Tuesday Reads: Obama’s Deficit-Reduction Plan, Backsliding Obots, Rev. Wright, and Dr. Doom
Posted: September 20, 2011 Filed under: American Jobs Act, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Global Financial Crisis, income inequality, Medicaid, Medicare, morning reads, Social Security, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Booman, Chris Hedges, class warfare, digby, Ezra Klein, Greg Sargent, Jon Walker, Jonathan Cohn, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, Nouriel Roubini, Rev. Jeremiah Wright 45 Comments
Good Morning!! Let’s see what’s happening in the news today.
Well, of course the Obama apologists are claiming that he has suddenly grown a backbone of steel and become the liberal messiah they all dreamed of in 2008. I already told you about Ezra Klein’s delusional column last night. The other usual suspects are also getting leg tingles, and former Obots are starting to backslide.
Greg Sargent has put on his rose-colored glasses and taken a few swigs of LSD-laced Koolaid:
This has to be the clearest sign yet that Obama has taken a very sharp populist turn as he seeks to frame the contrast between the parties heading into 2012. During his remarks this morning, Obama directly responded to Republicans accusing him of “class warfare,” but rather than simply deny the charge, he made the critical point that the act of protecting tax cuts for the rich is itself class warfare, in effect positioning himself as the defender of the middle class against GOP class warriors on behalf of the wealthy.
Wow! I’ll bet it never occurred to anyone that income inequality equals class warfare until Obama figured it out. Amaaaazzzzing!!
A senior administration official tells me that parts of Obama’s “class warfare” broadside were ad-libbed. Here’s the key chunk — and it’s a script that could have been written by just about any card-carrying member of the “professional left:”
Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There’s no justification for it. It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million…
We’re already hearing the usual defenders of these kinds of loopholes saying, “this is just class warfare.” I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare. I think it’s just the right thing to do. I believe the American middle class, who’ve been pressured relentlesly for decades, believe it’s time that they were fought for as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations.
Nobody wants to punish success in America … All I’m saying is, that those who have done well, including me, should pay our fair share in taxes to contribute to the nation that made our success possible.
Holy sh*t!! Obama ad libbed? Hope ‘n’ change! Change we can believe in! I guess it’s just me, but I thought that speech sounded kind of weak and defensive. But what do I know?
Booman has an even better rationalization for Obama’s behavior than Beltway Bob Ezra Klein. According to the ever-gullable Booman,
…the president has a lot more credibility now when he takes his ideas to the public and says the the Republicans aren’t interested in compromise. You have to try and fail to get a compromise before that argument has any resonance. It’s not so much 11-Dimensional chess as basic common sense. Everyone’s poll numbers suffered during the summer, but no one’s standing was weakened more the Republicans’. That’s not an accident.
So Obama must have planned this. The man is brilliant!!
Digby says Obama is in campaign mode and that’s why he’s trying to sound strong and determined.
My first thought is that it appears the administration has finally decided that there’s nothing to be gained with exclusively delivering post-partisan pablum. It certainly sounds as though he’s thrown down the gauntlet. Unfortunately, the President appears to want to have two fights going into this election, one over job creation and one over whose plan to cut the deficit is better, which I think is a confusing waste of time. (Focus like a laser beam on jobs and tell the Republicans they’ll have to go through you to get to the safety net and I think people would instinctively understand that he’s on their side.) But that isn’t this president’s style and perhaps it wouldn’t be believable if he did it. So, this is at least a change of tactics, more confrontational in tone, which is his best hope for reelection since it turns out people aren’t really all that impressed that he’s the most reasonable guy in the room if it appears that he gets punk’d every time.
Digby things the proposed Medicare cuts are a loser politically, though–especially for Congress members running for reelection.
Jon Walker at FDL was “pleasantly surprised” that Obama didn’t call for Social Security cuts or “any specific major cuts to Medicare benefits,” but he hasn’t gone back on the Koolaid.
This is a positive development. Having President Obama publicly call for major cuts in Medicare benefits or change in age eligibility would have been terrible for our senior citizens and a total political disaster for the Democratic party. But it is important to remember: simply because the president did not put such cuts on the table doesn’t mean he took these cuts off the table.
