Pentagon Getting Away With Fiscal Murder Using Spending Gimmick

It fairly boggled my mind when wifey read the piece on salon.com to me yesterday a.m. while having coffee. It had to do with a little known slush fund program that the author (David Dayen) compared to "crack cocaine for the Pentagon".  This slush fund goes under the eye- glazing title "Overseas Contingency Operations" fund or OCO, but it is really an underhanded device to bleed monies from government's tax commons without any accountability. It was one of the things former defense analyst Chuck Spinney warned the warhawks would try if they were never forced to account for "misplacing" $1.1 trillion of funding back in 2002.

That our leaders could actually aid and abet them in this, discloses they are - if not outright traitors - at least lacking any respect for the general welfare clause of the Constitution.  Indeed, this slush fund program (which borders on a black budget)  has enabled other non-military, domestic programs to face severe cuts - including under the draconian sequester baloney while the Pentagon got away Scot free. The reason is that our noisome rat politicos had set the program up so it could suddenly  - at any time-  morph into an "emergency funding" hole . Thus,  taxpayer money could be instantly funneled to the military and no one would be the wiser. Hence, while on paper the Pentagon and military appeared to be sharing in the budget cutting pain, in reality they were sitting pretty and laughing all the way to the bank.

DO the poor little bastards - admirals, five stars and others - need this extra hidden money? In two words, fuck no! In the words of one academic critic, the Pentagon is “a bureaucratic juggernaut accounting for 57% of the federal discretionary budget and nearly 40% of all military spending on this planet.”  But instead of bringing our tax dollars home with our troops as they come home from Afghanistan, the Pentagon and allies in Congress want to protect the profits of Pentagon contractors by adding billions to their off-budget slush fund. Oh wait! Did I say troops come home from Afghanistan? Even that's now put on hold and the money to keep them there will come from - you guessed it - OCO!

Meanwhile, 15 million hungry kids had to suffer at the end of 2013 when the federal SNAP (food stamps) program was cut by an additional $9 billion.   Many kids forced to raid dumpsters to try to get adequate food stuffs to eat. But did our bloated military-industrial complex care? Hell no! Why stop the gravy train when our own paid off political whores were behind it?  It is enough to make any proper citizen puke as I nearly did as the account was read to me.

Now, as we read Obama & Co. plan to extend the U.S. presence in Afghanistan we can be sure OCO monies will fund it as opposed to forcing congress to approve the taxes to pay for it. OR...to raise taxes to pay for fighting ISIS. No rational taxpayer would have complaints about fighting the ISIS rats but don't fucking do it under the table!  Put it out there in the legislative domain for citizens and taxpayers to see who will vote to raise taxes out in the open to pay for foreign military expeditions and engagements and who won't,

But let us admit here that this behind the doors sort of operation is inimical to democracy and the democratic process because there is no genuine oversight. There is no fiscal accountability because hidden funds can be piled in anytime it's convenient. This is what tyrants do, for god's sake - usually in military dictatorships.

The development of OCO represents a new mechanism for funding American wars since 9/11, another gift handed out by the George W. Bush Administration. “There’s no prior instance of such a thing in American military practice,” said Gordon Adams a professor at American University who worked on defense budgets at the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration.

What it also does - by skirting traditional legislative channels and processes -  is pave the way for perpetual war. As long as money is no object because this slush fund exists, any war can be launched at any time by any nut who might assume the presidency - including Ted Cruz. It is time we held our representatives accountable, including that their setting up slush funds for the military outside of constitutional oversight  is the epitome of being un-American!

 See more at:

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/crack-cocaine-pentagon-exposing-defense-hawks-secret-slush-fund


and

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pentagon-slush-fund-pays-for-isis-airstrikes-irking-some-in-congress/

Obama Has The Sense To Dump a Really DUMB Idea!

Above Obama discusses a possible "Grand Bargain" with John Boehner in 2011, which would have included the "chained CPI".

The Populist Left can now rejoice after the news has been released that  President Obama's forthcoming budget plan will not include a proposal to cut cost of living expenses from Social security, the dread "Chained CPI". Of course, this was always a dumb idea. Considering Social Security is a legacy of perhaps the most venerable Democrat, and serious cuts to it would harm seniors, the whole thing was a non-winner for Obama and the Dems and likely would have cost them both houses of congress in this year's mid-terms, as opposed to just the House.

Why would a Democratic President propose such nonsense at the outset anyway, when there was no need for it?  One plausible reason was because he wanted to act in "good faith" with a "Debt Commission" he'd appointed, headed by Alan B. Simpson and Ernest Bowles. By at least offering up cuts to Social Security he'd show he was acting in earnest with the Debt Commission, i.e. that he really wanted to do something about the deficits that the Reeps were endlessly squawking about.

In this manner, his aim was to strike a "Grand Bargain" with the Repukes which would have eliminated nearly $3.7 trillion in deficits over ten years. Never mind that a) the Reeps had generated more than 60 percent of the deficits from their unpaid for wars and tax cuts, and b) the same deficit savings could have been obtained relatively painlessly by simply not extending the Bush tax cuts for anyone, back in 2011. (A solution proposed by assorted writers, e.g. Clive Cook, Martin Wolf  in The Financial Times, and by many Left populists. But alas, the Bush tax cuts for the middle class proved too tempting an apple to exploit by the Dems, for the upcoming 2012 election.)

Since then, many Neoliberal mouthpieces (e.g. Robert Samuelson, Bob Woodward, Fareed Zakaria, Joe Klein etc.) believed the best option was to reach a big fiscal accord, built up from the baseline of higher taxes on rich people, from which Obama would agree to some entitlement cuts, Republicans would agree to close some tax loopholes, and the parties could put sequestration and budget brinkmanship behind them for years.  Obama seemed to agree with this, although again, no part of Social Security was responsible for the deficits, and higher taxes only on the rich would almost ensure having to try to gouge seniors with "entitlement cuts.'

Thus the penultimate stage led to the proposed 2014 budget, as dozens of liberal groups mounted a campaign to oppose any renewal of the Chained CPI. This included online petitions, as well as a full press mail campaign launched by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.  One of the White House’s most poorly kept secrets concerns Obama’s economic advisers - who have supported Chained CPI on the merits, or believed it to be the least-bad benefit cut Obama could offer Republicans.  But why support it at all, when the costs against Democrats in elections would be severe, and it was REEPs that ran up most of the deficits?  To many on the Populist Left this weasly sort of move imitated coughing up lunch money to the school bully before he even demanded it.

It showed political cowardice, and also contempt for the people that helped put Obama back in office in the 2012 election.   Hence, we who opposed it were pleased that Obama has decided to leave it out from his budget proposals to be announced in 2 weeks.  We were also quite aware there was little need to even keep it on the table given that deficits have plummeted from sequestration, and an additional $1 trillion in deficits can easily be avoided by the simple expedient of pulling out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan at the end of this year (and not leaving  7,000- 10,000 there until 2024, a foolish move if ever there was one, given nothing will stop Afghanistan from falling back into Taliban hands -- no matter how long we remain. And Karzai doesn't want us there anyway!)

The spin, of course, is that Obama pulled back from the brink because the Republicans offered nothing in return.  According to a New York Times report from yesterday:

"White House officials said on Thursday that since Republicans in Congress have shown no willingness to meet the president’s offer on social programs by closing loopholes for corporations and wealthy Americans, the proposed budget for the 2015 fiscal year will not assume a path to an agreement that no longer appears to exist."


