Cut Corporate Welfare, Not the Safety Net
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 8 January 2013
If your boat is sinking, do you blame the bird sitting on the railing or on the gallons of water spewing from a gaping hole in the floor?

In Congress’ latest “fiscal cliff” deal that supposedly had to be passed in order to avoid economic calamity, we spent $30 billion on extending unemployment benefits for a year, and $205 billion in corporate tax breaks, subsidies and excessive tax loopholes. Most of these Christmas gifts for corporate America are benefiting major, multi-billion dollar corporations that haven’t paid a dime of US income taxes in years, like GE and Boeing. In other words, taxpayers spent 6 times more on giving free money to companies making record profits than we did to making sure the people who were laid off by these corporations can still feed their families. $205 billion in corporate goodies was okay with Speaker Boehner, but $60 billion in Hurricane Sandy relief apparently wasn’t.

One of the most egregious giveaways included in the New Years Eve fiscal cliff deal negotiated between Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell is an extension of a loophole that allows corporations to book US profits in overseas, tax-free bank accounts. Today, US companies have up to $2 trillion offshored thanks to loopholes like the one in this deal, at the same time Congress is talking about raising the Medicare eligibility age to ...

Republicans Vote to Increase Cost of Medicare
Taylor
Published: Sunday 6 January 2013
Everything You Need to Know About the Emerging ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Tax Compromise
Elizabeth
Published: Monday 31 December 2012
The reported McConnell-Biden compromise does not deal with the spending cuts side of the fiscal cliff, though CNN’s Dana Bash reported that the sequester may simply be delayed for two months.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Vice President Joe Biden have reportedly reached an agreement that would solve the tax side of the debate over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” the package of tax increases and spending cuts that will begin automatically at midnight tonight.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the Democratic caucus have not yet indicated support for the compromise, which extends most of the Bush tax cuts and other tax provisions, and while the Senate may vote tonight, no vote is expected in the House before tonight’s deadline. Here is a breakdown of the different provisions of the reported compromise:

Bush tax cuts: The deal would extend all of the Bush tax cuts for incomes below $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for families, while reinstating the Clinton-era 39.6 percent tax rate for income above those thresholds. It will also push the capital gains rate ...

The Top 12 Political Fallacies of 2012
Taylor
Published: Sunday 30 December 2012
The Occupy movement changed Democratic political rhetoric, which changed poll numbers aand arguably changed the election results.

Our nation was gripped by so many fallacies and delusions in 2012 that the whole Mayan calendar end-of-the-world thing didn’t even make the list.

Even those apocalyptic prophecies were more plausible than the idea that cutting Social Security will help the deficit, that government spending cuts will jump-start the economy, there were no crimes on Wall Street, or that we live in a “divided nation” whose “center” wants more business as usual in Washington.

Here then, without further ado, are our Top 12 Political Fallacies for 2012.

1. Austerity works.

Last year we 

Bedford Falls or Pottersville?
Taylor
Published: Sunday 23 December 2012
Every year about now I watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” again to remind myself what Frank Capra understood about America — its essential decency and common sense.

It’s easy to feel discouraged about the bullying by right-wing Republicans and their patrons over everything from gun control to taxes and social safety nets to trade unions and jobs.

Every year about now I watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” again to remind myself what Frank Capra understood about America — its essential decency and common sense.

In many ways the nation is better than it was in 1946 when the movie first appeared. Women have gained economic power and reproductive rights; we enacted Civil Rights and Voting Rights and, through Medicare and Medicaid, dramatically reduced poverty among the elderly; we began to tackle environmental devastation; we stopped treating gays as criminals and have even started to recognize equal marriage rights. We elected and then re-elected the first black president of the United States. We have enacted the bare beginnings of universal healthcare.

But we are still in danger of the “Pottersville” Capra saw as the consequence of what happens when Americans fail to join together and forget the meaning of the public good.

If Lionel Barrymore’s “Mr. Potter” were alive today he’d call himself a “job creator” and condemn George Bailey as a socialist. He’d be financing a fleet of lobbyists to get lower taxes on multi-millionaires like himself, overturn environmental laws, trample on workers’ rights, and shred social safety nets. He’d fight any form of gun control. He’d want the citizens of Pottersville to be economically insecure – living paycheck to paycheck and worried about losing their jobs – so they’d be dependent on his good graces.

The Mr. Potters are still alive and well in America, threatening our democracy with their money and our common morality with their greed.

Call me naive or sentimental but I still believe the George Baileys will continue to win this contest. They ...

Playing to Lose? Obama’s Just Another Chicago Player Throwing the Game
Taylor
Published: Thursday 20 December 2012
“The current president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, commander in chief of the most awesome military the world has ever known, is the most pathetic negotiator in the history of modern politics. Either that or he wants to lose.”

 

If President Obama had been the commander of Allied forces during the invasion of Normandy 1944, he would have cut a deal with the Nazis when they launched the counter-offensive called the Battle of the Bulge, and WWII would have ended in Europe with a divided France and a still-extant Third Reich into the 1950s. If he had been president in 1965, we wouldn’t have Medicare today. If he had been Rosa Parks, black people might still be riding at the back of the bus.

The current president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, commander in chief of the most awesome military the world has ever known, is the most pathetic negotiator in the history of modern politics. Either that or he wants to lose.

During his first term, we watched him inexplicably water down his health reform program before it even got started, removing the option of a Canadian-style state-run insurance program known as “single-payer” from consideration, and then cutting deals with the insurance industry, the hospital industry and the pharmaceutical industry, before going to Congress with a plan that ended up being a gift to all three.

We watched him cave early on in negotiations over a crisis economic stimulus plan in 2009, giving Republicans a $425-billion tax cut that did nothing to boost jobs in return for getting a measly $425-billion in stimulus funding approved. He ...

5 Things Boehner Doesn’t Want You to Know About His Fiscal Cliff Deal
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 13 December 2012
“Publicly, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) offered another deal to Obama on Tuesday night claiming to concede more than $800 billion in tax revenue - still without any tax increases.”

As the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire automatically in a few weeks, some Republicans are urging their leaders to accept President Obama’s deal to allow tax rates to rise for the top 2 percent of earners, while looking ahead to the next budget showdown. The US will hit its debt limit in early 2013, and the GOP sees an opportunity to once again use the threat of default to force Democrats to concede to devastating cuts to entitlement programs along with more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Publicly, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) offered another deal to Obama on Tuesday night claiming to concede more than $800 billion in tax revenue — still without any tax increases. As 

U.S. “Fiscal Cliff” Talks
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 11 December 2012
Obama’s Grassroots Supporters Demand “Jobs Not Cuts”
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 11 December 2012
Obama’s grassroots supporters voted for jobs and social services, not for the budget cuts that Congress is demanding. Now they’re working to make sure that message is not forgotten.

November’s election results showed strong support for progressive values, which are now being attacked in the debate about the so-called “fiscal cliff.” A better name for it would be the “grand disconnect” because, in signaling its willingness to make cuts to essential services, Congress shows that it has already forgotten the message voters sent in November.

The good news is that, across the country, the same grassroots energy that helped deliver record turnout among low-income people, especially low- READ FULL POST 4 COMMENTS

The Nonsense About a Demographic Crisis
Taylor
Published: Sunday 9 December 2012
When people being portrayed as policy experts tell you that the United States or other countries face a demographic disaster because of declining ratios of workers to retirees they are mostly trying to tell you that they are not very good arithmetic.

One of themes that recurs endlessly in news coverage is that the United States and other countries face a disastrous threat to their living standards as a result of a falling ratio of workers to retirees. This is one that can be easily dismissed with some simple arithmetic.

A falling ratio of workers to retirees means that a larger chunk of what each worker produces must be put aside to a support the retired population. (Btw, this is true regardless of whether or not we have a Social Security or Medicare system. The only issue is whether retirees are able to maintain something resembling normal living standards.) However, that does not imply that the working population must see a drop in their living standards.

Fans of arithmetic might note that the ratio of workers to retirees fell from 5 to 1 in the early sixties to 3 to 1 in the early 90s. This sharp drop in the ratio of workers to retirees did not prevent both workers and retirees from enjoying substantial improvements in living standards over this period. The reason is that productivity growth, what each workers produces in an hour of work, swamped the impact of a falling ratio of workers to retirees.

That will also be the case the ratio of workers to retirees falls from the current 3 to 1 to a bit under 2 to 1 over the next 35 years under any plausible assumption about productivity growth. The chart below compares the impact of the decline in the ratio of workers to retirees in reducing the living standards with the impact of productivity growth in raising living standards, assuming that the ...

Cliff Notes on the Three Real Perils Ahead
Taylor
Published: Thursday 6 December 2012
Yes, America does face a cliff — not a fiscal cliff but a set of precipices we’ll tumble over because the GOP’s obsession over government’s size and spending has obscured them.

 

The “fiscal cliff” is a a metaphor for a government that no longer responds to the biggest challenges we face because it’s paralyzed by intransigent Republicans, obsessed by the federal budget deficit, and overwhelmed by big money from corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires.

If we had a functional government America would address three “cliffs” posing far larger dangers to us than the fiscal one:

The child poverty cliff.

Between 2007 and 2011, the percentage of American school-age children living in poor households grew from 17 to 21%. Last year, according to the Agriculture Department, nearly 1 in 4 young children lived in a family that had difficulty affording sufficient food at some point in the year.

Yet federal programs to help children and lower-income families – food stamps, aid for poor school districts, Pell grants, child health care, child nutrition, pre- and post-natal care, and Medicaid – are being targeted by the Republican right. Over 60 percent of the cuts in the GOP’s most recent budget came out of these programs.

Even if these programs are preserved, they don’t go nearly far enough. But the Obama Administration doesn’t talk about reducing poverty in America. It talks only about preserving the middle class.

Yet unless we focus on better schools, better health, and improved conditions for these poor kids and their families, in a few years America will have a significant population of under-educated and desperate adults.

The baby-boomer healthcare cliff.

Healthcare costs are already 18% of GDP. Between now and 2030, when 76 million boomers join the ranks of the elderly,those costs will soar. This is the principal reason why the ...

We’re Not Broke
Amanda Rae
Published: Wednesday 5 December 2012
“Our proposed reforms amount to $881 billion in potential new revenue and savings per year. These measures would eliminate most of the budget deficit, leave plenty of resources for jobs and for the nation’s pressing human and environmental needs.”

An overhaul of U.S. spending priorities is both long overdue and necessary to curb deficit growth. Yet there is no reason to accept the demands from conservative leaders and corporate lobbyists for the ill-timed belt-tightening and reductions in earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare they say are required to remedy the current budgetary crisis.

This "fiscal cliff" hysteria could easily trigger a grand fiscal swindle. But it doesn't have to — because we're not broke. The U.S. government can continue to fund and even expand programs that help people in need and rebuild our infrastructure while greening the economy, strengthening national security, and reducing the economic inequality that's eating away at our democracy. Plenty of smart ways to cut spending and increase revenue should be "on the table." Our report outlines 20 straightforward and creative options.

This is the second edition of an Institute for Policy Studies study that debunks the premise that the United States of America is broke. We released the first one a year ago, shortly before the supercommittee — a congressional panel tasked with putting our nation on a sound fiscal path — fizzled into obscurity.

This time around, the frenzied "Taxmaggedon" debate poses an unprecedented opportunity to harness our ample but misdirected resources in ways that will make the country more equitable, secure, and green. We have amassed a list of possible revenue-raisers and spending cuts to demonstrate that there are commonsense ways to shrink the deficit and get our country on a more sustainable path.

Our proposed reforms amount to $881 billion in potential new revenue and savings per year. These measures would eliminate most of the budget deficit, leave plenty of resources for jobs and for the nation's pressing human and environmental needs, and stave off those looming across-the-board cuts. We have not assembled ...

Understanding the Fiscal Cliff (In 2 Minutes and 30 Seconds)
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 4 December 2012
Democrats, here are eight principles to guide you in the coming showdown over the fiscal cliff:

 

Democrats, here are eight principles to guide you in the coming showdown over the fiscal cliff:

ONE: HOLD YOUR GROUND. The wealthy have to pay their fair share of taxes. That’s what the election was all about, and we won. It’s only fair they pay more. They’re taking home record share of national income and wealth, and have lowest effective tax rate in living memory.

TWO: NO DEAL IS BETTER THAN A BAD DEAL. You’re in a strong bargaining position. If you do nothing, the Bush tax cuts automatically expire in January, and we go back to rates during Clinton administration. Which isn’t such a bad thing. As I recall we had a pretty good economy during the Clinton years.

THREE: MAKE REPUBLICANS VOTE ON EXTENDING THE TAX CUTS JUST FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS. After all the Bush tax cuts expire, have Republicans vote on an extending the Bush tax cut just for the middle-class. If they refuse and try to hold those tax cuts hostage to tax cuts for the wealthy, it will show whose side they’re on. They’ll pay the price in 2014.

FOUR: DEMAND HIGHER TAX RATES ON WEALTHY, NOT JUST LIMITS ON DEDUCTIONS. Don’t fall for Republican offers to limit some tax deductions on the wealthy. Demand we go back to higher tax rates on the wealthy and eliminate their unfair tax loopholes, so they truly start paying their fair share.

FIVE: DON’T CUT SAFETY NETS. Don’t sacrifice Medicare or Social Security, or programs for the poor. Americans depend on these safety nets and can’t afford any benefit cuts.

SIX: DON’T CUT INVESTMENTS IN OUR FUTURE PRODUCTIVITY. Education, basic R&D, and infrastructure aren’t spending; they’re investments in our future prosperity. If the return on these investments is greater than the cost, they ought to be made, ...

Republicans Claim That Obama’s Long Time Economic Proposal Represents A ‘Classic Bait-And-Switch’
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 2 December 2012
“These ideas are so radical that they have already been rejected on a bipartisan basis by Congress.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) ripped into President Obama’s opening offer on a package to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, during the GOP’s weekly address on Saturday, characterizing the proposal as “radical” and a “classic bait-and-switch.” “Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall him asking for any of that during the presidential campaign,” Hatch said. “These ideas are so radical that they have already been rejected on a bipartisan basis by Congress.”

Watch it:

Obama’s proposal — which includes $1.6 trillion in increased taxes on the rich over the next decade, $400 billion in savings in Medicare and other social programs, $50 billion in stimulus spending to begin next year, and an end to current debt ceiling rules — is not new or radical: it reflects the very same same policies Obama advanced for years and promoted extensively on the campaign trail.

For instance, Obama’s FY 2013 budget — released in February 2012 — raised “an additional $1.7 trillion in revenue” and proposed $360 billion in savings from entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. (Comparatively, Simpson-Bowles called for $2.7 trillion revenue over 10 years, more than what Obama requested). Obama advocated for additional stimulative spending throughout the campaign, calling for a path “forward” that will “continue investing in education and infrastructure.”

Republicans are feigning shock that Obama is proposing to implement the ...

Avoiding a New American Recession
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 1 December 2012
“America’s national debt has more than doubled in the past five years, and is set to rise to more than 100% of GDP over the next decade unless changes in spending and taxes are implemented.”

The United States may be headed for a recession in 2013. Even if the country avoids going over the “fiscal cliff,” a poorly designed political compromise that cuts the deficit too quickly could push an already weak economy into recession. But a gradual phase-in of an overall cap on tax deductions and exclusions (so-called tax expenditures), combined with reform of entitlement spending, could achieve the long-run fiscal consolidation that America needs without risking a new recession.

The US economy has been limping along with a growth rate of less than 2% during the past year, with similarly dim prospects in 2013, even without the shock of the fiscal cliff.  That is much too weak a pace of expansion to tolerate the fiscal cliff’s increase in tax rates and spending cuts, which would reduce demand by a total of $600 billion – about 4% of GDP – next year, and by larger sums in subsequent years.

President Barack Obama’s proposed alternative to the fiscal cliff would substantially increase tax rates and limit tax deductions for the top 2% of ...

Elder Lobby Should Back off on Medicare
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 1 December 2012
“There’s the return to the nastiness and half-truths that buried productive conversation during the debate over ObamaCare.”

 

AARP's shot over the bow on the fiscal cliff talks is most unpleasant. Perhaps you've seen the ad on TV. As seniors go about their day, a stern female voice says of Medicare and Social Security, "We earned them." She goes on, "If Washington tries to cram decisions about the future of these programs into a last-minute budget deal, we'll all pay the price." She left out "down your throat."

Several unpleasantries here, in addition to the blatant threat. There's the return to the nastiness and half-truths that buried productive conversation during the debate over ObamaCare. Unlike Social Security, Medicare is only a partly earned benefit. The average two-earner couple retiring at 65 can expect about $351,000 in benefits after paying $116,000 in lifetime Medicare taxes. Medicare should be subsidized by other taxpayers, but don't pretend it's not.

The AARP ad was a bit unexpected in that the lobbying group for older Americans supported the Affordable Care Act — Medicare savings and all. Why it's running this ad now is unclear. Does anyone seriously believe that a cherished universal program like Medicare is going to be quickly chopped up just to get us past the fiscal cliff? Or is this about marketing?

Anyhow, one wishes that the elderly and those claiming to represent them would get over the idea — as AARP did during the ObamaCare brawl — that savings in Medicare spending automatically translate into benefit cuts. The elderly lost not a splinter of benefits in the reforms. They actually gained some. A more positive tone on the ways we can curb our rising health care costs is in order.

Think of replacing a 1975 refrigerator with a modern energy-efficient model. The new one does the same thing — and perhaps new tricks, like making ice — but costs less to run. No one would see this as any ...

Will Tim Geithner Lead Us Over or Around the Fiscal Cliff?
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 27 November 2012
“During his tenure as Treasury Secretary, Geithner has followed in Rubin’s path — engineering a no-strings Wall Street bailout that didn’t require the Street to help stranded homeowners.”

I’m trying to remain optimistic that the President and congressional Democrats will hold their ground over the next month as we approach the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

But leading those negotiations for the White House is outgoing Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner, whom Monday’s Wall Street Journal described as a “pragmatic deal maker” because of “his long relationship with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, for whom balancing the budget was a priority over other Democratic touchstones.”

Geithner is indeed a protege of Bob Rubin, for whom he worked when Rubin was Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration. Rubin then helped arranged for Geithner to become president of the New York Fed, and then pushed for ...

If the Budget Debate Had a Nate Silver
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 26 November 2012
The first thing that a Nate Silver would likely point out in discussing the budget is that the large deficits of the last few years cannot be attributed either to either extravagant social spending or the Bush tax cuts.

 

At this point almost everyone has heard of Nate Silver, the New York Times polling analyst who had all the pundits looking stupid on election night. Silver managed to call every state exactly right. He ignored the gibberish about momentum or voters’ moods and simply focused on the data given by the various polls taken in the final weeks of the campaign.

While Silver’s work has likely permanently transformed election coverage, it is interesting to think about a similar analysis being applied elsewhere, for example the debate over the budget. Suppose that we had someone focused on actual data involved in the budget debate instead of the silly rhetoric coming from the Republicans and Democrats.

The first thing that a Nate Silver would likely point out in discussing the budget is that the large deficits of the last few years cannot be attributed either to either extravagant social spending or the Bush tax cuts. The reality that neither Republicans nor Democrats like to acknowledge is that deficits were relatively modest until the economy collapsed in 2008.

The data here is straightforward and not debatable. The Congressional Budget Office reports (Table 1-1) that the deficit in fiscal year 2007, the last full year before the downturn was 1.2 percent of GDP. We can run deficits of 1.2 percent of GDP forever. At this level, the debt-to-GDP ratio was falling. Furthermore, the deficit was projected to remain in this neighborhood until 2012 when the expiration of the Bush tax cuts was expected to bring the government to a small surplus.

The reason that we got deficits of close to 10 percent of GDP in 2009 and 2010 and continuing large deficits through the present is that the economy collapsed. This led to a plunge in tax collections and increased spending on programs such as unemployment insurance and food stamps. There were no large unfunded increases in ...

Why We Should Stop Obsessing About the Federal Budget Deficit
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 19 November 2012
“Recall the 1990s when the Clinton administration balanced the budget ahead of the schedule it had set with Congress because of faster job growth than anyone expected.”

 

I wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both.

Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the “fiscal cliff” is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a “cliff” but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out of the economy.

But more jobs and growth will help reduce the deficit. With more jobs and faster growth, the deficit will shrink as a proportion of the overall economy. Recall the 1990s when the Clinton administration balanced the budget ahead of the schedule it had set with Congress because of faster job growth than anyone expected — bringing in more tax revenues than anyone had forecast. Europe offers the same lesson in reverse: Their deficits are ballooning because their austerity policies have caused their economies to sink.

The best way to generate jobs and growth is for the government to spend more, not less. And for taxes to stay low – or become even lower – on the middle class.

(Higher taxes on the rich won’t slow the economy because the rich will keep spending anyway. After all, being rich means spending whatever you want to spend. By the same token, higher taxes won’t reduce their incentive to save and invest because they’re already doing as much saving and investing as they want. Remember: they’re taking home a near record share of the nation’s total income and have a record share of total wealth.)

Why don’t our politicians and media get this? Because an entire ...

Re-Writing the History of the Housing Bubble and the Economic Crisis
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 18 November 2012
“The simple reality is bad enough, but what makes matters worse is that the whole episode was entirely preventable.”

The story of the housing bubble is an incredible tragedy. The collapse of the bubble has wreaked havoc on the lives of tens of millions of people by leaving them or family members unemployed, destroying savings and costing millions their homes.

The simple reality is bad enough, but what makes matters worse is that the whole episode was entirely preventable. As early as 2002 it was possible to recognize that house prices had sharply diverged from their long-term trend without any basis in the fundamentals of the housing market.

Since we had just seen the rise and collapse of a $10 trillion bubble in the stock market it should have been apparent to economists that our economy can generate large bubbles. The collapse of that bubble had thrown the U.S. economy into a recession, from which we were having considerable difficulty recovering, so it should have occurred to economists that the collapse of the housing bubble would also be bad news for the economy.

At least a few of us did recognize the housing bubble, and the dangers it posed at the time, and did everything we could to try to warn the country. For this reason it was somewhat shocking to see a book review in the New York Times by Noam Scheiber, an editor at the New Republic, that longed for the day when we will have people who can use data to identify housing bubbles before they grow so large as to pose a serious danger to the economy.

The personal slight is beside the point; the issue is that our elites are being allowed to construct an alternative reality that absolves them of responsibility for the ruined lives all around us. The reality is that people in positions of authority chose to ignore the evidence of a rapidly growing bubble and those trying to call attention to the dangers it posed. Instead we have Scheiber giving us the “who could have known story?” His case is that the dynamics of ...

The Trojan Horse in the Debt Debate
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 18 November 2012
“Behind their moderate slogans is an extreme agenda focused on further reducing corporate taxes and shifting the burden onto the poor and elderly.”

It's budget showdown time in Washington. With various tax increases and spending cuts set to kick in at the end of the year, the pressure is on for Republicans and Democrats to make a deal.

A major player in this hot debate is a new corporate coalition called "Fix the Debt." They've recruited more than 80 CEOs of America's most powerful corporations and raised $60 million for a big media and lobbying blitz.

Their ads call for what appears to be a moderate agenda of balancing spending cuts with some tax increases in order to bring down the deficit and ensure a bright future for the United States. But a closer look suggests the Fix the Debt campaign is a Trojan Horse.

Behind their moderate slogans is an extreme agenda focused on further reducing corporate taxes and shifting the burden onto the poor and elderly.

Take a look, for example, at a slideshow presentation the campaign has prepared as a "CEO tool" for wooing supporters. You can check it out right on their web site. It says flat out that the so-called "fiscal cliff" is an opportunity to push for "considerably less" spending on Medicare and Medicaid. It also calls for a shift to a "territorial tax system," which would permanently exempt U.S. corporations' foreign income from U.S. taxes.

At the Institute for Policy Studies, we analyzed how much the Fix the Debt member corporations would have to gain from this particular corporate tax break. The results are staggering.

We focused on the 63 Fix the Debt member companies that are publicly held and therefore must report how much they've amassed in overseas profits. Combined, these firms stand to gain as much as $134 billion in tax windfalls if the territorial system is adopted. That's $134 billion that won't go towards fixing the debt. To put ...

Hospitals Request Government Help in Curbing Possible Billing Abuses
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 16 November 2012
“The American Hospital Association, which represents about 5,000 hospitals nationwide, also signaled that it wants to work with law enforcement officials to write Medicare billing standards that keep its members on the right side of the law.”

 

The nation’s largest hospital group has asked federal officials to create new Medicare pay scales for emergency rooms and outpatient clinics and determine if electronic health records are prompting hospitals to overcharge the federal program.

The American Hospital Association, which represents about 5,000 hospitals nationwide, also signaled that it wants to work with law enforcement officials to write Medicare billing standards that keep its members on the right side of the law.

Hospitals want to ensure that they “receive only the payment to which they are entitled,” Rich Umbdenstock, the group’s president, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 12. The letter was sent to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder.

“Hospitals share the administration’s goal of a health system that offers high-quality, affordable care and work hard to ensure billing is correct the first time,” Umbdenstock wrote.

The industry has come under fire in the wake of the Center for Public Integrity’s “Cracking the Codes” series, which found that thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed higher rates for treating seniors on Medicare over the last decade — adding $11 billion or more to their fees. The investigation suggested that Medicare billing errors and abuses have been worsening as doctors and hospitals switch to

Blistering Inspector General Report Says Feds are Failing to Fight Medicaid Home Care Fraud
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 15 November 2012
“According to investigators, most fraud schemes in personal care services involve billing for care that was not provided or was not allowed.”

Like a growing number of disabled Americans on Medicaid, Keith Foreman, a 57-year-old in Metropolis, Ill., qualified for a personal caregiver to help him with daily activities like dressing, shaving, and preparing meals.

Foreman, who prosecutors say suffers from a spinal injury, hired his girlfriend, Sheila McDonald, for the job. In 2011, McDonald received almost $5,000 from Medicaid for six months of care she provided to Foreman.

These personal care services, which are available in all 50 states, are designed to help the sick, elderly, and disabled remain in their homes — and out of expensive nursing facilities. But Foreman was not living at home. During the days marked on McDonald’s timesheets, Foreman was housed in the Massac County jail in Illinois, serving time for forging a stolen debit card signature at a local liquor store.

Like Foreman and McDonald, who both pleaded guilty to charges of making false statements, unscrupulous beneficiaries and home health workers are increasingly targeting personal care services programs for illegal money-making schemes, according to a new federal report. Investigators say lax requirements ...

Go Back to Sleep America
Amanda Rae
Published: Wednesday 14 November 2012
“Our Constitution still reads ‘we the people’ not ‘we the corporations.’ It’s up to us to rise up and stand up for our rights and our planet.”

Go back to sleep America.  The election is over.  The “lesser of two evils” or as Glen Ford so aptly labeled him the “more effective evil” has won and all is well with the world.

You cast your faux fear vote for your faux president who was actually selected and installed by the corporate powers to serve the corporate police state that’s been put into place over the past 30 years and is now accelerating at an alarming rate.  The irony is many actually believe their vote matters and global warming doesn’t exist and we’re fighting the good wars and fracking will save us from peak oil and taking our rights away will keep us safe and we’re number one.

Sure we’re number 1.  Number 1 in income inequality, #1 in incarceration rates, #1 in building and exporting weapons, #1 in military spending.  In fact, we’re the #1 terrorist organization on the planet.  Our main exports are: murder, torture, death and destruction.  We’ve managed to create terrorists where there were none.  Terrorism is like a cancer and when it’s attacked it metastases and spreads around the globe.  Our child poverty rate is 23.1% second only to Romania.  We rank in the low 20’s in science and math scores so go back to sleep America.

The sociopaths have taken over the asylum and are hollowing or harvesting our country out from the inside.  Our manufacturing sector has plummeted from 70% in the 1960’s to a meager 17% today.  Corporate power, aided and abetted by our bought and paid for legislators, are exploiting us and destroying the environment in the process. 

