The "Rising Wages" Myth In Trump's USA And How It Originated

The latest fulsome malarkey being propagated by the financial press and assorted pundits is that incomes are rising and Americans ought to feel more of a "wealth effect" than ever before. No one seems to mention how much of the current "deregulated" economy is still built on gig jobs, such as using Task Rabbit, and Uber here in Colorado - but still not earning enough to afford a median scale home in Denver (price: $549,000).   Or a median priced home here in the Springs ($355,000).

Why not? Because one would have to put together earnings from dozens of gigs every day to make enough money to afford such homes, or even a basic single bedroom apartment in Denver for $1,490 a month.  So the most the gig jobbers can manage is maybe- if they're lucky- finding a bedroom to rent in someone's home for $650 a month. That is now considered a great deal.

Oh yeah, the financial media is full of all the jobs going unfilled, but what are they exactly? In Colorado in general they include landscapers, agriculture workers, retail, restaurant wait staff (some 5, 600 positions vacant last month alone) and construction.  In the case of the wait staff one restaurateur even told the Denver Post he would immediately hire anyone "with a pulse"..  But still no takers, neither for line cooks. Why not? Well because one would need to earn at least $60,000 a year to afford even the most modest single bedroom apt. and neither job pays that much.

So, it was kind of laughable when on Sept. 12, the WSJ featured this editorial:

Trump's Income Bump - WSJ

In which it was claimed:

"Real median household incomes ticked up 1.8% to $61, 372 between 2016 and 2017 while the poverty rate dropped 0.4 percentage points to 12.3 % according to the Census Bureau. ...

Incomes increased across the distribution range with the share of people earning less than %15,000 declining 0.3 percentage points to 10.7%, the lowest level since 2007."

But how real is this income increase exactly?  When one turns to the front page of the same issue, one comes to an article by Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg with a similar leading header 'Incomes Rise, Poverty Falls Again' .  But when one reads between the lines, as it were, a different story emerges.

We learn, for example:

"Incomes have grown 10.4% in the past three years and last year's figure was the highest on record. But a change in  the way the numbers are calculated over time makes comparisons imperfect and census officials said last year's figure wasn't statistically different from income peaks in 1999 and 2007.

The result is that the typical American household's income is stuck where it was before the last two recessions.  The 2017 growth rate also lagged behind the previous two years."

In other words, last year's growth rate for income - the first full year of the Trump administration, saw less growth than the previous two years (for the Obama administration).  In addition, as the quote from the piece points out, "last year's figure wasn't statistically different from income peaks in 1999 and 2007."

WSJ columnist William Galston also reinforced this in his column yesterday (p. A13), writing:

"Most of the income gains from the post- Great Recession low of  $54, 700 in 2012 reflect increases in the number of people working and hours worked, rather than in hourly compensation for each worker."

Note that last part again, 'rather than the hourly compensation for each worker'.  In other words, most of the financial media that jabbers on about the great income surge is comparing applies and oranges. Galston supports that take when he goes on to write: "As we approach full employment income gains will be sustained only by rising wages."  In other words, rises in hourly compensation per worker.

Anyone else get the feeling we're being gamed here on the "rising" income issue? Maybe by media agents and sources committed to make Trump look better than Obama? 

The real reason incomes rose also was noted in the article by Adamy and Overberg, showing why so many workers really aren't that much better under the reign of Dotard:

"Incomes rose mostly because more people worked more hours and to a lesser extent because their wages increased."

And we also read:

"Some economists said they are puzzled that wages haven;t risen more quickly given the overall strength of the economy and an unemployment rate around 4 percent"

But we already know why, because most employers don't want to pay higher wages.  Recall in a January 10 post I cited a Denver Post Business column  (Jan. 7,   p. 3K, 'Don't Get Your Hopes Up For A Raise') from which  we learned first and foremost, companies would much rather give one off "bonuses" and leave out any permanent pay raises.  As the piece noted:

"Those one time bumps, whatever really precipitated them, don't mean higher wages are around the corner. ...And for now employers are in no hurry to raise them."

Why?  According to Paula Harvey, VP of Human Resources at Schulte Building Systems in Houston:

"Companies are really hesitant to give raises. When you give a raise, it's stuck in the pay system. It is something you're guaranteeing: it's becoming a fixed cost. "

Harvey insisted it's much better for companies to preserve "flexibility" so instead companies enact "variable pay". This can come in the form of one off bonuses - say on a per year basis- or if you are a stellar performer you can get a "bigger bump". Say equal to a half year's wage increase of 3 percent. (If you are a super star performer you have the optimal chance of getting a permanent good raise.)