  So be it. We can live with it.   The main thing is that Obama has avoided what would have been a whopper of a mistake, not only to Democrats up for election, but to his own legacy. Let us also hope the idea has finally been put to rest- like a vampire that's had a final stake driven through its heart.

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/54446/yes-the-left-killed-the-chained-cpi

Latest Budget Deal Seeks to Preserve Military Bullshit Spending - Spare it from Sequester

"No one has recently said to me, 'You can only get so angry,' and escaped with their hide intact, probably because I tend to spend my time with people who know better, and the people who know me know better than to try and tell me I'm making too much of things in this diseased day and age, when "things" make plenty of themselves without my help."- William Rivers Pitt, in 'It Only Hurts When I Laugh' - on smirkingchimp.com


Well we now know, after Paul Ryan's conscious (or maybe unconscious) admission this morning on CBS Early Show, that this new budget deal is designed to spare the military -defense enclave about $23 billion in sequester cuts that otherwise would have gone into effect. Hence, any deficit savings are on the backs of the poor, hungry kids, the unemployed. 

Ryan openly admitted his "concern" about military spending cuts in the sequester so was "pleased" that $63 b of defense sequester cuts are "offset" by $85b in gov't "automatic spending". Unmentioned is that unemployment extension was off the table, as were any new tax increases - which would have helped limit the deficits by nearly $150b within two years. But oh no, none of the Reepos want higher taxes - so the Demos obliged them. The above offset - or rather spending cut imbalance between defense and "discretionary budget allocations" amounts to nearly $23b. That amount will now allow the defense industry-Pentagon to go ahead with the building of 2,335 F-35 bombers at a cost of 3/4 billion each. But oh no, can't cut this piece of waste! Too important to line the pockets of defense contractors! See also:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/09/joint-strike-fighter-lockheed-martin

The fact is that in real terms, military spending has exploded the past 11 years, thanks to the American people being scared shitless into believing them there "terrorists" will get them if they don't have massive, sustained and insane  "defense" spending.  Back in 2011 it was noted that Pentagon spending had doubled since 2000, to $790 b a year. This number included both yearly "supplementals" to fund the Afghan conflict and occupation, along with $553b for the base Pentagon budget.

Over the past decade this translates into a pure growth factor of nearly $2 trillion. Thus, Repub Tom Coburn (OK) was correct (for once) when he admitted in a 2011 statement that Pentagon spending :

 "is higher in constant dollars than at any time in the last 60 years, including the Korean War, Vietnam and all the Defense Dept. spending during the Reagan years ($2.2 trillion)".

It is also more than the next 25 nations' military spending combined. The gist of all this? In fact there are no real cuts to military spending in any absolute terms, but only an estimated "trim down" of roughly 23% in the projected INCREASES in Pentagon spending over the next ten years! The point here? Contrary to the bloviators' bollocks of "jeopardizing national security", just the opposite is true: the Pentagon base budget will still be larger than it is today by 2021! This necessarily means, given the zero sum resources we have, everyone else will be much poorer. That means an even more shattered and useless infrastructure with crumbling roads, cracking sewer and water mains and collapsing bridges....and a much more likely intolerable domestic environment over all.

 Anyone who doesn't see this as the distinctive symptom of a nation in decline is a foursquare idiot.

Does the U.S. REALLY need 702 military 'installations' in 63 foreign countries (it has 4,471 bases altogether), according to the Defense Department's  2012 budget statement? ( Figures that 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. Cut that fat and waste, and unemployment insurance could easily be extended and a Farm Bill could be passed that doesn't kill food stamps to the tune of $40 billion over 10 years.

So why the fuck are we blowing so much on this military  bullshit when our own people need help - with 16 million kids going to bed hungry each night - and our infrastructure falling into massive disrepair?  The reason is simple: the defense contractors know if they can squirrel away some amount of jobs into every congressional district they essentially have all the politicos in those districts - now numbering in the thousands - by the brains and balls. They know that being seen to surrender jobs in this low aggregate demand environment would likely see a congress critter getting "primaried"  by some military spending whore, like our own Doug Lamborn here in Colo. Springs, e,g,


Lamborn in his most recent comments to The Denver Post ('Defense Cuts Put Lamborn in Tough Fight'. Nov. 8  p. 5A) on the importance of military spending,  is on record as saying he:

 "intends to find other places to chop, including entitlements like food stamps and Medicare, to shield the military."

The Post piece also went on to note:

"Lamborn receives his heftiest campaign contributions from military contractors. Just in this election cycle, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman- both with offices in Colorado Springs - gave him a combined $10,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has also received contributions from Honeywell International and Boeing."

Where will it end? Sadly, as the yen to further bloat the military curries more favor from political Jacobins, traitors and numbskulls, the target of  REEP austerity hawks will continue to be "entitlements".  That essentially is what Ryan implied this morning, as he professed so much "concern about our debt". Funny.....,these fuckers when in power don't worry about debt or deficits at all. Wasn't it Dick(-head) Cheney who actually said: "Deficits don't matter!"  No, I guess they don't when Reep-Turds are in power and blow up the budgets with unpaid for "wars" and tax cuts so the next Dem Prez gets the blame and has to clean up the mess - by cutting  domestic spending!  These Rat fuckers won't be satisfied until we're all homeless, sick, dead or maybe ....walking dead.

Am I angry"? Fuck YES! And if you're not then either you're not paying attention or you're already among the Walking Dead!

"Cut Them Food Stamps & Medicaid More!"- Doug Lamborn Wants Military Funding Protected

It always amuses me how so-called "fiscal conservatives" ,  numbered among the Repukes,  have no qualms about splurging gazillions on military toys, defense contracts and make -work for those in their districts.  They will be hell-bent against any infrastructure spending - despite bridges, water mains and roads crumbling in front of them - but bring on them F-35 bombers at $600m each! The more the better!

Enter now the city of Colorado Springs, long a shameless suckling on the teats of government to the tune of billions a year for military support and expenditure. The irony is most of its burgers are ideological (social-economic) conservatives who find no irony in bitching, moaning and pissing about the economically vulnerable, kids or homeless receiving food stamps- though they themselves collect hundreds of times as much in terms of fat military contracts, special benefits, pensions or spinoff largesse.....which is essentially the same thing. So while they bemoan the "Nanny" state to which the poor are driven, they overlook the "Pappy" state which sits them on its knees and doles out goodies galore.

The  'doyen'  of the Springs, continually re-elected because of the military welfare he provides,  is Doug Lamborn, who was quoted yesterday in The Denver Post ('Defense Cuts Put Lamborn in Tough Fight'. p. 5A):

"Defense is my top priority. I say that without apology because it's the top priority of the federal government.  When you read the Constitution, defense spending and national security is mentioned more than anything else. It's the highest priority so it will be my highest priority."

Which is bare bollocks, and also provides a nifty cover or excuse to further gut domestic spending - including food stamps for hungry kids - in the next round of the sequester in January.

To me, priority is defined by what comes first. If Lamborn really knew the Constitution he'd also have known that the Preamble comes before all else and it clearly stipulates the government is to PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE.  Not "military welfare" or "corporate welfare" - and that general welfare embodies all those domestic spending components that Lamborn and his ilk would piss on: health care, infrastructure maintenance, social insurance for the poor. Those are also the things, interestingly, that contribute most directly to domestic security. You have a Bird Flu contagion and you really want to see 47 million sick and without care because they can't afford it? Only a nut would argue that is less of a security threat than a localized terror attack.

