Krugman writes: "If Obama stands his ground on the debt ceiling, this deal won't look bad in retrospect. If he doesn't, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him."
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. (photo: AP)
Perspective on the Deal
01 January 13
o make sense of what just happened, we need to ask what is really at stake, and how much difference the budget deal makes in the larger picture.
So, what are the two sides really fighting about? Surely the answer is, the future of the welfare state. Progressives want to maintain the achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society, and also implement and improve Obamacare so that we become a normal advanced country that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens. The right wants to roll the clock back to 1930, if not to the 19th century.
There are two ways progressives can lose this fight. One is direct defeat on the question of social insurance, with Congress actually voting to privatize and eventually phase out key programs - or with Democratic politicians themselves giving away their political birthright in the name of a mess of pottage Grand Bargain. The other is for conservatives to successfully starve the beast - to drive revenue so low through tax cuts that the social insurance programs can't be sustained.
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You meet all kind of men
Some rob you with a six-gun
Some with a fountain pen.
War isn't always about bombs and guns and troops. Sometimes it's much more subtle.
Also at stake are taxes (rates and cutoff levels for income tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, Medicare tax, Social Security tax, corporate income tax, even new taxes like a Wall St. transaction tax or fossil fuel tax), tax havens for the rich and corporations, corporate welfare (like fossil fuel subsidies), military spending, and all other spending.
Don't stoop to their level and think about things only in their terms. Look at the whole picture using the values of the people who elected you. An inability to put things into perspective and an inability to bargain are two of the biggest flaws that Obama and Reid have had for the past 4 years. They seem incapable of getting out of that rut.
In 1971, a high school student working a minimum wage job cashed his paycheck in silver dollars at the local bank. Working a seven hour shift after school, he never took home less than 15 silver dollars and often topped 20...
If your point is one that Krugman did not make framing the debate as critical to breaking down the myths that Neo liberal economists have created, then I agree that a major reframing of the debate needs to occur.
Krugman has discussed the framing issue in previous articles and it is apparent that he fully understands.
The majority of the Progressive movement and nearly all the Democratic Party are, as you say, enablers of Back Obama. This is an item that is clearly framed by the Republicans and believed only by Republicans.
Even some of more rational non-tea pot head republicans believe this myth.
You have to pay for this representation like any other service.
Where my husband grew up, Gerretsen Beach Brooklyn, NY, was very hard hit by Sandy.
Feds promised help. Fo-get about it.
Robin Hood old rockers show promised help. Lots of groups got help: $25,000 went to people to insure they receive wages for work done. But Gerritsen Beach, where all the homes were severely damaged and still have no heat? Where they had expected at least $100,000 from Robin Hood, and that would be only a start? They only received $25,000, and even then, when? Fo-get about it.
Gerritsen Beach, now (finally) called a "zone A" area because every house in the area had been completely under water, is still waiting for help. For anybody actually interested in sending help, not just talking about them, look up gerritsenbeach. net
I'm serious. At the very least, this area needs continuous publicity, so the rest of us can ask them, How 'ya doin'?
The Bush tax cuts were supposed to expire in their entirety two years ago. It's not a "victory" that taxes were restored on those making over $400k AGI.
All the cuts should have been allowed to expire, after which the Dems could have introduced new legislation to cut taxes on AGI below $200k.
But then I'm European and accustomed to more humanity in legislation.
-An' ah'm SOOO grateful deah massah-bosses, fuh the gigantic 1.7% cos' o' livin' you done grant me dis yeah (grovel, grovel, kiss feet of owners). Ah'm gon' have a hard time figgerein' out how tah spen' it all!
They zinged me for a little more in Medicare too. Not much, but a little.
We went two years without COLA raises.
Ah, but who is going to feed the rich and greedy but us?
In his fictionalized autobiographies , and some other discourses, Obama held that the most important notion is not progress, but how to "navigate".
Navigate among what? The powers that be. In the case of his presidency, the powers that be constitute the plutocracy in place.
Those who are genuinely for progress are not about navigating, but about creating, forging, changing things, instead of turning around, seducing the powerful to reach one's personal satisfaction, defined as the highest value.
Obama and other very rich democrats who lead (Pelosi, etc.) actually established the principle of not attacking the plutocracy when they had all the political power in Obama's first few months. They just killed time until their fellow multimillionair es in the republican party could block everything.
