If Boehner and the right wing were to agree to Obama's plan, there would be cuts in benefits to Social Security, along with Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps and 100 other programs vital to the most vulnerable among us.
Is that what you support?
About State of the Union
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Cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and 100 other programs needed by the 99% isn't the will of the people, but Obama apparently believes it is. He is the one who put Social Security on the table.
About State of the Union
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Not only did I live it, I can provide citations that back it up. From the Bureau of Labor and Statistics:
1970 - 4.9
1971 - 5.9
1972 - 5.6
1973 - 4.9
1974 - 5.6
1975 - 8.5
1976 - 7.7
1977 - 7.1
1978 - 6.1
1979 - 5.8
2008 - 5.8
2009 - 9.3
2010 - 9.6
2011 - 8.9
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
When politicians say that "Social Security is the third rail of politics", they mean it with a hostility that should be reserved for their Corporate Masters. You don't see politicians putting campaign finance and election reform on their agenda from year to year as you do their continuing assaults on social safety net programs for the People.
To politicians, all politicians (Democrats included), We The People 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 and give and give to Big Business (privatize national resources that belong collectively to us all, We the People) 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, and perhaps would eventually be able to join the ruling class.
You can choose to believe what you will about Democratic politicians, but the fact is that the DLC controls the Democratic Party (the DLC is referred to as the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the pro-corporate branch), and that Democrats in Congress and in the White House have signed on to privatize public resources and 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 four years has been in the People's and not the Corporations' interests.
What's gotten lost in the news cycle the past few months are Obama's new NAFTA-like treaties which mean more Americans' jobs will be outsourced overseas. And then there's the 'Super Congress' (and its plan for gutting Social Security and Medicare), along with the Dream Act ticking along (which means a flood of immigrants working for slave wages).
We The People are being transformed, from sheep to sacrificial lambs.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Politicians WANT a high deficit so that they can create a fiscal crisis that forces us to cut vital safety net programs. It's what Grover Norquist (president of Americans for Tax Reform, and George W. Bush's once-a-week lunch buddy for the 8 years of the Bush-Cheney Administration) meant when he said,"Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub."
During the 2000 election, when Gore was talking about "lock box" and Bush was campaigning on tax cuts ("We gotta get the money out of Washington or else the politishuns'll spend it!"), I was writing about how Bush and Grover Norquist intended to bankrupt the country as a back door to ending the Great Society.
I was writing about conservatives frustration over their futile attempts to end Social Security and other New Dea/Great Society programs, and how even their own (Republican politicians in Congress) would do it directly because it was so popular with the People. It would end their political careers if they went at ending Social Security with a head-on vote. They would have to go about it indirectly, lining up the ducks in a row, for the step-by-step dismantling of the singlemost effective program in the history of the US for lifting people out of poverty.
The way they would do it would be to get the nation into so much debt, into bankruptcy, that there would be no money left in SocialSecurity. That's how they would kill it.
When GeorgeWBush got into the White House after the contentious 2000 election (when Republicans stole the election), when Bush rammed those tax cuts through, no Democrats talked about "what about if we need that money for a rainy day?" Or "find ourselves in a war?"
Around 2006, when Democrats won the election and talk was rampant about Bush's legacy, when even conservatives were repudiating Bush, Bush was saying that he was certain he'd be vindicated in history as " a great conservative".
Even conservatives didn't see what he was talking about (that what Bush is counting on is the end of the Great Society programs, like Social Security and Medicare, vindicating him as both a great president and a great conservative).
By the way, not one journalist asked Bush why he thought he'd be vindicated by history; they still don't, as he's made the rounds of his book tour since leaving the White House.
Democratic politicians aren't stupid, by the way. They knew what Bush and Republicans were up to, and they let it happen.
Why? Why would Democratic politicians want to end Social Security and Medicare?
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
This subject is a waste of time because 1) it's members of Congress who set their own salaries, and 2) most of them do not rely on paychecks from their elected offices for support. Most of them are wealthy, independently of their public office. And they're never going to need their Social Security pension to survive, or Medicare or Medicaid for that matter.
About Barack Obama
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(Reuters) - The U.S. economy grew faster than previously thought in the third quarter, helped by exports and government spending, but a sluggish global demand and belt-tightening by Washington looks set to put on the brakes again.
Other data on Thursday showed factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region picked up this month, while home resales in November were the best in three years, indicating the economy retained some vigor early in the fourth quarter.
However, a rise in first-time applications for unemployment aid last week suggested job growth remains modest.
Bureau of Labor and Statistics:
1970 - 4.9
1971 - 5.9
1972 - 5.6
1973 - 4.9
1974 - 5.6
1975 - 8.5
1976 - 7.7
1977 - 7.1
1978 - 6.1
1979 - 5.8
2008 - 5.8
2009 - 9.3
2010 - 9.6
2011 - 8.9
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
This really couldn't get any simpler:
Politicians on both sides of the aisle want to stick the poor and middle classes with the bill for the past years of BS wars, war profiteering, corporate tax breaks that led to insane profits which weren't passed on to us but to the rich, etc. Add to that the costs of both Bush's Medicare Reform and Obama's healthcare legislation, both of which were forced on us instead of what it was that we wanted: Negotiating cheaper prices with the pharmaceutical industry and a single payer system like expanding Medicare to all.
Back when Obama extended Bush's tax cuts, I wrote that the 'Rule of Thumb' about when tax cuts make sense is, "When a nation's bills are paid". When the nation is in surplus. You don't go on vacation when you haven't paid the rent. You don't buy a Rolls Royce when you're living in your parents' garage. You don't buy Godiva chocolates when there's no food in the fridge or the cupboards to feed your kids.
When a tax cut requires a nation to borrow more money, adding to the deficit, increasing the national debt, that's robbing the People to give to the rich. Average Americans, our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, for generations to come, are getting stuck with the bill.
Ten years ago, Bush's tax cuts were sold to us as "job creators" - "They'd stimulate the economy". They didn't then and they haven't since they became Obama's tax cuts. The money for Bush's tax cuts had to be borrowed. The money is all gone. We're now stuck with cleaning up the party that the rich had (investing overseas, in other nations, outsourcing Americans' jobs and closing down US manufacturing). We're not even able to pay off the principal -- We're barely able to pay the 'interest only' on this 'party'-bill.
Working Americans are tired of paying for the parties of the rich. But it's even worse: We're not only paying for their parties, we're taking out loans so that they can stuff their mattresses. If I'm paying for bathtubs full of Dom Perignon, I'd better d@mned well be the one soaking in it.
In an economy like this, you raise the debt ceiling irrespective of a budget, and then Obama and Democrats need to get behind the People's budget plan and barnstorm the nation explaining it (read here). Money has to get into the hands of the people who are most likely to spend it (the poor and middle classes), and not the uber rich again, who park it offshore.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
So you believe that there are jobs out there for anyone who wants one?
What is it that you do for a living?
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Spending on social programs like Social Security, food stamps, unemployment is the problem? 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.
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