I believe these white male supremacist hate the feminine and therefore degrade, defeat, demean, abuse, rape and pillage Mother Earth every chance they get and when she fights back with a Katrina or a Sandy they deny climate change.  These male white supremacists ...

The President’s Opening Bid on a Grand Bargain: Aim High
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 13 November 2012
First, raise taxes on the rich – and by more than the highest marginal rate under Bill Clinton or even a 30 percent (so-called Buffett Rule) minimum rate on millionaires.

 

I hope the President starts negotiations over a “grand bargain” for deficit reduction by aiming high. After all, he won the election. And if the past four years has proven anything it’s that the White House should not begin with a compromise.

Assuming the goal is $4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade (that’s the consensus of the Simpson-Bowles commission, the Congressional Budget Office, and most independent analysts), here’s what the President should propose:

First, raise taxes on the rich – and by more than the highest marginal rate under Bill Clinton or even a 30 percent (so-called Buffett Rule) minimum rate on millionaires. Remember: America’s top earners are now wealthier than they’ve ever been, and they’re taking home a larger share of total income and wealth than top earners have received in over 80 years.

Why not go back sixty years when Americans earning over $1 million in today’s dollars paid 55.2 percent of it in income taxes, after taking all deductions and credits? If they were taxed at that rate now, they’d pay at least $80 billion more annually — which would reduce the budget deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade. That’s a quarter of the $4 trillion in deficit reduction right there.

A 2% surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent would bring in another $750 billion over the decade. A one-half of 1 percent tax on financial transactions would bring in an additional $250 billion.

Add this up and we get $2 trillion over ten years — half of the deficit-reduction goal.

Raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income and cap the mortgage interest deduction at $12,000 a year, and that’s another $1 trillion over ten years. So now we’re up to $3 trillion in additional revenue.

Eliminate special tax preferences for oil and gas, price supports for ...

Five Misconceptions About Our Tattered Safety Net
Amanda Rae
Published: Monday 12 November 2012
“The real problem is tax avoidance: lost revenue from tax expenditures (deferrals and deductions), corporate tax avoidance, and tax haven losses could pay off the entire deficit.”

Mitt Romney said he wasn't concerned about the very poor, because they have a safety net. This is typical of the widespread ignorance about inequality in our country. Struggling Americans want jobs, not handouts, and for the most part they've paid for their "safety net." The real problem is at the other end of the wealth gap.

How many people know that out of 150 countries, we have the 4th-highest wealth disparity? Only Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Switzerland are worse.

It's not just economic inequality that's plaguing our country. It's lack of opportunity. It's a dismissal of poor people as lazy, or as threats to society. More than any other issue over the next four years, we need to address the growing divide in our nation, to tone down our winner-take-all philosophy, to provide job opportunities for people who want to contribute to society.

Here are some of the common misconceptions:

1. Americans believe that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth.

Most people greatly underestimate the level of inequality in our country, guessing that the poorest 40 percent own about 10% of the wealth, when in reality they own much less than 1% of the wealth. Out of every dollar, they own a third of a penny.

Factor in race, and it gets worse. Much of minority wealth exists in home values. But housing crashed, while the financial wealth owned almost entirely (93% of it) by the richest quintile of Americans has rebounded to lofty pre-recession levels.

As a result, for every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent. Median wealth for a single white woman is over $40,000. For black and Hispanic women it is a little over $100.

2. Entitlements are the problem

No, they're not. The evidence is overwhelming. Social Security is a popular and well-run program. As summarized by Bernie Sanders, "Social Security, which is funded by the ...

Real Danger of “Obamacare”: Insurance Company Takeover of Health Care
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 11 November 2012
“Investment bankers are roaming the world to exploit this hot new opportunity.”

Election rhetoric shuns the big picture in favor of the bigger platitude. Now that The Show is over, we are left with the equivalent of a Sunday morning hangover following a binge of promises and lies. We leave the theatre of political spectacle on steroids for the real world of unstable economy, a globally and publicly subsidized financial sector, and increased costs of living on everything from food to education to health-care; outpacing declining median incomes. The average cost for health insurance for a family is $15,745 per year vs. a median income of $50,502, or about half post-tax take-home pay.

“Obamacare” is the name commonly used for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010. The very moniker is indicative of how name-and-image-centric our world has become; Medicare was never called “Johnsoncare” when President Johnson signed it into law in 1965 and Johnson was not exactly a man of small-personality. At any rate, Obamacare or the PPACA ranks as one of the most misrepresented issues from the campaign, by both sides of the ever-slimming aisle.

The Tea-Party Conservative types get it embarrassingly wrong when they call it a “government takeover of health care.” Likewise, Progressive Obama-supporters are deluded in accepting it as the most sweeping healthcare reform since Medicare. (Side note: I wish the word ‘sweeping’ could be retired from politics until it actually means -sweeping.)

Here’s why. The PPACA does nothing to restructure the health insurance industry, anymore than the Dodd-Frank Act restructures the banking industry. This means everything else it attempts to do, positive or negative, will be vastly overshadowed by an industry accelerating to morph itself into a acquisition machine in order to circumvent anything that even smells like a ...

Saving the Planet or ‘Fixing’ the Debt
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 10 November 2012
“If the economy were back near its pre-recession level of unemployment then the deficits would be close to 1 percent of GDP, a level that could be sustained indefinitely.”

Imagine Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 and our political leaders responded by debating the best way to deal with the deficits projected for 1960. This is pretty much the way that Washington works these days.

The political leadership, including the Washington press corps and punditry, were already intently ignoring the economic downturn that is wreaking havoc on the lives of tens of millions of people across the country. Now, in the wake of the destruction from Hurricane Sandy, they will intensify their efforts to ignore global warming. After all, they want the country to focus on the debt, an issue that no one other than the elites view as a problem.

The reality of course is straightforward. The large deficits of recent years are due to the economic downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. If the economy were back near its pre-recession level of unemployment then the deficits would be close to 1 percent of GDP, a level that could be sustained indefinitely.

But the deficit scare mongers are not interested in numbers and economics; they want to gut key government programs, most importantly Social Security and Medicare. That is why they are pushing the fear stories about the debt and deficit. This is the rationale for the Campaign to “Fix” the Debt, a collection of 80 CEOs ostensibly focused on getting the budget in order.

What is perhaps most infuriating about this crew is the claim that their efforts are somehow designed to benefit our children and grandchildren. This is bizarre for a number of reasons. First, while they do want to cut Social Security and Medicare for current retirees and those expecting to benefit from these programs in the near future, the biggest ...

We the People, and the New American Civil War
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 6 November 2012
The challenge – not only for our president and representatives in Washington but for all of us – is to rediscover the public good.

The vitriol is worse is worse than I ever recall. Worse than the Palin-induced smarmy 2008. Worse than the swift-boat lies of 2004. Worse, even, than the anything-goes craziness of 2000 and its ensuing bitterness. 

It’s almost a civil war. I know families in which close relative are no longer speaking. A dating service says Democrats won’t even consider going out with Republicans, and vice-versa. My email and twitter feeds contain messages from strangers I wouldn’t share with my granddaughter. 

What’s going on? Yes, we’re divided over issues like the size of government and whether women should have control over their bodies. But these aren’t exactly new debates. We’ve been disagreeing over the size and role of government since Thomas Jefferson squared off with Alexander Hamilton, and over abortion rights since before Roe v. Wade, almost forty years ago. 

And we’ve had bigger disagreements in the past – over the Vietnam War, ...

Romney Fakes Left
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 4 November 2012
“Was it really only two years ago that the tea party seized the national imagination and ran so far right they fell off the edge of their flat earth?”

Here’s what I was wondering, watching the debates, as Romney betrayed every position and promise he made to the GOP base in the most blatant, insincere attempt at political whitewashing in modern electoral history:

 

Was it really only two years ago that the tea party seized the national imagination and ran so far right they fell off the edge of their flat earth?

 

Romney sounded almost, dare I say it?  Like a liberal.  He out-doved Obama in foreign policy, he vowed to up the take-home pay of regular, working Americans, he method-acted as the guardian of such classic liberal programs as Medicare and Social Security.  He damn near got on his knees, standing up for the little guy.

 

At first, Obama seemed befuddled by the whole thing.  As if he’d been running against the Romney the Right Wing Avenger all these months, and now he’s supposed to debate Romney the Blow-up Pleasure Doll.

 

This was the same fellow who spent his summer firing up tea party rants, where you just know that somewhere in the crowd, off camera, a drooling fat dude was holding up a noose.

 

The fact that Romney had to run fast and furious to the center, even the left, to con the people into electing him is encouraging, is it not?

 

If America were the fundamentally conservative place the conservatives make it out to be, that wouldn’t work, would it?  If Romney tacked any harder left, he’d capsize.  But so far, it seems, he’s getting away with it.

 

Something about Obama rubs a lot of people wrong.  It’s like they voted for him in 2008 out of white guilt, and now they can’t wait to take it back.

 

There is no other way to explain how one, off-key debate appearance—against a guy who held his own by disowning every position he’d ever held—turned a blowout win ...

The “BS” Austerity Plan Nobody Wants ... And We May Get Anyway
Taylor
Published: Thursday 1 November 2012
Far-right politicians like Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann are merely reading from a prepared script when they claim that deficit reduction is a moral issue.

 

Poll after poll has shown that the public rejects the millionaire-oriented, tax-cutting, government-slashing austerity plan known as “Simpson Bowles.” And yet politicians in both parties keep trying to force it through the legislative process under the banner of a “Grand Bargain.” Word is they're going to try again, either during the lame-duck session or when the new Congress convenes in January.

That plan was originally called “Bowles Simpson,” but its well-financed architects soon ran afoul of the “BS” acronym. But “BS” can stand for something else, too: “bait and switch.” That's exactly what they'll be doing if politicians force a “BS” austerity plan on the public after the votes have been counted.

For years voters didn't even consider the deficit a very important issue. They correctly considered job creation a much higher priority. Now, after years of media hype, some (though by no means all) of the polls say that this issue is a top READ FULL POST 3 COMMENTS

Romney’s Latest Lie, His Former Lies, and Why We Must not Put Liars in the White House
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 31 October 2012
“Ryan’s plan includes the same $716 billion of savings but gets it from turning Medicare into a voucher and shifting rising health-care costs on to seniors.”

Over the weekend, Romney debuted an ad in Ohio showing cars being crushed as a narrator says Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.”

In fact, Chrysler is retaining and expanding its Jeep production in North America, including in Ohio. Its profits have enabled it to separately consider expanding into China, the world’s largest auto market.

Responding to the ad, Chrysler emphasized in a blog post that it has “no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China.”

“They are inviting a false inference,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on political advertising.

This is only the most recent in a stream of lies from Romney. Remember his contention that the President planned to “rob” Medicare of $716 billion when in fact the money would come from reduced payments to providers who were overcharging — thereby extending the life of Medicare? (Ryan’s plan includes the same $716 billion of savings but gets it from turning Medicare into a voucher and shifting rising health-care costs on to seniors.)

Remember Romney’s claim that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law, when in fact Obama merely allowed governors to fashion harder or broader work requirements?  

Recall Romney’s assertion that he is not planning to give the rich a tax cut of almost $5 trillion, when in fact that’s exactly what his budget plan does? Or that his budget will reduce the long-term budget deficit, when in fact his numbers don’t add up? 

And so on. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil ...

Liberals, Take Back the Flag!
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 29 October 2012
“This time around, let’s start fixing the political system by challenging the Republican propaganda offensive.”

 

Every election flags come out on houses with yard signs supporting conservative causes and candidates.  This year is no exception.

 

The closer we get to election day, the more flags come out.  Right on cue, Romney-Ryan signs spring up like poison mushrooms in Republican neighborhoods – the same tree-lined streets where the family sedan or SUV in the driveway will sport a "support our troops" decal in the rear window or a patriotic bumper sticker.  

 

The conservatives can have their decals and bumper stickers, but they can't have the stars and stripes.  The flag belongs to all of us.

 

This time around, let's start fixing the political system by challenging the Republican propaganda offensive.  How?  What can anybody do?  What everybody can do but most liberals are not in the habit of doing – show the flag.

 

No matter how this election turns out, let's promise to do one thing that costs little or nothing and requires a minimum of effort.  Let's take back the flag.

 

If you are liberal and your neighbors know it, show the flag.  

 

If you are sick of conservatives claiming to be better Americans even as they continue to support a party that has clearly lost its way and is ruining the country, show the flag. 

 

If you believe that it's wrong to send young men and women to fight and die in ill-conceived and unwinnable wars, show the flag.

If you think it's wrong to cut Social Security, Medicare, and funding for biomedical research and public education  while pouring trillions of dollars into military facilities and weapons we don't need, ...

Beware of CEOs Bearing Budget Gifts
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 28 October 2012
“The ultimate value in the CEO statement is that it lends credence and provides some political cover for members of Congress who vote for a deficit reduction plan that includes tax increases and Medicare and Medicaid cuts.”

The mainstream media and blogosphere lit up like Christmas trees yesterday when 80 CEOs came together to call on Congress and the president to agree on a comprehensive deficit reduction plan that includes revenue increases and spending cuts. Here's David Wessel's story from The Wall Street Journal.

(Note: I'm linking to the story on the Fix The Debt website only because you need a subscription to the WSJ to see Wessel's story there. This definitely is not an endorsement of Fix The Debt.)

As I told Janet Novak of Forbes yesterday, while it's great to see the CEOs engaged on the issue there's much, much less here than meets the eye.

The ultimate value in the CEO statement is that it lends credence and provides some political cover for members of Congress who vote for a deficit reduction plan that includes tax increases and Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

But the statement fails to move the needle as much as the hype wants you to believe because its way too general to demonstrate that any of the CEOs are willing to give up spending or tax provisions that are important to their companies.

Yes, as wealthy individuals they are likely to pay more if income tax rates rise.

But it's not at all clear that they can or will recommend changes in federal tax and spending laws that will hurt their corporate bottom lines. Indeed, their boards and stockholders would likely see support for those types of changes as a violation of their fiduciary responsibilities as CEO and several of them would be facing the corporate equivalent of a recall.

I suspect, therefore, that this will change nothing. At the same time the CEOS take credit ...

Mitt Romney’s Question-Mark Economy
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 27 October 2012
“Romney has created far more uncertainty. He offers a virtual question mark of an economy.”

 

As we close in on Election Day, the questions about what Mitt Romney would do if elected grow even larger. Rarely before in American history has a candidate for president campaigned on such a blank slate. 

Yet, paradoxically, not a day goes by that we don’t hear Romney, or some other exponent of the GOP, claim that businesses aren’t creating more jobs because they’re uncertain about the future. And the source of that uncertainty, they say, is President Obama — especially his Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Dodd-Frank Act, and uncertainties surrounding Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.

In fact, Romney has created far more uncertainty. He offers a virtual question mark of an economy

For example, Romney says if elected he’ll repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else. He promises he’ll provide health coverage to people with pre-existing medical problems but he doesn’t give a hint how he’d manage it. 

Insurance companies won’t pay the higher costs of insuring these people unless they have extra funds — which is why Obamacare requires that everyone, including healthy young people, buy insurance. Yet Romney doesn’t say where the extra money to fund insurers would come from. From taxpayers? Businesses? 

Talk about uncertainty.

Romney also promises to repeal Dodd-Frank, but here again he’s mum on what he’d replace with. Yet without some sort of new regulation of Wall Street we’re back to where we were before 2008 when Wall Street crashed and brought most of the rest of us down with it. 

Romney hasn’t provided a clue how he proposes to oversee the biggest banks absent Dodd-Frank, what kind of capital requirements he’d require of them, and what mechanism he’d use to put them ...

We Pay More
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 27 October 2012
“Regardless of political persuasion, there isn’t one person I’ve met who isn’t infuriated by the fact that they pay more in federal taxes than a combined majority of most billion-dollar corporations.”

 

After I pinned a dollar bill on my jacket lapel with “I PAY MORE” written on it in black marker, I’ve had countless conversations during my travels across the United States that went something like this:

 

Them: “I pay more? What does that mean?”

Me: “This dollar bill right here is $1 more than General Electric, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, and a bunch of other big corporations paid in federal taxes, since 2008, combined.”

Them: “What? That’s not right. I pay my taxes! Too much, actually.”

Me: “But I bet you don’t hire a bunch of lobbyists to make sure Congress keeps writing in more loopholes like they do, right?”

Them: “Well, no. I don’t have that kind of money.”

Me: “So you pay more. Pass it on.”

 

Regardless of political persuasion, there isn’t one person I’ve met who isn’t infuriated by the fact that they pay more in federal taxes than a combined majority of most billion-dollar corporations. But what’s even more infuriating is that under the Budget Control Act that was passed after our austerity-

crazed Congress forced it into being during the Summer-long debt negotiations of 2011, budgets for numerous essential social programs will be cut to the bone this January, under the false guise that our country is too broke to pay the bills. 

 

Obama’s Administration to Ease Rules for Medicare Benefit
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 24 October 2012
The National Debt and Our Children: How Dumb Does Washington Think We Are?
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 17 October 2012
“The corporate honchos are not expecting to convince the public that we should support cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”

 

While much of the country is focused on the presidential race, the Wall Street gang is waging a different battle; they are preparing an assault on Social Security and Medicare. This attack is not exactly secret. There have been a number of pieces on this corporate-backed campaign in the media over the last few months, but the drive is nonetheless taking place behind closed doors.

The corporate honchos are not expecting to convince the public that we should support cuts to Social Security and Medicare. They know this is a hopeless task. Huge majorities of people across the political spectrum strongly support these programs.

Instead they hope that they can use their power of persuasion, coupled with the power of campaign contributions and the power of high-paying jobs for defeated members of Congress, to get Congress to approve large cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other key programs. This is the plan for a grand bargain that the corporate chieftains hope can be struck in the lame duck Congress.   

Most of the media have been happy to cooperate with the corporate chieftains in this plan. There are two main ways in which they have abandoned objectivity to support the plan for cutting Social Security and Medicare.

First they continually run stories about how the deficit and debt are the biggest problems facing the country. They routinely use phrases like “crisis” and other hyperboles to scare their audience about the risks that the debt poses to the country.

The whole notion of a “fiscal cliff” is an invention that implies an urgency that does not exist. There is almost no consequence to not having a deal in place by the end of 2012. The dire projections of ...

Administration Official Asks for Medicare Billing Review
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 17 October 2012
“Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the Obama administration’s National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, said in an interview Monday afternoon that his policy-setting committee of experts would examine the issue and make recommendations on how to address it.”

 

The nation’s top health information technology official has launched an internal review to determine if electronic health records are prompting some doctors and hospitals to overbill Medicare.

Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the Obama administration’s National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, said in an interview Monday afternoon that his policy-setting committee of experts would examine the issue and make recommendations on how to address it. 

It is the second government action in the wake of the Center for Public Integrity’s“Cracking the Codes” series, which found that thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed higher rates for treating seniors on Medicare over the last decade — adding $11 billion or more to their fees.

The Center’s year-long investigation, published in September, suggested that Medicare billing errors and abuses are worsening as doctors and hospitals switch to electronic health records. A similar report was subsequently published by theNew York Times.

Mostashari said he wants to find out if the digital systems are triggering higher billing codes by allowing doctors to cut and paste records from prior encounters with a patient, a practice known as “cloning.” Many experts say that this process can raise the size of a patient’s bill, even though it reflects little in the way of added or necessary medical service.

“If we are just copying the same information over and over, that’s not good medicine,” Mostashari said. “I’ve asked the policy committee to provide guidance on that.”

Mostshari also said that ...

The Weird Political War Between the Generations
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 16 October 2012
The Republican candidates are creating war between the generations.

A weird war between the generations is growing, and the Republican candidates are the mongers.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan both accuse President Obama of taking money out of Medicare to help younger Americans get health care — while they blame government spending ( Medicare is a big item) for burdening "our grandkids" with debt. They reassure older Americans that their traditional Medicare program will not be touched, but tell younger folk that VoucherCare will offer the wonderful world of choice and, by the way, they can have “traditional Medicare,” if that's their preference.

Never mind that Obamacare is projected to reduce deficits while adding benefits to Medicare, thanks to cost savings within the plan. Never mind the obvious point that if VoucherCare were so wonderful, Romney and Paul Ryan would bestow the pleasure on today's and near-term retirees. Never mind that traditional Medicare within a voucher system would rapidly turn into a ghetto for the very sick, then collapse.

But this is not about the double messaging, telling contradictory stories to different groups. This is about the assumption that helping one generation unfairly hurts another.

READ FULL POST 2 COMMENTS

Memo to the President: Your Next Debate
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 15 October 2012
“Although the ‘town meeting’ style debate in which you’ll be answering audience questions isn’t conducive to sharp give-and-take with Romney, look for every opportunity to nail him.”

 

To: POTUS

From: Robert Reich

RE: Upcoming debate

Your passive performance in the last debate was damaging because it reenforced the Republican claim that you’ve been too passive in getting jobs back and in responding to terrorism abroad.

That doesn’t mean you have to “come out swinging” this time. You need to be yourself, and one of your qualities that the public finds reassuring is your steadiness and authenticity, by contrast to Romney’s unsteady flip-flopping and apparent willingness to say and be anything. But you will need to be more energetic and passionate.

And although the “town meeting” style debate in which you’ll be answering audience questions isn’t conducive to sharp give-and-take with Romney, look for every opportunity to nail him. Indignance doesn’t come naturally to you, but you have every reason to be indignant on behalf of the American people. 

Emphasize these five points:

1. Not only is the economy is improving, but there’s no reason to trust Romney’s claim he would improve it more quickly. He’s given no specifics about how he’d pay for his massive tax cut for the wealthy, or what he’d replace ObamaCare with, or how he’d regulate Wall Street if he repeals Dodd-Frank. His record to date has flip-flopped on every major issue. Why should Americans trust his assertions?

 

2. Our problems require we pull together, but Romney and his party want to pull us apart. Romney has praised Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration law profiling Hispanics, and has called for “voluntary deportation” by making life intolerable for undocumented workers. He is against equal marriage rights. He wants to ban abortions, and his party and running mate want to ban them even in the case of rape or incest. He’s determined to ...

“Town Hall” Debate: Will Voters Ask the Medicare And Social Security Questions Reporters Haven’t?
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 15 October 2012
The President’s been undercutting his own party’s best message and keeps threatening to cut benefits for its signature programs.

 

If you support strong and effective government, then the unfamiliar glow you felt after last Thursday's debate was the satisfaction of seeing your opinions forcefully defended by a national candidate. There hasn't been much of that going on lately. But a deceptive question was asked in the Vice Presidential debate, while other important ones still haven't been asked of any national candidate.

The President's been undercutting his own party's best message and keeps threatening to cut benefits for its signature programs. As for Mitt Romney and his running mate, there's little left to be said: They're both determined to undermine Medicare and Social Security. Even if they're retreating from their most radical ideas now, you know those ideas will be back once they're in office.

If what follows focuses more on the President than on his challenger, its because the Republicans are beyond redemption on this issue. But both candidates need to answer some direct questions on this topic.

This Tuesday the Presidential candidates will meet with voters face-to-face for a town-hall style debate. Let's hope the voters will ask the questions the media haven't.

Joe in the Flow

What you saw that night was a candidate on the Democratic national ticket doing something we haven't seen in a while: representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party." It was a pleasure to watch a gifted politician in the 'zone,' that state of maximum achievement sometimes called the "flow state."

But there were shadows over Biden as he spoke his stirring words about these two programs. First there was the shadow of Martha Raddatz's deceptive and scaremongering characterization of these programs, when she posed her question by stating that Medicare and Social Security are "going ...

Expanding VP Debate: Third Parties Challenge Biden and Ryan on War, Economy, Healthcare
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 13 October 2012
“Romney’s personal wealth came up, but many issues were missing, including poverty, global warming, immigration, gun control and the country’s staggering incarceration rates.”

Our "Expanding the Debate" special series continues as we open the discussion to include two third-party vice-presidential candidates who were excluded from the "official" debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan: Cheri Honkala of the Green Party and Luis Rodriguez of the Justice Party. With the general election just weeks away, Biden and Ryan squared off in their only debate Thursday night, aggressively challenging each other on foreign and domestic policy issues asked by moderator Martha Raddatz of ABCNews. Raddatz pressed them with questions on the deaths of Americans at the U.S. embassy in Libya, taxes, Medicare, Social Security, the budget deficit, terrorism and Afghanistan. Raddatz also asked each of the candidates, both of whom are Catholic, about how their personal beliefs affect their views on abortion. Romney’s personal wealth came up, but many issues were missing, including poverty, global warming, immigration, gun control and the country’s staggering incarceration rates. Democracy Now! poses many of these same questions today to Honkala and Rodriquez in order to bring new voices into the discussion. Democracy Now! first broke the sound barrier during the presidential debate on Oct. 3 by pausing after answers offered by President Obama and Mitt Romney to get real-time responses from Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party.

Transcript:

At The Vice Presidential Debate: Ryan Told 24 Myths in 40 Minutes
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 12 October 2012
“Even the Israeli President has effusively praised President Obama’s leadership on getting American and international sanctions on Iran, which have significantly slowed Iran’s progress.”

1) “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that [the Libya attack] was a terrorist attack.” Obama used the word “terrorism” to describe the killing of Americans the very next day at the Rose Garden. “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement on September 12.

2) “The administration was blocking us every step of the way. Only because we had strong bipartisan support for these tough [Iran] sanctions were we able to overrule their objections and put them in spite of the administration.” Even the Israeli President has effusively praised President Obama’s leadership on getting American and international sanctions on Iran, which have significantly slowed Iran’s progress.

3) “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.” [T]he possibility ...

Memo to Joe, Re: Debate
Taylor
Published: Thursday 11 October 2012
“The fundamental question is whether we’re still all in it together – whether as American citizens we continue to have obligations to one another to assure equal opportunity and help for those who need it – or we’re on our own, without a common bond or a common good.”

TO: VPOTUS

FROM: Robert Reich

RE: Debate

Beware: Paul Ryan will appear affable. He’s less polished and aggressive than Romney, even soft-spoken. And he acts as if he’s saying reasonable things.

But under the surface he’s a rightwing zealot. And nothing he says or believes is reasonable – neither logical nor reflecting the values of the great majority of Americans.

Your job is to smoke Ryan out, exposing his fanaticism. The best way to do this is to force him to take responsibility for the regressive budget he created as chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Ryan won’t be able to pull a Romney — pretending he’s a moderate — because the Ryan budget is out there, with specific numbers.

It’s an astounding document that Romney fully supports. And it fills in the details Romney has left out of his proposals. Mitt Romney is a robot who will say and do whatever he’s programmed to do. Ryan is the robot’s brain. The robot has no heart. It’s your job to enable America to see this.

I suggest you hold up a copy of the Ryan budget in front of the cameras. You might even read selected passages.

Emphasize these points: Ryan’s budget turns Medicare into vouchers. It includes the same $716 billion of savings Romney last week accused the President of cutting out of Medicare – but instead of getting it from providers he gets it from the elderly.

It turns Medicaid over to cash-starved states, with even less federal contribution. This will hurt the poor as well as middle-class elderly in nursing homes.

Over 60 percent of its savings come out of programs for lower-income Americans – like Pell grants and food stamps.

Yet it gives huge tax cuts to the top 1 percent – some $4.7 trillion over the next decade. (This is the same top 1 percent, you might add, who have reaped 93 percent of the gains from the recovery, ...

Romney’s Psychopathic Debate Strategy: Past, Present and Future
Taylor
Published: Thursday 11 October 2012
To paraphrase the Occupy movement chant, “This is NOT what democracy looks like.”

Mitt Romney helped design a debate environment that would accommodate dishonesty. He exploited it by escalating a campaign strategy of false accusations and outright lies, knowing he was unlikely to be caught. For those who see American politics as sports entertainment, Romney crafted the rules and called off the refs, before cheating. Romney “won” the debate like Lance Armstrong “won” seven Tour de France races or the Cincinnati Reds “won” the 1919 World Series. But more than a gilded trophy is at stake. Now it’s America’s future.

