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Showing posts with label economic royalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic royalism. Show all posts
For everyone who thought I was some insane "boy crying wolf" yesterday, this should prove them wrong. Just as I warned and many folks "in the know" had previously reported, President Obama may be open to supporting the creation of an commission that could force some undemocratic, unfair, and unstimulative proposals including cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
However, President Obama still says on the White House web site that he opposes the very measures that supporters of this "fiscal responsibility commission" support, like raising the retirement age and any type of privatization effort. So what are we to believe? We need for the White House to clarify to us and to the entire nation what they intend to do on "entitlement reform".
Please email the White House here or call them at 202-456-1111! And if you need any ideas on what to say, please let my comments inspire you.
Dear White House,
I am quite disturbed by this new report that the White House is considering a very undemocratic proposal that would force Congress into an "up-or-down vote" on legislation that could end up weakening Social Security and Medicare.
Is this true? Is President Obama considering supporting cuts to Social Security and Medicare? And is he changing his mind on privatization? We need to know.
My father depends on his Social Security and Medicare to just get by. It would be awfully unfair to "balance the budget" on the backs of seniors and disabled people like my dad, and it would be counterproductive to the President's goal of stimulating the economy. Please, please let us know that the President will not allow the theft of Social Security and Medicare funds in the name of "fiscal responsibility". That would not be responsible in any way, and I hope this is the message we soon hear from President Obama.
This frightens me. I'm sorry, but I just can't ignore it any longer. I need to ask this question. Is President Obama considering privatizing Social Security and/or Medicare?
Word has it that President Obama intends to appoint a task force the week after next which will be charged with "reforming" Social Security. According to inside gossip, the task force will be led entirely by economists who were not able to see the $8 trillion housing bubble, the collapse of which is giving the country its sharpest downturn since the Great Depression. [...]
[...] Due to the reckless policies of the Rubin-Greenspan-Bush clique, this cohort has just seen [baby boomers'] housing equity wiped out with the collapse of the housing bubble. Tens of millions of baby boomers who might have felt reasonably secure three years ago are now approaching retirement with little or no equity in their homes. [...]
In short, the vast majority of baby boomers will be approaching retirement with little other than their Social Security and Medicare to support them. And now President Obama is apparently prepared to appoint a commission that will attack these only remaining pillars of support.
It is especially infuriating that this task force is likely to headed up by economists who somehow could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble. The incompetence of such economists has inflicted enormous pain on billions of people around the world. However, unlike people who fail in other professions, economists who mess up on the job just get promoted so that they can do even more harm.
Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.
These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud.
Oh yes, none other than Mr. "IOUSA", Republican billionaire Peter Peterson, is out on a mission to finish what George W. Bush started in destroying the bedrock American social safety net. And why is he out to take away working people's right to a poverty-free retirement? Bascially, he and his fellow "market fundamentalist" buddies hate The New Deal. They hate the fact that "socialist" policies have kept the American capitalist system intact, so they're out to dismantle our social safety net so they can have their laissez-faire nirvana.
But why is President Obama cozying up to this? Hasn't he promised us that he will protect Social Security and Medicare? Yes, he has. So why are we even talking about this "fiscal responsibility summit" that's nothing more than a radical right scheme in disguise? That's what we need to know.
Now's a good time for us to contact President Obama and our members of Congress, before any "fiscal responsibility" ponzi scheme takes hold. Again, we need to remind them that they work for us, not the "Broder-Friedman media establishment". We defeated Bush's privatization program in 2005, and we can defeat it again in 2009. With so many other crises to tackle, like health care and climate change, there's no reason to rush into the non-crisis of Social Security & Medicare.
We elected President Obama & the new Congress on the promise that they will bring change to Washington. So why should we let Washington change them? Let's remind them who they're working for and what kind of change we want to see on "entitlement reform".
When President-Elect Obama first released his economic stimulus plan, I was underwhelmed. Corporate tax breaks? No undoing of the disastrous Bush tax cuts? Only $775 billion?