But for the rest it's 'catch as catch can'.  In other words, permanent salary bumps are just too expensive and if "times get tough, the needed pay cuts hurt morale and productivity".

Despite the WSJ editorial's humping the income increase, it is mostly just a big myth, and nothing's changed since that Jan. 10 blog post.  Indeed, in The Weekend Financial Times we learn companies have been even more tightfisted. According to Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, insists that companies have contributed to personal financial insecurity in the first place by removing financial safety nets. She goes on to say:

"As well as keeping wages as low as possible they have shifted the risks involved in meeting retirement obligations by eliminating final salary pension schemes".

Adding:

"My concern is employers can implement low cost, gimmicky financial welness programs, instead of putting real skin in the game - investments in employees in the form of higher wages and higher retirement contributions."

In other words, despite all the media hype and hoopla,  corporations, companies, employers are still getting the better of their workers.   William Galston's final words in his WSJ column are a sobering reminder that our income situation is no where as rosy as we've been led to believe:

"One thing is clear: Current policies offer little hope of reversing the steep decline in the share of U.S. income that flows to workers, Unless we change course, today's loss of confidence in a better future will persist."

Bernie's Surprise MI Win Keeps Campaign On Life Support

Bernie Sanders in the last Dem debate in Flint, MI, gave a devastating account of how free trade policies ripped jobs out of the country, including affecting Michigan. The connection to Hillary was indirect, her hubby was the one who pushed NAFTA - with the Repubs - but there just the same. Evidently his message got through in Michigan despite the elitist filters like factcheck.org claiming the "actual job loss from free trade is negligible". If that were so, then one of author William Greider's most significant books,  (One World Ready Or Not - The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism', 1996). would be fiction. Greider documented how American jobs dispatched to low wage nations overseas not only hollowed out our industrial cities but eliminated living wages.

Auto manufacturing jobs were also sent overseas, because it cost the "Big Three" and others less to assemble them there - saving billions.  A lot of this was traced to Clinton's NAFTA. The Wharton School site (Knowledge@Wharton) quoted Robert Scott, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute:

“Jobs making cars, electronics, apparel and other goods moved to Mexico, and job losses piled up in the United States, especially in the Midwest where those products used to be made.....By 2010, trade deficits with Mexico had eliminated 682,900 U.S. jobs, mostly (60.8 %) in manufacturing.”

Scott went on to point out that the scuttlebutt that NAFTA helped create jobs was due to false accounting. Other sources cited by Wharton claim the losses would still have occurred without NAFTA but we will never know, will we? The point of historical note is that economies in the Rust Belt all got uniformly worse after the passage of NAFTA and most of the Left who look at this don't believe it was coincidence.

All this had to play with the Michigan audience watching the Flint debate  - which was one of the most heated - with Hillary incessantly screeching and trying to interrupt Sanders, who at one point had to admonish her to "let me finish speaking".

In the end, the result, Sanders 50% to Clinton's 48% of the vote, left the pundits gasping as they had predicted from their polls Hillary winning by something like 11 pts. (Typical polls showed Clinton 55% and Bernie 44% the day before.)

But when the dust settled last night, Clinton had 1213 delegates and Bernie 557. So she is more than half way to the D-nomination. Unless Bernie can blow her momentum up next week with YUUUUUUUGE wins in Ohio, Florida etc. his campaign remains on life support only thanks to the odious DNC  superdelegate system.. Thus, sober heads still regard his campaign as basically 'game over' and he is merely staying in to keep Clinton honest while also seeking to gain some leverage at the convention. What that will be, who can say?

Time to face facts:  even with a string of major upsets by Bernie,  Clinton will still get the secretive state  super delegates to toss their lot in with her. As one angry Denver Post letter writer and Sanders supporter put it 2 days ago: "Why are we busting our butts if all our phone calls and canvassing efforts will just be trumped by hidden party bosses and lackeys?"

Good question! It's because the "Democratic" party believes in undemocratic means for nomination. While they tout voter "choice" in the primaries, this is only a smokescreen to convey the façade of democracy - while the actual wheels for the party heads spin beneath- detached from the voters' will.