But this is the shtick Lamborn uses to continually grabbing largesse for his 5th Congressional District, which pulled in $1.2 billion in federal contracts through the 3rd quarter of the 2012 fiscal year, according to the Post article. Moreover, Lamborn isn't satisfied, he still wants more, in the form of  $1 billion for a dubious combat air brigade (CAB) that's putatively there to "support operations in Afghanistan by training Apache helicopter pilots".  

This despite the fact that an ongoing environmental assessment hasn't even been completed, and hey - we're supposed to pulling out next year!  Meanwhile, hundreds of questions need to be addressed, including: How is such a unit to be accommodated on the given location and what will be the training parameters? How many flights per day? At how much social, environmental cost? What if two choppers crash into homes per month? How much fuel can be dumped if need be and where? Who will pay for any damages and what about insurance? What are all the impacts associated with this? Of course, the Army could escape all responsibility despite the 285-odd questions that demand to be addressed by simply issuing a FONSI ('Finding of No Significant Impact').

The Post goes on to note that the bulk of the $1.2 b already provided is tied to the military and  the military contractors. In other words, the Springs is now the "hub" of the Military Industrial Complex like Dallas was back in 1963. This is according to the Center for Effective Government.  This included a $246 million contract to Northrop Grumman and $97.6 million to Lockheed Martin. Meanwhile, Springs' roads are pot-holed, the water mains are 100 years old and haven't undergone major refurbishing, and bridges are near collapse in several places.  Oh, and the schools are over-crowded from having to close several middle and high schools last year owing to lack of funds.

Is Lamborn bothered? Hell no! He wants to go full tilt come January when further defense cuts are on the block,  and according to the Post, "intends to find other places to chop, including entitlements like food stamps and Medicare, to shield the military."

Never mind tens of millions of kids across the nation are already having to go to bed hungry thanks to the existing sequester, now having been combined with the end of a SNAP stimulus Nov. 1. I am sure all those kids, appreciate Dougie's manifest "Christian" concern, not to mention all the seniors on Medicare who Lamborn wants to pay more for their drugs, treatments and therapies. Cancer? Hell, let the old farts throw the dice, we can't afford to allow radiation treatments, chemo or anything else. Better them dead than my military defense contracts!

Speaking of which - and according to the Post (ibid.):

"Lamborn receives his heftiest campaign contributions from military contractors. Just in this election cycle, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman- both with offices in Colorado Springs - gave him a combined $10,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has also received contributions from Honeywell International and Boeing."

Of course, this embodies the very core of the corruption Eisenhower warned about in his January, 1961 Farewell address, referencing the "Military-Industrial Complex" and its "undue influence in communities throughout our nation."

Does Dougie care that roads are falling into potholes, that 11,000 kids in the Springs have to go to school every day on empty bellies, or that sewer lines regularly burst because of disrepair or the schools themselves are over crowded? Dougie's predictable response, as quoted in the Post:

"My votes on the military are for national security first and foremost ....and then I think about the district."

Thanks a heap, Doug. It's too bad we have too many stupid fuckers living in this burg who don't realize what side their bread is buttered on and keep voting your sorry, parasite ass into office.

The Upcoming Debt Ceiling Deal: There MUST be HIGHER Taxes!

Graphs showing how wars and tax cuts have contributed to most of the deficit - and why Obama must not let himself (or the nation) be held hostage to the repukes again in the debt ceiling coming increase.

"Beltway insiders are brandishing the phrase "national security" like a rusty scabbard, but it is impressive that they can do it with a straight face. It is estimated that each of the hundreds of missiles that we intend to attack Syria with costs around $1 million.

One has to wonder: Where are the deficit hawks? You know, the "courageous" ones that step up to the plate to make the "difficult choices" for fiscal probity, such as cuts in meals for needy seniors, cuts of school lunch programs for children, gutting our mail delivery, undermining pensions, letting cities go bankrupt. The ones that destroy our government's credit rating by balking on payment of debts already incurred.

The silence is deafening. It is challenging to avoid the conclusion that all the commotion about the deficit is a lot more about shifting income up to the .01 percent than it is about budgetary integrity. We should never listen to it again." - Letter from  Steve Milligan, in The Colorado Springs Independent, Sept. 13


As the next deadline for increase in the debt ceiling approaches - in less than 3 weeks-  the Reeptards are screaming for even more spending cuts - in order to approve meeting  debt obligations already on the books (which is what the debt ceiling increase is about) . Of course, this will invite a crisis and likely credit downgrade such as transpired 2 years ago.

According to a Denver Post piece 10 days ago the government is set to run out of money by mid-October. However, more recent estimates put it at the beginning of October.  As the Post notes:

"The mid-October date creates a new cliffhanger for Washington, one that's earlier than many analysts had expected. 

In exchange for raising the $16.7 trillion debt limit, Republicans are demanding significant new spending cuts and some are insisting on defunding or delaying Obama's signature health law."

 Of course, the reeptard demands are absolutely insane. First, because the debt limit raise isn't about mainly getting new money into the federal pipeline, but paying off existing debts to our creditors, such as China etc. Refuse to do that and the nation is placed in the same precarious position as a person who refuses to pay off credit card debt- the credit rating is destroyed. In the case of the country, the parallel is "credit default" -   which would be catastrophic. Don't the Reeps care? I doubt it, as their past actions in 2011 disclosed they prefer to be traitors to the nation's general welfare.  Will they now (again) ignore Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's warning that serious consequences will ensue if we do this again, with a likely credit downgrade?  Make your own bets!

Second, because reeptard  policies, legislation -  mainly tax cuts and wars (actually extended  occupations)-  have created nearly one half the deficit. This is shown in the accompanying graphics. Examining the left side chart we see that current debt without the tax cuts and wars would have been about 40% of GDP.   Add in the effects of the Bush II "Medicare Modernization Act" (2003)- which disallowed bargaining any for lower prescription drug costs (like the VA does) and paved the way for private "Medicare Advantage" plans to bleed the standard Medicare and you get to 45% of GDP by 2019.With the wars, unpaid for tax cuts,  the projected deficit soars to 85 percent by 2019. (See right side chart) Add in projected additional defense expenditures and security budgets and you're at more than 90% by 2019.  Attribute any minor decreases in total percentages to the current sequester, mainly affecting the domestic side of the budget. (i.e. total Medicare spending cut via Obamacare.)

Let's also get clear the Reeps are hypocrites more than anything else! They had no problem living with huge deficits during the Bush Junior years, but then those were all about THEIR kind of deficits - for wars and unpaid for tax cuts!   In the fiscal year ending 2011 alone, according to CNBC, there were more than $530 billion in government contracts awarded to defense contractors. That's almost as much revenue as will be raised in a decade by the recent fiscal cliff deal: http://www.cnbc.com/id/42494839/10_Companies_That_Make_Billions_From_The_US_Governmen

 Did Democrats block any debt ceiling increase during the Bush Jr. years? NOOOO.....! Congress instead voted SEVEN times to raise it ! But now, with a DEM in the WH, all bets are off and these gutter rats refuse to see their own contradictory behavior, as they hold Obama and the nation to a different standard. No wonder wifey said she wants to drop all the reep- turds off at Komodo Island to fend for themselves without any guns, and only a pocket knife to share between them,  vs. 4,000 monster reptiles .....hungry for human reptiles.