President Obama has already privately signaled that in theory he would be willing to support major cuts to Medicare. And he’s hinted he’d be willing to cut Social Security benefits. They were both earlier put the table for a theoretical deal and this speech didn’t take them off the table. There was no veto threat to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.
Actually, there do seem to be specific proposed cuts to Medicare. Jonathan Cohn breaks down the detail of the President’s deficit reduction proposal in a very technical piece that you can read if you’re interested. According to Cohn,
President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan includes about $320 billion in cuts to government health care programs. Most of the cuts from Medicare and that is sure to get a lot of people’s attention, if not now then in the presidential campaign.
But these reductions are less severe, and less worrisome, than some of the proposals Obama indicated he was willing to support over the summer, while he was negotiating with House Speaker John Boehner. In particular, Obama did not call for increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, as folks like me feared he would.
In fact, the cuts Obama has in mind are more or less consistent with the kind of cuts that you find in the Affordable Care Act: They are reductions designed to change the way Medicare pays for treatment and services, ideally (although not always) in ways that will actually improve the efficiency or quality of care. To the extent they would force individual seniors to pay more, it’d be in the form of higher premiums from wealthy seniors or higher co-pays for treatments likely to be unnecessary or wasteful.
For a reminder of who Obama really is, I’ll turn to Glenn Ford at the Black Agenda Report. His post was written a few days ago–before today’s speech–but I still think he has Obama’s number.
The GOP can count on Obama to offer up Social Security on the alter of austerity, as he has done consistently since January, 2009, while still president-elect. Back in April, he proposed $4 trillion in cuts over 12 years – nearly as draconian as his hand-picked committee – with the focus on the safety net. “By 2025,” warned the apocalyptic and grossly misleading president, “the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs, Social Security, and the interest we owe on our debt.”
Obama promises that his grab-bag, mostly supply-side and wholly inadequate jobs scheme will largely be “paid for” by cuts that include “modest adjustments [hah!] to health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”
Social Security stands to be mortally wounded at Obama’s hand. His second round of cuts in the payroll tax further undermine, not just the program’s trust fund, but its status as a free-standing entity outside of the usual congressional process. Congress will, theoretically, make up the temporary shortfall in payroll taxes through appropriations. But that puts Social Security in the middle of the budget deficit debate, where it does not belong and from which it has been purposely shielded since its origins in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Through rhetoric and calculated action, Obama has for the past two and a half years been in league with Republicans in falsely conflating Social Security and the federal debt. He is now positioned to knock the program from its protective pedestal.
The Social Security cuts are already taken care of as long as the GOP goes along with extending the payroll tax holiday. The more money Obama can suck out of the Social Security trust fund, the more likely he can “reform” the Social Security into a welfare program or Wall Street ATM.
If Obama succeeds, Social Security will become just another “entitlement” to be mangled in a grand bargain with the GOP, like Medicare and Medicaid. Obama wants to be remembered as the president who brought the Republicans and the right wing of the Democratic Party into harmonious consensus – over the dead carcass of the New Deal. That’s what he means by “Go big!”
Chris Hedges has another excellent article up at Truthdig. It’s an interview with Obama’s former pastor and spiritual adviser: “The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Recalls Obama’s Fall From Grace.” I know not everyone will agree with Hedges’ point of view, but I mostly do. As outlandish as Wright was made to seem in the media, I couldn’t fault much of what I heard him say about America and racism. It’s a lengthy article, but I hope you’ll take a look at it.
One of the things Wright discussed with Hedges was the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington DC. Wright himself raised $200,000 for the project.
“I think it’s a wonderful thing that the country would recognize someone as important as Dr. King,” Wright said when I reached him by phone in Chicago, “and recognize him in a way that raises his likeness in the Mall along with the presidents. He’s not a president like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. But to have him ranked among them in terms of this nation paying attention to the importance of his work, that’s a good thing.”
“I read Maya Angelou’s piece about the way the quote was put on the monument,” Wright said in referring to the editing of a quote by King on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue. The inscription quote reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” But these are not King’s words. They are paraphrased from a sermon he gave in which he said: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” Angelou said the mangled inscription made King sound “arrogant.”