The presidential debates weren’t always a ridiculous spectacle of “mini-speeches” and zingers. For several debates prior to 1988, the League of Women Voters invited and grilled two or three candidates. Then the major party candidates presented the League with stifling new rules, prompting League President Nancy M. Neuman to refuse to “perpetrate a fraud on the American voter” by adding debates to the list of “campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions.” Thus the Commission on Presidential Debates was born. It uses secret rules to hamstring the moderator, making calling candidates on their lies more difficult, and the questions easier. Third party candidates could play an important role in fact-checking and promoting alternate strategies like relying more on taxes and debt. Yet these parties are banned unless they poll over 15 percent in five national polls.

Thus Romney was left with only one fully capable presidential candidate or moderator. So he predicted President Obama would lie, implying he himself would personify integrity and the two should take the moral high ...
The 1 Percent’s Cry for Justice
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 10 October 2012
We’re talking money - the flow of mammon beyond regular people’s wildest dreams.

 It's out! This year's list of American success stories has just been published, and according to its compiler, it "instills confidence that the American dream is still very much alive."

Maybe you are one of these success stories. You might be a great public school teacher, for example, who motivated students to achieve new heights or an inventor who came up with an energy-saving device and got it to market at a fair price, generating a profit for yourself, the environment and society generally.

No, no, no. Not that kind of success. We're talking money — the flow of mammon beyond regular people's wildest dreams. That's how Forbes magazine measures not only "success," but also a person's value: You are what's in your Swiss bank account. And, just to rank last on this year's "Forbes 400" listing of America's wealthiest people, you need more than a billion dollars in financial wealth. To get into the top 10 requires at least $25 billion. And to be numero uno means you've got $66 billion socked away. Who says America is broke?

As Ray Charles sang, "Them that's got is them that gets." And sure enough, these richest of the riches got a lot richer in 2011 — the magazine gloated that these 400 swells jacked up their cumulative haul last year by $200 billion over the previous year — an average of half-a-billion each!

Now that's success, baby, especially when the typical American family's income dropped by 4 percent.

These ultra-wealthy, goes the Forbes narrative, are the "deserving rich," for they are our economy's makers and producers — as opposed to being takers and moochers, like those commoners who get Social Security, Medicare and other government ...

Highly Debatable: The Big Liar’s Biggest Lies
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 9 October 2012
The Republican’s own chief advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, had glibly described the “Etch-a-Sketch” strategy they would deploy in the general election, to make swing voters forget the “severe conservative” of the primaries.

 

“It's not easy to debate a liar,” complained an email from one observer of the first presidential debate — and there was no question about which candidate he meant. Prevarication, falsification, fabrication are all familiar tactics that have been employed by Mitt Romney without much consequence to him ever since he entered public life, thanks to the inviolable taboo in the mainstream media against calling out a liar (unless, of course, he lies about sex).

Yes, President Obama ought to have been better prepared for Romney's barrage of blather and bull. The Republican's own chief advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, had glibly described the “Etch-a-Sketch” strategy they would deploy in the general election, to make swing voters forget the “severe conservative” of the primaries. Romney executed that pivot on Wednesday night, but he could do so only by spouting literally dozens of provably fraudulent assertions — which various diligent fact-checkers proceeded to debunk.

Knowing that he is vulnerable on taxation and the budget for many reasons, including his own peculiar and secretive tax history, Romney made several contradictory claims regarding his economic plan. He has no plan to lavish $5 trillion in tax breaks on the wealthy. He won't cut taxes for the rich at all. He vowed to provide tax relief to the middle class and won't increase their tax burden. He swore that his tax cuts ...

Obama wins? So what?
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 7 October 2012
“With the election seemingly in the bag, Obama was tempted to run out the clock.”

We’ve all seen the first presidential debate.  Barack Obama was flat as a bug on Mitt Romney’s windshield.  But I don’t think it changed anything.  I’m going out on a very shaky limb and say Obama is still going to win.

 

For a day or two the commentators might feign surprise at how close the election got overnight.  I don’t believe it.  I think Mitt Romney has about as much chance of becoming president as Pussy Riot does of headlining the opening ceremonies at Sochi.

 

With the election seemingly in the bag, Obama was tempted to run out the clock.  He thought all he had to do in the debates was take a knee three times while Romney twisted himself into knots running away from all the extreme positions he was forced to take to get the nomination, and never really believed in anyway, insofar as that political polygamist believes in anything other than Mitt Romney.  But playing defense isn’t working.  Obama needs to make this election about something.

 

The next month is his opportunity.  I still believe the American people will say no to the thugs and extremists who have seized control of the Grand Old Party.  They’ll say no even when the face of that party is a bland white guy who’s about as scary as Liberace.

 

But what are they saying yes to?

 

I’m not privy to the workings of the big brains in Obama’s war room, but if they’re serious about winning, they need to spare a little bandwidth to come up with a few progressive ideas they intend to implement when they do.

 

I’m no wonk, but here are a couple of thoughts to get that conversation started. 

 

Mitt Romney said, ...

Top House Republicans Demand Suspension of Electronic Medical Records Program
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 6 October 2012
“In an Oct. 4 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebilius, they suggested that $10 billion spent so far on the program has failed to ensure that the digital systems can share medical information, a key goal.”

 

Four Republican House leaders want federal officials to suspend payments to hospitals and doctors who switch from paper to electronic health records, arguing the program may be wasting billions of tax dollars and doing little to improve the quality of medical care.

In an Oct. 4 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebilius, they suggested that $10 billion spent so far on the program has failed to ensure that the digital systems can share medical information, a key goal. Linking health systems by computer is expected to help doctors do a better job treating the sick by avoiding costly waste, medical errors and duplication of tests.

The letter urges Sebilius to “change the course of direction” of the incentive program to require that doctors and hospitals  receiving tax money get digital systems that can “talk with one another.” Failure to do so, the letter says, will result in a “less efficient system that squanders taxpayer dollars and does little, if anything, to improve outcomes for Medicare.” The letter urges Sebelius to suspend payments under the program until rules are written requiring that the systems share information.

The letter is signed by Ways and Means chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, D-Mich., Ways and Means health subcommittee chairman Joe Pitts, R-Pa. and energy health subcommittee chair Wally Herger, R-Calif.

The Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, which runs the incentive program, did not respond to a request for comment on the letter on Friday.

The harsh criticism from Congress is unusual given the strong support that digitizing medicine has received from both political parties in recent years.

President George W. ...

The Politics of the Jobs Report
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 6 October 2012
“In political terms, headlines are everything – and most major media are leading with the drop in the unemployment rate.”

 

The White House is breathing easier this morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent – the first time it’s been under 8 percent in 43 months.

In political terms, headlines are everything – and most major media are leading with the drop in the unemployment rate.

Look more closely, though, and the picture is murkier. According to the separate payroll survey undertaken by the BLS, just 114,000 new jobs were added in September. At least 125,000 are needed per month just to keep up with population growth. Yet August’s job number was revised upward to 142,000, and July’s to 181,000.

In other words, we’re still crawling out of the deep crater we fell into in 2008 and 2009. The percent of the working-age population now working or actively looking for work is higher than it was, but still near a thirty-year low.

But at least we’re crawling out.

Romney says we’re not doing well enough, and he’s right. But the prescriptions he’s offering – more tax cuts for the rich and for big companies – won’t do anything except enlarge the budget deficit. And the cuts he proposes in public investments like education and infrastructure, and safety nets like Medicare and Medicaid, will take money out of the pockets of people who not only desperately need it but whose spending is necessary to keep the tepid recovery going.

Romney promises if elected the economy will create 12 million new jobs in his first term. If we were back in a normal economy, that number wouldn’t be hard to reach. Bill Clinton presided over an economy that generated 22 million new jobs in eight years – and that was more than a decade ago when the economy and working-age population were smaller than now.

Both Obama and Romney assume the ...

The Winning Card: Obama and Democrats Need Social Security and Medicare
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 5 October 2012
So why didn’t the President play this winning card last night? Why aren’t more Democrats using it? It’s as if they’ve all signed a secret pledge to appear fair and reasonable.

 

There's a lot of post-debate analysis going on -- some would say too much -- but not enough is being said about the ace in the Democrats' deck: defending Social Security and Medicare. That's not just a winning card for the candidates who play it.Seniors, young people, the disabled, the jobless: Everybody at the table wins.

Everybody, that is, except the Republican in the race.

So why didn't the President play this winning card last night? Why aren't more Democrats using it? It's as if they've all signed a secret pledge to appear fair and reasonable - by not admitting they hold a better hand.

One-Sided Argument

Jim Lehrer asked the President, "Do you see a major difference between the two of you on Social Security?" The answer: "You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound. It’s going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill. But the basic structure is sound."

The President didn't mention the deeply unpopular Republican attempt to privatize Social Security, which was spearheaded by Romney's running mate and would have led to financial catastrophe for millions of people after the 2008 crisis. (Which, he might have added, was created by financiers not unlike Mitt Romney.)

The Reagan/O'Neill mention was also significant. It's been clear for a long time that the President almost venerates the Social Security agreement those two leaders made in the 1980s. But that agreement was striking because Reagan and O'Neill shared a characteristic which both the President and Mr. Romney lack: They were passionate and eloquent voices for their political philosophies.

The agreement between O'Neill and Reagan was remarkable, not because they weren't ...

What the Hell Happened?
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 4 October 2012
“Mr. President, if you can’t explain why you are the Commander-in-Chief in this class war against the billionaire bandits attempting to seize our government, then get off the horse and let someone in the saddle who can ride.”

What the hell happened?  Did Barack have a fight with Michelle?  Was it nicotine withdrawal?  Do really rich guys just scare you, Mr. Obama?

Dear Mr. President:  As a journalist I don’t take partisan sides, but I do take America’s side.  And as Commander-in-Chief, you simply cannot fall asleep in the saddle.

I mean Commander-in-Chief in the Class War.  The war of the billionaires against the rest of us.

You were asked, “What is the role of government?”

You seemed stumped.  Lost.

Well, here’s three, Mr. President:

  1. Issue Social Security checks. Checks for cash money.  Not some bullshit voucher.
  2. Save General Motors and Motor City.
  3. Kill Osama.

Maybe you should have written those on your palm.

When Mr. PBS Bumblebrain asked you the difference between your views and Gov. Romney’s on Social Security, you said, “You know, I suspect that, on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position.”

READ FULL POST 21 COMMENTS

The First Presidential Debate
Taylor
Published: Thursday 4 October 2012
The question now is whether Team Obama understands that our President must be more aggressive and commanding in the next two debates — and be unafraid to respectfully pin Romney to the floor.

 

In Wednesday night’s debate, Romney won on style while Obama won on substance. Romney sounded as if he had conviction, which means he’s either convinced himself that the lies he tells are true or he’s a fabulous actor.

But what struck me most was how much Obama allowed Romney to get away with: Five times Romney accused Obama of raiding Medicare of $716 billion, which is a complete fabrication. Obama never mentioned the regressiveness of Romney’s budget plan — awarding the rich and hurting the middle class and the poor. He never mentioned Bain Capital, or Romney’s 47 percent talk, or Romney’s “carried-interest” tax loophole. Obama allowed Romney to talk about replacing Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act without demanding that Romney be specific about what he’d replace and why. And so on.

I’ve been worried about Obama’s poor debate performance for some time now. He was terrible in the 2008 primary debates, for example. Expectations are always high — he’s known as an eloquent orator. But when he has to think on his feet and punch back, he’s not nearly as confident or assured as he is when he is giving a speech or explaining a large problem and its solution. He is an educator, not a pugilist, and this puts him at a disadvantage in any debate.

Romney stayed on script. If you look at a transcript of his remarks you’ll see that he repeated the same lines almost word for word in different contexts. He has memorized a bunch of lines, and practiced delivering them. The overall effect is to make him seem assured and even passionate about his position. He said over and over that he cares about jobs, about small businesses, and ordinary Americans. But his policies and his record at Bain tell a very different story.

The question now is whether Team Obama understands that our President must be more aggressive and commanding in the next two ...

Romney Passes The Torch to Taxpayers
Taylor
Published: Thursday 4 October 2012
Mitt won $1.5 billion of taxpayer gold for the Salt Lake City Olympics.

One of the mysteries of life in these curious times is that millions of Americans are enjoying the benefits of government — but are either unaware of it or in denial.

A 2008 study found that 40 percent of Medicare recipients, 44 percent of Social Security beneficiaries, 53 percent of people with student loans, and 60 percent of homeowners with taxpayer-subsidized mortgages answered “no” when asked whether they were using a government social program.

But whatever their confusion, at least they're not running for president. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is. And on the campaign trail he's disparaging Americans who turn to government to get what he calls “free stuff.”

He cites his experience as a private sector executive as proof that he has the managerial chops to run the government like a business. For evidence, he touts his stint as CEO of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, when he adopted cost-saving tactics, such as moving the Olympics' Washington office from a ritzy K Street building to a modest flat squished between a burrito shop and a hair salon.

READ FULL POST 6 COMMENTS

Jobs are for We, the People. Budget Cuts are for the Billionaires. Who will Prevail?
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 3 October 2012
“How do we get to this bizarre point where DC elite, the corporate media, etc are all talking about cutting the safety net and the things we do for each other, when the obvious problem is jobs?”

We have millions unemployed with millions more underemployed or just gave up looking, our infrastructure is literally crumbling, our trade deficit is horrendous, our "safety net" has eroded below minimum acceptable standards, pensions are cut or gone, the climate is getting more and more unpredictable and dangerous, and how many other problems can you name? But the billionaires will tell you that our biggest problem is too much government -- the very entity that exists to fix those problems. Will we get the jobs that We, the People want or the cuts in government that the billionaires are pushing for?

Deficit Hysteria Is About Cutting Government

Keep this in mind in the coming months -- the deficit hysteria and the "fiscal cliff," are all about cutting government and the things We, the People do for each other, so that the billionaires can have more. Who benefits if we cut government - Medicare, Social Security, the "safety net" programs, education, health and safety regulation and ...

Questions That are Unlikely to be Asked Wednesday Night
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 3 October 2012
“President Obama: You have spoken eloquently of the need to reduce the influence of big money in politics.”

Governor Romney: You’ve said that you have used every legal method to reduce your tax liability. You’ve also said that as president you would close tax loopholes in order to help finance a major across-the-board tax cut. What specific tax loopholes have you used that you would close? A followup: Would you close the loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax, even when they risk no capital of their own?

President Obama: You have spoken eloquently of the need to reduce the influence of big money in politics. What specific measures will you advance if you are reelected to accomplish this goal?

Governor Romney: You have promised to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill if you’re elected. Yet our largest Wall Street banks are significantly larger than they were before the near meltdown of 2008. How would you prevent another bank from being too big to fail?

President Obama: The Dallas Federal Reserve Board, one of the most conservative in the nation, has called for a limit to the size of Wall Street banks. Sanford Weill, the creator of Citigroup – one of the largest Wall Street banks – says Wall Street banks should be broken up. If you are reelected, will you support capping the size of Wall Street banks?

Governor Romney: You have said you’d repeal the Affordable Care Act if you’re elected. That would leave 30 million Americans without health insurance. You championed a small version of the Affordable Care Act in Massachusetts. Does that mean you believe it’s more efficient for each state to have its own system for insuring the uninsured?

President Obama: Last December, in a speech you gave in Osawatomie, Kansas, you noted that in the last few decades the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million ...

Federal Report Calls for Cuts, Ignores Americans’ Retirement-Security Crisis
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 2 October 2012
A far better strategy for strengthening our shaky retirement security system would be to increase Social Security benefits for low income beneficiaries under or close to the poverty line, add long-term care as a Medicare benefit, and contain our out of control health care economy.

A disturbing new report mandated by Congress from National Research Council (NRC) concludes that the rapid growth of the 65-plus population in the United States and the continuing strain on public resources will make Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “unsustainable” over the next three decades.

What’s troubling, though, are not the report’s conclusions, but its bias toward a strictly budgetary outlook. Unfortunately, this study—from a federally chartered body charged with scientifically objective research--is so unbalanced that it does a disservice to the full range of viewpoints on this politically volatile issue. 

The report, titled Aging and the Macroeconomy, fails to take into account the microeconomic realities facing tens of millions of Americans, especially lower-income and ethnic minority groups. 

The report’s 14 authors are ...

Jobs Are for We, The People. Budget Cuts Are for the Billionaires. Who Will Prevail?
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 2 October 2012
“Will the election results be honored? Will it be jobs (We, the People) or budget cuts (the billionaires)?”

 

We have millions unemployed with millions more underemployed or just gave up looking, our infrastructure is literally crumbling, our trade deficit is horrendous, our “safety net” has eroded below minimum acceptable standards, pensions are cut or gone, the climate is getting more and more unpredictable and dangerous, and how many other problems can you name? But the billionaires will tell you that our biggest problem is too much government -- the very entity that exists to fix those problems. Will we get the jobs that We, the People want or the cuts in government that the billionaires are pushing for?

Deficit Hysteria Is About Cutting Government

Keep this in mind in the coming months -- the deficit hysteria and the “fiscal cliff,” are all about cutting government and the things We, the People do for each other, so that the billionaires can have more. Who benefits if we cut government - Medicare, Social Security, the “safety net” programs, education, health and safety regulation and inspection, environmental controls, bank regulation, etc.? All of these help We, the People but are in the way of the billionaires.

READ FULL POST 4 COMMENTS

Tough Talk for America
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 1 October 2012
“Think of these as five hard truths that will determine the future of this country.”

 

Five big things will decide what this country looks like next year and in the 20 years to follow, but here’s a guarantee for you: you’re not going to hear about them in the upcoming presidential debates. Yes, there will be questions and answers focused on deficits, taxes, Medicare, the Pentagon, and education, to which you already more or less know the responses each candidate will offer.  What you won’t get from either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama is a little genuine tough talk about the actual state of reality in these United States of ours.  And yet, on those five subjects, a little reality would go a long way, while too little reality (as in the debates to come) is a surefire recipe for American decline.

So here’s a brief guide to what you won’t hear this Wednesday or in the other presidential and vice-presidential debates later in the month.  Think of these as five hard truths that will determine the future of this country.

1. Immediate deficit reduction will wipe out any hope of economic recovery: These days, it’s fashionable for any candidate to talk about how quickly he’ll reduce the federal budget deficit, which will total around $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2012.  And you’re going to hear talk about the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan and more like it on Wednesday.  But the hard truth of the matter is that deep deficit reduction anytime soon will be a genuine disaster.  Think of it this way: If you woke up tomorrow and learned that Washington had solved the deficit crisis and you’d lost your job, would you celebrate? Of course not. And yet, any move to immediately reduce the deficit does increase the likelihood that you will ...

Economic Growth Isn’t About ‘Makers’ vs. ‘Takers’
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 30 September 2012
“In the last three decades the economy has been restructured in ways that have led to a massive upward redistribution of income.”

The release of the video in which Governor Romney denigrated the 47 percent of households who don't pay income taxes has set in motion a silly debate about who pays taxes and who doesn't. This debate is a distraction from the real issues because paying taxes and receiving government benefits like Social Security and Medicare are less important in terms of income distribution than the way the government structures the economy.

In the last three decades the economy has been restructured in ways that have led to a massive upward redistribution of income. Serious public debate should be focused on these mechanisms.

The Impact of Trade Policy

To start with the most obvious, trade policy has been deliberately structured to place U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with low paid workers in the developing world. The predicted and actual outcome of this policy has been the elimination of millions of manufacturing jobs and wage depression of a large segment of the workforce as displaced manufacturing workers are forced to compete for jobs in retail, restaurants and other sectors of the economy.

The effect of this trade policy is further enhanced by the decision to have an overvalued dollar (aka a "strong dollar") that dates from when Robert Rubin became Treasury Secretary in 1996. An overvalued dollar hurts those in sectors that are exposed to trade, while benefiting professionals like doctors and lawyers who rely on professional restrictions to largely insulate themselves from international competition.

About Those Subsidies

While trade is a huge deal, it is far from the only story. The government gives $60 billion a year in subsidies to the large Wall Street banks in the form of "too big to fail" insurance. ...

The Three Moments that Wrecked the Romney Campaign, and their Common Thread: Conservatism
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 28 September 2012
Romney arguably lost every possible remaining undecided voter when the “47%” video was uncovered on Sept. 18.

 

Mitt Romney arguably lost Ohio on November 18, 2008, when he penned an oped titled "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." Today, 64% of Ohio voters call President Obama's restructuring of the auto industry "mostly good."

Mitt Romney arguably lost Florida, with its heavy concentration of older voters, when he picked as his vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the face of the conservative plan to end Medicare as we know it.

The CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac poll now has Obama leading Romney by 9 points in Florida, up from a 3 point lead in late August.

In August, Romney was ahead among Florida voters 65 and older by 13 points. Now, Obama is ahead among voters 55 and older (don't ask me why Quinnipiac didn't publish the same age breakdowns) by 8 points. This tracks with what the national Reuters poll found. Romney used to have a 20 point lead with voters 60 and over, now it's less than ...

IMPACT: Cabinet Officials Signal Crackdown on Medicare Billing Abuse
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 25 September 2012
Sebelius, Holder pledge scrutiny of electronic records in wake of Center series.

Top federal officials are stepping up scrutiny  for doctors and hospitals that may be cheating Medicare by using electronic health records to improperly bill the health plan for more complex and costly services than they deliver.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder notified five medical groups of their intention to ramp up investigative oversight, including possible criminal prosecutions, by letter on Monday.

The government action follows The Center for Public Integrity’s “Cracking the Codes”  series,  published last week. The year-long investigation found that thousands of medical professionals have steadily billed higher rates for treating seniors on Medicare over the last decade — adding $11 billion or more to their fees.

The Center’s probe uncovered a broad range of costly billing errors and abuses that have plagued Medicare for years—from confusion over how to pick proper payment codes to outright overcharges. The findings indicated that Medicare billing problems are worsening as doctors and hospitals switch to electronic health records.

 “There are troubling indications that some providers are using this technology to game the system, possibly to obtain payments to which they are not entitled,” the letter states, adding: “There are also reports that some hospitals may be using electronic health records to facilitate ‘upcoding’ of the intensity of care or severity of patients’ condition as a means to profit with no commensurate improvements in the quality of care.”

The letter said that “false documentation of care is ...

Looking for that ‘47 Percent,’ Mitt? Check Red States and Elderly Republicans
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 25 September 2012
“These are people who pay no income tax,” Romney told his well-heeled audience in Boca Raton, suggesting that voters who don't pay income taxes comprise the same alleged 47 percent who will vote in lockstep for the president.

While Mitt Romney may well wish he had expressed himself more “elegantly” at the swanky Boca Raton fundraiser where he denounced half the voting population as shiftless, government-entitled moochers, he isn't backing away from those secretly recorded remarks — although what he said was entirely inaccurate, as well as obnoxious.

Watching him on video, the Republican nominee sounds not only vulgar and arrogant, but profoundly ignorant about the nation he hopes to govern. “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” said the Republican nominee, who proceeded to describe those people.

“All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government ... Those people,” he went on, “believe that they are victims ... believe the government has a responsibility to care for them ... believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

Let's stop right there: Whatever percentage of Americans plan to vote for the president, there is no plausible evidence that they all think of themselves as entitled to government benefits. Nor is there any evidence that all of Obama's supporters are in fact "dependent on government." And there is plenty of evidence that Romney supporters — Obama supporters and like many Americans who will not vote at all — receive Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits, housing vouchers, veterans benefits and other forms of federal assistance.

The Republican-leaning moochers, as defined by Romney, can easily be found in the red states, which contribute far less in federal taxes than they receive in per capita benefits. Alabama, for instance, receives almost $4,000 per capita in federal spending on retirement and disability, while contributing just over $1,000 per capita in federal income taxes. Kentucky receives ...

Enlightened Economics: There is an Alternative
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 24 September 2012
“Unlike the euro, the dollar is a sovereign, fiat currency, unconstrained by exchange rates or treaties.”

 

Both Republicans and Democrats have been explaining that “There Is No Alternative,” we need public policies promoting austerity because government is “out of money.” The question seems to be not “do we need austerity?” but “will we be austere sooner or austere later?” Meanwhile, the bipartisan consensus is that the government is definitely out of money.

But these assertions are at odds with the common knowledge that the U.S. government literally creates its own money. Unlike the euro, the dollar is a sovereign, fiat currency, unconstrained by exchange rates or treaties. And since Nixon closed the gold window, government can issue dollars without waiting for gold or silver mines to provide any backing for them. So we can’t possibly be “out of money,” any more than the Bureau of Weights and Measures can be “out of inches.”

Nevertheless, even the private sector agrees with that “out of money” message. Billionaire Pete Peterson recently sponsored the Fiscal Wake Up Tour, essentially trying to drum up popular support to cut social safety nets, retirement programs and Medicare because we’re “out of money.”

Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but investors like Peterson profit from the “out of money” sentiment since it’s deflationary. When borrowers repay loans to creditors like Peterson with inflated money his investor class suffers investment returns that are lower than when dollars are scarce, and deflation prevails.

Even more conveniently, during deflationary times, the investor class can buy assets in the public realm at bargain-basement prices. If the public sector is “out of money,” then German bankers can demand, as they have, that the Greeks mortgage the Parthenon and their ports. The City of Sacramento can propose selling $500 ...

Hospitals Grab at Least $1 Billion in Extra Fees for Emergency Room Visits
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 23 September 2012
In 2008, the hospital billed Medicare for the two most expensive levels of care for eight of every 10 patients it treated and released from its emergency room — almost twice the national average, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis.

 

Judging by their bills, it would appear that elderly patients treated in the emergency room at Baylor Medical Center in Irving, Texas, are among the sickest in the country — far sicker than patients at most other hospitals.

In 2008, the hospital billed Medicare for the two most expensive levels of care for eight of every 10 patients it treated and released from its emergency room — almost twice the national average, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Among those claims, 64 percent of the total were for the most expensive level of care.

But the charges may have more to do with billing practices than sicker patients. A Baylor representative conceded hospital billing for emergency room care “did not align with industry trends,” but said that the hospital since 2009 has reined in its charges.

The Texas hospital’s billing pattern is far from unique. Between 2001 and 2008, hospitals across the country dramatically increased their Medicare billing for emergency room care, adding more than $1 billion to the cost of the program to taxpayers, a Center investigation has found. The fees are based on a system of billing codes — so-called evaluation and management codes — that makes higher payments for treatments that require more time and resources.

Use of the top two most expensive codes for emergency room care nationwide nearly doubled, from 25 percent to 45 percent of all claims, during the time period examined. In many cases, these claims were not for treating patients with life-threatening injuries. Instead, the claims the Center analyzed included only patients who were sent home from the emergency room without being admitted to the hospital. Often, they were treated for seemingly minor injuries and complaints.

What Mitt Romney Really Represents
Amanda Rae
Published: Friday 21 September 2012
“Romney just released his 2011 tax returns, showing he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million of income last year — for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent.”

It’s not just his giant income or the low tax rates he pays on it. And it’s not just the videotape of him berating almost half of America, or his endless gaffes, or his regressive budget policies.

It’s something that unites all of this, and connects it to the biggest underlying problem America faces — the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the very top that’s undermining our economy and destroying our democracy.

Romney just released his 2011 tax returns, showing he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million of income last year — for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. (He released his 2010 return in January, showing he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent.)

America has had hugely wealthy presidents before — think of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt; or John F. Kennedy, beneficiary of father Joe’s fortune.

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The Real Mitt Revealed
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 19 September 2012
“Some of us thought Romney was without core or principle, an empty suit that would say anything to be elected.”