Part of the problem also, let's concede, is Obama and the Dems' failure to demand higher taxes nine months ago when the "fiscal cliff"  deal emerged. Instead of sticking to what he promised during his 2012 campaign : raising taxes on all incomes over $250k/yr. (which would have pretty well covered a lot of the deficit, Obama punked out and agreed to remove the Bush tax cuts only for the top 1% - those earning $359,000 or more per year (increasing their marginal rates to 39.6%). Instead, as The Financial Times noted three years ago, ALL the Bush tax cuts  (i.e. including for the middle class) ought to have been expired when their termination date arrived, instead of being renewed. See e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/08/democrats-must-stop-playing-politics.html

The other failure had to do with not seeing madness when it's staring you in the face, i.e. Obama and Dems approving a sequester deal, in order to be the putative "stick" to make both parties come to an agreement on the last debt ceiling fracas, with the stick being $1.2 billion in cuts supposedly shared equally between defense and domestic support. Well, we saw how that turned out! One side, the reepos, actually were mad enough to say 'Fuck the deal' and allow the sequester in - hurling us nonstop toward austerity as it slows growth.

Now, we're in an austerity environment, a seriously low aggregate demand environment - in which whole states - like here in Colorado - are facing nearly $50 billion in repairs, maintenance and re-building costs after these floods are finished. Consider: over 40 miles of highways and roads smashed and washed away, 30 bridges destroyed (20 seriously damaged), 20,000 homes destroyed, and whole towns (e.g. Jamestown) so utterly mashed up by floodwaters they will have to be relocated. Anyone believe private enterprise will step in to do all this? If so, I have a plot of land in Barbados to offer you for a buck! Nope, the only logical source is the federal government.

But what is really rich, what half amuses me, is these reeptard assholes who sit in their little dens in Florida, feeding on the government tit, say with a VA disability check, then howling about how "liberals and socialists want to keep people government dependent by soaking the rich". Are you kidding me? The latest econ stats show the rich are now doing better than ever! The Gini coefficient for inequality is now worse than for the Philippines! The reason? Too low taxes to pay for the expanding needs of a nation, including for disaster relief and hey .....repairing the crumbling infrastructure. Yet these jackwads want to cut everything ....oh, except for defense....while they collect checks which themselves would be sliced or nixed if they got their dumb wish!

In her guest blog from Jan. 3rd this year, Jayne Lyn Stahl put it superbly:

"There is rape, and there is legitimate rape. So, when you hear legislators from the right wing side of the aisle cry out for the urgent need for "deficit reduction," to make much needed changes to Medicare, Social Security, end extensions to unemployment, and curtail food stamps; if they're allowed to prevail, consider yourself raped, America, legitimately or otherwise."

CFR Prez Richard Haass: Oldsters "Stealing from Our Children!"

Richard Haass clearly HAAAAAS NO sense, or powers of minimal perception, or discrimination. In his TIME essay (‘Bringing it all back home’, March 13, p. 19) this president of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR – a hotshot group of elites that weighs in on foreign policy) clearly names the proverbial elephant in the room. That is, the ‘elephant’ responsible for drowning us in debt-deficits and leaving our domestic needs unattended and the country in tatters. In his own words:

“Many participants in the foreign policy debate appear to have forgotten the injunction of former President John Quincy Adams that America ‘goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy’.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan (as of 2009) was a war of necessity; more important neither was a justifiable war of choice.. In both cases, the interests at stake were decidedly less than vital.”


Here he names the ‘elephant’ laying waste to the domestic landscape:  the gross, even malignant expansion of the Military Industrial- Complex. The Complex and political establishment invested in the insane policy of perpetual war, that has drained us dry and made the country even more vulnerable to terrorism than it would have been had we not stuck our nose in where it never belonged. Indeed, even now the drone missions are increasing Terrorism like a cancer, even as Guantanamo is.


This Military malignancy has already drained us of over $4 trillion and it may well be much more, when all the medical needs of the returned Iraq and Afghanistan vets are tended to, as well as their future disability benefits finally paid for.


Yet despite naming the ‘elephant’ clearly, Haass wanders off the beaten path and points to seniors receiving Social Security or on Medicare STEALING "from our children"! He states in another paragraph that we haven’t attended to those domestic priorities left orphans by our overseas meddling. True enough! Then he adds: we've been “lurching from crisis to crisis almost going off fiscal cliffs…..stealing from our children by refusing to rein in spending on Medicare and retirement”.


How did this inept bozo mess up so badly? First he commits the equivocation and conflation error by using ambiguous verbiage that fails to distinguish the actual culpable agents (i.,e. Repuke Tea Baggers) who created the fiscal cliff panic and (2011) debt ceiling crisis  from those CITIZENS who are Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. People who had NADA to do with either of the former! Second, he compounds this equivocation error by accusing the willfully conflated group  (innocent older citizens) of committing theft on future generations! This goes beyond a lack of temperance to total lack of basic common sense.

Perhaps a fact or two may assist this chuckle head. Fact one: Tens of thousands of seniors with cancer who need chemotherapy have been turned away from Cancer centers (that deliver the treatments) thanks to just 2% cuts to Medicare providers. This arrived thanks to the brutal sledge hammer of the “Sequester”. Meanwhile, let us note the insane military weapons brigade has had to suffer NO cuts at all ZERO! Not one! They managed to finagle an exception.

Haass is also evidently oblivious to the fact that Social Security hasn’t contributed to the deficit and indeed, legally is forbidden by law to do so. Indeed, more than $2.3 trillion of Social Security monies have been raided by congress over the past 15 years. Hence, the claim that it is “stealing” from our children is absolute balderdash.


As for Medicare, Haass needs to direct his CFR gaze to the Medicare Advantage (privatized) program passed by the Bushies in 2003. That privatized version has sent traditional Medicare into insolvency by spending at least $12 billion more per year, while passing additional costs to the premiums paid by standard Medicare beneficiaries.

So, it is reckless in the extreme for Haass – whatever his position in the CFR- to employ such loose, unfactual rhetoric. In fact, he owes seniors on Medicare an apology –especially now we see first hand what even minimal cuts will do.


But in spreading such misbegotten tropes Haass is by no means alone. In the same TIME issue, the Neoliberal clown Joe Klein (author of ‘Primary Colors’) goes off his own deep end in playing the false equivalence game. He actually puts those of us challenging Obama on the Chained CPI issue (for Social Security) in the same "extremist" league as the NRA - which recently shot down a weak gun control law! Is he nuts, or just high?

Klein begins his essay referencing political demagoguery, i.e. “by well funded extremist groups to thwart the will of the overwhelming majority”. In this he accurately names the NRA, which was largely responsible for recently  killing a very tame bill for universal background checks –  with which 90% of Americans approved.

Had he remained focused on that example and expatiated on it, he’d have been fine and I’d not have had to append the clown label. But he didn’t. NO, he then decided to jump on a high horse and pair “demagogue DEMS” with the NRA! This was by using the case of Howard Dean’s brother who recently sent out a letter headed ‘Disgusted’ with the subtitle: ‘President Obama’s Budget Has Left me Disgusted’. This was in reference to Obama's ridiculous inclusion of the "Chained CPI" in his recent budget.


Klein responded in his predictably Neoliberal pundit vernacular:

“Really? WHY? Because the President called for very modest cuts in old age entitlements”.


Errrr NO, Clown! Those were not “very modest cuts”! The Chained-CPI reduces the cost of living adjustment down by 0.3 percentage points annually. That translates into a cut in benefits of 3 percent for those who have been retired ten years, 6 percent after 20 years, and 9 percent after 30 years. The people who have been retired the longest and are, therefore, the poorest, will see the largest cuts. A 1% "bump" isn't going to make much of a difference. This is a cut. And it's substantial. After just ten years a senior will lose an entire month’s benefits – perhaps equal to half what he or she must pay for meds!