Look for Bernie to take a few more contests, but ultimately the superdelegates of the Dem Neoliberals and the Clinton Machine will win.  This isn't pessimistic but being realistic.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2016/03/09/it_should_be_over_for_hillary_party_elites_and_msnbc_cant_prop_her_up_after_bernies_michigan_miracle/

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/gaius-publius/66336/can-hillary-clinton-beat-donald-trump-a-preliminary-look

Clutter, Capitalism and Inequality: Why So Many Uncaring 'Muricans ?

Young woman during an Occupy protest in 2011. Young people - under 35 - are more likely to be invested in issues of income inequality.


It was somewhat shocking to read in the Denver Post yesterday ('Income Inequality, Americans Don't Care', p. 12A) how blasé most of our countrymen are to the growing problem of income, economic inequality. It's as if all their brains have been numbed or administered a powerful narcotic. Another possibility is that their consciousness has been falsified by a drumbeat  of framing by the corporate media to ignore the problem or regard it as inapplicable to them. We call this regrettable mental condition "false consciousness" about which I have written earlier, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/09/class-consciousness-or-false.html

Anyway, the Post piece is extracted from  this article in the Associated Press, which pulls data from the General Social Survey and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The saddest aspect of the central article is that the gap between the rich and the rest of us continues to grow, but just as American wages have stagnated, so too has the public’s interest in combating income inequality.

Why? Don't they believe this inequality applies to them? Do they not think it will ever catch up to them? Say after losing a job and health care to a serious illness and having no lifeline, not one - while the elites howl with laughter. Who knows? But one of the most pathetic segments of the piece noted:

"The public's focus on income inequality has remained stagnant over the past 36 years.  Less than half of Americans — 46 percent — say the government ought to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor, a level that has held fairly steady since the survey began asking the question in 1978. Thirty-seven percent say the government shouldn't concern itself with income differences, while the rest don't feel strongly either way"

WTF?! Are these people comatose or zombies? Or, maybe they are so enmeshed in their 'toys' - from X-boxes, to new cars or big homes, they don't care anymore. Consumption has converted them all into deadheads  It's as if all their brains have been numbed, de-sensitized by all the crap they've bought. 

This isn't that farfetched. According to Stanford Professor Janet Spitz in her article: "I Have Way More Stuff Than You': How Is This Normal? ('Democratic Left' magazine, p. 4) , consumption and clutter plays a major role in desensitizing brains to the predicaments of others.  How much consumption and clutter are talking about?

According to a recent article in TIME, p. 44, March 23, Americans now have so much 'stuff' they have to either rent storage units to put it all or their homes have become nests of clutter - with stuff piled up in ever room to the extent the living space is non-existent.  There are now 48,500 storage facilities  nationwide- raking in $24 billion a year. There are so many they "could fill three Manhattans and outnumber all the Wendys, McDonalds, Burger Kings and Starbucks in the U.S. put together".

How is this even possible? Well, one reason is that the consumption is fueling ever lower prices. According to the TIME article: "In the past decade, the cost of cell phones, toys, computers and televisions has plunged - thanks in large part to overseas manufacturing."

But that overseas manufacturing is mainly paying slave wages, after the decent American manufacturing jobs were shipped out  (via "globalization") to places as diverse as Beijing, and Bangalore. So, the stuff you have accumulated basically comes from capitalist wage slaves in poor nations. Your cheapo prices sustains their misery while it befuddles your brain by the sheer accumulation and distractions. All this was well described by Benjamin Barber in his book, 'Consumed'.

Thus, according to Prof. Spitz, a large part of our blasé attitude to inequality derives from being blinded by our own consumption. This in turn is fed by a run amuck market fundamentalism. As she puts it (p. 5): "The rightward ideological shift toward market fundamentalism creates problems for practical democracy too."

Well, of course! Because bastardized Supreme Court decisions like 'Citizens United' have basically converted our election process into a race to the bottom by political whores. Those whose money caches are filled the most and fastest by their corporate owners-  whether the Koch bros. or Sheldon Adelson,  become the winners and get to govern. But they do so for the corporations and special monied interests, not us.  That also includes domination of the media by which can they control what we get to see and hear about issues. If those problems like income inequality are never discussed, or else dismissed, then it will be off people's radar. So no wonder their disinterest. As noted in the Post article, quoting the Center for American Progress’ John Halpin: "This is an elite debate, and it's filtered through partisan lenses. It hasn't been strong enough to change the public's mind."

Well, it should!