First are the distortions. Romney says 47 percent of Americans don’t pay income taxes. That’s literally true, except it’s misleading because it includes every retiree who hasn’t enough income to pay income taxes (most retirees), every poor and lower-income person who doesn’t have enough income to pay, and a few multi-millionaires (perhaps like Romney himself — we don’t know because he won’t release his tax returns), who don’t pay because of tax loopholes and tax-avoidance schemes. Moreover, just about all working Americans, regardless of income, pay federal payroll taxes. Everyone pays state and local sales taxes. And so on.

 

Romney also distorts reality by purposely mixing “entitlements” with “a sense of entitlement,” and lumps in all recipients of Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits into his 47 percent. Even though these programs are considered “entitlement” spending, their recipients are not undeserving; they don’t consider themselves entitled to handouts. They’ve paid into these insurance plans through their payroll taxes. 

 

But the the most important revelation here isn’t Romney’s witting distortions. It’s his indignant condemnation of almost half the American electorate. A president is supposed to represent all of America, not just the 51 percent who elect him, and have a modicum of sympathy for the less fortunate among us. 

 

Yet here is the real Mitt Romney — a fabulously wealthy financier, presumably speaking to other wealthy people (note the waiters scurrying about), with a passion we haven’t before seen in him — saying it isn’t his “job” to worry about Americans who he describes as “irresponsible,” who fail to take care of themselves, and ...

Why Romney and Ryan are Going Down
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 17 September 2012
“Instead of putting together the largest possible coalition of voters, they’re relying largely on one slice of America — middle-aged white men — and alienating just about everyone else.”

 

Unemployment is still above 8 percent, job gains aren’t even keeping up with population growth, the economy is barely moving forward. And yet, according to most polls, the Romney-Ryan ticket is falling further and further behind. How can this be?

Because Republicans are failing the central test of electability. Instead of putting together the largest possible coalition of voters, they’re relying largely on one slice of America — middle-aged white men — and alienating just about everyone else.

Start with Hispanics, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they become an ever-larger portion of the electorate. Hispanics now favor President Obama over Romney-Ryan by a larger margin than they did six months ago.

Why? In last February’s Republican primary debate Romney dubbed Arizona’s controversial immigration policy – that authorized police to demand proof of citizenship from anyone looking Hispanic — a “model law” for the rest of the nation. 

Romney then attacked GOP rival Texas Governor Rick Perry for supporting in-state tuition at the University of Texas for children of undocumented immigrants. And Romney advocates what he calls “self-deportation” – making life so difficult for undocumented immigrants and their families that they choose to leave.

As if all this weren’t enough, the GOP has been pushing voter ID laws all over America, whose obvious aim is to intimidate Hispanic voters so they won’t come to the polls. But they may be having the opposite effect – emboldening the vast majority of ethnic Hispanics, who are American citizens, to vote in even greater numbers and lend even more support to Obama and other Democrats.

Or consider women – whose political and economic impact in America continues to grow (women ...

5 Issues This Election Should Be About, and One to Drop
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 16 September 2012
“Campaigns like the petition drive launched by the League of Conservation Voters to demand that Jim Lehrer bring up climate change during the presidential debates show additional ways that citizens can set the agenda.”

Every election year, the two parties choose the agendas and issues to highlight and ballyhoo. Often it feels as though we citizens have little power to turn the conversation to the issues we want addressed.

But that’s not as true as it seems. Conversations around the water cooler or over the picket fence reverberate through society, amplified by social media that can make all of us into little newscasters. Campaigns like the petition drive launched by the League of Conservation Voters to demand that Jim Lehrer bring up climate change during the presidential debates show additional ways that citizens can set the agenda.

With that said, here are five issues we at YES! believe should be at the center of this election, and one that should be off the table.

1. Rebuild the economy, starting with the middle class and poor, not Wall Street and CEOs.

Although the Great Recession is officially over, the middle class and poor are still struggling. One in four working families is spending more than half its income just to keep a roof over their heads. There are more than half a million Americans who are homeless on any given night, and one in three families headed by a single mother is going hungry at least part of the year.

To get the economy moving again, we need to start by putting more earning and spending power in the hands of the poor and middle class, starting with a higher minimum wage and progressive tax policies. Only then can businesses invest, knowing they will have customers.

We need small and medium-sized businesses that are rooted in their ...

How Doctors and Hospitals Have Collected Billions in Questionable Medicare Fees
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 16 September 2012
“Medical groups argue that the fee hikes are justified because treating seniors has grown more complex and time-consuming, both due to new technology and declining health status.”

 

 

Thousands of doctors and other medical professionals have steadily billed higher rates for treating elderly patients on Medicare over the last decade — adding $11 billion or more to their fees and signaling a possible rise in medical billing abuse, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity has found.

Medical groups argue that the fee hikes are justified because treating seniors has grown more complex and time-consuming, both due to new technology and declining health status. The rise in fees may also be a reaction, they say, to years of under-charging, and reflect more accurate billing. The fees are based on a system of billing codes that is structured to make higher payments for treatments that take more time and effort.

But the Center’s analysis of Medicare claims from 2001 through 2010 shows that over time, thousands of providers turned to more expensive Medicare billing codes, while spurning use of cheaper ones. They did so despite little evidence that Medicare patients as a whole are older or sicker than in past years, or that the amount of time doctors spent treating them on average was rising.

While it’s impossible to know precisely why doctors and hospitals moved to better-paying codes in recent years, it’s likely that the trend in part reflects “upcoding,” — the practice of charging for more extensive and costly services than delivered, according to Medicare experts, analysis of the data and a review of government audits.

And Medicare regulators worry that the coding levels may be accelerating in part because of increased use of electronic health records, which make it easy to create detailed patient files with just a few mouse clicks.

Many health policy experts have long believed that billing errors and abuses, from confusion over how to pick proper payment codes to ...

Where the Candidates Stand on Medicare and Medicaid
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 15 September 2012
“Earlier this year, the Medicare Board of Trustees estimated that the Medicare hospital trust fund would remain fully funded only until 2024.”

 

Medicare and Medicaid, which provide medical coverage for seniors, the poor and the disabled, together make up nearly a quarter of all federal spending. With total Medicare spending projected to cost $7.7 trillion over the next 10 years, there is consensus that changes are in order. But what those changes should entail has, of course, been one of the hot-button issues of the campaign.

With the candidates slinging charges, we thought we’d lay out the facts. Here’s a rundown of where the two candidates stand on Medicare and Medicaid:

THE CANDIDATES ON MEDICARE

Big Picture

Earlier this year, the Medicare Board of Trustees estimated that the Medicare hospital trust fund would remain fully funded only until 2024. Medicare would not go bankrupt or disappear, but it wouldn’t have enough money to cover all hospital costs.

Under traditional government-run Medicare, seniors 65 and over and people with disabilities are given health insurance for a fixed set of benefits, in what’s known as fee-for-service coverage. Medicare also offers a subset of private health plans known as Medicare Advantage, in which ...

Sick Money: How Mitt Romney’s Bain Investments are Exploding the Deficit and Harming Our Health
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 14 September 2012
“Thousands of dollars for bandages and gauze during a surgery; a 12,000-percent markup on ointments; a $250 charge for the lightbulb in a projector the hospital claimed was used during surgery.”

 

Few individuals or organizations have been as influential as Mitt Romney and Bain Capital in worsening our runaway healthcare costs, causing unnecessary suffering, or accelerating our government's long-term deficit problem. Their highly leveraged investment strategy puts healthcare companies under enormous pressure to increase revenue. They often respond by overbilling -- or worse, by encouraging unnecessary medical treatments that can include anything from non-invasive tests to heart surgery.

I spent many years working in healthcare economics: running health service companies, projecting health plan costs for governments and employers, and analyzing healthcare investments. I've reviewed hospital bills in detail and seen shocking things: Thousands of dollars for bandages and gauze during a surgery; a 12,000-percent markup on ointments; a $250 charge for the lightbulb in a projector the hospital claimed was used during surgery.

I've seen hucksters put red filters over an ordinary flashlight, call it an "infrared" healing device, and charge insurance companies or hapless patients for their use. And I've seen hundreds of cases of human tragedy brought on by unnecessary surgeries performed solely for money. I can't say I was always on the side of the angels, but I can say this: Before Bain, I had never seen behavior that was as consistently bad as we're seeing today.

Mitt Romney and Bain Capital paved the way for other investors in healthcare. Their greed has caused explosive growth in a cost and overtreatment spiral that's threatening Medicare, our healthcare system, and arguably -- us.

The Important Part

Consider the story of Bain Capital and Duane Reade. Bain purchased the drugstore chain and hired a CEO who was later convicted of investor fraud, while the chain itself was selling ...

Who Will Save (the) US?
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 14 September 2012
“Only a tiny percentage of voters in November will have read the article or will have any idea that the US military is so, um, active in so many places around the world some two decades after the end of the Cold War.”

 

 

 

A recent article in Nation of Change (Tom Engelhardt, "Monopolizing War", September 13, 2012) starts with a multiple choice question about Marines carrying out combat operations in a certain foreign country. The article goes on to list nine possible answers (that's right, boys and girls, not the usual four) – and one of the choices wasn't "all of the above.” It turns out it was a trick question.  In fact, the correct answer was all of the countries on the list, to include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Central Africa, Northern Mali, the Philippines, and Guatemala.

 

Only a tiny percentage of voters in November will have read the article or will have any idea that the US military is so, um, active in so many places around the world some two decades after the end of the Cold War.  Okay, okay.  Let's not forget that the shocking events of 9-11 changed the game 11 years ago (as we are all gravely reminded every year at this very time with a barrage of hair-raising, heart-breaking images, look-backs, documentaries, op-eds, flags, and bumper-stickers).

 

We're in a war.  On terror.  It's different from all other wars.  Even the Cold War.  Different from all the wars that have ever been fought.  Anywhere.  Anytime.  It's a war without end.  Against a fanatical, hate-filled enemy that is also invisible, amorphous, and relentless.   An enemy that has no state and no army, navy, or air force.  An enemy that cannot be defeated by conventional or unconventional military means.  Or nuclear weapons.  Ever.

The Biggest Economic Challenge of Obama’s Second Term
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 11 September 2012
If Obama gets a second term, recreating that bargain — and getting enough votes from Congress to do so — will be his central challenge, and America’s.

 

The question at the core of America’s upcoming election isn’t merely whose story most voting Americans believe to be true – Mitt Romney’s claim that the economy is in a stall and Obama’s policies haven’t worked, or Barack Obama’s that it’s slowly mending and his approach is working.

If that were all there was to it, last Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the economy added only 96,000 jobs in August – below what’s needed merely to keep up with the growth in the number of eligible workers — would seem to bolster Romney’s claim.

But, of course, congressional Republicans have never even given Obama a chance to try his approach. They’ve blocked everything he’s tried to do – including his proposed Jobs Act that would help state and local governments replace many of the teachers, police officers, social workers, and fire fighters they’ve had to let go over the last several years.

The deeper question is what should be done starting in January to boost a recovery that by anyone’s measure is still anemic. In truth, not even the Jobs Act will be enough.

At the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, Romney produced the predictable set of Republican bromides: cut taxes on corporations and the already rich, cut government spending (mainly on the lower-middle class and the poor), and gut business regulations.

It’s the same supply-side nonsense that got the economy into trouble in the first place.

Corporations won’t hire more workers just because their tax bill is lower and they spend less on regulations. In case you hadn’t noticed, corporate profits are up. Most companies don’t even know what to do with the profits they’re already making. Not incidentally, much of those profits have come from replacing jobs with computer software or outsourcing them ...

Called Out by Republicans, Clinton Answers in Masterful Convention Speech
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 10 September 2012
“There has been no political leader since FDR with Clinton's capacity to perform this rhetorical magic, and there is none today who can match him.”

 

Bill killed.

Nominating Barack Obama for a second term, the former president brought to bear the full weight of his political experience and forensic skill Wednesday night, on behalf of a man who was once his adversary. Rewritten up until the final hour before he took the podium, this was among his finest campaign speeches, even surpassing the address he delivered at the last Democratic convention in 2008. Clinton presented an exhaustive argument for Obama (and against the Republicans) with four key elements:

A lesson in presidential economics delivered in professorial style, acknowledging complexity while at the same time presenting issues in an understandable and even simple style. There has been no political leader since FDR with Clinton's capacity to perform this rhetorical magic, and there is none today who can match him. He possesses a singular authority to discuss employment, spending and debt, having proved his GOP opponents wrong so decisively in the past that they now attempt to cite him as a model.

Calling him out that way — as both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have done in recent weeks — was a woeful mistake. He repaid the cynical compliment by "scoring" them and their party on budgetary arithmetic and job creation, an exercise from which they did not emerge unscathed.

Republicans have ruled the country for more presidential terms than Democrats over the past 53 years, noted Clinton, but they have overseen the creation of only 24 million jobs, compared with 42 million credited to Democrats. He extended that theme into the present campaign, praising Obama for 250,000 new jobs in the restored auto industry and castigating Romney for his advice to bankrupt the industry, which would have created "zero" jobs (and probably caused the loss of millions). And the "country boy from Arkansas" did the sums that show why the ...

Silence is Golden: What Democrats Aren’t Saying in Charlotte
Taylor
Published: Thursday 6 September 2012
They’re certainly talking about the economy at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, which calls itself “the Wall Street of the South.” But, nobody’s talked about stronger oversight of Wall Street and other corporations,and nobody’s promised to defend Social Security and Medicare from benefit cuts.

Here's a new Zen riddle: What is the sound of money not talking?

Sure, it talks sometimes. We heard it loud and clear at the Republican Convention. But sometimes the sound of money in politics is the sound of silence. It's the sound of crooked bankers being let off the hook, of economies left at risk, of Social Security and Medicare being weakened, of growing inequity being ignored. Wall Street is spending record amounts on this year's election, and sometimes the best response is silence.

They're certainly talking about the economy at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, which calls itself “the Wall Street of the South.” But as of this writing (mid-day on Wednesday), nobody's talked about stronger oversight of Wall Street and other corporations,and nobody's promised to defend Social Security and Medicare from benefit cuts.

Unions Enforce Democracy
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 4 September 2012
“Our system is not perfect, it does not by itself sufficiently protect our We, the People system from the constant efforts of some people to gain power - so they can get all the stuff for themselves at the expense of everyone else.”

 

What is Labor Day? And why is it a national holiday?

Labor Day is our national holiday to celebrate the contribution that regular working people make to our country and our economy. It is also a holiday that celebrates the way our  We, the People democracy can deliver prosperity to many, instead of great wealth to just a few -- when it works. And strong unions help make it work.

Systems That Enforce “More Stuff For A Few”

History teaches of the inherent conflict that exists in economic systems that reward a few people with power and wealth at the expense of the rest. The few will necessarily use their power to perpetuate their own wealth, while the regular people will organize themselves to overcome the structures set up to enforce these “more for a few” systems. 

Power structures enforcing "more stuff for a few" often come with ...

GOP Platform Declares Medicaid Unconstitutional
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 31 August 2012
“We support the review and examination of all federal agencies to eliminate wasteful spending, operational inefficiencies, or abuse of power to determine whether they are performing functions that are better performed by the States.”

 

Almost immediately after President Obama took office, many Republican politicians seized upon a distorted vision of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment that would leave America nearly incapable of governing itself. Indeed, top Republicans — including U.S. Senators, governors and members of Congress — have claimed that everything from Social Security to Medicare to federal disaster relief to national child labor laws all violate the Constitution. A similarly erroneous vision of the Constitution has now infected the GOP’s party platform:

We support the review and examination of all federal agencies to eliminate wasteful spending, operational inefficiencies, or abuse of power to determine whether they are performing functions that are better performed by the States. These functions, as appropriate, should be returned to the States in accordance with the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We affirm that all legislation, rules, and regulations must conform and public servants must adhere to the U.S. Constitution, as originally intended by the Framers. . . . Scores of entrenched federal programs violate the constitutional mandates of federalism by taking money from the States, laundering it through various federal agencies, only to return to the States shrunken grants with mandates attached. We propose wherever feasible to leave resources where they originate: in the homes and neighborhoods of the taxpayers.

The GOP platform closely echoes a brief filed by GOP mega attorney Paul Clement on ...

Elders at Risk in Ryan’s Health Care Plan
Taylor
Published: Thursday 30 August 2012
Sarah van Gelder appears on FreeSpeech TV’s RNC coverage to explain the consequences of Republican health care plan.

Who stands to lose if the Affordable Care Act is repealed? Where will seniors turn for healthcare if Medicare is converted into a voucher system? Sarah van Gelder discusses these topics and more on FreeSpeech TV.

Nursing Home Inspect Update: More Homes, More Violations
Taylor
Published: Thursday 30 August 2012
“Nursing home industry officials have cautioned that while the reports can be of value when choosing a home, they are only a snapshot and don’t highlight good practices in the home.”

 

Today, we are refreshing our Nursing Home Inspect app to include thousands more deficiencies found by government inspectors in nursing homes around the country.

Our tool, based on data from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has already led to an impressive array of news stories.

 
 

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Bush is Not in Tampa, but His Ideas Are
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 28 August 2012
The one place Republicans suggest real change is in Medicare.

The name of George W. Bush graces no chair at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. The 43rd president left behind monumental deficits and an economy in tatters. Republicans hold him responsible for the party's straying from its alleged small-government ethic. They want the public to forget the man.

Thing is, the man wasn't the problem. His plan was the problem. And there is very little in the "new" Republican proposals that would change the plan. It's more tax cuts targeting the well-to-do, a bigger defense budget and less regulation. The one place Republicans suggest real change is in Medicare. Mitt Romney's pick for vice president, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, proposes a Medicare voucher system that would save money by making sure that taxpayer subsidies don't keep pace with projected health care costs.

There are less radical ways to curb soaring Medicare costs, but Ryan's idea does deserve half a credit for courage. It doesn't get a full credit for two reasons. One is it would not impose the voucher system on anyone 55 or older — that is, for those who are really paying attention. The second reason is that it privatizes the hard conversations on what Medicare should offer, discussions the public should be having with their government. What privatizing coverage does is move the tough calls to insurance company executive suites, where the profit motive strongly favors denying care.

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GOP Platform Says ‘Impeachment’ Is a Solution to Judicial Decisions the GOP Opposes
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 27 August 2012
“The U.S. Constitution is the law of the land. Judicial activism which includes reliance on foreign law or unratified treaties undermines American law.”

 

Last year, former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich delivered an authoritarian speech where he promised that if elected president he would ignore court decisions he disagrees with, wage a campaign of intimidation against judges, and even potentially impeach judges who interpret the Constitution in way he disapproves of. Gingrich lost the GOP primary, but his spirit lives on in the Republican Party’s draft platform:

Despite improvements as a result of Republican nominations to the judiciary, some judges in the federal courts remain far afield from their constitutional limitations. The U.S. Constitution is the law of the land. Judicial activism which includes reliance on foreign law or unratified treaties undermines American law. The sole solution, apart from impeachment, is the appointment of constitutionalist jurists, who will interpret the law as it was originally intended rather than make it. That is both a presidential responsibility, in selected judicial candidates, and a senatorial responsibility, in confirming them. We urge Republican Senators to do all in their power to prevent the elevation of additional leftist ideologues to the courts, particularly in the waning days of the current Administration.

There’s something quaint about Republicans expecting the nation to still believe they care about judicial activism after they spent the last two years pushing an attack on the Affordable Care Act ...

Obama Shifts Campaign to Medicare
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 25 August 2012
Romney’s Lying Machine
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 25 August 2012
“The mainstream media along with a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations and sites have called Romney on these whoppers, but to no avail. He keeps making these assertions.”

 

I’ve been struck by the baldness of Romney’s repetitive lies about Obama — that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare, for example, or that Obama’s Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

The mainstream media along with a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations and sites have called Romney on these whoppers, but to no avail. He keeps making these assertions.

Every campaign is guilty of exaggerations, embellishments, distortions, and half-truths. But this is another thing altogether. I’ve been directly involved in seven presidential campaigns, and I don’t recall a presidential candidate lying with such audacity, over and over again. Why does he do it, and how can he get away with it?

The obvious answer is such lies are effective. Polls show voters are starting to believe them, especially in swing states where they’re being repeated constantly in media spots financed by Romney’s super PAC or ancillary PACs and so-called “social welfare” organizations (political fronts disguised as charities, such as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have set up).

Romney’s lying machine is extraordinarily well financed. By August, according to Jane Mayer in her

Ryan Isn’t an Entitlement Reformer, He’s an Entitlement Destroyer
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 22 August 2012
Ryan “reforms” Medicaid by destroying it – cutting the federal contribution by some $800 billion and then continuing the cuts after the first ten years until federal spending is a small fraction of what it is today, and handing it over to the states, which can’t possibly keep the program going.

David Brooks in today’s New York Times commits the standard error of pundits who want to appear neutral but know the Romney-Ryan plan would be a disaster for America. He asserts that Ryan makes a serious effort at entitlement reform. “If you believe entitlement reform is essential for national solvency, then Romney-Ryan is the only train leaving the station.”

Baloney.   

Ryan “reforms” Medicaid by destroying it – cutting the federal contribution by some $800 billion and then continuing the cuts after the first ten years until federal spending is a small fraction of what it is today, and handing it over to the states, which can’t possibly keep the program going.  

Ryan “reforms” food stamps by slashing them – reducing the federal contribution by around $125 billion and then, beyond the first decade, essentially ending the program altogether.

He “reforms” Medicare by substituting vouchers that can’t possibly keep up with the rising costs of health care.

Originally he wanted to “reform” Social Security by turning it into private savings accounts whose value would rise or fall at the whim of the Wall Street casino. (Now he doesn’t suggest any reform of Social Security. )

You want real entitlement reform? President Obama has begun it. Rational people would make sure he gets a second term to:

Use the government’s huge bargaining clout in Medicare and Medicaid to push down drug costs and the costs of medical providers, and to shift from a fee-for-services system to a payments-for-healthy-outcomes system.

Then allow anyone of any age to join Medicare so all Americans can get affordable health care.

Fold food stamps and other programs for the poor into a single enlarged Earned Income Tax Credit ...

The Five Reasons Why the Ryan-Romney Economic Plan Would be a Disaster for America
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 21 August 2012
“Let’s take a look at the five basic features of this ‘marvelous’ Ryan plan.”

Mitt Romney hasn’t provided details so  we should be grateful he’s selected as vice president a man with a detailed plan Romney says is “marvelous,” “bold and exciting,” “excellent,” “much needed,” and “consistent with” what he’s put out.

So let’s look at the five basic features of this “marvelous” Ryan plan.

FIRST: It  would boost unemployment because it slashes public spending next year and the year after, when the economy is still likely to need a boost, not a fiscal drag. It would be the same austerity trap now throwing Europe into recession. According to the Economic Policy Institute, Ryan’s plan would mean 1.3 million fewer jobs next year than otherwise, and 2.8 million fewer the year after. 

SECOND: Ryan would take from lower-income Americans and give to the rich – who already have the biggest share of America’s total income and wealth in almost a century. His plan would raise taxes on families earning between 30 and 40 thousand dollars by almost $500 a year, and slash programs like Medicare, food stamps, and children’s health What would Ryan do with these savings? Reduce taxes on millionaires by an average of over $500,000 a year. 

THIRD: Ryan wants to turn Medicare into vouchers that won’t keep up with the rising costs of health care – thereby shifting the burden onto seniors. By contrast, Obama’s Affordable Care Act saves money on Medicare by reducing payments to medical providers like hospitals and drug companies.

FOURTH: He wants to add money to defense while cutting spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research and development. America already ...

The Delusions in Ryan’s Medicare Vision
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 21 August 2012
Let’s set the confusion aside for a moment and look at where the projected cuts would be made.

Paul Ryan has bold economic ideas. Or maybe he doesn't. It's really hard to know what Mitt Romney's VP pick thinks, since his budget plan includes Obamacare's $716 billion in Medicare savings over 10 years, but his election plan has him saying he would restore those spending cuts. Romney is accusing president Obama of "robbing" that money from today's beneficiaries.

Let's set the confusion aside for a moment and look at where the projected cuts would be made.

First off, none of the savings comes from changing eligibility or benefits. The president's health care reforms actually add benefits to Medicare. The savings come from reducing payments to hospitals, home-health services and other providers, though not doctors. And all the provider groups (except for insurers) have gone along with it because by covering 32 million currently uninsured Americans, the law brings them more paying customers.

The Ryan plan would affect only Americans now under age 55. It would replace guaranteed benefits with vouchers, whereby folks would be given a set number of dollars with which to buy private coverage or pay their Medicare premium. It would save money  by increasing that number of dollars over the years by less than expected rises ...

Courage in Washington Doesn’t Have the Same Meaning
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 21 August 2012
“However, Biden also lives in a city where calling for cuts to Social Security is the way to demonstrate your manhood. The bigger the cuts and the more frequent the calls, the higher your status.”

 

Last week Vice President Joe Biden did a courageous thing, he promised an audience in southern Virginia that there will be no cuts whatsoever to Social Security in a second Obama Administration. He used the strongest possible language, telling customers at a local diner: “I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee you.”

That was good to hear from the Vice President. Since the Obama Administration had several times indicated that it would be willing to cut Social Security as part of a “Grand Bargain” on the budget, it was encouraging to hear Mr. Biden make such an unambiguous commitment. While nothing in politics can be taken as 100 percent certain, this is about as good as you get.

On the one hand, Biden’s commitment may not seem very courageous. After all, he is running for office and Social Security is the most popular program on the table. It draws approval ratings close to 80 percent from Republicans, conservatives, and even Tea Party supporters. Backing Social Security in this context might just seem like cheap politics, which it may well be.

However, Biden also lives in a city where calling for cuts to Social Security is the way to demonstrate your manhood. The bigger the cuts and the more frequent the calls, the higher your status. And, there are plenty of rewards for those politicians who go down fighting for Social Security cuts. Just check out the salaries for the lobbying jobs of the Blue Dog Democrats who have left office in recent ...

Romney Runs Away From His Running Mate
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 21 August 2012
If they were honest with voters, their bumper sticker would read: “Ryan-Romney 2012.”

 

Poor Paul Ryan — he successfully rammed a budget bill through the U.S. House of Representatives that gutted Medicare, thus earning him the undying adulation of the far-right Republican fringe, whose unrestrained enthusiasm for him compelled Mitt Romney to name the Wisconsin Republican as his vice presidential nominee.

So far, so good — but, wham! — the Romney-Ryan ticket had barely debuted before Mitt started dumping on his newly anointed running mate's budget. Curiously, that's the exact same budget that Romney had gushed about during the Republican primary this spring, calling it a “bold and exciting effort” that is “very much needed.”

 

But that was when Mitt was trolling for votes in the shallow waters of the fringe. Now, however, Ryan's budget, the very bauble that got him to the GOP's No. 2 political slot, turns out to be so widely and wildly unpopular with voters in the deeper waters of the general election that it's already been trashed by the GOP's No. 1. "I have my own budget plan," Romney backpedaled the day after he knighted Sir Ryan, "and that's the budget plan we're going to run on."

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Todd Akin Claims Federal School Lunch Programs Do Not ‘Fall Within the Framework of Our United States Constitution’
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 20 August 2012
“An Akin spokesperson explained to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent why Akin believes that it is wrong for the United States to feed needy children, and his explanation is a doozy.”

 

As ThinkProgress previously reported, U.S. Senate candidate Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin (R-MO) believes the federal government should “end its support for school lunch programs,” and his votes reflect his hostility towards the idea that the richest country in the world should ensure that its children have adequate nutrition. Akin was one of just five members of Congress to oppose the bipartisan Child Nutrition Improvement and Integrity Act, which streamlined the process for children to qualify for free or reduced priced school lunches and expanded a program providing local produce to schools.

An Akin spokesperson explained to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent why Akin believes that it is wrong for the United States to feed needy children, and his explanation is a doozy:

Steve Taylor, a spokesman for Congressman Akin, confirmed the above votes and said they reflect Akin’s beliefs.

“As a principled conservative, he has always stood for limited government and for supporting authorizations that fall within the framework of our United States Constitution,” Taylor said. “Those are principles that guide him.”