Even more noisome to me, but what you'd expect from the coddled  'Wine and brie' DC Elites Klein represents, is a pernicious belief that 70-year-olds who are living on $25k- 35k a year won't feel a cut in their incomes, which just goes to show how detached they are from the way people really live. You factor in ONE major medical emergency or say a breast cancer requiring tamoxifen or long term chemo, and the affected senior is not merely reduced to cat food but out and out garbage! Meanwhile, the rich bastards continue to insist on the gold-plated toilets, special health spas, and trips to St. Kitts over the weekend for 18 holes. It's a god damned disgrace!


Contrary to Klein’s take, Dean’s brother was spot on. It is Klein who is wrong, as much as Richard Haass. The very fact Klein could pair the NRA’s recent antics with Jim Dean’s letter in terms of demagoguery and extremism is as insane as it is odious. Indeed, if TIME had any consistent journalistic standards it would send this overpaid hack packing. Then maybe he could pen another pot-boiler novel, say like 'Primary ASSHoles'


It also shows me that the Neoliberals have now resorted to such warped rhetoric that they can’t even be taken seriously any more. Klein clearly shows, like Haass, that when one ceases to invoke facts and recklessly equates the NRA’s antics to opposition against the Chained CPI or Medicare cuts, there is no longer substance to arguments. In this case, the essays attempted are merely propaganda pieces designed to sway weak minds, or maybe fellow Neolibs.

Despite that, we all need to be aware of how this entrenched political Elite continues to make up lies as it attempts to destroy our social insurance infrastructure. If you want to see the swine really behind it all, including the Reinhart-Rogoff paper that attempted to academically justify austerity - while the rich live high off the low-tax hog - go to www.petersonPyramid.org )

The next time Haass or any other overpaid, self-important hack thinks of playing the "generational war" meme they need to be reminded of the following:

- Seven million children currently live with grandparents - who depend on Social Security to care for them

- 8.5 million other children (including college kids that find themselves jobless and live at home) who live with elder parents that depend on Social Security to make do.

- The tens of millions of 50-plus Americans who, through their tax dollars and Social Security monies, pensions, provide voluntary contributions to support public schools, child health programs, grandparent guardianship programs as well as other charities that care for homeless kids (e.g. Covenant House).

 Concocting war between the generations, pitting young against old, therefore serves no useful or moral purpose. It is merely a cheap, malicious tactic to take attention from the REAL problem: the malignant growth of the Military Industrial Complex to the detriment of all of us outside it!

Haass, having identified the actual "bad guy" in his piece, the Perpetual War mongers, ought to be ashamed of himself for implicating seniors as contributing to the nation's crises. A President of the CFR, one would have thought, would know better.

Boehner and Ryan Admit Repuke Deficit Hysteria is a Hoax

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but as I’ve been writing over and over on my blog the GOP –fomented deficit crisis is all horse manure. It was invented by Right wing ideologues and billionaires as an excuse to justify gutting social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. This has now finally been openly admitted by both Boehner and Ryan on the Sunday Talk Show circuit.


Boehner finally came clean on yesterday’s edition of ABC’s “This Week” and admitted that “we do not have an immediate debt crisis.” (His admission was followed up by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, who quickly echoed much the same sentiment on  CBS’ Face the Nation).

Boehner's confession finally revealed the fact that the GOP’s fiscal alarmism is not some natural reaction to reality, but a calculated means to other ideological ends, namely destruction of the social contract embodied in Social Security and Medicare. Since these rats couldn't do it for decades by way of the front door, they are trying to break through the back door using a deficit crisis. They are aided and abetted in this by the long time ideologue, Peter G. Peterson. ((To learn more about Peterson, his contrived campaign, and his millionaire CEO buddies, go to www.petersonPyramid.org)


TIME finance columnist Rana Forhoohar (March 18, p. 18) also observes that "if you combine cuts previously agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011, with the tax increases secured by Obama at the end of last year and add to that things like the associated interest savings and shifts in deficit expectations by the Congressional Budget Office, we are already two thirds of the way there ." (to the $4 trillion 'grand bargain' so many Neoliberals are ga-ga over.)

Indeed, two simple steps (ok, two and a half)  could get us all the way there, or netting the remaining $1.3 trillion: Cutting the defense side of the budget by the $600b allocated for in the sequester, and raising the income tax level to cover the $200,000 income level while raising the payroll tax threshold to the $200,000 level. With these accomplished, neither Obama or anyone else has to make draconian and 'superlative' cuts to Social Security or raise Medicare premiums.

Besides, as Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has pointed out, “Even if we do run deficits, federal debt as a share of GDP will be substantially less than it was at the end of World War II” and “it will also be substantially less than, say, debt in several European countries in the mid to late 1990s.” It is also lower than the 80 percent of GDP level that many economists say starts to put countries in a precarious position.

    But WHY be surprised at Boehner's dishonesty? Over and over I had related their tactics (and their history) along with their prime directive and objective, emphasizing that Obama had to be smart enough not to play into their game. However, as we beheld in 2011, Obama let his guard down by allowing himself and the nation to be taken to the brink by GOP –Tea Party economic terrorists in the debt ceiling crisis. Panicked, he signed on to a “sequester” which cut equally from the domestic and military sides. The official rationale was that neither party would actually be insane enough to let it go through, but again- he underestimated GOP ideology and insanity. They were prepared to let anything happen, even take the country down a dumpster, in order to cut social benefits.


Now that the GOOPr Deficit game has been exposed, it’s time for Obama to grow a steel spine and reject all their spending cut plans and schemes (UNLESS it’s for defense). If another debt ceiling increase appears like it may be blocked, Obama needs to do what he ought to have two years ago: invoke the 14th amendment! Amendment XIV, Section 4, stipulates:


"The validity of the Public Debt of the United States, authorized by law, includes debts incurred for payment of pensions ....and shall not be questioned."


It is clear to me that if the Republican Congress refuses to act to raise the debt ceiling (and thereby honor the validity of paying the Public Debt) then President Obama can and MUST exercise an Executive Order to override a putatively derelict Congress and invoke Article 4 of Amendment XIV to raise the debt ceiling. The alternative, of not doing so, would also violate Article XIV and be lawless while also violating Sec. 8 of Article I:

"The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises to pay Debts and provide for the common defense and General Welfare of the United States"


As for the GOP -Pentagon warmongers and their media hacks, who want us to believe Afghanistan and Iraq were real wars, this is bollocks. And the proof is in the pudding, i.e. of taxes (as opposed to tax cuts) to pay for them! Real patriots understand that wars have to be paid for out of the common public sacrifice - via higher TAXES. As my dad once told me before he passed away in July, 2009: Anyone calling for no taxes or tax CUTS during a putative wartime (as in WWII) would have been branded unpatriotic at best, and a traitor at worst. So you never heard anyone bitching, pissing and moaning when gas was rationed. Or when income taxes went up!

Not one person complained about heavy new taxes during the four years of the U.S. fighting in the Pacific theater, or in Europe, though we've seen no similar pay-go with over ten years in Afghanistan. Nor did people bitch in the immediate post-war period when the high taxes helped to finance the Marshall Plan - to help pay for the reconstruction of Europe. People were smart enough then to grasp that Europe's stability meant their own - and if they paid NOW (in higher taxes) they would be less likely to pay later in another war.