People's lack of education also plays into their false consciousness or disinterest in inequality, leading to false beliefs regarding perception of class in relation to income levels. As a first test, ask ten Americans off the street what income class they belong to. Nine of ten, or more likely all ten, will say "middle class" - even if unemployed for a year, on food stamps, and about to have their home foreclosed.

A more concrete study of class in relation to income level was a (2003) survey conducted by The Economic Policy Institute. It asked generally where people thought they were in the economic spectrum: upper 1% (earning $320,000 year or more); upper 5% (> $80,000) or where?

Unbelievably, a full 19% in this random survey claimed they were in the privileged class of the top 1%.!  A virtual statistical impossibility in any random study. In fact, internal survey cross-check questions on income category showed many of these working at a little above minimum wage, and even the highest were at barely $44,000/yr. Nowhere near the 1% threshold! Other commentators at the time on this study (e.g. Froma Harrop, Ellen Goodman) pointed to this ignorance as a basis for supporting such crap as the Bush tax cuts, which overwhelmingly favored the rich elites. Thus:

A) They didn't know where they themselves fit, and indeed inflated their wealth and positions and

B) they actually believed they'd be millionaires one fine day and be able to partake of the tax cuts. (Or 'death tax' benefits).

In fact, they were deliriously out of touch with reality. As author Michael Parenti has noted ('Dirty Truths') 94% of all wealth comes by way of inheritance, not paid work. So, they are fooling themselves. Unless they have a rich elder relative hidden away with a vast fortune, they'd be better off thinking they may have to work until they're 70 or 80 and even that may not be enough to stay in place.

But sadly, the Overclass and its minions (including the GOP Party, a basic "sub-division") consistently get working class folk to act against their own vested interests by distracting them with moralism ploys - raising "moral" issues like abortion, porn, gays and what not - just long enough so that many working class voters keep they're eyes off the ball when election day arrives. Then these workers wonder why they never get ahead.

Fortunately, there appears to be a ray of hope. Young people, Millennials, appear to be more likely to have income inequality on their personal radar. According to the AP piece:

"Younger adults — those under age 35 — are more likely than older adults to say the government should do something about the gap.”

Let's hope they take up the banner again, perhaps in a revived 'Occupy Wall Street' movement, driven by as many or more people than we've seen act in the post-Ferguson racial milieu. Because, in the end, the two issues are inextricable bound.

YES! Give Those Fast Food Workers A Living Wage!

The workers in the photo are upset and on strike, as they have every  right to be. Their wages are pathetic, most at a $7.25/hr minimum wage, and as one explained on an ABC News segment two nights ago (to finance reporter Rebecca Jarvis) there is no way they can survive on such pay, or feed a family or pay rent and medical bills. The worker then looked Jarvis in the eyes and asked her: "You put yourself in my place. How would you get through?" Jarvis could only blink a few times before cutting away, back to Dianne Sawyer in the studio.

Look, this is serious shit, especially as we approach Labor Day. It is not fodder by which to make insipid sport, say by posting images on a hate blog showing a person dressed in a fast food uniform (which could have come from anywhere)  spitting on food and then using that as a basis to piss on them and argue they deserve nothing. That sort of shtick is the sign of sick mind. One that needs ECT or perhaps a neural implant to ameliorate whacko tendencies.

These morons, also profoundly ignorant (but likely derived from their moron IQ status)  insist that fast food industry workers are the dummies because, hey, the job is supposed to be "entry level" only! DOH!  Well, tell that to the hundreds of Intel and other tech workers in Colo. Springs who were all tossed out of their jobs back in 2004-05  (due to companies closing or moving operations overseas) and are now working at Safeway, Burger King, KFC, McDonald's and Chili's. Their wages now, most of them, are barely one third what they used to earn. With it, the fortunes of the city itself have plummeted since obviously less is collected in taxes, and city services have also declined. Hence the stories people across the U.S. heard the past two years of COS turning off street lights, shuttering schools and allowing the weeds to grow to monstrous proportions on meridians and other public places.


The backstory here? Evidently, the loss of 15 million American jobs via globalization hasn't been processed by the dummies who still believe fast food jobs are "entry level". Newsflash! Fast food jobs, along with other service jobs (as waitresses etc. with a $2.13 /hr minimum wage and only tips to live off) are now the working NORM!   Because the jobs pyramid has collapsed, especially since the financial meltdown in 2008, these are the about the only jobs people (including many recent college grads) can get!

