Written by Don Washington   

I remember walking in the snow, knocking on doors, making phone calls, visiting with people, working my soul down past the bone to elect Barack Obama… only to be hit by Deception’s Hammer. He didn’t make many promises. He said he’d put on comfortable shoes and march with us but he wasn’t in Wisconsin or Michigan or Ohio, or Chicago or anywhere else where unions are being strangled to death. Deception’s Hammer is driving a stake through democracy’s heart and it feels like our President is holding it place for the killing blow.

I say that because somehow a routine thing, like raising the debt ceiling; something that has been done regularly since 1917 and has no connection to any kind of tax policy is about to lead to the eventual demise of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and our President is asking us to cheer this on like it was an inevitable compromise made by an adult. But I’ve been hit by Deception’s Hammer too many times by my fellow Chicagoan and I now know its backswing before it comes forward. This is not compromise; this is what President Obama has had in mind and hoped to have a chance to do since he came into office… none of us wanted to believe it.

None of us wanted to believe it when he named the members of the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission. The Chairmen, former arch-conservative, Republican Senator Alan Simpson and a triangulating new Democrat Erskine Bowles who was onboard with the destruction of welfare as a safety net and the now clearly terrible and possibly criminal deregulation of the financial sector were tasked to think about the fate of programs that they hate. The report did not truly address military spending on any of the dozens of ways to make these programs solvent without adding to the debt. Here, read the budget put together by the largest caucus in the Congress and ask yourself why you know nothing about it and have heard less than nothing about it?
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=70

They would be called the Gang of Seventy and the President has not met with them once during all of this because he does not believe in what they are selling. He’s too busy swinging Deception’s Hammer, telling you that he is a pragmatist and an adult in these difficult times when all he is doing is using a fake crisis to do what he has always wanted to do; gut Social Security and turn Medicare and Medicaid into voucher/premium support payment programs. If this, sounds like a Republican plan for the demise of these hated programs that’s because it is; and it’s exactly what President Obama wants to have happen.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3402

We do face a real problem with debt. According to the Government Accounting Office the Federal Reserve paid out $16trillion for junk securities that have nothing to do with the real economy. So we, you, I and the other taxpayers just bought investments in nothing and that created a “residue” of $13 trillion in new government debt. We did this in a matter of weeks to save the very people our President believes in. While he was telling us that there would be a public option and that there would be mortgage relief for ordinary people this was going on but that’s because he did not believe what he was telling us.

He was swinging Deception’s Hammer to mislead us so we wouldn’t see the blow that staved in the ribcage of our faith in his word. We found $16 trillion with a “t” for billionaire and millionaire gamblers in months but can’t find $1 trillion dollars over the next fifty years create for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

If the world seems upside down and inside out it’s because you are listening to and watching a Democratic President be an advocate for the demise of programs that are fundamental cornerstones of the party’s principles. You are trying to make sense of nonsense. A faux “crisis” has Republicans playing bad cop, worse cop so that the Tea Party’s insane point of view makes the President’s Wall Street friendly, slow motion destruction of what remains of our social safety net seem... rational and pragmatic.

These would be the peas of shared sacrifice he’s asking the public that has already shelled out $16 trillion to eat by giving up what remains of our dubious social safety net. But when says that the equitable, pragmatic and adult thing is that we have to swallow $13 trillion more bitter pills in ways that will eventually funnel Social Security in to the very Casino that devoured pensions when they became 401K’s and 403b’s and IRAs one has to know he’s swinging Deception’s Hammer again.

It is far past time for us to start understanding that “debt ceiling crisis” is the deep breath before the plunge. It’s the cocked fist that puts the warfare back in business. This is the financial sector smelling blood in the water because when they were at their weakest they were stronger than our collective will. As So now that they are stronger this is their grab for power, their next and not their last chance to carve up the public domain and take the money and run because they know there’s another train wreck coming. They know it’s coming; because they are driving the train.

As Sheila Bair, an escapee from the Federal Reserve, indicated the likes of Paulson, Summers, Geithner, Bernanke and Greenspan stopped her from letting the banks pay the price for what they did and are still doing to us. It should give you no comfort that our President has found; in these three men, kindred souls for a vision of America that we will have to be misled by and beaten with Deception’s Hammer to accept.

I was not in Grant Park on the night when Deception’s Hammer was raised. I was watching the Park and the returns with a clutch of other political people, who’d worked for what was happening down below in some way or the other. Some of these people were destined for roles in Washington and others, like me were destined to be at ground zero... right near the nail when Deception’s Hammer fell.

My father said that Deception’s Hammer knocks information out of the body politic and without good information the public cannot be expected to hold its politicians accountable. Worse yet, unaccountable politicians are capable of anything and only answer to their pay masters not the ordinary people who live and die by the laws they pass and regulations they choose to enforce... and realities they feel they must create and support.

We have to stop believing what our President is saying and start believing what he is doing. If we do not stand up soon there will be nothing left to stand up for… and we will spend the remainder of the 21st century trying to restore the 20th before we are consigned to the 18th by the greedy, the powerful and a President who is wielding Deception’s Hammer.