Indeed, many of those post-war taxes were still in place when the Korean War broke out. Despite ALREADY high taxes, congress passed new taxes in 1950 and 1951 to pay for the costs of the conflict. They had enough sense to know, unlike the useless miscreant tea baggers today, that if you engage in military actions - especially prolonged- they HAVE to be paid for! You can't keep signing a national credit card and expecting future generations to pay the debt!

If the Repukes want to continue to hide behind their phoney baloney deficit lies and obstruction, let them be the first to come out and either fess up that those two "wars" we've allegedly fought were phony wastes of blood and treasure, OR, they were real wars that now have to be PAID for! If the latter and they don't allow the taxes to be raised to do so, they are not merely dissemblers but traitors!

A Tea Party Plot to Destroy Government?

Today is sequester day and we all know the cumulative spending cuts won’t hit at once but be more of a slow rolling calamity. Though assorted idiots make light of the amounts (Joe Scarborough referred to “only $44 billion” in real hits this morning) but make no mistake that even a billion is a LOT of moola if hundreds of thousands depend on it.


Meanwhile, a clip of John McCain played on MSNBC this a.m. with the Arizona Senator screeching his lungs out at the audacity and recklessness of slicing $46 billion from the Pentagon budget. McCain would have done better to point the finger at his own Tea Party faction. This group ultimately is behind the cuts and not allowing John Boehner to accept reasonable tax increases after the Repukes nearly drove the nation off a real cliff with their deficit spending (on wars, prescription drug payola to PhrMA, and tax cuts) during the Bush years.

As a deep politics researcher, my job is to spot actual conspiracies (not "theories")  before the empty suits in the mainstream media do, and I spot a big one here. In fact, it doesn’t even take a deep politics background to see it, but merely looking at recent and past events and applying rigorous logic.


First some history: Sequestration emerged as a hopeful and presumptively rational counter-strategy soon after the TeePees took over the House in 2011, then proceeded to hold hostage the full faith and credit of the United States during the debt ceiling debacle. This,  notwithstanding the Constitution’s injunction that the public debt of the United States “not be questioned.” At that time, I’d repeatedly implored Obama not to cave in to these miscreants but to invoke the 14th amendment instead, even if it meant a possible “constitutional crisis”. See e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/will-there-be-blood-in-water.html

And: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-obama-serious.html

Meanwhile I’d exposed the Tea Party’s myths about the Constitution here:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/07/time-to-take-constitution-back-from.html

Anyway, having taken the only feasible weapon (in the 14th amendment) off the table, Obama and the WH agreed with the TP-driven Reeps to harsh and arbitrary “sequestered” spending cuts if they couldn’t come up with a more reasonable deal in the interim. Be aware too, the Tea Peas had no intention of agreeing to a more reasonable plan. They knew the only way to dismember the federal government was through large spending cuts without tax increases and they knew they could get their own side howling with patriotic fervor by including steep defense cuts too.

This debased fringe cabal knows of the pain to come but they don’t care. Their ideology drives all, just like fanatic ideology drove Hitler’s National Socialists to tear apart the German Reichstag as a positive governing force ca. 1933, setting the stage for a fascist dictatorship. The National Socialists knew, like the Tea Peas do now, that when the masses sense their security is undermined they will often yelp for a strong directing arm, or man. They got it in spades with Adolf Hitler. (As my sister-in-law Krimhilde frequently reminds me!)


Thus the Tea Peas, like the National Socialists 80 years earlier, yearn for the next hit they can make on government for the people by denying any extension of the government’s spending authority, which expires March 27. This means they are prepared to send the nation into credit default in order to try and twist Obama’s arm to cut “entitlements”. But if he plays into this tableaux again, he’s an even bigger played- for -fool than he was in 2011 when he left his biggest 'gun' on the table while expecting rationality from his opponents.


Do the Tea Party skunks welcome more joblessness because they want Americans to be even more fearful and angry? Of course! Tea Peas consistently use fear and anger in their war against the government – always blaming the anemic recovery on government deficits and the government’s size, and selling a poisonous arsenic/snake-oil  mix of austerity and trickle-down economics as the remedy.

Like the National Socialists in Germany in the early 1930s, the Tea Party wingnuts are prepared to use the ensuing disruption and paralysis to try to persuade Americans their government is palsied and necessarily dysfunctional, and American politics is inherently bad. Thus, the inevitable continuing showdowns and standoffs are part of the plot, much like the Nazis' aims after the 1932 elections in Germany. (The SS beat the hell out of workers and forced national slowdowns, strikes and turmoil to send the country’s debt into the stratosphere as they sowed dissension)

What is Obama’s response? Evidently, from the  White House website he still wants a so-called “grand bargain of balanced spending cuts” (including cuts in the projected growth of Social Security and Medicare) combined with tax increases on the wealthy. Tragically, actual facts haven’t measured up to the rhetoric since he has agreed to a gross imbalance, over $1.5 trillion in cuts to Republicans’ $600 billion in tax increases on the rich. This was why many of us were hopping mad at the fiscal cliff travesty noting that the $400,000 income level for tax raises was nuts, and would by its anemic level of revenue, force more spending cuts.


The existence of the plan on the WH site discloses Obama apparently still believes Republicans are serious about deficit reduction, when in fact the squalid Teepees running the GOP only care about dismembering the government. Obama, then, extends an unrealistic excess of good will (and respect) to the other side which they do not deserve. In this way, he pathetically resembles Weimar Republic President Paul von Hindenburg before acquiescing to Hitler’s Chancellorship in 1933. As one history website (historyplace) puts it:


“In January 1933, Adolf Hitler took the reins of a 14-year-old German democratic republic which in the minds of many had long outlived its usefulness. By this time, the economic pressures of the Great Depression combined with the indecisive, self-serving nature of its elected politicians had brought government in Germany to a complete standstill.”

A complete parallel to what the Tea Party Nazis now plan to do, and believe me they are elated to do so. If you don’t believe me, please read this on the GOP House's effusive reaction to the coming cuts:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/us/politics/house-republicans-cheer-boehners-refusal-to-negotiate-on-cuts.html?hp&_r=0


Hence, like Weimar President Paul von Hindenburg, Obama can’t or won't see the vile evil before him and its intent. If he did, he’d never agree to the “grand bargain” he has allowed on the WH website. Besides, as Robert Reich has noted in a salon.com piece, “the deficit is now down to about 5 percent of GDP – where it was when Bill Clinton took office”. Maybe Obama is blinded by a secret desire to appease the Beltway Neoliberal  Gurus (like Bob Woodward) in order to himself be regarded as a "serious President", thereby establishing the basis for a "serious legacy". But this would be a tragic error! (Unless Obama is a secret Neoliberal himself. After all, he did praise 'free market capitalism' barely 2 years ago.)

Meanwhile, the ebbing growth trends have little or nothing to do with government programs but a continued low aggregate demand environment. In fact, Medicare is far more efficient than private health insurance as I will show in a near future blog.

My advice to Obama? Forget about making any “grand bargain” with a gaggle of extremist rats. Stop talking about the “budget deficit” and playing into the Tea Peas’ hands and start talking instead about the widening inequality – as you did in the campaign.

Lastly, grow up and cease seeing the Reeps as seriously interested in making a deal, since any such will be contaminated by the Tea Partiers who now run the Republican Party.

As Robert Reich put it: Obama would do better to drop the rose-tinted glasses and “see the Tea Partiers for who they are — a small, radical minority intent on dismantling the government of the United States”. So long as Obama allows them to dictate the terms of public debate they will continue to hold the rest of us hostage to their extremism, like the National Socialists did in the early 1930s in Germany.