Fortunately, the response from Democratic Congressional leaders and progressive economists has been great. They've challenged Obama to agree to a better bill, and now we may have a better chance at seeing a better stimulus passed. Believe it or not, it often takes some pushback and a whole lot of standing our ground to get something good accomplished.
While I may not agree with him on everything, David Sirota made some great points today at Open Left on what progressives need to do to win a stimulus that actually works. We need to stand our ground in saying no to silly "entitlement reform" gimmicks that are only meant to finish what GW Bush started in privatizing Social Security & Medicare. Furthermore, we must also resist "tax relief" gimmicks that are only meant to continue redistributing wealth from the working class to the "American Oligarchs".
Of course, we can't just resist awful "ideas" from the radical right. We must also promote our own good ideas, as A Siegel has done. We shouldn't just settle for "infrastructure spending", but push for "green economy" infrastructure. We can create good jobs and reduce our carbon footprint by developing more renewable energy, building high-speed rail lines, supporting carbon neutral building, and much more. Building green will actually stimulate more green, if you know what I mean.
But is it really all that important to be so ideological when Obama wants to be pragmatic? This is a false dichotomy. The fact is , as Jane Hamsher points out so well, that progressive ideas for spending will be more effective in stimulating the economy than tax cut panders to the GOP. Now this doesn't mean that no tax cuts should be included in the final bill, but it's utterly ridiculous for a $775 billion bill to include $310 billion in tax cuts that only yield a return of about $1 for every dollar spent. This isn't about "ideology vs. pragmatism", but rather about pragmatically utilizing proven progressive Keynesian economics to provide real relief to the American people.
So what should we do to get a real stimulus passed? We need to continue pushing Obama to care less about whipping 80 Senate votes for the bill, and more about achieving more bang for our bucks. We need to keep pushing Congress to pass good legislation. Basically, we need to keep being loud & refuse to give up.
Hoover lives! How wonderful that the GOP pols hold fast to their "values" of killing the economy by sitting on their hands & doing nothing. Are they aiming to make this recession into a depression?
Major props to BTD at TalkLeft for catching this! Last night, some corporate media noticed John McCain's new plan to deal with the mortgage mess... And equated it to Hillary Clinton's plan to help struggling homeowners stay in their homes. Score one for "The Maverick" on helping working families... Right?
WRONG! Actually, McCain's plan is nothing like Hillary Clinton's! You see, Hillary's plan is for the federal government to buy bad loans at market value, letting the lenders take the hit, and helping the struggling homeowners keep their homes on the new and more affordable credit terms. McCain, on the other hand, simply wants to pass another "Bailout Bill" giving $100 billion of our tax dollars to the very mortgage lenders that made the bad loans in the first place! Now how is the McBush Big Lender Bailout like Hillary's plan to actually send the help to the homeowners who need it? It isn't!
Cheese louise, is McCain just asking for defeat now?! When we the people are sick and tired of being robbed so the oligarchs can continue living their lavish lifestyles and continue making bad investments that we then have to bail them out on AGAIN, McCain is proposing that we do even MORE of the same? He really has become McBush now. I wonder when he'll start referring to himself as "The Decider".
BTD said it best today...
"No way, no how, no more corporate giveaways McCain."
Don't believe me? See for yourself! In order to pay for his horribly flawed health care scheme that would have us the working-class people pay more to get less coverage, John McCain wants to cut Medicare!
Now how the hell is that "fiscally responsible"??!!
My dad is on Medicare. He was injured on the job, and he's now disabled. He relies on Medicare to see his doctors and obtain his prescription drugs. Why does John McCain want to hurt my dad so I'll have an even shittier "health" scare plan than I do now??!!
John McCain obviously doesn't have to worry about his health care. His Congressional plan is the best in the nation. But what about us working people? Why doesn't he give damn about us?
Well, John McCain can kiss the "senior vote" and the "health care vote" goodbye!