This also explains why, as noted in a July 29 Denver Post article:

"Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more than 76% of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge to be published next year in the Oxford University Press."


The Post article noted that "measured across all races" the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79% or nearly 4 in 5. Pardon me, but this indicates a nation of rising inequality and the degradation of most citizens in terms of their economic welfare. One of the reasons is that there are now too few decent paying jobs, by which I mean, paying a living wage - not a minimum wage. This is not adequate to raise  a family on and indeed it is one of the factors creating government dependency that the Rightist deplore.

But they can't have it both ways! If the Rightists scream and yowl at any proposed increase in the minimum wage - yes to at least $15 an hour- they can't also scream and yowl about the increasing use of food stamps!  Obviously, people -families have to eat and if $7.25/hr is inadequate to feed a family then they are going to have to get food stamps to make it to the end of the month! (Indeed, this is one of the strategies McDonald's, for example, recommends, in order to "make ends meet."  Meanwhile, Walmart offers advice on how to secure gov't health insurance via assorted programs such as SCHIP.)

To read some of the Righties' screeds you'd think jobs grew on trees (or fell from the skies), and upward mobility is just a matter of will - not that there is a remaining deficit of some 8 million jobs - which explains why so few college grads are able to pay off their student loan debts. Newsflash! They can't find jobs that pay the rent, provide food and also pay off loans on $8.50- 9.25/hour!

Yes, I also worked at a fast food place (Jackie Gleason's Restaurant in Miami, FL) busing tables - removing refuse such as half-eaten "Norton's hot dogs",  but that was in between quarters at the University of South Florida.  The pay was $1.60 /hour but whatever I saved from the job was ample to pay for my in-state tuition and textbooks. Today, that same type of job has now become a permanent fixture of our service economy and it is the service jobs that dominate. Then assorted idiots wonder why the spending of the American "consumer" has declined in recent years. (Never mind that corporations that could create extra jobs are still sitting on over $1.7 trillion in capital).

As for the claim that increasing fast food workers' wages would increase prices, that also is essentially  bollocks, since the Economy Policy Institute has found the increase would be minimal and not kill any fast food addict's budget.  As an example, your bare bones special "dollar burger" from the BK  "Dollar menu" would go up to maybe $1.25. Big freakin' deal! Look, if you can afford a buck you can sure as shit also afford a buck twenty-five. NO one in his right mind is going to argue and tell me that a paltry 25 cents will spell the difference between buying the damned burger and not buying it!

It is time fast food workers catch a break and their wages are increased to a living wage. They will then be able to buy more -  propping up the sagging economy and stimulating aggregate demand - and they won't have to go on food stamps! Even a moron ought to be able to grasp that!

All TRUE Liberals Need to Support Sanders' et al Amendment!

The time has now arrived for all REAL Liberals to come to the aid of their country, in the form of the PEOPLE, not the Neoliberal jerkoffs who want us all reduced to serfs for Big Business or the Military-Industrial state. To this end, let me help put the  Sanders-Harkin-Hirono Amendment  on readers' radar. This amendment would prevent the government from cutting Social Security benefits, a despicable idea which both sides in the “Grand Bargain” negotiations seem to drool over.  Meanwhile, the Stabenow Amendment would ban the privatization of the Medicare system through the Ryan/Republican “voucher” scheme.


Both of these amendments we need desperately! They would protect everyone’s financial and physical health during the dicey, health-issue fraught senior years, while also protecting disabled veterans and other disabled Americans. For all of our sakes, tell your Senators to support them. And don't do it by email which we already know they never read (according to recent lobbyist interviewed by Rachel Maddow) - but do it via phone or even better, an old fashioned hard copy letter sent by snail mail. Yeah, I know it sounds so turn of the century, but reps always pay more attention to them because it takes more effort to write your thoughts out on paper, put the paper in an envelope and mail it, then to merely email!

As I've noted before, the "chained CPI" is being offered as part of a "deficit reduction" deal, even though Social Security is forbidden from contributing to the deficit. Even if you accepted this unreasonable act, it remains morally reprehensible to reduce spending on the backs of the elderly, women, the poor, veterans, disabled Americans, and already malnourished children. It's even more unethical to do it when other options available could save much more money, And it's even worse when we see who isn't "sharing in the sacrifice" -- a list that includes hedge fund managers, Wall Street gamblers, billionaires, drug companies, defense contractors, and tax-dodging corporations.