The Austerity Barbarians At the Gate: And What's with the Chained CPI Still in Play?

John Boehner blubbered and huffed all through his interview with Scott Pelley yesterday. "We need the Senate to stop sitting on its ass and pass that bill!"

Huh? WHO was taking a vacation the past ten days, Mr. Speaker? Are you still in a parallel universe? Anyway, Mr. Boehner still demands more spending cuts in order to appease his austerity Barbarians, now salivating at the gate.

But I don’t get it! We’ve already had by proportion two dollars of spending cuts for every increase in revenue, despite the fact it was a revenue implosion (via unpaid for ‘wars’, tax cuts) that dug us into this mess. So why are even more spending cuts being demanded as a way to preserve the existing small growth economy?


Even this morning (MSNBC), Pat Toomey (R-PA) was bleating nonsense about closing loopholes to then be able to LOWER marginal tax rates and “unleash the power of the economy”. NO! NO! NO! You aren’t going to unleash anything but larger deficits and debt as you grind the economy to a halt. The evidence has already been manifestly shown that NO tax cuts of ANY kind work for enhancing growth!

Matt Miller showed this in spades in his ‘The Tyranny of Dead Ideas’ (tax cuts being a ‘dead idea’ still retained out of a long held supply side mythology). Meanwhile, The Financial Times in its issue of 9/15/10 showed the Bush tax cuts to be the frauds they are by not even having achieved the most modest growth objectives. Their main conclusion? "The 2000s were the weakest decade in U.S. postwar history for real, non-residential capital investment. Not only were the 2000s by far the weakest period, the tax cuts did not even curtail the secular slowdown in the growth of business structures. Rather the slowdown accelerated to a full decline".

So why do Repuke tax cut fetishists hold on to them? Because they are a convenient means of “starving the Beast” along with unpaid for wars. In this way they believe they can ensure cooperative Dems will cut domestic spending, when they ought to be increasing it!


Flash forward to the current situation and the coming “sequester”. Barring an unlikely last minute deal, here's a short list of some of the massive, national bi-partisan-created austerity cuts arriving by Friday, according to the New York Times:


-600,000 food stamp recipients will be cut from the program

-Massive education cuts


The first will be murderously brutal given 1 in 3 kids in marginal income families ($24,000/yr for a family of 4) is already going to bed hungry and the mean benefit is only $3 /day with food stamps running out for most families within 3 weeks. A new documentary film, ‘A Place At the Table’ will highlight this abomination in the alleged “richest nation” on Earth. The sad thing is now these people will be in worse straits, all because the Repukes don’t want to even close one tax loophole for the richest hedge fund managers, or stock brokers, traders. See my earlier blog ( http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/02/scarborough-bwwaaaahaha-we-cant-have.html) on why the Rs are wrong, dead wrong on not increasing taxes!


Meanwhile, we learned this morning (‘Morning Joe’)that  most college students don’t even want to hear the word “sequester” and they flee from any subject tag for a blog, or tweet bearing it. Well, I hope not! The fact is they will be adversely affected in terms of being able to secure further (government-based)  college loans if this thing goes through. When your future interests are at stake you do pay attention, and you try to learn how your own welfare is threatened. In addition, thousands of teachers will be laid off as the federal support purse strings dry up, including for ‘Head Start’ and ‘Race to the Top’.

Other impending cuts:

-12 billion in Medicare cuts (more to come after 2013)

-Millions receiving unemployment will see their checks cut by 11% (an average of $132 a month)


So don’t tell me that the amount of the cuts ($85b) is ‘trivial’ or regurgitate the Repuke line that “Obama is using scare tactics”.

Note this is just for 2013. The current plan for the austerity "sequester" cuts is $100 billion of federal cuts every year for ten years, equaling massive cuts to jobs, Medicare, education, and completely destroying federally funded social programs.

We will be laid waste as never before, and left as a marginal Third World nation, perhaps even worse than Barbados.

Now, WHO is to blame? Despite the finger pointing in Washington, D.C. and the sequester being described as “stupid” (e.g. no targeted cuts) in many quarters, in reality both Democrats and Republicans created these "sequester" cuts (back in 2011 with the really stupid debt ceiling increase and Obama unwilling to invoke the 14th amendment instead) , and they can just as easily undo them with a snap of the finger. But both parties are choosing not to delete the cuts. They just don't want political responsibility for the fallout, which many economists have predicted will push the U.S. economy over the edge into official recession.


Obama could also just as easily appeal to the American public —over the heads of congressmen — to demand that the cuts be shelved forever. Instead, he's still proposing a "grand bargain” deal that he knows the Republicans won't go for.  What's in Obama's grand bargain deal? According to the White House website :


-$130 billion in "savings" [cuts] to Social Security, by implementing a ‘superlative CPI'
-$35 billion in "savings" [cuts] to the retirement of federal employees.

- $400 billion in health care "savings" [cuts], much of it Medicare cuts.


Obama (cynically, in the minds of some) fails to mention the words Social Security or Medicare in the above plan, choosing instead to write in code "superlative Consumer Price Index". But there’s nothing ‘superlative’ about prolonged, corrosive cat food cuts that demeans seniors, especially those who do not have the wealth to sustain lowered adjustments to inflation over time. Already Bernanke and his Beltway Club of “serious people” (e.g. assholes) are pushing the BS there’s “no inflation”, despite fuel, food, and medical costs soaring. Seniors even with moderate incomes therefore will be shafted as the chained CPI kicks in and woe betide them if a medical catastrophe strikes – especially with Medicare cuts on a $400 b scale.

Most real progressives’ jaws dropped last week when, incredibly, White House spokesman Jay Carney  told a press conference that Obama is a  "macho man". He told the reporters that President Obama is still willing to cut Social Security benefits by using the Chained CPI as the basis for the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).  Believe me, Mr. Carney, there is nothing "macho" about sending 45 million seniors into cat food diets, and  forcing them to grovel in dumpsters for remains of kibbles when their meds end up breaking the bank!

This willingness to cut the benefits of retirees is presumed to establish President Obama as a “serious person” in elite (read: NEOLIBERAL)  Washington circles. But in progressive circles it defines him as a wuss and enabler of the Repukes. Moreover, it will defame the Dem brand in perpetuity if he goes through with this BS, marking him as the destroyer of the primary principles first put forward by FDR, JFK etc. Is THAT really worth a “legacy”?


Likely most of the D.C. Neoliberal insiders (e.g. Fareed Zakaria, Bob Woodward, Joe Klein etc.) probably don't understand the Chained CPI. However, everyone else should recognize that this technical fix amounts to a serious cut, never mind the odious PR to disguise it. It reduces benefits compared with the current schedule by 0.3 percent annually. This adds up over time. After someone has been getting benefits for 10 years, the cut in annual benefits is 3 percent, or equivalent to one whole month of Social Security. After 20 years, people would be seeing a benefit that is 6 percent lower, and after 30 years their benefit would be reduced by 9 percent. (For those interested, AARP has a nice calculator that shows how much retirees can expect to lose from the Chained CPI.)

Now, one can certainly debate whether the Chained CPI should be viewed as a "large cut," but there is no debate that Chained CPI cut imposes a bigger hit to the typical retiree than the ending of the Bush tax cuts were to the typical high-end one percent earner. Social Security provides more than half of the income for almost 70 percent of retirees. This means that the 3 percent cut in Social Security benefits amounts to a reduction in their income of more than 1.5 percent.