John McCain seems to have a history of hanging out with the wrong crowd. Think about it. His chief economic adviser, Phil "Don't Have a Mental Recession About My Deregulation Screwing You Over, You Nation of Whiners!" Gramm. His campaign manager, Rick "The Corporate Lobbyist" Davis. In fact, his entire campaign run by corporate lobbyists! And how can we forget his running mate, Sarah Palin, and her cynically hypocritical "clean state house" in Alaska full of corruption and secrecy?
Our economy is in peril. We need a President who will be ready & able to do what's necessary to make our economy work for working people again. We can't afford another President who puts the wants of his corporate buddies above the needs of working families.
So why should we take a serious risk with John McCain?
Wow. So McBush parachutes his way into Washington today... To do what? Torpedo a deal on the financial recovery bill? Offer more of the same pure crap deregulation that got us into the mess in the first place?
On Monday, I talked a little about what's at stake in this election. And today, I'd like to expand on that some more. Now that the stupid scandals are gone and we're all focusing again on the economy, now's the perfect time.
When John McCain talk about "change", he talks about some supposedly high-minded concept of "reform". Now of course, McCain has never actually supported any effort to regulate the financial sector and curb the runaway "laissez-faire" madness that threw us into this nmess in the first place. He's never supported reforming our trade agreements to make them fairer for our workers. He's never taken real action to help us working people afford good health care or avoid losing our homes to foreclosure. But now that his poll numbers are dropping like Lehman Brothers' stock price on Monday, he's now embracing the "reform" mantle. But no matter how much McCain talks "reform", we can't believe it.
Why not? Well, let's look at the facts. McCain's "plan to clean up Wall Street" basically consists of appointing a commission to "study what went wrong". Huh?! Don't we all now know what went wrong? McCain's good buddy Phil Gramm pushed to deregulate the financial sector, and he stood by and supported those efforts. McCain's other good pal, George W. Bush, pushed to loosen up regulations even further, basically creating an environment where mortgage lenders could devise ridiculous schemes to entrap borrowers in loans they couldn't really afford while institutional investment banks could pounce upon these subprime mortgages, claim them as "hard assets" as good as cash. If we had the regulations intact that had once set rules for the institutional investment houses, the commercial banks, and the mortgage lenders, we wouldn't be in this debacle today.
But now, John McCain wants us to forget his role in creating the problems he claims he can solve. He wants us to forget that he's supported the Bush Agenda over 90% of the time. He wants us to forget that his chief economic adviser only thinks of us working class people as "a nation of whiners". McCain wants us to forget that even though he's consistently stood with Bush in opposing common-sense regulation of Wall Street, equal pay for women for their equal work, real solutions for affordable and accessible health care, and creating new, well paying "green-collar jobs" that would revitalize our economy while helping us solve the climate crisis, that somehow McCain is different from Bush.
Can we afford to forget all of that? Can we afford the "change" John McCain offers us? Bush is doing nothing now to help us working people survive the financial meltdown, yet all McCain offers is some silly "commission to investigate" what we already know went wrong. We continue to lose good jobs to unfair trade agreements, but McCain has no plan to fix these broken trade agreements and no plan to create new and better jobs for our workers. McCain seems more interested in pleasing his neoconservative and economic royalist friends than enacting an agenda that helps people survive. Barack Obama got it right when he made his point on how his plan of actionoffers real help and real change over the Bush-McCain plan for more of the same.
Simply put, John McCain offers "change" we can't afford. He only offers more of the same Bush-Cheney ideology when we need practical solutions. And if we want this nation to recover and our economy to work for working people again, we can't afford more of the same. We need real changethat we can count on.
Now I know times are tough, and many of us can't afford to give much of our money or our time. That's OK, as there is plenty we can do to make real change happen. Tell your friends who are still considering McCain that he's not the "maverick" he claims to be. Spend a few minutes tonight making some calls or writing a letter. And if you can, please donate whatever you can to help Democrats win this fall. I donated $15 myself this week, and I'll continue to give whatever I can to make sure we have a President and a Congress that will put working people first, not corporate lobbyists. I hope you'll join me.
