Three things I most value...Social Security, public education, Medicare..are being undermined now.

madfloridian

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Wed Sep-14-11 10:12 PM
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Three things I most value...Social Security, public education, Medicare..are being undermined now.

And I am supposed to not be upset about it, supposed to understand that there is very clever politicking going on that I can not comprehend. Well, that's true. I am pretty smart, and I don't understand why we are not taking the once in a lifetime opportunity to call out the Tea Party groups who are against everything our party stands for as a rule.

Instead of using the opportunity, our party leaders are playing some kind of weird game where it's a contest to see who can put programs like Social Security, Medicare and public education on the table first. It's really ridiculous.

I am upset. They say never post when you are angry inside, but this is not going to change apparently. And I am supposed to ignore all of the overtures our president and his advisors are making to the Tea Party in the name of bipartisanship.

If I show I am upset other people become upset because I am questioning the president's policies. I taught for over 30 years, so how I am supposed to react when they are on the attack against public school teachers and blaming them for all the ills of society.

I think it is deceiving to pretend that Social Security is contributing to the deficit, and making it a part of the Super Committee's agenda is simply outrageous. And don't kid yourself, they are already cutting back Medicare so much that doctor's offices and clinics are squealing in pain and unable to deliver services as they should.

J. K. Galbraith in December asked why in the world do the American people not know that the Tea Party and other Republicans are opposed to everything most Americans support. He pointed out a question that was asked.

Recently, Gregory King asked why the people didn't know that the Republican Party is uniformly and massively opposed to job programs, to state and local assistance, and to every legislative measure that might aid and promote economic recovery from the worst crisis and recession in modern times. Why is that that they didn't know? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the White House didn't tell them?

And why was that?

Whose side is the president on?

Yes, why is that?

And Galbraith offered up some very sound answers also.

The president deprived himself of any chance to develop a narrative from the beginning by surrounding himself with holdover appointments from the Bush and even the Clinton administrations: Secretary Geithner, Chairman Bernanke, and, since we're here at Harvard, I'll call him by his highest title, President Summers. These men have no commitment to the base, no commitment to the Democratic Party as a whole, no particular commitment to Barack Obama, and none to the broad objective of national economic recovery that can be detected from their actions.

Very true. Those men who are his advisors do not think of the people of the country, they consider policies that will benefit the business world. That is the bubble in which our president receives advice.

With this team the President also chose to cover up economic crime. Not only has the greatest wave of financial fraud in our history gone largely uninvestigated and unpunished, the government and this administration with its stress tests (which were fakes), its relaxation of accounting standards which permitted banks to hold toxic assets on their books at far higher prices than any investor would pay, with its failure to make criminal referrals where these were clearly warranted, with its continuation in office -- sometimes in acting capacities -- of some of the leading non-regulators of the earlier era, has continued an ongoing active complicity in financial fraud. And the perpetrators, of course, prospered as never before: reporting profits that they would not have been able to report under honest accounting standards and converting tax payer support into bonuses; while at the same time cutting back savagely on loans to businesses and individuals, and ramping up foreclosures, much of that accomplished with forged documents and perjured affidavits.

Could the President and his administration have done something? Yes, they could have. Where was the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation? Why did they choose not to implement the law -- the Prompt Corrective Action law -- which requires the federal government to take into receivership financial institutions when there is a significant risk of large taxpayer losses to the insurance fund?

There is much more at the link. Galbraith is angry, as are many of us.

Galbraith also had a piece published in April this year in Deutsche Welle. He is blunt about the political games going on in this country, games that are harming all of us.

The Bad Deal

Over here reality has been evident for a while, thanks to the President's pattern of giving way to banks, lobbies, Republicans and right-wing extremists. Whether your prime interest is housing, health care, peace, justice, jobs or climate change, if you are an activist in America you have known for a long time that this President is not your friend.

Still, even on these shores disillusion often took a mildly forgiving form. The President was a �disappointment.� He was weak. He had �bad negotiating skills.� He had a tendency to �deal with hostage-takers,� to �surrender.� All of this fed the image of a man with a noble spirit, a good heart, the best intentions, but trapped by limited ability and the relentless and reckless determination of his foes.

Obama is no progressive

The debt deal will make things clear. The President is not a progressive � he is not what Americans still call a �liberal.� He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result.

What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted: a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs � Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all.

William Greider at The Nation also has been sounding the alarm about the safety net since last year. Our Democrats are not listening, they are not hearing us. Though a majority of Americans want these programs left alone...they do not speak out for us.

Obama Threatens Social Security

The most dangerous feature in the president's proposed compromise on taxes is not the $700 billion tax cut for billionaires. It is the Trojan horse provision that threatens to destroy Social Security by undermining the longterm solvency of the social insurance system.

Barack Obama has proposed to knock two percent off the FICA deductions every worker regularly contributes to the Social Security Trust Fund, the money set aside for their future retirement benefits. Obama�s one-year tax relief sounds attractive and workers can surely use the money, but the consequences could prove deadly for the federal government�s most popular program.

Doubtless, that is not Obama�s intention�he regularly calls for strengthening Social Security�but the president has bought into a Republican proposition favored by conservatives who would love to do away with this New Deal creation. They know this will deprive the trust fund of $120 billion in annual revenue and that shortfall will sooner or later have to be made up to sustain future benefits. Can you imagine Congress finding $120 billion for Social Security amid all the other fiscal pressures?

The changes to the social safety nets for seniors, the sneaky ways to turn public schools over to management companies who get taxpayer money, the denigration of public school teachers....these things that the right wing and conservative Democrats have wanted for ages are finally coming to pass right now.

I am not supposed to be upset, and if I do speak out I am considered disloyal to the party.

What is going on now is going to tear our party apart like nothing else has ever before. You say you don't see that in the media? Of course you don't. But the discontent is there lurking, and it is growing.

People do want public education, they are just not yet aware of the dismantling. People do not want their Social Security and Medicare tampered with, yet no one is listening. Our own party put it on the table.

I am posting while upset inside. I am sorry that many people here who used to respect me have let me know they don't anymore. I am older now, a hell of a lot wiser since our active participation in politics in 2003, and I simply don't care what they think.