Let us sincerely hope that Obama isn’t gaming us, and trying to disguise an underlying Neoliberal instinct with progressive rhetoric. We didn’t go “all in” with him last November just to put a Neoliberal plant into office, when voters chose him because the alternative, “Mittens”, planned to do just what Carney proclaims Obama is “macho” enough to do now.

We deserve better. It’s time for Obama to show he is a fighter and for the Middle Class, including not enabling cuts to cripple seniors in their most vulnerable years.

Mr. President, take DOWN that CPI proposal from the White House site! Do NOT, I repeat do not, seek any "grand bargain" with the Republican ratfuckers!

Scarborough: "BWWAAAAHAHA! We Can't Have Higher Taxes!"

Joe Scarborough this morning broke into a hissy fit and almost cried at the mere mention (by 'Morning Joe' guest Al Sharpton) that Obama wants a balanced approach to the deficit problem and that means more taxes. Sharpton made the accurate point that Obama had already ceded $650b as part of the fiscal cliff deal, and that had come down from $1.2 trillion.  Meanwhile, over $1.2 trillion in spending cuts had already been made last year. The time was now for MORE taxes, not less.

But why the crying, pissing and moaning from Repukes? THEY are the ones, after all (see graphs) that let deficit spending explode under Bush Jr's reign, for both tax cuts that mainly benefited the wealthy, and unpaid for wars.  While these cretins incessantly demanded TWO "wars" (actually occupations), they never insisted that anyone actually sacrifice to pay for them!

Meanwhile, I not long ago received in the mail (from my first cousin) two war ration books issued to my mom back in 1941 when she was just 19. The ration book allowed access to certain provisions, but with limits. Each book had born a number of war ration stamps which could be used to buy special goods, such as meat, bread, butter etc. The person had to sign and date each time such stamps were accessed for purchase, such that it had been legitimate, with this representation made formally (under penalty of perjury) to the Office of Price Administration. Evidently, mom had three ration stamps left at this point. (Old recovered letters from my grandmother to her son (fighting in Europe), dated 1943-44 noted some meat supplies, such as ham, beef and bacon, were running low by then.)

To me, the war ration book embodied sacrifice of the citizen in the war effort. That, along with increased taxes, disclosed it was a real war as opposed to a fraud and mockery perpetrated for the sake of lining the pockets of defense contractors and padding the payrolls of certain congressonal districts - as occurs now.

But all Americans are aware of anymore are the frauds and make-up "wars" for which no sacrifice is expected, not even higher taxes,  far less ration books with war ration stamps. And so we have a populace for which basically the events in Afghanistan (and earlier Iraq) only existed on a fantasy or unreal level if they existed at all. No surprise there!

But what Americans ought  to be processing is that those recent wars of choice exacted a cost, along with the atrocious tax cuts,  at a time taxes ought to have been raised!  The twin tables, again, show the whole sordid picture and what has really dug us into the existing deficit hole, which the "Simpson Bowlers" and Repukes now propose to extricate us from, via Catfood 2.0 perpetrated on our seniors. (See e.g. http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/48217/youve-heard-of-the-birthers-now-meet-the-simpson-bowlers )

Now, logically, since the Repukes dug us into this debt hole by refusal to approve adequate revenue, for both the "wars" and tax cuts (as well as their insane 2003 prescription drug bill - more a giveaway to  Big PhRma), then it is logical that increased revenue must be the way to dig us out of the debt mess.  As a New York Times op-ed put it today, the first major tax hits....errr....hikes.... must come from the hides of those who benefited most from the Bush tax cuts during the "war" years:

"Those taxpayers are the same ones who benefited most from Bush-era tax breaks and who continue to pay low taxes. Even with recent increases, the new top rate of 39.6 percent is historically low; investment income is still taxed at special low rates; and the heirs of multimillion-dollar estates face lower taxes than at almost any time in modern memory."


Incredibly,  despite these facts, the Repukes are resisting any cuts to defense, this despite the fact that they haven't - up to now - paid for any of their earlier defense spending shenanigans. They let TWO "wars" go unfunded, during supposed "war time" - a big hoot if there ever was one- plus they've not paid for the two sets of Bush tax cuts that already produced $3.2 trillion in deficits even before Obama got into office.

These miscreants demand this perfidy despite the fact it would impose "brutalizing cuts in non-defense discretionary areas like education, environment..already set to see their lowest share of the budget since 1950" according to the NY Times op-ed.   The education hits may well mean thousands of college students can't obtain affordable loans. The cuts to the EPA will mean our water here in Colorado, for example, will not be checked for contamination from the recent discovery of nuclear-polluted tailings, or from fracked effluent with xylene, benzene etc. backed up into our aquifers. Hello, more cancers!

The TIMES makes the additional sound point that:

"Raising taxes at the top is neither punitive nor gratuitous. It is a needed step, both to achieve near-term budget goals and to lay the foundation for a healthy budget in the future. As the economy strengthens and the population ages, more taxes will be needed from further down the income scale, both to meet foreseeable commitments, especially health care, as well as unforeseeable developments, from wars to technological challenges"


Will the Repukes pay attention? I doubt it, despite the fact that recent polls all disclose the public is on the side of Obama's solutions not the Tea-Party tainted Repuke House. For example, A USA Today/Pew Research poll released Thursday shows Obama with a strong lead over Republicans in Congress on gun policies (45-39 percent), the budget deficit (45-38 percent), immigration (50-33 percent) and even climate change (47-26 percent). When this news came out it prompted Scarborough to cry out two days ago: "We're gettin' our butts beat by Obama!"  Yeah, Joe! Deal with it!


Meanwhile, a Bloomberg poll from Wednesday had similar findings, with Obama’s approval ratings reaching a 3-year high at 55 percent, while just 35 percent have a favorable view of Republicans. From Bloomberg:


"Americans by 49 percent to 44 percent believe Obama’s proposals for government spending  on infrastructure, education and alternative energy are more likely to create jobs than Republican calls to cut spending and taxes to build business confidence and spur employment."

Now, this ought not come as a shock for anyone with more than air between the ears! I mean, as one wit aptly put it a year ago, referring to the European austerity measures: "Look, it's silly to think you can run a race faster if you cut off one of your feet!"

Adding to Republican troubles: 43 percent of Americans blame Republicans for what’s wrong in Washington, compared with 34 percent who blame Obama.

If any Americans read the recent TIME story concerning the F-35 waste ( Feb. 25, 'The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built’ ,p. 26), they'd also be asking why have that white elephant when cutting it would mean so much more benefit for the nation, in all domestic spheres. The Repuke answer is "We need to be strong on defense!" but that's a red herring. What they really want is military jobs for their own districts- they care nothing about real national sacrifice, not like during a REAL war (WWII) which saw my mom using ration books and her family paying higher taxes! You can't have a real war and not have a broad spectrum of citizen-public sacrifice, particularly to PAY for said war. Otherwise, you have a shameless farce and one costing lives and wasting treasure unnecessarily!


Bottom line: the shtick of Repukes and their pro-Southern extremist party has been well known since the 1960s: Bleed the government coffers dry using bloated military spending and tax cuts, then demand the next Dem president cut all domestic spending on account of the deficits the war mongers-tax cutters generated.

But I believe too many people are much wiser now, especially as most of us have the first hand evidence - whether from ration books of WWII, or from deficit charts today - to isolate the frauds from the real McCoys. And the Repukes are frauds!