But above all else, I hope you see the truth for yourself and I hope you join me in bringing about the change we need.
No, I'm not kidding! Supposed Hillary Clinton supporter Lady Lynn Forrester de Rothschild actually says she can't support Obama because she says he's an "elitist". Uh-huh... And Lady Lynn is the woman of the people!
Why do I have a feeling that this won't hurt Barack Obama one bit? ;-)
McLiar says he'll "reform Wall Street", but he doesn't say how he'll do it. Maybe that's because he doesn't want us to remember how he supported all those deregulation bills that got us into this mess.
John McCain tells us that "change is coming"... But is it the kind of change we need?
I don't think so. After all, he and his economic team are proposing to "solve" this crisis by implementing the same failed economic royalist policies that deregulated us into this mess in the first place. Because he stood by and quietly approved as his friend Phil Gramm moved to dismantle the Glass-Steagall Act that used to regulate the financial sector, we couldn't prevent the kind of disaster we're seeing unfold today. And because he once again stood by and approved as the Bushie-run SEC lowered the capital reserve requirements for major brokerage houses, these institutional investment houses (like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Lehman Brothers) made these extremely risky investments in subprime mortgages, counted them as actual "assets", and ultimately collapsed as their once "profitable assets" went bust.
I'm sorry, but that isn't the change we need. If we want to see real change happen, we need new leadership. Oh yes, and how about new and better ideas as well.
Barack Obama understands what we need to do to solve this financial crisis, and he has the right ideas to do so. We need to restore reasonable regulations on the financial sector. We need to provide immediate, real relief to the working class people who are losing their homes to foreclosure, not just to the big Wall Street Titans that are losing their shirts from their risky investments. Ultimately, we need to enact a second stimulus package that will help stabilize and strengthen the economy by providing that aid to the homeowners hardest-hit by the housing crisis, as well as extending and expanding unemployment insurance for people who've lost their jobs. That sounds more like the real change we need.
We have a real choice to make. Our nation is facing hard times, and we need new leadership to get our country out of the mess George W. Bush & his GOP cabal got us into. Do we allow John McCain to give us four more years of the same ol' sh-t... Just branded differently? Or do we choose real change?
- The major indeces are off their lows, but overall the market's still sharply lower. The Dow's down 2% now while the Nasdaq's off just over 1%.
- Bank of America & Merrill Lynch are describing their deal as a "merger", but the reality seems to be that BofA will be taking over the $50 billion of Merrill's assets and "merging" them into BofA.
- AIG's stock is off over 40% as investors wonder whether there's a future for them.
- Lehman Brothers stock has fallen 90% JUST TODAY to spare change as they go bankrupt.
- Bush hardly had anything to say on today's news... Just something on "having confidence in the market".
Stay tuned here at C4O for more as we track today's big news on the financial crisis.
Oops, I mean George Bush & John McCain. Sorry, but news like this causes me to forget this is 2008, and not 1929...
Wall Street was in turmoil on Sunday as Merrill Lynch rushed to find shelter in a $35bn-plus takeover by Bank of America and Lehman Brothers headed towards filing for bankruptcy.
BofA's bold bid for Merrill came as the world's top banks appeared close to abandoning efforts to save Lehman and set out to build a firewall against further financial chaos with a $50bn liquidity pool to support other vulnerable institutions.
There was speculation late on Sunday that the Federal Reserve might announce additional liquidity support, possibly by easing the terms on its borrowing windows, to reduce the risk of a disorderly unwinding of Lehman's positions. The Fed meets to decide on interest rates on Monday. The moves capped a weekend of high drama that could lead to one of the most radical reshapings in Wall Street's history.