“I read the explanation as to why we couldn’t include the whole quote,” said Wright, who helped raise $200,000 for the monument. “Kids a hundred years from now, like our pastor who was born three years after King was killed, they’re going to see that and will not get the context. They will not hear the whole speech, and that will be their take-away, which is not a good thing. My bigger problems, however, have to do with all the emphasis on ’63 and ‘I Have a Dream.’ They have swept under the rug the radical justice message that King ended his career repeating over and over and over again, starting with the media coverage of the April 4, 1967, ‘A Time to Break Silence’ message at the Riverside Church [in New York City]. King had a huge emphasis on capitalism, militarism and racism, the three-headed giant. There is no mention of that, no mention of that King, and absolutely no mention of the importance of his work with the poor. After all, he’s at the garbage collectors strike in Memphis, Tenn., when he is assassinated. The whole emphasis on the poor sent him to Memphis. But that gets swept away. It bothers me that we think more about a monument than a movement. He had a movement trying to address poverty. It was for jobs, not I Have a Dream, not Black and White Together, but that gets lost.”
He’s right. The powers that be have worked for years to minimize King’s work to end the Vietnam war as well as his determination to wipe out poverty. It’s interesting that this is the second time King has been misquoted on Obama’s watch.
This post is already too long, so I’ll end with an article by Dr. Doom (Nouriel Roubini): Eight drastic policy measures necessary to prevent global economic collapse. None of them will be popular. The first recommendation is that
we must accept that austerity measures, necessary to avoid a fiscal train wreck, have recessionary effects on output. So, if countries in the Eurozone’s periphery such as Greece or Portugal are forced to undertake fiscal austerity, countries able to provide short-term stimulus should do so and postpone their own austerity efforts. These countries include the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the core of the Eurozone, and Japan. Infrastructure banks that finance needed public infrastructure should be created as well.
Read the rest and weep. Our current “leaders” aren’t likely to pay any attention.
So sorry if I depressed you with that one. What are you reading and blogging about today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Surprise, surprise: Female staffers felt frozen out in early Obama WH
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/friction-over-womens-role-in-obama-white-house-was-intense/2011/09/19/gIQA9OUygK_story.html
I don’t think this story is going away, despite the denials.
The Washington Post
Barack Obama doesn’t have a “women” problem. At least not yet.
Scary article pushing Social Security “reform.”
http://thinksb.com/2011/09/social-security-is-headed-for-reform-and-it-could-be-a-good-thing/
Despite my dislike for Obama, I must say he has a chance if he some how shows the debt will be comming down without eviserating the social programs.. It is my beleif that the debt is so large, that we all have to pull on the oars. Everyone has to pay, rich middle and poor. A lot of this can be mittigated with a steep progressive application. However every one has to be part of the solution. Let us forget that the rich give a damn about the middle class or poor. Christianity is claimed, but not practised. The Republicans seem to think that God will provide. Obama has to motivate the population.
If Obama proposes and strongly campaigns a progressive response to the nonsense currently being implemented, we have a chance. We could have growth to recover if we had manufacturing and employment. However, the probability of that is low. Hence the need for everone to pull on the oars and provide the example for the rest of the world.
Regarding the feasibility of this, just look at the debt and deficit curves under the Clinton administration. The tragedy is that the Republicans are not able to field a reasonable candidate.
True, and Ron Paul goes as far as saying that charities like the Catholics (named them in a debate) can take care of the poor in need of health care. I don’t know why people are so hard at work against their own interests by registering as Republicans.
The Republicans are busy trying to steal Social Security’s and Medicare’s money to continue waging their wars with no objective, and no clear end in site. In Iraq the military lost billions that they still can’t account for (Iraqi money entrusted in the US’s care) and the missing 2.3 Trillion dollars from the Pentagon…no investigations in site, none. Congress has become a rubber stamp for corruption by not holding inquiries into these thefts while trying to pay for the wars with workers’ money for their retirement.
I am half asleep sorry…
The middle class and poor already pay. The wealthy and corporations do not. I think the Bush tax cuts should be dumped for everyone. Frankly, I never got anything out of them. In fact, my taxes went up under Bush. Guess what? I was in a very low income category: full-time student. The best I ever got out of Bush was two $300 checks, which I would have been happy to forgo to keep the surplus.
