Better Late than Never for Obama

By Robert Kuttner, Reader Supported News

03 December 12

resident Obama has belatedly grasped that holding firm on tax increases for the top 2 percent, and defending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid against needless cuts, is good politics and good policy. As his Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner put it on Fox News Sunday, "Why does it make sense for the country to force tax increases on all Americans, because a small group of Republicans want to extend tax rates for 2 percent of Americans, why does that make any sense? There's no reason why it should happen."

Geithner was even more explicit on CNN, when interviewer Candy Crowley pressed him on whether the Administration was really prepared to go "off the cliff" if Republicans refused to raise tax rates on the top 2 percent.

"If Republicans are not willing to let rates go back up [on the top 2 percent" Geithner said, "and we think they should go back to the Clinton levels when the American economy did exceptionally well, then there will not be an agreement."

In his budget proposal, the president offered no cuts in Social Security, and only $400 billion over 10 years in Medicare and other savings, money that can be gotten by allowing Medicare to negotiate bulk discounts with drug companies and other administrative savings, without raising the eligibility age or otherwise cutting into benefits.

The Republicans, meanwhile are revealed as the people who would push the economy off a cliff in order to fight for tax breaks for the richest 2 percent; the party that would rather cut benefits in Medicare and Social Security than have the wealthy pay even the relatively low tax rates of the Clinton years.

It was Winston Churchill who said that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else. Obama, belatedly, is doing the right thing.

He tried taking big savings out of Medicare in order to finance his Affordable Care Act. The Republicans pilloried him for it.

He tried pivoting to fashionable austerity, appointing the Bowles-Simpson Commission to propose far deeper budget cuts than the economy required. The commission majority report offered a deflationary program of cuts in Medicare, Social Security, and no rate increases on the taxes paid by the rich. Mercifully, the commission failed to get the necessary super-majority for its proposals.

And he tried offering cuts in Social Security and Medicare in order to get a budget deal in 2011 with House Speaker John Boehner. But the refusal of the Republicans to consider even a penny of tax increases saved the President from himself.

Now, as a last resort, President Obama has come around to sensible economics and smart politics -- no cuts in social insurance benefits, no backing down on tax hikes for the rich, no deeper deficit cuts until the economy is stronger. His plan even proposes $50 billion in new public investments -- not enough but a big step in the right direction.

What's so heartening is not just that Obama is helping voters appreciate what Republicans really stand for but that he is turning his back on the echo chamber of deficit hysteria ginned up by Wall Street as a way of cutting social insurance and protecting low tax rates on the richest. Seeing Pete Peterson and his corporate deficit-hawk cronies lose this fight is as satisfying as seeing the Republicans lose.

So what happens next?

The Republicans will continue to huff and puff that it's Obama's fault if taxes go up for everyone. But the fact is that the Senate has already approved a continuation of the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent -- all the Republican House has to do is concur and Obama will sign the bill into law.

The business elite, through the corporate-funded campaign "Fix the Debt" campaign, will continue to warn about the perils of the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts -- the dreaded fiscal cliff -- and press the two parties to meet each other halfway.

But domestic spending has already been cut by $1.7 trillion over 10 years under the terms of the 2011 budget deal. Domestic spending has been cut enough. Tax rates on the rich are already at a postwar low, and it hasn't levitated a depressed economy. The Democratic Party have already met the GOP more than halfway. And each time, the Republicans use the concession as the new starting point.

If Obama hangs tough and the budget briefly goes "over the cliff" in the form of automatic tax increases for everyone and mandated indiscriminate spending cuts that risk sending the economy back into recession, the Republicans are at last set up to take the blame that they richly deserve.

Obama seems willing let that happen, in order to keep the pressure on Republicans to allow taxes to rise on the rich.

The risk is that when the negotiations finally get to the end game, and Republicans are forced accept the tax deal, Obama may succumb to pressure to cut Social Security and Medicare, so that he can say that he, too, gave ground on issues that were difficult for his party. The risk is that he will listen to his inner bipartisan.