So Akin believes that school lunch programs are unconstitutional, which probably ...

Let’s Start a Medicare and Social Security Action (MASS Action) Party
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 20 August 2012
The commission, which proved to be a bust, was headed by co-chairs named by the president. For the Republicans, who since its inception have wanted to destroy this last vestige of the New Deal, it was former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a cadaverous wretch of a man who promptly called the program a “milk cow with 300 million tits.”

 

If you want to know how moribund the Democratic Party is, how completely owned by Wall Street the president is, and how sick our national politics have become, just consider Social Security.

The president, earlier in his term, convened a “blue ribbon” panel, supposedly composed of a “broad spectrum” of opinions from liberal to conservative,” to come up with a plan to “reform” the system.

At issue: It is known that because of the huge number of Baby Boomers -- people born between 1946 and 1964 -- just starting to hit retirement age, and the general aging of the population, the Trust Fund composed of revenues paid into the system by working people will be depleted by about 2033. That would leave current worker taxes covering just 78% of the benefits promised to be paid out the same year, unless something is done sooner to increase revenues or decrease the rate of payouts of those benefits.

The commission, which proved to be a bust, was headed by co-chairs named by the president. For the Republicans, who since its inception have wanted to destroy this last vestige of the New Deal, it was former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a cadaverous wretch of a man who promptly called the program a “milk cow with 300 million tits.” ‘Nuff said there. Nice pick Barack.

As for his Democratic co-chair, the president named Erskine Bowles. If you wanted to know the views of this former congressman and Clinton advisor on Social Security, you need only learn that in 2011 at a public event, he praised Rep. Paul Ryan, now Mitt Romney's choice for VP, who has said he wants to privatize Social Security, and condemned the president’s last budget proposal as a joke. Barack sure knows how to pick ‘em. Bowles ...

Does Paul Ryan Know What’s in His Budget?
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 20 August 2012
“His budget implies that after three decades the federal government will have no money to spend on health research, education, highways, airports, and other infrastructure, the Food and Drug Administration and most other activities that we associate with the federal government.”

 

If the news media had to work for a living, this is what they would all be asking right now. The reason is simple. The projections the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made for Representative Ryan's budget imply that he literally wants to shut down the federal government.

His budget implies that after three decades the federal government will have no money to spend on health research, education, highways, airports, and other infrastructure, the Food and Drug Administration and most other activities that we associate with the federal government. His budget has money for Social Security, Medicare and other health programs and the Defense Department. That's it.

This is not a vicious anti-Ryan attack coming from hyper-partisan Democrats. This is what the analysis of his budget by the non-partisan CBO shows. It's right there in the fifth row of Table 2.
The table shows that in 2040, Representative Ryan would allot an amount equal to 4.75 percent of GDP to all these other areas of government including defense spending. By 2050, Ryan's allocation for these areas, including defense, falls to 3.75 percent of GDP.

The defense budget is currently a bit over 4.0 percent of GDP. Ryan has indicated that he would like to maintain or even increase this level of spending. The arithmetic is then straightforward. In 2040, Ryan would leave less than 0.75 percent of GDP for areas of spending that currently require more than five times this amount. In 2050, all these areas of spending would literally have to be zeroed out as defense spending will take up every cent and more that Ryan has left in his budget.

It is important to understand that CBO tried to accurately present the implications of the budget that Representative Ryan gave them. CBO works for Congress. These are career civil servants. They cannot be easily fired, but if CBO's staff deliberately misrepresented a ...

How Romney Could Win the Presidency and Save the Republic (And Why He Won’t)
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 20 August 2012
“Oddly enough, while poll after poll shows that most Americans no longer trust our basic institutions, they continue to believe the people who run them got where they are on basis of superior merit and talent.”

 

How Romney Could Win the Presidency And Save the Republic (And Why He Won’t)

 

At this perilous moment in the nation’s history, nobody is better positioned to restore public trust  - or take the White House back for the Republicans – than Mitt Romney. My prediction is that he won’t do either because he believes he can do one (win the presidency) without the other (restoring public trust).

 

Oddly enough, while poll after poll shows that most Americans no longer trust our basic institutions, they continue to believe the people who run them got where they are on basis of superior merit and talent.  This belief flies in the face of mounting evidence of corruption and incompetence at the top.

 

Despite a steady stream of news about scandals in business (WorldCom, Enron), banking and finance (Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase), journalism (Iraq War, WMD, and Judith Miller), sports (Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and doping), and, of course, politics (Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Keating Five, NSA warrantless surveillance), the public is still being gulled into believing what corporate media shills say about everything from global warming to health care.

 

Few public policy issues are more confusing and convoluted that our bizarre federal income tax code. The system, like the political and business elites who created it and now shamelessly perpetuate it, is designed to deceive most of the people most of the time.

 

Most middle-class taxpayers know the system is rigged in favor of corporate interests and wealthy individuals, but few understand when or how it happened – or the real reasons why. Indeed, the winners like it that way and reward politicians and journalists ...

4 Ways Paul Ryan’s Budget Would Devastate the Poor
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 17 August 2012
Americans who rely on Medicaid, food stamps and Pell grants won’t be afforded the luxury of retaining their existing benefits, should Romney and Ryan implement their plans; these programs would experience immediate reductions if the Ryan budget becomes law (via CBPP)

 

National media attention has focused on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) drastic restructuring of the Medicare program, detailing the Vice Presidential candidate’s efforts to transform the current benefit guarantee into a “premium support” program for future enrollees.

But Romney/Ryan’s most devastating changes would impact programs that serve society’s most vulnerable citizens. American who rely on Medicaid, food stamps and Pell grants won’t be afforded the luxury of retaining their existing benefits, should Romney and Ryan implement their plans; these programs would experience immediate reductions if the Ryan budget becomes law (via CBPP):

 

 

1. CUTS FOOD STAMPS BY $133 BILLION: Ryan’s budget would send the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) back to the states as a block grant and cut the program by $134 billion. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “an average of almost 10 million people would have to be cut from the program in the years from 2016 through 2022 to achieve the required savings.” If the cuts were to come from benefits, rather than kicking families out of the program, “All families of four — including the poorest — would see their benefits cut by about $90 a month in fiscal year 2016, or more than $1,100 on an annual basis.” Ryan continually claims that the food stamp program is “unsustainable,” even though the numbers show that’s simply not the ...

Game Changer: Biden Guarantees No Changes In Social Security
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 17 August 2012
“Vice President Joe Biden announced yesterday that the ticket would guarantee no changes in Social Security.”

 

It's unclear what effect presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's decision to add Rep. Paul Ryan to his ticket will have on his candidacy, if any. But the choice certainly has had a salutary effect on the Obama re-election campaign.

Naturally, it sparked a full-throated debate on the infamous Ryan and House Republican plan to turn Medicare into a voucher, and force the most vulnerable -- the elderly, the disabled, and seriously ill -- to pay thousands more for health care out of pocket. (The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office put the estimate at about $6,500 per person.) Democrats generally can only be delighted as Romney and Ryan and House members struggle to explain why they have to destroy Medicare to save it. ("It's a great reform, but don't worry; it only applies to folks under 55 who might not be watching.")

Equally important, the debate has led the president and vice president to become vocal defenders of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- the centerpieces of the social compact we make with one another, and the glittering crown jewels of the Great Society and the New Deal.

First, the president made it clear that his Medicare reforms – unlike those passed by the Republican House and advocated by Romney/Ryan – don't cut guaranteed benefits. Instead they take on the entrenched hospital, insurance company and doctors lobbies to exact savings. This focus – initiated in Obamacare -- is vital if we are to fix our broken health care system which now threatens to bankrupt everyone – families, companies and government ...

On 77th Anniversary of Social Security, Paul Ryan Pushes Dismantling the Social Safety Net
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 16 August 2012
“Over the years, Ryan has not only pushed for privatizing Social Security, but also dismantling Medicare and slashing funding for Medicaid.”

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney’s newly picked running mate, Paul Ryan, is on the forefront of efforts to dismantle Social Security by putting seniors’ savings into risky Wall Street investments. Over the years, Ryan has not only pushed for privatizing Social Security, but also dismantling Medicare and slashing funding for Medicaid. In the Republican response to President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, Ryan defended cutbacks on social spending. "We’re in a moment where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century," Ryan said. "This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency." For more, we speak with two experts on Social Security: independent journalist Eric Laursen, author of the book "The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan," and Heather McGhee, vice president of policy and outreach at the progressive policy group Demos and co-author of a chapter on retirement insecurity in the book "Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences."

Transcript:

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Social Security, which celebrated its 77th anniversary on Tuesday. President ...

How the Ryan Plan Threatens Middle-Class Retirement Security
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 15 August 2012
“Much controversy currently surrounds a radical federal budget overhaul designed by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and overwhelmingly backed by House Republicans.”

Generations of Americans have worked together to build our nation's Social Security system. Each citizen contributes through a lifetime of work, and each is entitled to claim an assured benefit to see him or her through retirement and old age, or in the event of a serious disability or the death of a working parent or spouse. The vast majority of Americans support this system, because it works. In an economy where most are dependent on wages, Social Security insures a worker and his or her dependents can continue to get a portion of those wages during old age or if death or disability strikes.

Much controversy currently surrounds a radical federal budget overhaul designed by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and overwhelmingly backed by House Republicans. The Ryan plan calls for trillions of dollars in cuts in Medicaid and other safety-net programs for low-income and disabled Americans. It also goes after Medicare, one of the pillars of middle-class retirement, aiming to turn it into a voucher system that would force the typical retiree to pay about $6,000 more per year just to get the same benefits Medicare now guarantees.

What about Social Security? Ryan would effectively gut that program, too, supposedly to address a looming national fiscal crisis. But in fact Social Security's long-term shortfall is manageable, and we need to invest more not less in this effective system.

How Ryan Plans to Undermine Social Security

Because Social Security is so popular, the 2011 Ryan budget backed by almost all House Republicans tip-toes around planned changes in the program -- and simply includes procedural changes that would "fast track" modifications and make it possible for legislators to accept them without full political accountability. When procedural tricks are put in place, we have to ask why. What changes do Representative Ryan and his colleagues have in mind? In ...

Democracies Don’t Start Wars, but Fake Democracies Sure Do!
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 15 August 2012
“Clearly the reason we have seen the US starting so many wars is that the US is and has not for a very long time been anything approaching a democracy.”

We’ve all heard it said by our teachers when we were in school, we’ve all heard it said by politicians, including presidents: “Democracies don’t start wars.”

And yet we have had the decades-long American war on Vietnam, the Reagan invasion of Grenada, the LBJ invasion of the Dominican Republic, the George H.W. Bush invasion of Panama, the G.W. Bush back-to-back invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now we have President Obama talking about launching an unprovoked war on Iran.

Is the much touted axiom wrong?

I don’t think so. I believe that in a democracy, where the will of the people is paramount, it would be very unlikely to have a country start a war. People generally don’t like war. They need to feel truly threatened or even under attack before they will accept the idea of their or anyone’s fathers, husbands, brothers and sons (and now mothers, wives, daughters and sisters) being marched off to face the horrors of war.

Clearly the reason we have seen the US starting so many wars is that the US is and has not for a very long time been anything approaching a democracy.

Democracy in the US is a purely formalistic thing. People get to vote once every two and four years to chose from a narrow list of pre-selected candidates approved by the real rulers of the country, who are the wealthy owners of the large business interests, many of which prosper when there’s a war on, and many more of which are happy to have periodic wars, or the threat of wars, to keep people in line and willing to tolerate the kind of abuse that is typically heaped on the average working person: financially starved school districts, starvation-level welfare grants, no public health system, rusting bridges, pot-holed roads, almost no public transit, and falling real wages, etc.

I think it’s largely true that real democracies do not ...

Happy Birthday, Social Security! Now About Your Gift ...
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 14 August 2012
“What do you give a government program that has everything ... except a secure future of its own?”

Today, August 14, is Social Security's 77th birthday. That presents us with a difficult challenge: What do you give a government program that has everything ... except a secure future of its own?

Let's take a look at the options for this year's celebration.

The Gift Pile

Talk about an embarrassment of riches! Look what Social Security can already list among its gifts. It's got:

Hundreds of millions of people who love it. Polls consistently show that Social Security, along with Medicare, is one of our most popular government programs.

The best balance sheet in the entire government. Despite all the scare talk (which we'll get to shortly), no program in U.S. history is on a firmer financial footing than Social Security. It's a stand-alone program which isn't allowed to contribute to the overall government deficit, and is absolutely solvent until the mid-2030s.

No other program can say that.

A great profile. There's no way to say this delicately, so we'll come right out with it: Social Security has the slimmest, sleekest look in Washington. We don't like to encourage our society's fixation on thinness as the ideal of beauty, but let's face it -- Social Security is so cost-effective in delivering its benefits that it's got the most streamlined chassis around.

The Social Security Administration beats every private benefits program in the country when it comes to low overhead and efficient administrative design. One of the main reasons for that is the fact that everybody who pays into the system receives its benefits at qualification time.

There's no "means testing," no gamesmanship, no trick—just trim, no-overhead service delivery.

Great polls. Time and time again, overwhelming majorities of Americans have made it clear that they don't want this program to be cut. That means a lot: Of all the gifts in the world, the best ...

Whose Plan Destroys Medicare — Obama’s or Romney-Ryan’s?
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 14 August 2012
“What Romney didn’t say was that his running-mate’s budget — approved by House Republicans and by Romney himself — would cut Medicare by the same amount.”

 

Stumping in Florida today, Mitt Romney charged President Obama’s Affordable Care Act will “cut more than $700 billion” out of Medicare.

What Romney didn’t say was that his running-mate’s budget — approved by House Republicans and by Romney himself — would cut Medicare by the same amount.

The big difference, though, is the Affordable Care Act achieves these savings by reducing Medicare payments to drug companies, hospitals, and other providers rather than cutting payments to Medicare beneficiaries.

The Romney-Ryan plan, by contrast, achieves its savings by turning Medicare into a voucher whose value doesn’t keep up with expected increases in healthcare costs — thereby shifting the burden onto Medicare beneficiaries, who will have to pay an average of $6,500 a year more for their Medicare insurance, according an analysis of the Republican plan by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

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Representative Ryan’s Far-Right Agenda: The Media Can’t Take the Truth
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 14 August 2012
“First, in spite of all the name-calling about President Obama being a Kenyan socialist, he has pushed an agenda that most Republicans would have been comfortable with 20 years ago.”

In principle the country faces a choice this fall between a moderate conservative, President Obama, and Governor Romney, an extreme conservative who wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare and eliminate most of the services that the public expects from the federal government. The reason why this choice only exists in principle is that the media have worked hard to conceal Representative Ryan’s extreme positions from the public. Now that Governor Romney has implicitly embraced these positions by selecting Representative Ryan as his vice-presidential nominee, it remains to be seen whether the media will does it job.

First, in spite of all the name-calling about President Obama being a Kenyan socialist, he has pushed an agenda that most Republicans would have been comfortable with 20 years ago. His health care plan was put forward by the conservative Heritage Foundation in 1992, before Governor Romney put it in place in Massachusetts. His Wall Street reform leaves the too-big-to-fail banks bigger than ever, even after they helped to inflate a housing bubble, the collapse of which brought the economy to its knees.

And, running large deficits in a downturn was a practice that Obama could tie to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes. It would be difficult to find a policy pushed by our Kenyan socialist president that would make a Nixon Republican unhappy.  

By contrast, Representative Ryan has an extreme right-wing agenda that predates both Great Society and the New Deal. He has put forward plans that ...

“An Extreme Choice”: Touting Ayn Rand, GOP Pick Paul Ryan Backs Dismantling New Deal.
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 13 August 2012
This is a crucial moment in the life of our nation, and it is absolutely vital that we select the right man to lead America back to prosperity and greatness.

 

As Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney names Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice presidential running mate, we speak with two Wisconsinites about the seven-term congressman's record, and how his views are influenced by the controversial philosopher, Ayn Rand. "This is not necessarily a foolish choice by Romney," says John Nichols, political writer for The Nation magazine. "It is an extreme choice and it does define the national Republican Party toward a place where the Wisconsin Republican Party is — which is very anti-labor, willing to make deep cuts in education, public services, and frankly, very combative on issues like voter ID and a host of other things that really go to the core question of how successful and how functional our democracy will be." Ryan is chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee and architect of a controversial budget plan to cut federal spending by more than $5 trillion over the next 10 years. "Ryan gets a lot of mileage for understanding so-called the budget and economics," says Matthew Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive magazine. "But if you look closely, he doesn't really get it." Democrats argue Ryan's planned Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security reform would essentially dismantle key components of the social safety net.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with the latest news in the U.S. presidential race. On Saturday, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney announced Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin would be his vice-presidential running mate. Ryan, now 42, was elected to the House of Representatives at 28. He’s a Republican representative. He’s also chair of the House of Representatives Budget Committee. He spoke in Virginia right after his selection was made.

REP. PAUL RYAN: I’ve been ...

Romney Claims Obama ‘Robbed Medicare’ to Distract from GOP Plan to End Medicare
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 13 August 2012
The Ryan-backed GOP budet maintains these cuts, but rather than using them to improve the Medicare program, it applies the savings to pay for massive tax cuts.

 

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are turning the GOP’s greatest political liability — a proposal to drastically restructure Medicare for seniors — into a sharp attack against President Obama, despite Republican efforts to cut more than a trillion from the program.

“There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare,” Romney said during the ticket’s first interview together on CBS, honing in on a charge the pair has reiterated at every campaign stop since the two Republicans joined forces on Saturday:

“What Paul Ryan and I have talked about is saving Medicare, is providing people greater choice in Medicare, making sure it’s there for current seniors. No changes, by the way, for current seniors, or those nearing retirement. But looking for young people down the road and saying, “We’re going to give you a bigger choice.” In America, the nature of this country has been giving people more freedom, more choices. That’s how we make Medicare work down the road.”

Watch it:

 

 

The $716 billion figure comes from the Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate of the Republican proposal to repeal the law, though the office doesn’t back up the charge that Obama stole the money from the current Medicare budget. Rather, the savings slow the growth of Medicare over the next decade: eliminate ...

The Ryan Choice
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 12 August 2012
“Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves.”

Paul Ryan is the reverse of Sarah Palin. She was all right-wing flash without much substance. He’s all right-wing substance without much flash.

Ryan is not a firebrand. He’s not smarmy. He doesn’t ooze contempt for opponents or ridicule those who disagree with him. In style and tone, he doesn’t even sound like an ideologue – until you listen to what he has to say.

It’s here — in Ryan’s views and policy judgments — we find the true ideologue. More than any other politician today, Paul Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves. Dog eat dog.

Ryan’s views are crystallized in the budget he produced for House Republicans last March as chairman of the House Budget committee. That budget would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over the next decade. The biggest cuts would be in Medicaid, which provides healthcare for the nation’s poor – forcing states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million low-income people, according to the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Ryan’s budget would also reduce food stamps for poor families by 17 percent ($135 billion) over the decade, leading to a significant increase in hunger – particularly among children. It would also reduce housing assistance, job training, and Pell grants for college tuition.

In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts proposed by Ryan would come from low-income programs.

The Ryan plan would also turn Medicare into vouchers whose value won’t possibly keep up with rising health-care costs – thereby shifting those costs on to seniors.

At the same time, Ryan would provide a substantial tax cut to the very rich – who are ...

Beating Back the CEO Attack on Social Security and Medicare
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 7 August 2012
“The CEOs want to do this behind closed doors because they know that politicians who have to answer to their constituencies will never be able to get away with these cuts. The key is to force the debate into the sunlight.”

 

Last week I wrote about the conspiracy of corporate chieftains to impose a budget plan involving large cuts to Social Security and Medicare, regardless of who wins the elections in November. According to veteran Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, who wrote approvingly of these efforts, many of the top executives of the country’s biggest companies are meeting behind closed doors to design such a budget plan.

This plan is expected to follow the designs of the plan crafted two years ago byMorgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, the co-directors of President Obama’s deficit commission. The Bowles-Simpson plan called for a reduction in the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security that is equivalent to a 3 percent cut in benefits. It also called for gradually raising the normal retirement age to 69 and phasing in lower benefits for workers who earned more than $40,000 a year. The Bowles-Simpson plan would also raise the age of eligibility for Medicare to 67.

America is a Democracy? Really?
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 4 August 2012
“Forget that the government is increasingly trampling on the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, with a burgeoning surveillance program and a growing militarization of the police.”

We Americans are taught it in school. The propaganda put out by Voice of America repeats the idea ad nauseum around the globe. Politicians refer to it in every campaign speech with the same fervor that they claim to be running for office in response to God’s call: America is a model of democracy for the whole world.

But what kind of democracy is it really that we have here?

Forget that only half of eligible voters typically vote in quadrennial presidential elections (less than 30% in so-called “off-year” elections for members of the House and a third of the Senate, and less than 25% in municipal and state elections). Forget that the government is increasingly trampling on the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, with a burgeoning surveillance program and a growing militarization of the police.

The US government doesn’t even do what the majority of the citizens want. In fact, these days it flat out ignores what we the people want.

Consider the polls, and what they show public sentiment to be on key issues, and then look at what the government, composed of supposedly elected representatives and an elected president, actually does:

1. Military spending

Most polls show that Americans, tired of the endless wars that have been raging almost without pause since the end of World War II, and the huge amount of taxes devoted to the military (currently over $1 trillion per year!), favor cutting the military. Just recently, the Center for Public Integrity conducted a poll and found that when asked whether they wanted to cut funding for education, veterans’ benefits, homeland security and other areas, or military spending, 65% of people said they wanted military spending to get the axe. Overall, people favored an 18% cut in the military budget. Democrats wanted a 22% cut, while even Republicans, usually perceived as pro-military, ...

The CEO Plan to Steal Your Social Security and Medicare
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 31 July 2012
“Many of the same folks who brought the economy to ruin just a few years ago are now going to come up with a plan that is supposed to set the budget and the economy on a forward path. ”

 

Many people are following the presidential election closely with the idea that the outcome will have a major impact on national policy. However, according to Steven Pearlstein, a veteran Washington Post columnist and reporter, it may not matter who wins the election. In a column last week, Pearlstein told readers that the top executives of some of the country’s largest companies are getting together to craft a budget package that they will try to push through Congress and get the president to sign.

While Pearlstein clearly sees these backroom meetings of corporate chieftains in positive terms (he refers to them as “grown-ups” who have been noticeably absent from the conversation about the budget), the rest of us might view this plotting a bit differently. As Pearlstein openly acknowledges, this corporate coup is an end-run around the electorate. As corrupt as the political process may have become, at least we will get a vote in the election. Pearlstein’s plotters are not inviting the rest of us into the conversation.

Many of the same folks who brought the economy to ruin just a few years ago are now going to come up with a plan that is supposed to set the budget and the economy on a forward path. At the center of their proposal are big cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

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If The Public Knew - Corporate Media Helps GOP Sneak in Plutocrat Agenda
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 25 July 2012
If people knew what Republicans were doing... but they don’t. In the 2010 election Repubicans spent hundreds of millions on ads telling the public that Democrats had “cut half a trillion from Medicare.”

Last week Republicans filibustered the Bring Jobs Home Act, when polls showdramatic support for ending tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Last week Republicans filibustered the DISCLOSE Act which would at least let us know who is pumping hundreds of millions into our election, when polls show overwhelming opposition to corporate purchases of politicians. That's two BIG ones, and that's just last week. You'd think that would clinch the election -- but the public doesn't know who to blame. In a democracy accountability is important but in a plutocracy impunity carries the day.

Campaigned Saying Dems Cut Medicare - Got Voted In And Eliminated Medicare

If people knew what Republicans were doing... but they don't. In the 2010 election Repubicans spent hundreds of millions on ads telling the public that Democrats had "cut half a trillion from Medicare." So the public "knew" that and Republicans took the senior vote for the first time, enabling them to gain a majority in the House. Except it wasn't true. And when Repubicans got into office they passed a budget that ... pretty much eliminates Medicare.

Eliminating Medicare Only The Beginning

That budget that eliminates Medicare is called the Ryan budget (more recently called the Romney-Ryan budget), and it was passed by House Repubicans. Here are just some of the things this budget -- already passed by House Republicans and endorsed by Mitt Romney -- does:

  • Raises taxes on wage earners who make between $50,000 to $100,000 by $1,300
  • Raises taxes on those who make between $100,000 to $200,000 by $2,600
  • Cuts taxes on those who make between $500,000 and $1 million by $35,000
  • Cuts taxes on those who make over a million dollars ...
Four Spending Myths that Could Wreck Our World
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 18 July 2012
“Each of these claims has grabbed national attention in a big way, sucking up years’ worth of precious airtime.”

We’re at the edge of the cliff of deficit disaster!  National security spending is being, or will soon be, slashed to the bone!  Obamacare will sink the ship of state! 

Each of these claims has grabbed national attention in a big way, sucking up years’ worth of precious airtime. That’s a serious bummer, since each of them is a spending myth of the first order. Let’s pop them, one by one, and move on to the truly urgent business of a nation that is indeed on the edge.

Spending Myth 1:  Today’s deficits have taken us to a historically unprecedented, economically catastrophic place.

This myth has had the effect of binding the hands of elected officials and policymakers at every level of government.  It has also emboldened those who claim that we must cut government spending as quickly, as radically, as deeply as possible.

In fact, we’ve been here before.  In 2009, the federal budget deficit was a whopping 10.1% of the American economy and back in 1943, in the midst of World War II, it was three times that -- 30.3%. This fiscal year the deficit will total around 7.6%. Yes, that is big. But in the Congressional Budget Office’s grimmest projections, that figure will fall to 6.3% next year, and 5.8% in fiscal 2014. In 1983, under President Reagan, the deficit hit 6% of the economy, and by 1998, that had turned into a surplus. So, while projected deficits remain large, they’re neither historically unprecedented, nor insurmountable.

More important still, the size of the deficit is no sign that lawmakers should make immediate deep cuts in spending. In fact, history tells us that such reductions are ...

The Slick “No Labels” Plan to Duck Debate, Cut Social Security and Coddle The 1%
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 17 July 2012
“Labeling would tell them that the group was designed and created by and for political backs from both parties, who scrupulously hide their funding sources but are associated with people like anti-Social Security billionaire Pete Peterson.”

 

The Jeff Daniels character from The Newsroom would know what to ask the operators of an allegedly “grass roots” group called “No Labels”:

“Why won't you publish your list of donors?” 

“What's wrong with having legislators debate the issues publicly? Isn't that how representative democracy works?“

“How can you call yourself 'centrist' when so many of your ideas are unpopular, and in fact are too conservative for most Tea Party members?”

He might have another question, too:

READ FULL POST 5 COMMENTS

The Real Battle in 2012 and Beyond
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 12 July 2012
“The upcoming election is critical but it’s not the end of this contest. It will go on for years. It will require that you understand what’s at stake.”

 

It’s not merely Republicans versus Democrats, or conservatives versus liberals. The larger battle is between regressives and progressives.

Regressives want to take this nation backward — to before Social Security, unemployment insurance, and Medicare; before civil rights and voting rights; before regulations designed to protect the environment, workers, consumers, and investors. They want to sabotage much of what this nation has achieved over the last century. And they’re out to do it by making the rich far richer, turning Americans against one another in competition for a smaller and smaller slice of the pie, substituting private morality for public morality, and opening the floodgates to big money in politics. 

Progressives are determined to take this nation forward — toward equal opportunity, tolerance and openness, adequate protection against corporate and Wall Street abuses, and an economy and democracy that are working for all of us. 

The upcoming election is critical but ...

The Obamacare Misinformation Campaign Has Worked Well for Conservatives
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 6 July 2012
Is Obama’s Corporate-Friendly Approach Really “How Liberals Win”?
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 6 July 2012
“The most liberal reforms in more than 40 years have been brought about because Mr. Obama views corporate power as a force to bargain with, not an enemy to vanquish.”