Thanks to the Bush-McCain GOP "laissez-faire" policies that actually privatized reward while socializing risk for these financial industry oligarchs, they allowed for a deregulated market that led to all these risky investments that are now collapsing all around us. I hear that McCain says this reinforces his call for "reform" on Wall Street. Excuse me... But what "reform"??!! Sorry, but his & Bush's "reform" is what f**ked us up in the first place. Why the hell would we want more?
'[T]he Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers." The companies, as McClatchy reported, "aren't taxpayer funded but operate as private companies. The takeover may result in a taxpayer bailout during reorganization."'
(Emphasis supplied.) Palin issued standard issue Republican nonsensical cant (See Curve, Laffer) on matters economic - which, as usual, is utter nonsense. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will NOW become "too expensive for taxpayers" because the government is going to bail them out. That said, the bailout plan is probably a good idea, as Krugman explains.
Is this the great gaffe of the century? Not really. To me it is standard issue GOP BS. Which seems the stronger political point to me. McCain-Palin = Bush's Third Term.
This is what we need to hit on. McCain-Palin = Bush-Cheney. None of them know how to fix the economy they broke.
While I don't necessarily agree with all of David Frum's observations in today's New York Times Magazine, I do think they're worth a look. While he goes too far in talking about how Democrats have become the party of the "wealthy elite" (hint: look at income cross-tabs instead of just zip codes), he does have good points about the GOP losing its edge with middle-class voters. And no matter how much McBush & Failin' cry "TAX & SPEND!!", they simply can't put lipstick on their dirty pig of a "steal from the working class to bestow upon the oligarchs" economic policies.
The nation's unemployment rate zoomed to a five-year high of 6.1 percent in August as employers slashed 84,000 jobs, dramatic proof of the mounting damage a deeply troubled economy is inflicting on workers and businesses alike.
The Labor Department's report, released Friday, showed the increasing toll the housing, credit and financial crises are taking on the economy.
6.1% unemployment? 84,000 jobs lost? Looming recession? And "the fundamentals of our economy are strong", as Bush & McCain say? Gimme a break!
"I have actual responsibilities, said Jacqueline del Valle," a community organizer in the Bronx. "If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldnt have so much responsibility. Maybe working people would have an easier time in America today. But thats not our reality, and they dont have to mock us while were trying to clean up their mess."
Today, I found a great new blog called Organizers Fight Back. Here, we see the truth that the Rethuglican fat cat elitists don't want us to see. They think they can mock Barack Obama for working to help the community as a young man, but we know better. We can't let them get away with their ugly smears.
In case you missed it, a slew of speakers at the GOP Convention last night tried to make "community organizer" into some dirty job that anyone would be ashamed of. Rudy Giuliani mocked Obama for having "problems with his resume", while Sarah Palin actually mocked organizers as "having no responsibilities". Maybe from their vantage points as ultra-rich oligarchs that don't know what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck, these Republicans don't think community organizers do anything important. But for the rest of us, we know better.
I have friends myself who have worked hard as community organizers. Through their blood, sweat, and 24/7 nonstop work, they've helped protect the environment, get more affordable housing built, improve our schools, and help workers get the living wage they deserve. I know better, so I refuse to allow these Republican attacks on grassroots local organizers go unchallenged.
We all know of Barack Obama and his work as a community organizer. He actually worked hard to bring about real change for the better in his community in Chicago. He worked to help out workers who lost their jobs at the steel mills. He worked hard to help working families get the affordable housing they deserve. And for Republicans like John McCain and Sarah Palin to mock that while they hide their own ugly truth of putting the wants of the powerful over the needs of the people, that's just outright despicable.
If the Republicans plan to make "community organizer" into some new veiled racist attack, we won't let them. Of the Republicans want to mock Barack Obama's record of service to the people, we won't let them. I've seen far too many ugly, disgusting right-wing attacks go unanswered in the past, so I refuse to stay silent as I see another "swift boat" style smear rear it's ghastly head. I hope you'll all join me.
Let's fight the smears. Let's help truth fight back. Let's stand up for community organizers, for real agents of change like Barack Obama, and let's take our country back from the lying GOP elitists!
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