Yet two guys are secretly negotiating away your life’s earned benefits.

No deal.

Tax rates for the top income level need to go up. No cuts to our earned benefits, to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. No raising eligibility age for Medicare. No more givebacks to the folks who have been taking from us for forty years. But that’s not the end of this.

On Medicare, we want a public option for non-Medicare folks, a public option that works with Medicare to keep costs down. Allow Medicare to bargain for lower drug prices. Allow Medicare to compete to lower the costs of medical equipment and devices.

These are not my ideas. This initiative is from the AFL-CIO, a federation of unions that has been looking out for workers since before I was born.

Two guys secretly negotiating all of this in a room? Unacceptable. Tell your elected officials where you stand.

Here is a number to use to call your Senators and Representatives, to let them know what kind of a deal you expect - 888-659-9401.

First you will be asked if you want to reach your Senator or your Representative. After you choose an option you will be asked for your zip code, then your call will be directed to the right telephone number.

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Obama Hits Social Security In Fiscal Cliff Offer Friendlier To The Wealthy

Raising taxes on the middle class, cuts to Social Security and Medicare? Anything but cutting military spending:

Then-defense secretary Robert M. Gates stopped bagging his leaves when he moved into a small Washington military enclave in 2007. His next-door neighbor was Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, who had a chef, a personal valet and — not lost on Gates — troops to tend his property.

Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn. “I was often jealous because he had four enlisted people helping him all the time,” Gates said in response to a question after a speech Thursday. He wryly complained to his wife that “Mullen’s got guys over there who are fixing meals for him, and I’m shoving something into the microwave. And I’m his boss.”

Of the many facts that have come to light in the scandal involving former CIA director David H. Petraeus, among the most curious was that during his days as a four-star general, he was once escorted by 28 police motorcycles as he traveled from his Central Command headquarters in Tampa to socialite Jill Kelley’s mansion. Although most of his trips did not involve a presidential-size convoy, the scandal has prompted new scrutiny of the imperial trappings that come with a senior general’s lifestyle.

The commanders who lead the nation’s military services and those who oversee troops around the world enjoy an array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards and aides to carry their bags, press their uniforms and track their schedules in 10-minute increments. Their food is prepared by gourmet chefs. If they want music with their dinner parties, their staff can summon a string quartet or a choir.

The elite regional commanders who preside over large swaths of the planet don’t have to settle for Gulfstream V jets. They each have a C-40, the military equivalent of a Boeing 737, some of which are configured with beds.

Read more at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/11/18/Petraeus-Scandal-Lays-Bare-the-Perks-of-Power.aspx#eL4PUXIaFRXhpOBE.99
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