But the real problem is the wars, and until we stop spending billions on those we’ll have a huge deficit. Don’t forget that Bush financed the wars off-budget, and Obama put them into the federal budget. That’s where a lot of the deficit “increase” came from. It was there all the time, just camoflaged.
Other areas that should be cut way back (but won’t be of course) are homeland security, defense, and specifically closing lots of those bases overseas. But it won’t happen, we will lose the safety net and as a consequence we will be come a huge third world country.
Politico has a article on Suskind with this video . Today he said his book was solid as a brick, all comments have been sourced. Is he possibly the new Woodward?
http://bcove.me/3ptudtvp
It might be that this book might have motivated Obama to finally stand up and do something. However he has to be ready to take his views to brinkmanship to get them done.
It is all in having the right idea’s and framing of the discussion.
Is the book on sale now? I think I am going out to buy a copy.
It came out today. My copy should arrive by UPS this afternoon. I can’t wait.
Watching everyone deflecting on TV says to me, this author has written the truth. I am interested in how President Obama blocked Single Payer, the Public Option and then took the bone he wagged in front of us for the Medicare Buy In. I really need to know who in his administration was complicit in throwing REAL Health Care Reform under the bus when he had control of both houses.
I don’t know how much of that health care stuff will be in this book. It focuses on how Obama chose his economic team and how it all fell apart. I’ll check for health care info when I get my copy and let you know.
Thanks BB!
I noticed Obama’s job approval numbers just tanked to a new low of 39%.
On MSNBC Cornell West will be speaking of the need to Primary Obama. There is one reason people are afraid to voice and I won’t either, but wonder if West will.
Available on Amazon Kindle — I just ordered one.
Many of us noted early on that there were too few women in the 0bowma WH and that many of the males had well known sexism issues.
So I really doubt that many of us are surprised that sexism thrives in the 0bowma WH. Plus as I’ve mentioned before — Mrs. 0 is not a feminist. So she has be of little use — and the b**** has two daughters.
He has everything on tape. I mentioned above that he already undercut Anita Dunn’s denials by playing the tape for a WaPo reporter. The WH has already backtracked. This is going to be fun to watch.
Glad to see ‘journalistic’ principles still exist.
get the popcorn ready. 😆
These guys (and gals – I’m so disappointed in TL taking back her pink slip) are so easily seduced it is beyond belief. A few words? That’s all it takes to get them back in line? I’ve never ever seen so-called liberals be so easily conned. Is it because of the color of Obama’s skin? Seriously. How can this be happening? They’re already preemptively letting him off the hook when he hasn’t done a damn thing and when, more importantly, HE’S the one who has ALWAYS made his intentions to gut both programs abundantly clear. And, even without raising the Medicare-eligibility age, he’s still proposing some serious cuts. This fawning and capitulation strike me as anything but post-racial.
They do it, because they don’t want to see the truth, and let him screw us (sorry but it upsets me) on Single Payer, The Public Option and the Medicare Buy In. I mean if 50,000 Americans die each year and 2/3 of all bankruptcies are due to lack or health insurance or under insurance, but they must protect him…do these people matter? President Obama isn’t held accountable for anything, nor his broken promises…
Well said — no apology needed — because we are screwed.
Oh, my! So sardonic here. The latest from Ezra Klein’s newly formatted Wankblog.
http://www.manarewescrewed.com/?p=5689
Great post. I had forgotten that fawning article by Beltway Bob. I wanted to comment on your post, but couldn’t figure out how to do it.
Speaking of fawning, check out Dana Millbank today: Obama launches a revolution
The media has lower expectations for Obama than they did for Bush. They go wild with praise if he doesn’t surrender immediately.
I saw that last night and had to suppress my gag reflex. Some people just have to give bj’s in public, don’t they?
Oh, and dig this one by David Brooks:
“I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.“
I was afraid to read that one. I already hate Brooks, and just didn’t think I could handle it.
I highlighted it in the next post so cover your eyes.
Damn, what is it with these people? You got one group of media who are ready to string Obama up by his balls for anything…the paperclip crap comes to mind…
Then you got the other group that as Dak says, gives blowjobs of gratitude for anything he does and more particularly anything he doesn’t do.
That leaves the few of us who voice any fair and reasonable opinions on the man…the MSM press is not doing their jobs (accountablilty) at all. Which leaves obama to continue to do this crap over and over again.