Recently my friend and colleague Bill Scher challenged progressive critics of President Obama's conciliatory approach toward corporations with a New York Times op-ed entitled "How Liberals Win." Far from being "business as usual," Bill writes, "the Supreme Court's upholding of Mr. Obama's health care law reminds us that the president's approach has achieved significant results."

Bill argues that, critics notwithstanding, ours is not "a system paralyzed by corporations." He adds: "The most liberal reforms in more than 40 years have been brought about because Mr. Obama views corporate power as a force to bargain with, not an enemy to vanquish."

Sorry, Bill. I'm with those who have concluded that the Obama White House has failed, both pragmatically and politically, on a number of key progressive issues. In my view, believing otherwise requires an almost ahistorical view of liberalism. We can't preemptively limit the definition of "liberal victory" to whatever corporate interests will allow.

Wherever the truth lies, the road ahead is clear: We can't allow the radical right to take power this year. But we need to fight for results, not politicians, by building a mobilized and truly independent citizens' movement.

Young and Estranged

This is an important discussion, especially in an election year in which liberals should be terrified. A Romney Presidency and increased Republican control on the Hill would endanger much they hold dear, including representative democracy, our social safety net, and workplace rights. And yet the outcome of this election may depend on the ability to mobilize precisely those voters who believe, not unreasonably, that the Obama Presidency represents "business as usual."

That may not be easy. ...

A Wall Street Gambling Tax: The Remedy to Inequality
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 3 July 2012
“However because the folks in Washington are so dependent on Wall Street money, it is more likely that they will be looking to target the benefits of people struggling to get by on their $1,100 a month Social Security checks.”

 

As the presidential election builds up steam, the Washington elites in both parties are actively scheming to find ways to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for retired workers. The media have widely reported on efforts to slip through a version of the deficit reduction plan developed by Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former senator Alan Simpson. Since the vast majority of voters across the political spectrum reject cuts to these programs, the Washington insiders hope to spring this one on us after the election, when the public will have no say.

That is the sort of anti-democratic behavior we expect from elites who naturally want to protect their own interests. Of course the rest of us are more concerned about the well-being of the country as a whole rather than the preserving the wealth of the richest 1 percent.

For the 99 percent there are much better ways of dealing with whatever deficit problems may arise down the road. Most obviously, insofar as we need more revenue we can look to tax the sort of financial speculation through which the Wall Street gang makes its fortunes. A very small tax on trades of stocks, options, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments could raise a vast amount of money.

The Joint Tax Committee of Congress estimated that a tax of just 0.03 percent on each trade, as proposed by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio, would raise more than $350 billion over the first nine years that it is ...

Plumbing New Depths of Insanity in the Tea Party Crowd
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 2 July 2012
Now, after the latest Supreme Court decision, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four alleged “liberal” members of the court to uphold the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare), the new cry from these dopes is that they want to move to Canada “because the US is too socialist.”

 

Let me preface this column by saying that I don’t think all conservatives and right-wingers are stupid. In fact I have some right-leaning friends of a libertarian bent who are really smart, and a lot of fun to argue with. They may have an unquestioning faith, bordering on religious zealotry, in the wonders of the “market,” but like Jesuit-trained Catholics defending the existence of God, debating that faith with them can be entertaining and even challenging.

Having said that, I have to say that the so called “rock-ribbed” conservative crowd -- let’s change that to “rock-headed” -- that serves as the foot-soldiers for the Koch-brothers-funded Tea Party “movement” are really low-wattage.

Back in 2008-2010, their incredibly inane rallying cry was: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

Never mind that the Medicare these bozos were trying to protect is a government program.

Now, after the latest Supreme Court decision, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four alleged “liberal” members of the court to uphold the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare), the new cry from these dopes is that they want to move to Canada “because the US is too socialist.”

I kid you not!

Wally Weldon (@WallyWeldon), is a classic of the genre. In a Tweet, he declares, “I’m moving to Canada, the US is entirely too socialist.”

Van Summers (@VanSummers) chirps back, “Screw this commie country, I’m moving to Canada.”

Problem: Canada has what might best be described as socialized health care. Way back in 1947, Tommy Douglas, a social-democratic provincial leader of the prairie province of Saskatchewan, introduced the first public hospital insurance program in Canada. ...

Medicare for All: A Single Solution to the Health Care Fracas
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 30 June 2012
There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system.

 

It will take some time to digest the Supreme Court's decision yesterday, but it appears to have averted some terrible jurisprudence that might have very seriously restricted the government's overall ability to regulate the economy and protect citizens.

In upholding most of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court lets stand legislation that offers some important benefits, but only to a portion of those who are uninsured, and will predictably fail to solve our nation's health care crisis.

However the health reform law ultimately plays out, we know two things for certain: Tens of millions of Americans will remain uncovered as will tens of millions of under-insured who will remain at risk of financial ruin if a major illness strikes; and it will leave the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries in charge of prices and life-and-death treatment decisions.

There is a single solution to the challenges of providing coverage to the 50 million who are uninsured that would curb out-of-control health care costs and provide a humane standard of care to all who enter the medical system. That solution is an improved Medicare-for-All, single-payer system.

The improved Medicare-for-All approach starts with the premise that health care is a critically needed right that must be afforded to all, irrespective of any individual's ability to pay for care. It solves the problems of 50 million uninsured Americans simply and directly by establishing that everyone is covered by the improved Medicare

After Supreme Court Rules, Work for Single Payer: Dr. Margaret Flowers on what follows Judgement Day.
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 29 June 2012
As the nation awaited the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA,) Flowers sounded more upbeat than aghast at the prospect of the Supreme Court ruling striking down part or more of the Obama law.

Margaret Flowers MD, is a pediatrician whose exasperation with the American health care system turned her into a single-payer activist. In 2009 she was arrested at the Senate Round Table on Health Insurance for attempting to speak on behalf of a single-payer plan when single payer had been cut out of the conversation.     “When Obama was elected I was optimistic like many people because he knew what single-payer was,” she told me recently when we talked. “He’d been on record saying that single-payer was the best solution. It was quickly very clear that that this was a predetermined course that it was more like a marketing campaign.” As the nation awaited the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA,) Flowers sounded more upbeat than aghast at the prospect of the Supreme Court ruling striking down part or more of the Obama law. For Flowers, a single-payer plan, like Medicare for all (which would fund medical care from a single insurance pool run by the state), was always the ideal way to provide universal, affordable, quality care, and contain soaring costs and waste in the process. As for the individual mandate – forcing the public to buy from a for-profit company – she’s called it “crony capitalism on steroids.”     It would be no small thing to move health reform through the legislature again, she agrees. Three years ago, Democratic leaders in Washington foreclosed on single payer, and went on to betray their commitments to single-payer-lite  -- the so-called public option. There’s no evidence there’s been a sea change in Washington. Around the country, though, Flowers ...

Advocates Hail Supreme Court Decision - Worry at Law’s Shortcomings
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 29 June 2012
“The Affordable Care Act’s [ACA] requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.”

 

Initial reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court’s general upholding of the health care reform law Thursday ranged from the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) heralding the decision to conservative groups, such as the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, decrying it as “a victory for those who want the Federal government to micromanage your life and medical care.”

 

Buzzing beneath the first bluster of reactions, though, advocates for uninsured or underinsured Americans are raising concerns about the impact — if any — of limitations on the high court’s decision.

 

Chief Justice’s Surprise Swing Vote

 

First, here’s what the court decided: The 200-plus-page judgment breaks down into two major parts. In a 5-4 majority opinion written by conservative stalwart Chief Justice John Roberts, who became the surprise swing vote, the court upheld the law’s provision mandating that individuals have insurance or pay a penalty. 

 

The decision states, “The Affordable Care Act’s [ACA] requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.” 

 

Roberts thus accepted the Obama administration’s secondary argument that compelling people to buy insurance or be penalized was not tantamount, as dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia argued, to compelling citizens to buy broccoli for their health. Instead, says the majority, the penalty for not purchasing health insurance is no different from any other federal tax permitted by the U.S. Constitution.

 

The Chief Justice, however, sided with his four conservative colleagues on the ...

Roberts’ Switch
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 29 June 2012
“Justice Roberts may have, like his earlier namesake, saved the Court from a growing reputation for political partisanship.”

 

Today a majority of the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare in recognition of its importance as a key initiative of the Obama administration. The big surprise, for many, was the vote by the Chief Justice of the Court, John Roberts, to join with the Court’s four liberals.

 

Roberts’ decision is not without precedent. Seventy-five years ago, another Justice Roberts – no relation to the current Chief Justice – made a similar switch. Justice Owen Roberts had voted with the Court’s conservative majority in a host of 5-4 decisions invalidating New Deal legislation, but in March of 1937 he suddenly switched sides and began joining with the Court’s four liberals.  In popular lore, Roberts’ switch saved the Court – not only from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s threat to pack it with justices more amenable to the New Deal but, more importantly, from the public’s increasing perception of the Court as a partisan, political branch of government.

 

Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t related to his namesake but the current Roberts’ move today marks a close parallel. By joining with the Court’s four liberals who have been in the minority in many important cases – including the 2010 decision, Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission, which struck down constraints on corporate political spending as being in violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech – the current Justice Roberts may have, like his earlier namesake, saved the Court from a growing reputation for political partisanship.

 

As Alexander Hamilton pointed out when the Constitution was being written, the Supreme Court is the “least dangerous branch” of government ...

High Court Upholds Key Part of Obama Health Law
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 28 June 2012
“The ruling hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in approving the plan.”

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld virtually all of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul, including the hotly debated core requirement that nearly every American have health insurance.

The 5-4 decision meant the huge overhaul, still taking effect, could proceed and pick up momentum over the next several years, affecting the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care.

The ruling hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in approving the plan. However, Republicans quickly indicated they will try to use the decision to rally their supporters against what they call "Obamacare," arguing that the ruling characterized the penalty against people who refuse to get insurance as a tax.

Breaking with the court's other conservative justices, Chief Justice John Roberts announced the judgment that allows the law to go forward with its aim of covering more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Roberts explained at length the court's view of the mandate as a valid exercise of Congress' authority to "lay and collect taxes." The administration estimates that roughly 4 million people will pay the penalty rather than buy insurance.

Even though Congress called it a penalty, not a tax, Roberts said, "The payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation."

Roberts also made plain the court's rejection of the administration's claim that Congress had the power under the Constitution's commerce clause to put the mandate in place. The power to regulate interstate commerce power, he said, "does not authorize the mandate. "

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney renewed his criticism of the overhaul, calling it "bad law" and promising to work to repeal it if elected in November.

Stocks of hospital companies rose sharply, and insurance companies ...

Why the Supreme Court Will Uphold the Constitutionality of Obamacare
Taylor
Published: Thursday 28 June 2012
Why the Supreme Court will uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by a vote of 6 to 3.

Predictions are always hazardous when it comes to the economy, the weather, and the Supreme Court. I won’t get near the first two right now, but I’ll hazard a guess on what the Court is likely to decide tomorrow: It will uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by a vote of 6 to 3. 

Three reasons for my confidence:

First, Chief Justice John Roberts is — or should be — concerned about the steadily-declining standing of the Court in the public’s mind, along with the growing perception that the justices decide according to partisan politics rather than according to legal principle. The 5-4 decision in Citizen’s United, for example, looked to all the world like a political rather than a legal outcome, with all five Republican appointees finding that restrictions on independent corporate expenditures violate the First Amendment, and all four Democratic appointees finding that such restrictions are reasonably necessary to avoid corruption or the appearance of corruption. Or consider the Court’s notorious decision in  READ FULL POST 9 COMMENTS

Three Big Lies about “Big Government”
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 23 June 2012
Time and again conservatives characterize those of us on the left as “large government loyalists,” as “tax and spend liberals” who “support the growth of an inefficient and parasitic public sector.”

Many conservatives who stylize themselves as defenders of small government lean precariously on Reagan-era platitudes when pressed to justify their affections. Though Reagan’s alluringly demagogic 1981 decree that “government is not the solution to our problems [but rather], government is the problem” is easy to chew, its arbitrary application has led to a number of misconceptions about the role, size, and scope of “government.”

Time and again conservatives characterize those of us on the left as “large government loyalists,” as “tax and spend liberals” who “support the growth of an inefficient and parasitic public sector.” Unfortunately, the tales that conservatives use to vituperate those of on the left are as shallow as they are tall.

Let’s take a few minutes to debunk three common conservative critiques lodged against supposed “big government” sympathizers.

Myth #1: President Obama has created a “spending inferno.”

Did not Harvard Business School teach you anything, Mitt? In FY 2009—the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 18 percent from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Then, in FY 2010—the first budget overseen by President Obama—federal government outlays fell by nearly 2 percent. In FY 2011 spending rose 4.3 percent to $3.60 trillion and in FY 2012 spending is scheduled to rise 0.7 percent to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent budgetary estimates.  Finally in FY 2013 — the final budget of President Obama’s term — spending is ...

Health Care: Give the People What They Want
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 22 June 2012
“More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.”

 

The nutty thing about the health care debate that will play a prominent role in the next election is that most Americans want pretty much the same outcome: to control costs without sacrificing quality. And that’s not what either major-party candidate is offering. Few think that Obamacare, a Romneycare descendant that contains the same kind of individual mandate the then-governor of Massachusetts signed into law, will get us to that desired goal. Nor would Mitt Romney, who has been reborn as a celebrant of the old, pre-Obama system with a few nips and tucks.

As the nation awaits a Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the Obama health care approach, a new Associated Press-GfK poll suggests that the vast majority of Americans want Congress to come up with a better plan. They know that the current system is unsustainable. Only a third of those polled favored the law President Barack Obama signed, but according to the AP, “... Whatever people think of the law, they don’t want a Supreme Court ruling against it to be the last word on health care reform.” The article continued, “More than three-fourths of Americans want their political leaders to undertake a new effort, rather than leave the health care system alone if the court rules against the law, according to the poll.”

That sentiment underscores the opportunity missed by Obama, who limited his ambition to what Big Pharma and the insurance giants would accept as “reform” in a system that they had so successfully exploited. Obamacare is a faux reform born of opportunism, as was Romney’s original version: Play ball with those who have profited most from the run-up of medical costs and expect them to make it more affordable.

Two dynamics doomed the experiment. First, the new Democratic president wanted to launch a bold progressive program, but rather than channel the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to address the ...

Occupy Will be Back
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 19 June 2012
“The Occupy movement is not finally about occupying. It is, as Zeese points out, about shifting power from the 1 percent to the 99 percent.”

 

In every conflict, insurgency, uprising and revolution I have covered as a foreign correspondent, the power elite used periods of dormancy, lulls and setbacks to write off the opposition. This is why obituaries for the Occupy movement are in vogue. And this is why the next groundswell of popular protest—and there will be one—will be labeled as “unexpected,” a “shock” and a “surprise.” The television pundits and talking heads, the columnists and academics who declare the movement dead are as out of touch with reality now as they were on Sept. 17 when New York City’s Zuccotti Park was occupied. Nothing this movement does will ever be seen by them as a success. Nothing it does will ever be good enough. Nothing, short of its dissolution and the funneling of its energy back into the political system, will be considered beneficial.

Those who have the largest megaphones in our corporate state serve the very systems of power we are seeking to topple. They encourage us, whether on Fox or MSNBC, to debate inanities, trivia, gossip or the personal narratives of candidates. They seek to channel legitimate outrage and direct it into the black hole of corporate politics. They spin these silly, useless stories from the “left” or the “right” while ignoring the egregious assault by corporate power on the citizenry, an assault enabled by the Democrats and the Republicans. Don’t waste time watching or listening. They exist to confuse and demoralize you.

READ FULL POST 8 COMMENTS

Food Fights Exploit Class, Income Splits
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 17 June 2012
“The average American eats 29 pounds of French fries, 23 pounds of pizza, 24 pounds of ice cream and consumes 53 gallons of soda, 24 pounds of artificial sweeteners, 2.736 pounds of salt and 90,700 milligrams of caffeine per year.”

As epic battles brew between sustainable, organic and non-renewable industrial farming, the politics of food surround our every bite. That’s a good thing, driving better assessments of actual food costs while factoring in enormous, perpetual farm subsidies and government supports. What we eat, and deem worthy for others to digest, has as much to do with class, income, family, and status as with packaging, nutrition, and health.  

 

Hardly going down as a high point is the latest skirmish from Mayor Bloomberg of New York, defying logic and common sense by asserting smaller soda containers will automatically reduce consumption of sugary drinks. Talk about vulnerable liberal tunnel vision and over-reach; this notion skims the surface of obesity, empty calories, and unhealthy eating habits. Chew on this indigestible morsel, Mr. Mayor:

 

The average American eats 29 pounds of French fries, 23 pounds of pizza, 24 pounds of ice cream and consumes 53 gallons of soda, 24 pounds of artificial sweeteners, 2.736 pounds of salt and 90,700 milligrams of caffeine per year. Do we really think we can create health in that toxic environment?

 

And Dr. Mark Hyman bypasses other average annual intakes: 632 lbs of dairy, 85 lbs. of oil, and 63 lbs. of beef alone. If food fights obscure air, soil, water, media and mind contamination, this liberal “toxic environment” will draw out the wingnuts, yapping loudly: “keep government out of my gullet” or “give me calories or give me death.”

 

Forever seeking wedges

 

Food fights loom because gay rights and abortion, even “gun control” folly, have lost electoral clout. Gun sales lag only the ultimate ...

A Back Door to the Public Option
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 15 June 2012
“If the Court strikes down the individual mandate, health insurance company lobbyists and executives will swarm Capitol Hill seeking to have the Act amended to remove the requirement that they insure people with pre-existing medical conditions.”

 

Any day now the Supreme Court will issue its opinion on the constitutionality of the Accountable Care Act, which even the White House now calls Obamacare.

Most high-court observers think it will strike down the individual mandate in the Act that requires almost everyone to buy health insurance, as violating the Commerce Clause of the Constitution — but will leave the rest of the new healthcare law intact.

But the individual mandate is so essential to spreading the risk and cost of health care over the whole population, including younger and healthier people, that some analysts believe a Court decision that nixes the mandate will effectively spell the end of the Act anyway.

Yet it could have exactly the opposite effect. If the Court strikes down the individual mandate, health insurance company lobbyists and executives will swarm Capitol Hill seeking to have the Act amended to remove the requirement that they insure people with pre-existing medical conditions. They’ll argue that without the mandate they can’t afford to cover pre-existing conditions.

But the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions has proven to be so popular with the public that Congress will be reluctant to scrap it.

This opens the way to a political bargain. Insurers might be let off the hook, for example, only if they support allowing every American, including those with pre-existing conditions, to choose Medicare, or something very much like Medicare. In effect, what was known during the debate over the bill as the “public option.”

So in striking down the least popular part of Obamacare - the individual mandate - the Court will inevitably bring into question one of its most popular parts - coverage of pre-existing conditions. And in so doing, open alternative ways to maintain that coverage - including ideas, like the public option, that were rejected in favor of the mandate.

The fact is, ...

The Truth About Taxes
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 14 June 2012
“Three reasons why taxes have to be raised on the richest Americans.”

“Here are three reasons why taxes have to be raised on the richest Americans: 1. We have budget deficits. If the rich don't pay their fair share than the rest of us will either have to do with less Medicare and Medicaid, fewer public investments, infrastructure and education. Or we will have to pay even more in taxes to make up for what the rich do not pay. 2. Top tax rate is at historic lows. Because so much of their income is in the form of capital gains, the very wealthy pay far less. 3. The rich can afford to pay more. The wealthy are taking home a larger share of total income than they have in 80 years.” 

The Debt is Not a Measure of Generational Burdens
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 13 June 2012
“Suppose that we have two economies at the same level of per capita income, both growing at the rate of 2.0 percent a year. Let’s call them Germany and the United States.”

Okay folks, today we are going to learn why the national debt tells us nothing about the burdens or benefits that we are bequeathing to future generations. This will require a few minutes of clear thinking, so for the moment put out of your head whatever nonsense you just heard from a politician or economic commentator about the debt or deficit.

Suppose that we have two economies at the same level of per capita income, both growing at the rate of 2.0 percent a year. Let’s call them Germany and the United States. For simplicity we will say that both have zero growth in the labor force so that the growth is all due to productivity growth, meaning that each worker is producing 2.0 percent more for every hour that she works.

After 10 years, both economies will be roughly 20 percent richer. Now suppose that Germany reaches 2022 with zero public debt. It managed to run surpluses and still maintain healthy growth. By contrast, the United States had to run budget deficits to keep its economy moving. By 2022 its ratio of debt to GDP is 200 percent. That’s not quite up there with Japan, but substantially larger than anything the United States will see anytime soon under almost any circumstances.

The next question is which country is richer? If you answered Germany, then you get an op-ed column in the Washington Post and an “F” in economics. You were just told that the countries started with economies of the same size and that they grew at the same rate, how could Germany be richer?

If your inner deficit hawk is screaming that the people in the United States will have to pay interest on this massive debt, whereas the people in Germany will have no comparable burden, then remember the interest on the debt is also paid out to people in the United States. This is a distributional question, not a question about the wealth of the country as a whole.

It’s true that we can have foreign ownership of ...

Why We have to Raise Taxes on the Rich and End the Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy (and Bill Clinton Agrees)
Taylor
Published: Thursday 7 June 2012
“Here’s the truth: If the rich don’t pay their fair share, the rest of us have to pay higher taxes — or do without vital public services like Medicare, Medicaid, Pell grants, food stamps, child nutrition, federal aid to education, and more.”

 

I was on CNBC Tuesday when Bill Clinton gave an interview saying that, given the deadlock between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill, it seemed likely the Bush tax cuts would be extended in 2013 along with all spending. When asked to comment, I said Clinton was probably correct.

But, of course, Republicans have twisted Clinton’s words into a pretzel. They say the former president came out in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy – in sharp contrast to President Obama’s position that they should not be.

It’s typical election-year politics, except for the fact that the Republican megaphone is larger this time around due to all the Super PAC and secret “social welfare” organization bribes, er, donations that are filling Republican coffers.

Here’s the truth. America has a huge budget deficit hanging over our heads. If the rich don’t pay their fair share, the rest of us have to pay higher taxes — or do without vital public services like Medicare, ...

A Hidden Economic Ideology: Six Flaws In The CBO’s New Report
Taylor
Published: Wednesday 6 June 2012
The words “employment” or “jobs” appear nowhere in the summary of its report, and the report itself says little about job creation.

 

The new CBO report is out, and it's a huge disappointment. Their report misrepresents both our nation's economic situation and the range of policy solutions available to the Federal government.

We'll review the report in greater detail in the days to come, but here are six glaring flaws that illustrate a hidden economic ideology - the same sort of anti-Keynesian, anti-spending, and anti-growth ideology that led so many economists to be so wrong in the last couple of decades.

Some flaws are analytical, some are errors of omission or bias, and some are merely misleadingly emphasized or presented facts. But, taken together, they illustrate the fact that our CBO - like so many economic institutions - has failed to absorb some real-life lessons of recent years.

The six most glaring flaws we found in the CBO report are:

1. It ignores job ...

Alan Simpson: The Washington Elite’s Attack Dog
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 5 June 2012
Alan Simpson once again launched an obscenity-laden diatribe against those who oppose his plans to cut Social Security and Medicare.

 

Alan Simpson, the foul-mouthed former senator, has been back in the news again. He once again launched an obscenity-laden diatribe against those who oppose his plans to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Unfortunately, the focus of the media attention has been on the senator’s use of obscenities. This is unfortunate because the use of obscenities is really beside the point. After all, a single well-placed expletive can often do the work of a hundred g-rated words.

The real issue is the senator’s open contempt for the portion of the population that is either dependent on Social Security or Medicare now or will be in the future. Since that group comprises almost everyone except the rich, Senator Simpson’s diatribes are expressing contempt for just about the whole population, in other words, the 99 percent.

The contempt the senator holds for the 99 percent is probably common among those like him, the son of a senator, who grew up to great privilege and never had to fear financial insecurity. However Senator Simpson is unusual in showing this contempt so openly. Usually the members of the elite who enter politics are at least able to conceal the negative views they have of the less-privileged.  

READ FULL POST 6 COMMENTS

December Surprise? From Rubin to Pelosi, Wall Street & DC Dems Push Post-Election Austerity
Taylor
Published: Thursday 31 May 2012
“Nobody in Washington is telling people the truth: Focusing on deficits during a recession-cum-depression is wrongheaded, foolish, and destructive.”

On a recent Meet the Press face-off between Democrats and Republicans, a politician claimed we urgently need to cut government spending. He embraced a plan to slash vital government programs and gut retirement security, while actuallycutting taxes for the rich. The only tax hikes in his plan were targeted toward the already-devastated middle class.

Then it was time for the Republican to speak.

Who'd have thought it? Progressive stalwarts like Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dick Durbin are pushing the same radical austerity plan as Jamie Dimon, CEO of troubled megabank JPMorgan Chase, and Robert Rubin, the Clinton ...

The ‘Geezers’ are Right This Time
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 29 May 2012
“About 25 years ago, Social Security taxes were raised above that needed to support current retirees and the surplus put in a trust fund.”

Alan Simpson let loose at a group of Californians who charged in a brochure that he and Erskine Bowles were "using the deficit to gut our Social Security." The former Republican senator from Wyoming sent the California Association of Retired Americans a characteristically colorful response, which I quote: "What a wretched group of seniors you must be to use the faces of the very people (the young) that we are trying to save, while the 'greedy geezers' like you use them as a tool and a front for your nefarious bunch of crap."

I can't not like Simpson, but he is wrong this time, and the activists are right. The plan named for him and former Clinton Chief of Staff Bowles bravely confronted soaring deficits with balanced spending cuts and tax hikes. Upon its release, the tax-a-phobic Grover Norquist called Simpson "old and grumpy." Simpson fired back with "old Grover Norquist and his happy band of goofy warriors, all they do is make  READ FULL POST 9 COMMENTS

Romney’s Regressivism
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 26 May 2012
“But let’s not forget Romney’s budget proposal, which mimics Paul Ryan’s.”

Fine to nail Romney with Bain Capitalism. But let’s not forget Romney’s budget proposal, which mimics Paul Ryan’s. Take a moment to make yourself aware of both, because they’re eye-opening and scary. 


Both would restore the military budget, slash Medicare (turning it into vouchers that shift costs to the elderly) and Medicaid (turning it over to the states but without enough money to keep it going), cut programs for the poor (food stamps, Pell grants, etc), and yet at the same time cut even more taxes on the super rich. 
 


According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, Romney’s plan would give a $250K tax cut, on average, to everyone now earning over a million dollars a year. 
 


Yet Romney’s plan would also — according to the ...

Yes, We Can Walk and Chew Gum
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 19 May 2012
“Essentially, conservatives are asserting that we cannot extend equal rights to all Americans and fix the economy.”

One of the most overused metaphors in a writer's arsenal is the one about "walking and chewing gum at the same time." As a hiker and Big League Chew enthusiast, I particularly hate this cliché. Nonetheless, I feel it is fitting right now because it so perfectly summarizes the argument being made by Republicans. They now insist that America cannot simultaneously walk the walk on equal rights and also chew economic gum.

In the last week, Colorado was the testing ground for this talking point. At the presidential level, Republican nominee Mitt Romney criticized a Denver television reporter for daring to ask about his position on, among other issues, same-sex marriage. Before restating his opposition, he scoffed at the question, asking: "Aren't there issues of significance that you'd like to talk about (like) the economy? The growth of jobs? The need to put people back to work?"

At the same time, Colorado's Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty twice blocked a vote on a bill to legalize civil unions. His rationale? "We should not be spending time on divisive social issues when unemployment remains far too high and (when) far too many Coloradans remain out of work," he said. Echoing that sentiment, the shadowy Republican front group Compass Colorado financed an automated telephone call telling thousands of voters that the push for civil unions was unacceptable because it is "promoting (a) divisive social agenda over Colorado job creation."