Obama will reach port, after his personal navigation, when he is as rich as the Pelosis, Feinsteins, Clintons, Kerrys... That means as rich, or richer, than Romney himself.
In a well established plutocracy, the opposition itself is either plutocratic, or aspire to be. That is what is going on. A Kabuki of the hyper rich, or aspiring hyper rich. Everything points towards a dismantling of the welfare state, and further blossoming of the plutocratic effect.
Politics is an "industry" - a protection racket - and a sucker fleecing racket.
No one in any industry intentionally sets out to reduce their revenue sources.
Most people who go into politics - both republicans and democrats - go into the industry for the same reason most people go into any other industry.
To make money.
Is this some kind of a mystery to anyone?
..........
LIBOR: "The Mob Learned From Wall Street"
http://antemedius.com/content/libor-mob-learned-wall-street
With the right wing corporate puppet president they have in the white house, they're likely to be successful.
Bob Woodward: "This is a confidential document, last offer the president -- the White House made last year to Speaker Boehner to try to reach this $4 trillion grand bargain.... what it shows is a willingness to cut all kinds of things, like TRICARE, which is the sacred health insurance program for the military, for military retirees; to cut Social Security; to cut Medicare."
http://tinyurl.com/bcytexx
Barack Obama, October 24, 2012: Obama laid out an astoundingly ambitious second-term agenda in an interview published Wednesday...
"It will probably be messy. It won't be pleasant," Obama told the Des Moines Register's publisher and its editor by telephone. The daily made the exchange public after the White House dropped its insistence that it be off-the-record.
...
"I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I've been offering to the Republicans for a very long time...
"We can easily meet—'easily' is the wrong word—we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years...
http://tinyurl.com/8e4fxzq
The fical cliff is a fraud created by both parties to get us to accept a rotten bargain like this. Our believing in it or trusting ANY politician is like committing suicide and we have only ourselves to blame.
Maybe a comprehensive bill will emerge. But too many Congress people are tied to W.S. The FC is not ONLY about the Bush Tax cuts - For example we need Tax reform (to include investigation of off shore accounts that have INCOME buried.)
Off shore $$ is not really so hard to figure out. Every penny I make is turned into IRS. Get my drift?)
We, the people, don't want just tax cuts and medicare, social security (etc) - we want oil subsidies, bank bail outs, military (etc) stopped.
As we know Congress should not have tried trying to rush this "cliff" problem into a few days.
We are going down - and we all will know it's the house GOP/TP who caused our demise.
But actually we won't care who PUT us down when we are in the pits. The TP must be outed in 2014 - 2 years is a long time and can we recover another 2 years of loss?
Do we have hope in the new Congress? More than with this Congress
Why in the world can we not take the best of all Ism's and resist the bad. Before we can digest that however, we first have to learn and be informed of the real differences, good and bad.
Why can't we use the example of many European countries were the union boss is in fact sitting on the board of corporation and both benefit? The ideal of democracy, works a lot better there, than it does here. Ironically the profit and stability and satisfaction has been a plus for both; the owner and the worker as well as society. Unfortunately this kind of argument usually results in the standard answer that this is Socialism. With that distorted belief we are doomed. Capitalism within the framework of a real Democracy has worked wonders and it still could, but not in a way it is handled and preached today
Republicans should appreciate him more than democrats. Even made windfall profits for Republican operated health insurance corporations simply to be able to eliminate the 'pre-existing condition' exclusion. The list goes on and on...
1. Underpay your workers.
2. Loot the treasury with expensive, unnecessary contracts (paid for by bribing the politicians), whether bloated medical, military, or other expenses which have nothing to do with health or national security, only with fattening your pockets, returning billions for the millions you give the politicians.
3. Evade taxes to pay for those expenses.
4. Your underpaid workers pay less taxes, and have less money to spend to stimulate the economy and create more jobs and tax revenue.
5. Cut spending for infrastructure, education et al. for the 99%, claiming “we need to cut the budget” that you just looted.
6. Ship jobs overseas, which gives more money to you and less to the country that nourished you, either in taxes or in jobs which would pay for those taxes and reduce that deficit that you created.
7. Refuse to pay pensions and medical insurance for your employees, so that they wind up using Medicaid et al., thereby looting the treasury even more.
8. Loan the money to pay for those debts, and make MORE money!
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