We’re not a corporation. We’re people. Texas will execute us and we can be put in jail.
He’ll probably be awarded another Nobel Prize.
They go wild with praise if he doesn’t surrender immediately.
lol !At least he’s starting to pertend to say no….he could not be bothered to do that before…would not do the Dem two day stand then cave kabuki. Someone must have told him caving right away it makes it harder to ask for money to “fight”
Interesting
Thank you, thank you, thank you for that link. I only caught a small bit of it, but listening to President Clinton for just a bit is so interesting and informative. He is brilliant.
I believe they have the complete segments up for reply for folks that missed it. I am watching the opening and the end after I finish some time items at work.
As to Rev. Wright…………we know how he linked with Obama, 20 years of sitting in the pew, and donations of more than 85,000 dollars, and he didn’t hear a fugging word that was said.
Then the Rev. connects Obama to the Altegld Gardens Housing Projects where he begins as a community organizator. He fails to tell you that Obama didn’t succeed in improving the lives of the poor people there, and that when Obama becomes a Grant Bandit. He learned the ropes alright, $125,000 for community food garden, and not one damn gets planted. Obama had a bad disregard for the poor at an early age.
What really bugs me, is that Rev. Wright tells the story of Obama saying he would never run against a black sister…..that he would drop out first…………Got Alice Palmer? Her story in Chicago paints another picture of trigger happy Obama.
I guess Rev. Wright thinks we forgot, but we didn’t and we will not forget “Pres. Obama was selected before he was elected”…………and what did the Rev. say about Hillary, she ain’t never been called a niggra”………..we know who was campaiging for who , and where (Trinity Church).
Finally the Rev. mentions the upcoming King Memorial on Oct 16………..he talks about all the donations, he himself donated, and others, but not a word about the slave laborers of China
who finished the memorial……..
Wright sounds pretty unhappy with the entire MLK memorial project. I don’t see how he can be blamed for any of it. Here’s an interesting article about how the sculptor was chosen.
http://www.minnpost.com/stories/2011/08/25/31085/chinese_sculptor_of_national_malls_martin_luther_king_monument_was_discovered_in_st_paul
I think the entire mess has left a bad taste in a lot of mouths, but the sculptor himself seems to be very engaged in the U.S.
Despite Wright’s obvious human flaws, his analysis of American history and race is pretty accurate, IMHO. I didn’t fight much controversial at the time, except for his nasty remarks about Hillary.
He’s obviously paid a very high personal price for his support of Obama.
BB and I talk about this and I’m no psychologist, but it seems to me Obama replies his parental angst over and over again. He wants the love of the reckless, abandoning, selfish father and hates his mother and all she stands for with a passion. It’s like everything he does plays that out. He chases the approval of republicans while using and dissing the poor and women. It’s like we’ve had two presidents in a row that keep working out their daddy issues on the nation. Clinton had some really tough issues in that department and all it did was possibly contribute to the womanizing. Again, I don’t know but it seems like a huge pattern that has to have a basis insomething.
So what else is new? Same old psychological ________. I won’t say what I’m thinking because you will so skewer me.
I so have nothing in common with him and others like him because all I want is for the reckless, abandoning selfish father to go away so that I can be with my mother. And they’re just the opposite.
Sorry about he errors………………not one damn SEED gets planted.
I had a laugh, as I had forgotten about that, and those that say he was a community organizer, don’t know that most are ‘starving organizers’ as they put all the resources towards the project. Wright was wrong in not holding him accountable and patting him on the back and letting him get away with being called an organizer, rather than sending him over to the garden to plant the garden. So, he now expects pats, praise, cheers, while he tears down the Democratic principles.
Denied: Parole board denies clemency to Troy Davis | ajc.com
It’s posted up above on the front page.
Hope you’re doing OK, MInx.
It has been hard, but today is going to be the first time we get to see Karen, his wife… I had not even read the last couple of post yet…will catch up later tonight. Obituary Page 16
This appeared on the twitter page – thought it was appropriate
@JamesGRickards
Jim Rickards #Obama saw himself as FDR, the class warrior cleaning up a mess. But history cast him as #Hoover; a smart guy who tried everything & failed
He has a chanct to be either