America’s G-Zero Moment
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 15 May 2012
“U.S. foreign policy may be as active as ever, but it is downsizing and becoming more exacting about its priorities and as a result, many global challenges – climate change, trade, resource scarcity, international security, cyber-warfare, and nuclear proliferation, to name a few – are bound to loom larger.”

The 2008 financial crisis marked the end of the global order as we knew it. In advance of the upcoming G-8 summit, it is impossible to overlook the fact that, for the first time in seven decades, the United States cannot drive the international agenda or provide global leadership on all of today’s most pressing problems.

Indeed, the US has trimmed its presence abroad by refusing to contribute to a eurozone bailout, intervene in Syria, or use force to contain Iran’s nuclear breakout (despite strong Israeli support). President Barack Obama officially ended the war in Iraq, and is withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan at a pace constrained only by the need to save face. America is handing off the leadership baton – even if no other country or group of countries is willing or able to grasp it.

In short, US foreign policy may be as active as ever, but it is downsizing and becoming more exacting about its priorities. As a result, many global challenges – climate change, trade, resource scarcity, international security, cyber-warfare, and nuclear proliferation, to name a few – are bound to loom larger.

 

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Palin’s Rhetoric Torpedoed Medicare Savings
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 14 May 2012
“If we’re fortunate, some courageous candidates will call for renewed debate on a provision of the health care reform bill that had once enjoyed bipartisan support.”

 

We’ll be hearing a lot from politicians this summer and fall about the urgency of dealing with Medicare spending, which will begin to rise sharply in the coming years as increasing numbers of the country’s 75 million baby boomers turn 65.

If we’re fortunate, some courageous candidates will call for renewed debate on a provision of the health care reform bill that had once enjoyed bipartisan support. The one that spineless Democrats decided had to be yanked when a certain former vice presidential nominee claimed, falsely, that it would create government-run “death panels.”

Medicare expenditures now total more than half a trillion dollars annually, representing 15 percent of federal spending.  The only programs to which the government devotes more dollars are Social Security and national defense, both of which consume 20 percent of yearly federal outlays.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the average annual growth in Medicare spending will be 5.8 percent between 2012 and 2020. It would have been one percentage point higher than that, according to the CBO, if not for the cost-constraining provisions of the Affordable Care Act,  most notably the one that will gradually eliminate the bonuses the government pays private insurers to participate in the Medicare Advantage program.

The Affordable Care Act might have been able to curtail spending further if it hadn’t been for Sarah Palin’s reckless rhetoric. It was Palin who charged that a provision of the law allowing Medicare to pay doctors for having end-of-life discussions with their patients would lead to government-run “death panels.”

That provision was important because, according to the Congressional Research Service, about one-fourth of total Medicare spending is for the last year of life, and a lot of that spending could be avoided if more folks received counseling from their doctors on what ...

Conservatives Again Risk Higher Student Debt to Protect the Wealthy
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 13 May 2012
“While we don’t think young people should have to suffer any more than they already are as a result of this president’s failure to turn the economy around, we just disagree that we should pay for a fix by diverting $6 billion from Medicare and raising taxes on the very businesses we’re counting on to hire these young people.”

Senate Republicans today filibustered the effort to prevent federal student loan rates from doubling, once again obstructing the majority and putting the finances of millions of college students at risk for the sake of protecting the leather wallets of the 1 percent.

Forty-five Republicans voted against allowing the measure to come to the floor for a full debate and up-or-down vote (52 voted in favor; 60 votes were required) even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to their demand that they be allowed to bring to the floor their proposal to eliminate an illness prevention and public health program to cover the $6 billion cost of keeping student loan interest rates as they are, at 3.4 percent. That was the proposal passed by Republicans in the House, which President Obama has already said he would veto.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's excuse? 

Medicare and Social Security: Fact Vs. Myth
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 25 April 2012
Social Security is on an even keel for the foreseeable future. Twenty years from now it’s projected to be in a position to pay only 75 percent of benefits - but that’s easily fixed by lifting the payroll tax cap.

In the coming days and weeks we'll be hearing a lot of misinformation about the Trustees Report from the Social Security Administration. It's time to separate the myths from the realities:

Myth: "Social Security and Medicare have a cost problem."

Fact: Medicare has a financial problem. As this chart shows, the cost of providing Social Security benefits is not out of control or skyrocketing.

Social Security is on an even keel for the foreseeable future. Twenty years from now it's projected to be in a position to pay only 75 percent of benefits - but that's easily fixed by lifting the payroll tax cap.

Fact: That's a headline we saw repeated across the country in anticipation of the Trustees Report, but it's wrong. What's "straining" Social Security and Medicare today is the unequal distribution of income and a broken regulatory system for Wall Street that has put the entire economy under stress.

Social Security was actuarially stable after it was overhauled by the Greenspan Commission in the 1980s. The Baby Boomers were all alive and (mostly) working by then. So what really happened?

First, a radical upward shift in income toward the "1 percent" - and the "0.0001 percent" - meant that more and more of the nation's income was ...

Defending Ourselves to Death
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 24 April 2012
If you add the $100 billion or more for the two wars we are still fighting, the $80 billion for the intelligence budget, and various other defense-related expenditures, that figure is actually much higher – roughly one-half the entire federal budget for the period 2002-2008.

The OWS movement is right to focus on Wall Street and the financial services industry as the proximate cause of our current discontents. Wall Street is at once the symbol of greed and the instrument of the big commercial banks, venture capitalists, and "wealth managers" that feed on greed, and (more to the point) are fed by it.  As everyone knows, the nation's leading financial institutions engaged in extremely risky behavior with our money, plunging the country into a deep and prolonged recession, causing great pain across the length and breadth of middle-class America, while reaping fabulous rewards, some virtually tax-free, in the form of multi-million-dollar bonuses, perks, deferred compensation, stock options, and "golden parachutes".



The economic conundrum we face at present is rooted in the past, including a tax system that redistributes wealth upward from the middle class to the wealthy and, consequently, the relentless growth in both public and private ...

Medicare Fraud Cut Down by Competition
Amir Gholi
Published: Wednesday 18 April 2012
Experts Reject Study From Koch-Backed Center Claiming Health Care Law Will Increase Deficit
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 12 April 2012
A recent right-wing media study says the Health Care Law “Is Expected To Add At Least $340 Billion And As Much As $530 Billion To Federal Deficits.”

Right-wing media are touting a study claiming the health care reform law will not lower the deficit, but rather increase it by more than $300 billion. In fact, economic experts dismissed the study by conservative analyst Charles Blahous, saying it uses "discredited arguments."

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Study Claims Health Care Law Will Add More Than $300 Billion To Deficit

Study: Health Care Law "Is Expected To Add At Least $340 Billion And As Much As $530 Billion To Federal Deficits." According to a study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University:

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The Real Health Care Debate
Amir Gholi
Published: Tuesday 10 April 2012
“Obamacare will, according to figures compiled by Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP), leave at least 23 million people without insurance.”

The debate surrounding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act illustrates the impoverishment of our political life. Here is a law that had its origin in the right-wing Heritage Foundation, was first put into practice in 2006 in Massachusetts by then-Gov. Mitt Romney and was solidified into federal law after corporate lobbyists wrote legislation with more than 2,000 pages. It is a law that forces American citizens to buy a deeply defective product from private insurance companies. It is a law that is the equivalent of the bank bailout bill—some $447 billion in subsidies for insurance interests alone—for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It is a law that is unconstitutional. And it is a law by which President Barack Obama, and his corporate backers, extinguished the possibilities of both the public option and Medicare for all Americans. There is no substantial difference between Obamacare and Romneycare. There is no substantial difference between Obama and Romney. They are abject servants of the corporate state. And if you vote for one you vote for the other.

But you would never know this by listening to the Democratic Party and the advocacy groups that purport to support universal health care but seem more intent on re-electing Obama. It is the very sad legacy of the liberal class that it proves in election cycle after election cycle that it espouses moral and political positions it will not pay a price to defend. And since we have no fight in us, since we will not punish politicians like Obama who betray our core beliefs, the corporate juggernaut rolls forward with its inexorable pace to cement into place our global neofeudalism.

Protesting outside the Supreme Court recently as it heard arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act were both conservatives from

GOP Budget ‘Will Ultimately End Medicare As We Know It’
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 8 April 2012
“Instead of being enrolled in medicare when they turn 65, seniors to retire a decade from now would get a voucher that equals the cost of the second cheapest health care plan in their area.”

President Obama described the Republican budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as “laughable” during a speech at the Associated Press Luncheon on Tuesday and said that Ryan’s Medicare “premium support” plan would “end Medicare as we know it.” In a preview of his general election pitch, Obama argued that the GOP blueprint cuts essential government programs that help lower and middle class Americans in order to pay for tax cuts that primarily benefit the rich, before laying out his opposition to the party’s Medicare and Medicaid reforms.

“We’re told that Medicaid would simply be handed over to the states,” Obama explained. “But here’s the deal the states would be getting. They’d have to be running these programs in the face of the largest cut to Medicaid that has ever been proposed.” According to the Center on Budget and policy Priorities, the Ryan budget would reduce federal spending on Medicaid billion and would provide states with smaller “block grants” to run their health care programs. “A cut that according to one nonpartisan group would take away health care for about 19 million Americans,” Obama said, before turning to the GOP’s proposal to transform Medicare into a premium support structure:

OBAMA: Instead of being enrolled in Medicare when they turn 65, seniors to retire a decade from now would get a voucher that equals the cost of the second cheapest health care plan in their area. If Medicare is more expensive than at private plan, they will have to pay more if they want to enroll in traditional Medicare. If health care costs rise faster than the amount of the voucher, as, by the way, they have been doing for decades, that’s too bad. Seniors bear the risk. If the voucher is not enough to buy private plan with bit specific doctors and carry need, that’s too bad. Most experts will tell you the way this ...

The Fable of the Century
Satra Kit
Published: Friday 6 April 2012
“Imagine that the richest people in this country use some of their vast wealth to routinely bribe politicians.”

Imagine a country in which the very richest people get all the economic gains. They eventually accumulate so much of the nation’s total income and wealth that the middle class no longer has the purchasing power to keep the economy going full speed. Most of the middle class’s wages keep falling and their major asset – their home – keeps shrinking in value.

Imagine that the richest people in this country use some of their vast wealth to routinely bribe politicians. They get the politicians to cut their taxes so low there’s no money to finance important public investments that the middle class depends on – such as schools and roads, or safety nets such as health care for the elderly and poor.

Imagine further that among the richest of these rich are financiers. These financiers have so much power over the rest of the economy they get average taxpayers to bail them out when their bets in the casino called the stock market go bad. They have so much power they even shred regulations intended to limit their power. 

These financiers have so much power they force businesses to lay off millions of workers and to reduce the wages and benefits of millions of others, in order to maximize profits and raise share prices – all of which make the financiers even richer, because they own so many of shares of stock and run the casino. 

Now, imagine that among the richest of these financiers are people called private-equity managers who buy up companies in order to squeeze even more money out of them by loading them up with debt and firing even more of their employees, and then selling the companies for a fat profit.

Although these private-equity managers don’t even risk their own money – they round up investors to buy the target companies – they nonetheless pocket 20 percent of those fat profits.

And because of a loophole in the tax laws, which they created with their ...

The Supreme Scream: Obamacare After the Court Ruling
Amir Gholi
Published: Tuesday 3 April 2012
“The group that faces an immediate problem in a world with Obamacare, but without mandates, is the insurance industry.”

The conventional wisdom following the oral arguments before the Supreme Court last week is that, at the least, the health insurance mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act is going down. Many observers thought it likely that the Republican-controlled court would strike down the entire bill. Either way, it will be necessary to do some serious rethinking of health care policy.

The simpler case, where the mandate is struck down but most of the rest of the bill is left intact, could likely be repaired without great difficulty. The mandate that everyone buy insurance was a quid pro quo with the insurance industry. Insurers are prohibited from discriminating against sick people in issuing insurance policies; in exchange the government is going to force healthy people to buy insurance.

There is a real problem of adverse selection in this case. If everyone knows that they can wait until they get a serious illness to buy insurance, then only people who are in bad health will have insurance and the cost will be very high.

There are mechanisms that can be used to get around this problem. They generally involve imposing a higher price or excluding coverage of pre-existing conditions for those who delay buying insurance. This would substantially reduce the number of people who might try to game the system.

Even assuming that the Republicans keep control of Congress this fix may be possible. The group that faces an immediate problem in a world with Obamacare, but without mandates, is the insurance industry. It can always count on a sympathetic ear from Republican politicians.

However we will be in a qualitatively different world if the Court rules that the bill in its entirety is unconstitutional. That puts health care reform back at square one.

A number of people have commented that this would be ...

The Best, Most Revealing Reporting on Our Healthcare System
Amanda Rae
Published: Saturday 31 March 2012
While waiting for the Supreme Court to give its verdict on the health-care reform, we become aware of some of the most revealing reporting on the issues.

As we wait for the Supreme Court to issue its verdict on the health-care reform law, we rounded up some of the most revealing reporting on the issues. They’re grouped roughly into articles on high costs and those on insurance.

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Desolation Row: Five Pictures of the Future in a Paul Ryan/Mitt Romney America
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 31 March 2012
Economic radical Paul Ryan has endorsed Mitt Romney, Romney’s embraced the Ryan budget, and the House Republicans have voted to enact the Romney/Ryan vision of the future into law.

Economic radical Paul Ryan has endorsed Mitt Romney, Romney's embraced the Ryan budget, and the House Republicans have voted to enact the Romney/Ryan vision of the future into law. Yet an eerie silence has settled over the vision itself: How would it affect our daily lives? What kind of country would we become?

The Romney/Ryan America of tomorrow is more like the science-fiction worlds of H.G. Wells' Time Machine or Fritz Lang's Metropolis than it is like the United States, as we know it. The privileged few would be even wealthier than they are today, while the rest of us struggle to survive in a dystonic world of disease, deprivation, and fear.

That's not lefty rhetoric, either. All you have to do is read the budget.

What did Romney say about Ryan's budget? "He is setting the right tone for finally getting spending and entitlements under control. Anyone who has read my book knows that we are on the same page." For his part, Paul Ryan expressed confidence that Romney will enact something very close to the budget he proposed and House Republicans passed this week.

And yet the real vision they're offering for the country is somehow off-limits in polite company. They're being treated like reasonable politicians, rather than as radicals whose social agenda is severely out of step with that their predecessors in both parties. That has to stop. We need to quit discussing the political horse race and start talking in real-life terms about the country they intend to create.

Here are five glimpses of the American future under Romney, Ryan, and the Republicans:

1. Diseased America

Forget what it means to be a ...

Every Progressive Should Know About the “Budget for All”
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 29 March 2012
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has put together a “Budget for All” that “puts Americans back to work, charts a path to responsible deficit reduction, enhances our economic competitiveness, rebuilds the middle class and invests in our future.”

Every progressive should know about the Congressional Progressive Caucus's "Budget for All." In fact, every American should know about this budget. But the corporate news media sure isn't going to tell people. So you should help get the word out. Read and Share the One-Page Handout. Email this post to friends, relatives, and especially to your right-wing brother-in-law.

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When Health Care Reform Comes to America...
Amir Gholi
Published: Thursday 29 March 2012
“Is it constitutional for the federal government to compel individuals not engaged in commerce to buy a product (health insurance) from private companies?”

Were American novelist Sinclair Lewis alive today he may have said that “When fascism comes to America… it will come in the form of a 907-page health “reform” bill. (The impassioned are encouraged to read the bill’s full text here.

 

In Benito Mussolini’s relatively obscure 1932 “essay” entitled “What is Fascism?” he writes that "fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Sound familiar? Perhaps the bi-partisan Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 firmly cements the “merger of state and corporate power” through the collusion of the health insurance/pharmaceutical lobbies and Congress.

 

Hitherto now most public deliberation concerning the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been reduced to ideological bombast. Ideology, as opposed to fair-minded analysis, is birthed when we, either knowingly or otherwise, apply the wrong questions to the right social concerns. Ideology, moreover, is sustained when we pretend that the application of “equal rights” guaranteed by the State substantially mitigates the prevailing inequalities in the private sector.  In other words, ideology smudges the line between “citizen” and “consumer.” As I have written before, we live in a world where the reality of private consumption induced debt, rather than that of rights, has become the primary means for accessing basic social goods like food, clothing, housing, and health care.

“Health-care experts” beholden to the roughly uniform interests of mainstream media ...

Whether Obamacare Wins or Loses, Obama Wins
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 28 March 2012
“Obamacare is head and shoulders above what we have today.”

Small wonder President Obama chose not to delay the U.S. Supreme Court case on his health care reforms until long after the election. His advisors are clearly in the lab transforming the president's signature legislation into a potent election issue — whether the justices leave it intact or rip it apart.

For starters, ignore the new CBS News poll showing that 47 percent of Americans give the Affordable Care Act a thumb down, while only 36 percent approve.  Older surveys suggest that many of the unhappy respondents actually wanted a larger role for government in health care (the public option, for example), not the smaller one conservatives demand.  The bottom-line question for discontented liberals is, do they want a flawed federal health care plan or no plan?  They can want the reform to happen without loving the final product.

Obamacare is head and shoulders above what we have today.  That is the worst of most worlds — growing health care insecurity paired with soaring health care costs.  The better course for reform would have been folding everyone into Medicare.  Under the health care plan for the elderly, government picks up most of the hospital bills, and enrollees may buy subsidized private coverage for doctor visits and such.  It's simple and cheap to administer.  Oh, but let's not go over this burnt ground again.

The key issue before the Supreme Court is whether the federal government can force the uninsured to buy health coverage.  Those seeking to strike down the law see it as an abuse of federal power.  Its backers counter that the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause says otherwise.

This much is obvious: If the ...

Obama’s Health Care Law Remains Huge Political Issue
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 24 March 2012
“Rather than cheering it on, Americans are divided over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which he signed into law two years ago Friday.”

It was the biggest achievement of his first term, the national health care law that had eluded Democrats for 60 years. "A big (bleep)ing deal," in the blunt words of Vice President Joe Biden.

But it could help cost President Barack Obama a second term.

Rather than cheering it on, Americans are divided over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which he signed into law two years ago Friday. The Supreme Court is weighing whether it's constitutional. Republicans vow to repeal it if the court doesn't. And the White House is working overtime to sell the American people on the law, before it's too late.

It may still turn into a political triumph. Republicans, in fact, fear that if left intact, the law could take hold in the American psyche over the years, as Social Security and Medicare did generations ago.

For now, though, it hangs in the political balance, along with the fate of Barack Obama.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Obama won his 2008 election in part on the pledge to finally deliver what ...

Why Seniors Could Pay $5,900 More for Health Care Under the Republican Budget
Satra Kit
Published: Saturday 24 March 2012
“We pointed out that new beneficiaries could end up paying as much as $1,200 more per year by 2030 and $5,900 more per year by 2050.”

Earlier this week the Center for American Progress released of the Republican budget’s Medicare plan, which would provide vouchers to beneficiaries to purchase either a private health insurance plan or the traditional Medicare plan.  We pointed out that new beneficiaries could end up paying as much as $1,200 more per year by 2030 and $5,900 more per year by 2050.  Here’s a detailed explanation of where those numbers come from.

 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed the Republican budget and estimated its effect on average Medicare spending per beneficiary.  Under current law, or CBO’s “baseline scenario,” CBO projects that average spending will rise from $5,500 today to $8,600 in 2030 and to $17,000 in 2050.  (CBO converted all dollar figures to 2011 dollars to remove the effects of inflation and ensure appropriate comparisons over time.)  These numbers reflect the projected trend in health care costs over time.

 

But the Republican budget would limit the growth in Medicare spending per beneficiary to growth in the economy plus 0.5 percentage points.  That growth rate is much slower than the projected growth rate under current law.  As a result, under the Republican budget, CBO projects that average spending would rise to only $7,400 in 2030 and to only $11,100 in 2050.  Since the Republican budget would convert Medicare spending into vouchers, these dollar amounts would be the amounts of the vouchers, on average.

 

In other words, CBO projects that government spending per beneficiary would be $1,200 lower in 2030 (the difference between $8,600 under current law and $7,400 under the Republican budget) and $5,900 lower in 2050 (the difference between $17,000 under current law and $11,100 under the Republican budget).

 

The key question is: where would these cuts in government spending per ...

Paul Ryan’s Plan for American Decline
Amanda Rae
Published: Thursday 22 March 2012
“The Ryan budget shows debilitating cuts to nearly every department of government today, from law enforcement and border patrols to scientific research, food safety, environmental protection, federal highways, national parks, weather monitoring, education and all the other essential functions of a great country.”

If the foreign adversaries and competitors of the United States imagined a future that would fulfill their most ambitious objectives, it might begin with a government crippled by the House Republican leadership's "Ryan budget" released on Tuesday. Followed to its absurd conclusion, this document would lead America toward a withered state, approaching the point where Marxian dreams and Randian ...

Expensive Care That Hurts Patients
Amir Gholi
Published: Wednesday 21 March 2012
“Guidelines are needed, and this is a job for government working with medical experts.”

The biggest challenge for fixing American health care isn't finding more money. It's learning not to spend money on the wrong things. The solution, conservatives say, is simple: Have patients bear more of the costs now being covered by private or government insurers. The concept has merit, except for this: How on earth can we mortals know we don't need something when the god wearing the stethoscope says we do?

Guidelines are needed, and this is a job for government working with medical experts. To advance the process, here are examples of some low-hanging fruit of waste, ripped from the news:

— Obesity surgery for teenagers. The New York Times reported on a 17-year-old — 5 feet tall and 271 pounds — who could have lost her excess weight through diet and exercise but didn't try very hard. So a New York state program for low-income people paid $21,369 for an operation whereby a surgeon placed a silicon band around her stomach to curb feelings of hunger.

After losing only 34 pounds, the girl began again downing chips and chocolate with abandon. She was almost back to where she started.

Psychological factors often underlie serious weight problems. Until obese young people — who have time on their side — deal with the emotional part, subjecting them to surgery is cruel and a crying waste of money.

— MRIs for athletes with minor pains. MRIs can detect tumors and help doctors ...

What’s This “We” Jazz, White Man? Paul Ryan Edition
Satra Kit
Published: Wednesday 21 March 2012
“If you want to see House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan sanctimoniously excuse himself and his friends for missing the most predictable economic crisis in the history of the world, you now have the opportunity: In a YouTube video”

If you want to see House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan sanctimoniously excuse himself and his friends for missing the most predictable economic crisis in the history of the world, you now have the opportunity: In a YouTube video produced by his staff, Ryan tells viewers that the crisis called by the collapse of the housing bubble caught “us” by surprise.

Well, it didn’t actually catch us by surprise.  Some of us had been warning about the potential damage caused by the collapse of the bubble since 2002.  We repeatedly tried to warn of the dangers of the housing bubble in whatever forum we had.

It was easy to see that the housing market was hugely over-valued and that at some point it would collapse, just as the stock bubble had collapsed in 2000-2002.  It was also easy to see that its collapse would have a devastating impact on the economy.

The bubble was driving the economy both directly by propelling a construction boom and indirectly through the impact of housing bubble wealth on consumption.  When the bubble burst, there would be nothing to replace this bubble driven-demand.  It would be necessary to run the sort of large government budget deficits that we have seen the last four years in order to sustain the economy and keep unemployment rate out of the double digits.

All of this was 100 percent predictable and predicted.  However Representative Ryan wants to give himself the blanket “who could have known” amnesty because he and his Wall Street friends chose to ignore the people who were giving the warnings.

Ryan should apply a variation on the sanctimonious lines in his video to ...

Medicare Costs too Much and They Better Not Cut it
Satra Kit
Published: Monday 19 March 2012
“The Republicans, led by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, have argued that Medicare threatens to bankrupt the country.”

There is an old story about two men in a retirement home. The first declares, “the food in this place is poison.” His friend agrees and adds, “and the portions are so small.” This exchange perfectly captures the Republican approach to Medicare.

The Republicans, led by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, have argued that Medicare threatens to bankrupt the country. They have pointed to cost projections showing the program more than doubling relative to the size of the economy over the next three decades. The Republicans say that the country cannot afford this expense and scream about huge debt burdens for our children.

The Republicans’ concern might lead people to believe that they would support measures to contain Medicare costs. But if you thought that was the case, you would be wrong.

The latest Republican crusade on Medicare is to eliminate the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which was put in place as part of the health care reform bill passed two years ago. IPAB is empowered to impose a cap on Medicare spending if it grows too fast relative to the size of economy. The way it would reduce cost growth is by reducing or eliminating payments for medicines and procedures that have not been shown to be effective.

Mr. 1 Percent Doesn’t Need Medicare? How Nice For Him.
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 18 March 2012
“Romney’s ideological evolution towards becoming the Republican nominee includes a move to embrace Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.”

Mitt Romney is down South, trying to win votes in the Alabama and Mississippi Republican primaries.  So, I will respond as a Southerner to Romney's announcement that he won't be enrolling in Medicare, because he's worth $150-to-$200 million and doesn't need it: Well, bless his heart.

Once again, I reminded of Will Allen Dromgoole's poem, "The Bridge Builder," in which an old man crosses a river only to start building a bridge across it.  (A "bridge over troubled water," if you will.)  Asked by a traveler why he's building a bridge over a river he's already crossed, the old man speaks of one who will pass that way after him.  "I am building this bridge for him," he explains.

As I said of Romney's billionaire backer Ken Griffin, Romney sound like the kind of guy who would cross that bridge, and then either blow it up or build a toll booth on it.

Romney's ideological evolution towards becoming the Republican nominee includes a move to ...

Cuts and Consequences - How Budget Cuts Hurt The Economy
Satra Kit
Published: Sunday 11 March 2012
“Whoever controls government is naturally going to direct government to benefit them – and only them.”

Is smaller government really better for the economy?

Conservatives chant that taxes and government "take money out of the economy" and we need to "cut and grow," meaning if government spending is cut way back the economy will grow as a result. Europe's conservatives are also forcing cuts in the things their governments do for regular people, claiming "austerity" will bring "confidence" that grows their economies.

How is this experiment working out? What are we learning about the effect on the larger economy when government is cut?

 

What Does Government Do?

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Ideological Hypocrites
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 26 February 2012
“Can conservatives finally face the fact that they actually want quite a lot from government, and that they are simply unwilling to raise taxes to pay for it?”

When we talk about hypocrisy in politics, we usually highlight personal behavior. The serially-married politician who proclaims “family values” while also having affairs is now a rather dreary stock figure in our campaign narratives.

But the hypocrisy that matters far more is the gap between ideology and practice that has reached a crisis point in American conservatism. This Republican presidential campaign is demonstrating conclusively that there is an unbridgeable divide between the philosophical commitments conservative candidates make before they are elected and what they will have to do when faced with the day-to-day demands of practical governance. Conservatives in power have never been — and can never be — as anti-government as they are in a campaign.

Begin by asking yourself why so many conservative politicians say they’re anti-government but spend long careers in office drawing paychecks from the taxpayers. Also: Why do they bash government largesse while seeking as much of it as they can get for their constituents and friendly interest groups?

Why do they criticize “entitlements” and “big government” while promising today’s senior citizens — an important part of the conservative base — never, ever to cut their Medicare or Social Security? Why do they claim that they want government out of the marketplace while not only rejecting cuts in defense but also lauding ...

Taking the Initiative in a Struggle Against Excessive Rate Increases
Brian Walker
Published: Monday 20 February 2012
“California effort would give insurance commissioner new power to fight health insurers.”

The biggest applause line Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) got at a gathering of Democratic Party activists last week came when she endorsed a ballot initiative to give the California Insurance Commissioner power to reject excessive health insurance rate increases.

Consumer advocates there decided to go the ballot initiative route after the insurance industry’s friends in the legislature blocked a bill last year that would do the same thing. Feinstein became the first Californian to sign a petition. Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones became the second. To get the measure before voters in November, the advocates, led by Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, must collect half a million more signatures.