That would be a huge mistake. The Republicans have been unmasked for who they are. The best thing Obama can do is to continue to hold the high ground of this debate. The Republican position is entirely at odds with the vast majority of voters. If Obama doesn't fold a winning hand, eventually the Republicans will have to come to him.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Bradley Manning and Our Decade of Denial

By Seamus McKiernan, Reader Supported News

03 December 12

or nearly three years, Bradley Manning, the 24-year-old army private accused of leaking classified documents, has been denied the right to speak in public. He got his chance this week in a Fort Meade, Md. courtroom, but the long denial reminded me of a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's a fictional tale about villagers who enjoy total happiness and bliss as long as they keep quiet about a boy who's locked up in a dark, underground cellar. The denial that haunts the pages of "Omelas" is also at the center of the government's case against Bradley Manning.

Manning has been in the dark for more than 900 days -- with most of that time spent in solitary confinement. It is the longest pre-trial detention of a U.S. military soldier since the Vietnam War. The extreme conditions of Manning's detention have been widely reported. A Navy psychiatrist who treated Manning testified that his medical recommendations were consistently ignored by commanders. A UN investigation last spring described Manning's conditions as "cruel" and "inhuman."

Like any allegory, the "Omelas"-Manning comparison isn't perfect. Unlike the boy in the story, Bradley Manning may not be innocent. But if there's a strong case against Manning, what accounts for the delay in due process and the extreme conditions of his detention? If the Obama administration believes in protecting whistleblowers, as it codified in new whistleblower-protection legislation that Obama signed this week, why is Bradley Manning's case being treated so differently?

The answer lies in the perceived power of denial. Instead of confronting revelations in the leaked material -- which includes thousands of intelligence documents and diplomatic cables -- the government has chosen to focus its efforts on punishing the suspected leaker.

It's clear that disclosures about how the U.S. has prosecuted its wars and foreign policy have embarrassed the Obama administration. But official denial of government malfeasance is connected to the larger vacation from reality that we as a nation have taken -- especially in the last decade.

There's the denial about prisoner abuse, suicides and coercive methods of interrogation at Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba. And the denial of secret intelligence-gathering efforts by U.S. diplomats. There's the denial of secret bombings in Yemen and covert U.S. special operations missions in Pakistan. There's the denial of secret dealings between the U.S. and Ahmed Wali Karzai, the accused drug baron and brother of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. And the denial about civilian casualties, like the now-infamous video that appears to show a U.S. gunship killing 12 people in Iraq. The list goes on.

But the first rule about denial is that no one talks about denial. Beginning late in George W. Bush's second term, we started to hear talk about letting bygones be bygones. Obama followed suit, refusing to investigate the Bush administration for alleged past misconduct.

In an election year, issues related to war and foreign policy took a back seat on the campaign trail, they were largely overlooked at the Republican and Democratic Conventions, and were barely touched upon in the debates.

"Don't litigate the past" is the new American mantra. We have subverted important constitutional protections -- and a vigorous debate about their value -- in the name of national security. But mistakes don't go away just because you cover your eyes or stick your head in the sand. The Patriot Act, which eroded privacy and other American freedoms, was intended as a piece of temporary legislation. But it still exists today.

The government case against Bradley Manning claims that Manning "aided the enemy" and endangered U.S. soldiers, but a 2010 Pentagon review found no such evidence. Who is the enemy? Is it the lack of honesty and dialogue about the shortcomings of U.S. foreign policy? Maybe Pogo, the legendary cartoon character during the Vietnam era, was right when he mused about the need for transparency: "We have met the enemy -- and he is us."

The Bradley Manning trial is an important piece of history and, like the "Omelas" story, it can teach us something about ourselves. I was disappointed this week to see that the New York Times, the American paper of record, gave the story short shrift with a one-page article (a wire story via AP on Thursday) on the week-long hearings.

At the end of the fable, some villagers decide to protest over the town's silence about the secret of the boy in the cellar. The single act of conscience puts their promised utopia in the balance. We might think of doing the same, by reinvigorating a conversation about the "War on Terror" during our decade of denial. Yes, it may put complacency, our false sense of happiness, at risk. But that is to be expected. Guilty or not, Bradley Manning has put uncomfortable truths in front of our eyes.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.