Independent estimates say that the "chained CPI" will slash Social Security benefits by $122 billion over the next ten years. Wise- ass Neolib Dems are trying to fudge this by asserting they will parse the Chained CPI so that the "poorest seniors" aren't terribly affected. That's nice to know but of little value or use to middle -income seniors who still face rocketing costs usually via health issues. Besides, nearly every financial advisor and publication in the land advises seniors to have at least $260,000 each for medical care expenses to pay for what Medicare does not. Hence, the Chained CPI by eroding benefits will make it harder and harder for those middling seniors to cover costs. WTF you expect them to do, take out loans! Are you frickin' nuts?

(Here’s blogger Dean Baker’s latest take on the subject, courtesy of the Roosevelt Institute. Also here’s a write-up from Lawrence Mishel, head of the Economic Policy Institute).

Read each carefully! The chained-CPI sales pitch often comes with an offer to increase benefits to “protect” the poorest of the elderly, as if it were moral to finance antipoverty programs by taking benefits away from struggling seniors. But, as Mishel points out, this contradicts the argument that the chained CPI is a “more accurate” way to measure inflation. If that were true we wouldn’t need to protect anyone.


Senator Elizabeth Warren summed it up pretty well, as she is wont to do: “‘Chained CPI’ is just a fancy way to say ‘cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans. Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle-class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch.”


Contrast Sen. Warren’s moral and rhetorical clarity with the White House’s decision to label the chained-CPI cut the “superlative CPI” measure – as if all those old people are drowning in unnecessary cash!  As for the voucher idea, Dean Baker notes that it would force seniors to spend most of their income on medical care.


Instead of hacking savings out of the backs and bones of seniors there are THREE much saner and more humane avenues, including:

1. Refuse to compromise (again!) on the original $250,000 income level that Obama insisted he wouldn't deviate from!

Obama's original tax plan, the one he said over and over that he wouldn't budge from during his campaign, the one he and his party ran on, the one that voters endorsed -- called for letting the Bush tax cuts expire for income above $250,000. That would bring in an estimated $366 billion in added revenue over the next ten years. Now, say reports, he and the Republicans will agree on a figure that's "somewhere in the middle." That loss in tax revenue (say for a $400,000 threshold) automatically would mean more spending cuts and on social insurance programs. That can't be tolerated!


2. Reduce the budget for overseas U.S. Military bases by 50%.- saving $500 billion

The United States maintains 702 military 'installations' in 63 foreign countries (it has 4,471 bases altogether), according to the Defense Department's annual budget statement. These figures don't include bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're talking about our military presence in nations like Germany, South Korea, and Japan. ALL of these represent redundant costs since the wars that incepted the bases are now more than a half century over! While the total cost of these bases is kept secret, the best analysis I've seen estimates their ten-year cost at approximately $1 trillion.

3. Allow Medicare to Negotiate with Drug companies like the VA does! ($220 billion saved)

Current law specifically forbids the government from using its negotiating power to obtain lower rates for Medicare prescriptions like the VA -- even though much of the research behind the drugs involved was performed at government expense! If we allow the government to negotiate with drug companies, that will save an estimated $220 billion. That's 1.8 times as much money as the "chained CPI" -- and it comes from the drug companies, not vulnerable Americans. If this isn't on the table instead, one must ask why the Dems seek to go after the vulnerable as opposed to Big PhrmA - which has money to burn (our money) in showing endless ads every evening!

ALL of these are doable but require our elected DEM representatives to fight for the PEOPLE as opposed to appeasing the Neoliberal Establishment!

This brings us to the above cited amendments, which will make your senior years “larger” – and safer. Both will probably come up for a vote this week. (In fact, Sanders was on the floor taking about the chained-CPI amendment today.) They need your support. As Robert Reich  says, the “pre-concessions” on Medicare and Social Security we’ve seen from the President and Leader Pelosi are “tantamount to accepting the most insidious and dishonest of all Republican claims: That for too long most Americans have been living beyond their means.”


Make no mistake here that these cuts would be a political blunder bordering on catastrophe  for Democrats, a policy failure for the government, and a personal disaster for millions of Americans. In the first case, the  Dems would disclose themselves once and for all as a political whore party never to be trusted again as a party of the People, or for the little guys. Arguably, it would send the Ds back into political oblivion while again decreasing the number of registered voters.

If you agree, phone or write your Senators and tell them to vote “yes” on the Stabenow and Sanders-Harkin-Hirono amendment!