In her San Diego speech before the party faithful, Feinstein pointed out that in the first quarter of this year, the five largest health insurers — UnitedHealth, WellPoint, Aetna, CIGNA and Humana — posted profits of $3.6 billion, 16 percent more than the same period a year earlier. One of the ways those ...

Congress’ Payroll-Tax Deal a Rare Bipartisan Effort
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 18 February 2012
Lawmakers congratulated themselves on finally reaching a quick compromise.

Congress on Friday overwhelmingly approved extending a payroll tax cut for 160 million workers through the end of the year, probably the biggest accomplishment lawmakers will be able to savor in 2012.

The rare bipartisan agreement, which also provides jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed and preserves Medicare payment rates to physicians, came without the hostility that's scarred economic debates since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009.

The House of Representatives voted 293-132 to approve the plan. Minutes later, the Senate agreed 60-36.

Under the bill, Social Security taxes for workers will remain at their current 4.2 percent level this year on wages up to $110,100. The rate was scheduled to go up by 2 percentage points next month. Friday's fix assures that the average worker earning $50,000 a year would continue to get a weekly break of $20.

Medicare payments to doctors, which had been scheduled to drop by 27.4 percent, will stay at current levels. Extended unemployment benefits for people who've been out of work for long stretches will continue, though for shorter periods.

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Congress Nears Deal to Extend Wage-Tax Cut, Jobless Benefits, ‘Doc Fix’
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 16 February 2012
“This fresh outburst of comity was sparked by today’s unpredictable politics and economics in an election year.”

Congress is calmly inching toward approving a payroll tax cut and other help for the struggling economy without the bitter rancor that's colored economic debates since President Barack Obama took office three years ago.

Lawmakers are widely expected to give bipartisan approval this week to extending the Social Security payroll tax cut, now scheduled to end Feb. 29, through the end of the year.

They're also likely to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed and to stave off a huge planned cut in Medicare payments to physicians.

All this is being done without the down-to-the-wire brinksmanship that characterized other Obama-era budget battles. This fresh outburst of comity was sparked by today's unpredictable politics and economics in an election year.

"The public wants action, and the economy needs help," said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a center-left research group.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as 33 in the Senate, are up for election this fall. Congress' approval ratings are dismal, and polling shows voters blame both parties for inertia in Washington. Few incumbents ...

The New York Times “Safety Net” Package Gets It Half Right
Anna Gilliam
Published: Wednesday 15 February 2012
“While the Times article provides striking human context for understanding the deeply troubling effects of the economic crisis, it stumbles in its discussion of Medicare and, to a lesser extent, Social Security.”

The New York Times front-page article Sunday showing how extensively Americans—including Tea Party supporters—rely on government programs successfully shatters some myths about who accesses the safety net. But despite its fine on-the-ground reporting, the article’s poor framing on policy solutions seems to perpetuate other myths about Medicare and Social Security.

First, the good news: In “Even Critics of Safety Net Depend on It Increasingly,” Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff examine recessionary life in Chisago County, Minnesota, northeast of the Twin Cities and somewhat farther north of Anoka, the real Lake Woebegone where Garrison Keillor grew up.

In 2010 voters there tossed out Democratic stalwart James L. Oberstar, who served in the House of Representatives for 36 years. They replaced him with Tea Party Republican Chip Cravaack—after Oberstar refused to meet with Cravaack and others to discuss the then-pending health care reform legislation. Last week, Rick Santorum, who won the Minnesota GOP caucus, took 57 percent of the Republican vote in Chisago County with his warnings against “the narcotic of government dependency.”

Recession Hit Middle Class Hard

The Times reporters show that although Chisago County has little outright poverty (under the outdated Federal Poverty Line), middle-class residents there have increasingly relied on government programs to get by. That reflects the national picture, they report: “The government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.”

Yet while the Times article provides striking human context for understanding the deeply troubling effects of the economic crisis, it stumbles in its discussion of Medicare and, to a lesser extent, Social Security.

The Times survey revealed ...

Getting a Grip on Deficit Hysterics
Brian Walker
Published: Wednesday 15 February 2012
“The problem of the current deficit is the problem of incompetent economic management that allowed the housing bubble to grow to dangerous levels.”

Promoting fears about the budget deficit is a major industry in Washington. The central theme is usually that we have out of control spending which will make us just like Greece in only a few short years. The policy take away from this story is that we have to cut Social Security and Medicare, and the sooner the better. This is just the idea put forth by Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) in a recent piece that appeared on The Hill's Congress Blog.

Everything in this picture is wrong. The basic story of out of control deficits as an ongoing problem is nonsense. While people may have complained about the deficits in the Bush presidency, the debt-to-GDP ratio was actually falling by the end of his administration and was projected to continue to fall for the foreseeable future, even without the ending of the Bush tax cuts.

The factor that changed this picture was the economic downturn that followed the collapse of the housing bubble. The projections for deficits soared before President Obama even took office; the people who want to blame an Obama administration spending spree for the deficit are missing the mark.

Obama’s Budget Frames Election Choices, Doesn’t Solve Long-Term Problems
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 14 February 2012
“It maintains a decade of red ink while putting off until after the election — at the earliest — any detailed proposals to fix long-term problems in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

President Barack Obama's proposed federal budget is more campaign commercial than governing document.

His $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 — and blueprint for the coming decade — is filled with promises sure to appeal to voters that he wants to win for his re-election in November, such as new spending to hire teachers and tax increases on the wealthy.

Yet it has no chance of passing Congress, where Republicans already have vetoed his calls for more spending and taxes. It offers little prospect of breaking the Washington cycle of lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis with temporary agreements and no consensus on permanent solutions. And it maintains a decade of red ink while putting off until after the election — at the earliest — any detailed proposals to fix long-term problems in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"It's not going to be enacted," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates fiscal responsibility. "It's designed to shape the campaign. There's a lot of spending for new investments and there's spending caps in the future so he can claim two things at once."

"The president's budget fails to lay out a substantive path to restore fiscal sanity," said David M. Walker, former director of the Government Accountability Office. "It does not include enough specifics regarding comprehensive tax reform and neglects any reforms to Social Security. It is not bold enough or specific enough regarding proposed changes to Medicare, Medicaid and other health reforms."

Obama unveiled his budget proposal at a community college in Annandale, Va., — a swing state he won in 2008 and is courting heavily this year — where he used the same broad themes he's used since Labor Day to frame the coming election.

"We've got a choice," he ...

Yesterday’s Deception, Today’s Correction
Anna Gilliam
Published: Thursday 26 January 2012
“Dear Gov. Mitch Daniels and your Republican Brethren, Your response to President Obama’s State of the Union last night was deceitful, historically tenuous, and politically unsophisticated.”

Dear Gov. Mitch Daniels and your Republican Brethren,

 

Your response to President Obama’s State of the Union last night was deceitful, historically tenuous, and politically unsophisticated. George Orwell once said that “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

 

M.D. "The percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades.”

 

TRUTH: Daniels speaks truth without context. Yes, the unemployment rate is indeed the highest it has been since 1983, but it has actually fallen by 1.5% since its peak in December, 2009.

 

M.D. “In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt.  And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.”

 

TRUTH: Over the course of President Obama’s first three years he and Congress increased the national debt by 41%. And in Ronald Reagan’s first three years? You guessed it. He increased the national debt by 55%. 

 

M.D. “The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy.”

 

TRUTH: Yes, but since 1980 federal spending as a percentage of GDP has changed very little. Since Reagan’s first term Republicans presidents have spent on average 21.53% of GDP on federal programs, Democrats, 21.6%.

 

M.D. ...

Park City Vantage Point Puts Tragedy of American Health Care in Vivid Relief
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 24 January 2012
“It hit me that the work I was doing as a spokesman for the insurance industry was making it necessary, at least in part, for those people to resort to such humiliation to get basic medical care. ”

The journey I embarked on when I made the decision to leave a successful career in the health insurance business was a spiritual one. I can trace the decision to a true epiphany, to the very moment I saw hundreds of people standing, soaking wet, in long, slow-moving lines, waiting to get medical care that was being provided in animal stalls at a fairground in Wise County, Virginia.

It hit me immediately that had my circumstances been a little different when I was growing up near there, I could have been one of those people. It also hit me that the work I was doing as a spokesman for the insurance industry was making it necessary, at least in part, for those people to resort to such humiliation to get basic medical care. One of my responsibilities was to persuade Americans of the lie that most of the uninsured are that way by choice, that they have shirked their responsibility to themselves and their families. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Our so-called health care “system” had simply left them behind.

I cannot tell you why I felt compelled to drive from my parents home in Kingsport, Tennessee to Wise County — a distance of about 50 miles — on that late July day in 2007. What I can tell you is that stretch of U.S. Highway 23 turned out to be my Road to Damascus. For the past few years, I have been dedicated to spreading the truth about how health insurance companies really operate in this country.

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For a State of the Union Home Run, the President Should Stand Up for Social Security
Anna Gilliam
Published: Monday 23 January 2012
“There’s no better way for the President to start the year than with a vigorous, unambiguous defense of Social Security - and Medicare, too.”

Like a lot of former Obama voters, I've had my issues with the President. Sure, it helped when he sang that Al Green song at the Apollo Theater last week. (Good job, Mr. President! Good pitch and an appropriately understated delivery.)

But in a time of uncertainty people are looking for certitude. In a time of great battles people are looking for strength. They don't just need to hear the words when they listen to their leaders. They need to feel the music.

The State of the Union Address is scheduled for this Tuesday night. The President can go a lot further toward winning over voters who are disappointed, doubtful, or just unenthusiastic, if he chooses an issue that's vitally important to them and offers a clear, strong and unequivocal defense.

Social Security is the ideal issue. It's one of many, according to polls, where both parties are out of step with voters. After seeing their savings, pension plans, and housing values destroyed, people are frightened about their retirement security. They don't hear anybody in Washington offering to protect their benefits.

And to borrow a phrase from Rev. Al, they're tired of being alone.

People's Choice

Last year the President narrowly averted political disaster in his State of the Union address. He bowed to outside pressure and abandoned an ill-conceived plan to propose cutting Social Security benefits and a partial lifting of cap on payroll taxes that fund them. But a form letter from the White House illustrates the Administration's still-squishy position on both Social Security and Medicare.

The White House is clearly preparing for an economically-themed, pro-99 percent speech this week. A chart is clearly visible on

The Decline of the Public Good
Brian Walker
Published: Friday 6 January 2012
“America has created a whopping entitlement for the biggest Wall Street banks and their top executives — who, unlike most of the rest of us, are no longer allowed to fail.”

Meryl Streep’s eery reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” brings to mind Thatcher’s most famous quip, “there is no such thing as ‘society.’” None of the dwindling herd of Republican candidates has quoted her yet but they might as well considering their unremitting bashing of everything public.

What defines a society is a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions — public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on. 

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers, and are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those who better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else. 

“Privatiize” means pay-for-it-yourself. The practical consequence of this in an economy whose wealth and income are now more concentrated than any time in 90 years is to make high-quality public goods available to fewer and fewer.

In fact, much of what’s called “public” is increasingly a private good paid for by users — ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.  

Much of the rest of what’s considered “public” has become so shoddy that those who can afford to do so find private alternatives. As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, they pay premium rates for private care.

Gated communities and office parks now come with their own manicured lawns and walkways, security guards, and backup ...

Romney Worships 2011’s False Idol: Paul Ryan
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 31 December 2011
“Never mind that Ryan’s plan has no chance of being adopted—even by a President Mitt Romney, who distinguished himself in 2011 by pointedly rejecting Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Social Security–bashing.”

Paul Ryan’s ideas reached their sell-by date in 2011, as tens of millions of Americans recognized that his proposals would permanently damage and ultimate destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But as the year came to a close and his rancid schemes were starting to putrefy, Ryan suddenly found a new buyer: Mitt Romney.

The Republican presidential contender is so desperate to sell himself as the “conservative leader” he never was that Romney’s “closing argument” appeal to Iowa caucus goers features quotes from columnist Ann Coulter.

Those Romney radio ads, which are more ubiquitous in Iowa than Geico gecko insurance commercials, tout the former governor of Massachusetts as a “conservative ...

Analysis: When Medicare isn't Medicare
Brian Walker
Published: Monday 26 December 2011
[Senator Paul] Ryan’s plan would change [the] health program by shifting risk to beneficiaries.

Let’s say you have a Ford and decide to replace everything under the hood with Hyundai parts, including the engine and transmission. Could you still honestly market your car as a Ford?

That question gets at the heart of the controversy over who is being more forthright about GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to “save” Medicare, Republicans or Democrats.

If you overhaul the Medicare system like you did your Ford and tell the public it’s still Medicare, are you doing so honestly?

As I noted last week, PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Time’s fact checker, decided that the Democrats’ claim that Ryan’s plan would mean the end of Medicare was so blatantly untrue it merited designation as the 2011 “Lie of the Year.” Republicans, whose erroneous claims about health care reform garnered “Lie of the Year” prizes in 2009 and 2010, cheered. Democrats, as you might imagine, jeered — as did some  journalists and pundits.

PolitiFact’s Washington-based editor defended the choice by contending that Ryan’s proposal to restructure Medicare by providing beneficiaries subsidies to buy private insurance would not “end” the program. It would still be Medicare, he reasoned.

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Gifts for the Unemployed
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 25 December 2011
“Lower the Medicare age to 60, and millions would probably dance off into retirement or start their own businesses.”

To many rational economists, holiday gift-giving is "an orgy of wealth-destruction," writes Dan Ariely in The Wall Street Journal. A behavioral economist at Duke University, Ariely makes pro-gifting arguments while acknowledging the bah-humbug view, which goes as follows: Givers often spend money on things others don't necessarily want, and the recipients frequently think the present cost less than the price actually paid for it. 'Tis more rational to give cash.

For our unemployed friends and relatives, the rational case for giving presents, cash or otherwise, seems stronger. Those needing jobs may have cut spending to the bone. We can give them things they really want and need — and that don't cost us much. Socks are the classic example. I like to offer my jobless friends the little luxuries that they have done without, such as a subscription to a cooking magazine or gift card for Starbucks. A gift card is almost the same as giving cash. Rational economists would applaud.

What Ariely calls "paternalistic gifts" might be especially suited for the unemployed. Paternalistic gifts, he explains, are "things you think somebody else should have," as opposed to what they crave. But I'd be careful with potential "message" gifts, such as books on resume writing or, for men, a tie for job interviews. It may suggest that the recipients are clueless or haven't been trying hard enough to find work. Recipients might bristle at the presumption if they had, or the implied criticism if they hadn't.

For the jobless who have been paying attention to recent political debates, I can think of a very thoughtful ...

Congress Approves Payroll Tax Cut, Obama Signs It Into Law
Brian Walker
Published: Saturday 24 December 2011
The measure also provides for an expedited review of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Congress on Friday quickly and quietly approved a two-month extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut, ending a week of rancor and assuring that more than 160 million people will avoid a 2 percentage point payroll tax increase next year.

But the calm, collegial legislative day was deceptive. When lawmakers return in January, they’ll remain far apart on agreeing to a longer-term deal.

The package approved Friday — a major victory for President Barack Obama and a setback for Republicans in the House of Representatives — will assure that the average employee will avoid paying $80 a month more in Social Security taxes after Jan. 1. The rate for employees will remain at the 2011 level of 4.2 percent. But if no action is taken before Feb. 29, it will rise to 6.2 percent.

Congress’ agreement, reached Thursday after rebellious House Republicans abandoned their bid for a one-year deal before Jan. 1, also continues current payment rates for Medicare physicians, which otherwise would have dropped by 27.4 percent starting Jan. 1, and retains up to 99 weeks of unemployment benefits for long-term jobless workers.

The measure also provides for an expedited review of the Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,700-mile project would bring oil from oil ...

The Cowardly Senator Wyden
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 20 December 2011
[Senator Ron Wyden] decided to join ranks with Representative Paul Ryan on a proposal to replace Medicare with a voucher-type system.

Years ago members of the elite showed their courage by leading troops into battle. They risked their own lives for the greater good. (Never mind that the wars being fought often did not serve anything resembling the “greater good.”) 

Things are different today. In the land of the 1 percent, the way you show your courage is by demonstrating your willingness to beat up on the elderly. That gets you bucket loads of campaign contributions, high praise from the Washington Post in both its news and opinion pages, and could even get you named Person of the Year by TIME.

Last week, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon stood up to do the big kick. He decided to join ranks with Representative Paul Ryan on a proposal to replace Medicare with a voucher-type system. The claim was that with increased competition, we will be able to lower costs.

Using competition to lower costs; that seems like such a great idea! If only someone had thought of this sooner.

Of course this has been thought of sooner and tried again and again. Remember Medicare Plus Choice in the 90s? How about Medicare Advantage, the more recent incarnation of the program which still exists? In both cases, analyses from the Congressional Budget Office and others have consistently found that they raise costs. And we have been experimenting with competition between insurers in the private sector for decades, and it has not succeeded in holding down costs.

But in Washington, just ...

The Defining Issue: Not Government’s Size, but Who It’s For
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 20 December 2011
The cynicism comes from a growing perception that government isn’t working for average people.

The defining political issue of 2012 won’t be the government’s size. It will be who government is for.

Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government.

But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn’t about government’s size. The cynicism comes from a growing perception that government isn’t working for average people. It’s for big business, Wall Street, and the very rich instead.

In a recent Pew Foundation poll, 77 percent of respondents said too much power is in the hands of a few rich people and corporations.

That’s understandable. To take a few examples:

Wall Street got bailed out but homeowners caught in the fierce downdraft caused by the Street’s excesses have got almost nothing.

Big agribusiness continues to rake in hundreds of billions in price supports and ethanol subsidies. Big pharma gets extended patent protection that drives up everyone’s drug prices. Big oil gets its own federal subsidy. But small businesses on the Main Streets of America are barely making it.

American Airlines uses bankruptcy to ward off debtors and renegotiate labor contracts. Donald Trump’s businesses go bankrupt without impinging on Trump’s own personal fortune. But the law won’t allow you to use personal bankruptcy to renegotiate your home mortgage.

If you run a giant bank that defrauds millions of small investors of their life savings, the bank might pay a small fine but you won’t go to prison. Not a single top Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for Wall Street’s mega-fraud. But if you sell an ounce of marijuana you could be put away for a long time.

Not a day goes by without Republicans decrying the budget deficit. But the biggest single reason for the yawning deficit is big money’s corruption of Washington. 

One of ...

Congress Passes Spending Package But Bigger Money Issues Still Loom
Elizabeth
Published: Saturday 17 December 2011
Also included in the package would be a provision forcing the Obama administration to make an expedited decision on the Keystone pipeline.

The House of Representatives on Friday approved a $915 billion spending package that will keep the government running through Sept. 30, but a separate agreement aimed at avoiding a Social Security payroll tax increase Jan. 1 remained elusive.

The Senate is expected to approve the spending plan as soon as Saturday.

Without congressional action, many government agencies would run out of money as of midnight Friday, but any closings would be avoided as long as the plan is passed this weekend.

But facing another deadline, Senate leaders Friday reached a tentative deal to extend expiring provisions for two months. They would pay for the continuation of the Social Security tax cut and Medicare payments at current levels, and extension of certain jobless benefits with higher charges on mortgages financed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Also included in the package would be a provision forcing the Obama administration to make an expedited decision on the Keystone pipleine.

The two-month extension, which the Senate could vote on as soon as Saturday, is expected to stir controversy in both parties. It sets up an election year fight over the provisions. In addition, many lawmakers, already concerned constituents view them as ineffective, fear they'll have to go home next week without being able to resolve a major dispute.

The Social Security tax paid by employees, now 4.2 percent, is scheduled to revert to its 2010 level of 6.2 percent on Jan. 1. Also due next month: A 27.4 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians and a cutoff of unemployment benefits to long-term jobless workers.

Congressional leaders continued negotiating Friday and remained optimistic that a deal would be reached.

In the meantime, there was little rancor over the spending plan, which was passed by a 296-121 vote.

"This bill has been worked on carefully," said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who called it a "positive step ...

Gingrich Urged Conservatives to Support Budget Busting Medicare Prescription Drug Act in 2003
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 13 December 2011
Ironically, Gingrich convinced Republicans to support the [2003 Medicare Modernization Act] by appealing to their sense of fiscal responsibility.

Politico’s Jonathan Allen recalls Newt Gingrich’s role in urging conservative Republicans to approve the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, an unfunded expansion of Medicare that provided a drug benefit to American seniors through Medicare Part D. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) initially estimated that the MMA would add to the deficit by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013 and the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) now project that the program will cost the government $16.1 trillion “through the infinite horizon.”

But ironically, Gingrich convinced Republicans to support the measure by appealing to their sense of fiscal responsibility:

If you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, there may be no more important vote in your career than one in support of this bill. Since health expenditures comprise almost 14 percent of the U.S. GDP, a shifting away from the failed bureaucratic third-party payer model and back to a market-mediated binary payer model, where the customer controls his own first health dollars, is the single most significant reform that can be made in saving the country from skyrocketing health costs and steadily increasing calls for taxpayers to finance more and more of the healthcare system through higher taxes.

Gingrich also argued the the measure — which subsidized Medicare Advantage and introduced Health Savings Accounts — would begin to shift more seniors into private programs, noting that “it is a major step toward giving the baby boomers a multi-choice Medicare system for the 21st ...

Elder Poverty and a GOP Sucker Punch - NOW Will Democrats Pledge to Defend Social Security?
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 11 December 2011
“Social Security needs protecting, and elected officials need to prove they're committed to defending a popular and successful program.”

Here are three things to consider:

Nearly one American in six over the age of 65 lives in poverty. A newly progressivized Barack Obama is rocking the populist bandwagon from Osawatomie to the Oval Office. And the Republicans have started attacking Democrats on Social Security - from the left.

This would be a good time for the President and other 'centrist' Democrats to offer the country a firm pledge not to cut Social Security benefits in any way, now or in the future.

Seniors in Poverty

Research teams working with the U.S. Census Bureau recently improved the government's approach to tracking poverty. They began including income from government programs - a request made by conservatives, but not an unreasonable one - adjusting for regional cost differences, and including medical care and other items that often get overlooked into their calculations.

The revised figures showed that poverty in this country is greater than previously believed. And they showed that nearly twice as many Americans over 65 live in poverty than earlier figures had suggested - more than 15%, rather than the previously reported figure of 9%.

Seniors are especially hard-hit by medical costs, despite the existence of Medicare. A study conducted by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College showed that the average couple reaching age 65 in 2009 could expect to pay nearly $197,000 in out-of-pocket medical expenses.

Medical care costs are rising much faster than general inflation. So are other costs, like transportation, that affect seniors and the disabled, Social Security's biggest pools of beneficiaries. That means elder poverty figures are likely to keep rising as these costs soar - and as the current cost of living adjustment for Social Security lags behind their actual living expenses.

The Cut of a Thousand Deaths

So why would so many Democrats, from Barack Obama to Dick Durbin, push a Social Security ...

How to Avoid Being a Principled Republican on Taxes
Anna Gilliam
Published: Tuesday 6 December 2011
Republican leaders are trying to get rank-and-file Republicans to go along with an extended payroll tax holiday — but by paying for it without raising taxes on the very rich.

Every time I try to make sense of Republican tax doctrine I get lost.

For example, rank-and-file House Republicans are willing to increase taxes on the middle class starting in a few weeks in order to avoid a tax increase the very rich.

Here are the details: The payroll tax will increase 2 percent starting January 1 – costing most working Americans about $1,000 next year – unless the employee part of the tax cut is extended for another year.

Democrats want to pay for this with a temporary – not permanent – surtax on any earnings over $1 million, according to their most recent proposal. The surtax would be 1.9 percent, for ten years. (Democrats would also increase the fees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge lenders.)

This means someone who earns $1,000,001 would pay just under two cents extra next year, and 19 cents over ten years.

Relatively few Americans earn more than a million dollars, to begin with. An exquisitely tiny number earn so much that a 1.9 percent surtax on their earnings in excess of a million would amount to much. Most of these people are on Wall Street. It’s hard to find a small business “job creator” among them.

Nonetheless, Republicans say no to the surtax. “The surtax is something that could very much hurt small businesses and job creation,” says John Kyl of Arizona, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican.

This puts Republicans in the awkward position of allowing taxes to increase on most Americans in order to avoid a small, temporary tax only on earnings in excess of a million dollars — mostly hitting a tiny group of financiers.

Not even a resolute, doctrinaire follower of GOP president Grover Norquist has any basis for preferring millionaires over the rest of us.

To say the least, this position is also difficult to explain to average Americans flattened by an economy that’s taken away their ...

Wisconsin Voter ID Law may Force 84-Year-Old Woman to Pay $200 to get a Voter ID
Amanda Rae
Published: Tuesday 6 December 2011
Because Ruthelle Frank, born in the United States, never received an official birth certificate, the state’s new voter ID law will not allow her to vote.

For 63 years, Brokaw, Wisconsin native Ruthelle Frank went to the polls to vote. Though paralyzed on her left side since birth, the 84-year-old “fiery woman” voted in every election since 1948 and even got elected herself as a member of the Brokaw Village Board. But because of the state’s new voter ID law, 2012 will be the first year Frank can’t vote. Born after a difficult birth at her home in 1927, Frank never received an official birth certificate. Her mother recorded it in her family Bible and Frank has a certification of baptism from a few months later, along with a Social Security card, a Medicare statement, and a checkbook. But without the official document, she can’t secure the state ID card that the new law requires to vote next year.

“It’s really crazy,” she added. “I’ve got all this proof. You mean to tell me that I’m not a U.S. citizen?” But state officials have informed Frank that, because the state Register of Deeds does have a record of her birth, they can issue her a new birth certificate — for a fee. And because of a spelling error, that fee may be as high as $200:

Though Frank never had a birth certificate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can generate a birth certificate for her — for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.

“I look at that like paying a fee to vote,” Frank said.

And for Frank, that might not be the end of it. The attending physician at Frank’s birth misspelled her maiden name, which was Wedepohl. To get a birth certificate that has correct information, she will have to petition a court to amend the document — a weeks-long process that could cost ...

A Tired Playbook of Insurance Industry Scare Tactics on Health Reform
Anna Gilliam
Published: Monday 5 December 2011
They’re concerned that if we can get information we’ve been denied all these years, we just might force them to provide better value for what we soon will be forced to buy.

If you wonder why the health insurance industry has to set up front groups and secretly funnel cash to industry-funded coalitions to influence public policy, take a look at the most recent results of the Kaiser Family Foundation’s monthly Health Tracking Poll.

In its November poll, KFF added a few new survey questions to find out exactly which parts of the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare are the most popular and which are the least popular. Insurers were no doubt annoyed to see that the provision of the law they want most — the requirement that all of us will have to buy coverage from them if we’re not eligible for a public program like Medicare — continues to be the single most hated part of the law. More than 60 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of that mandate.

When it comes to what Americans like most about the law, the runaway winner is one of the provisions insurers most despise—the one that requires them to provide us with easy-to-understand benefit summaries. That element of the reform law was viewed favorably by a whopping 84 percent of the public.

Until now, insurers have been able to get away with providing skimpy and often incomprehensible information about their benefit plans, including what is covered and what is not and how much policyholders will have to pay out of their own pockets if they get sick or injured. The insurance firms have shown no willingness to communicate with their customers in a more forthright way, which is why an act of Congress was necessary to get them to do just that.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the industry and its allies are lobbying the Obama administration to ignore that part of the law, arguing that to comply will cost millions of dollars that insurers would have to pass on to consumers. The companies insist that providing understandable information allowing us to compare plans serves no purpose that would justify the additional cost.

The ...

We Need a ‘Rout’ of Wolves to Evict the ‘Stench’ of Skunks Occupying Washington
Brian Walker
Published: Sunday 4 December 2011
“Clearly, on the evidence of these two measures working their way through Congress now, we have a federal government that has run amok, that is responding not to the people but to narrow corporate interests that seek to both impoverish the citizens and to prepare for greater levels of public unrest and rebellion by putting into place the tools of a police state.”

The US Congress is such a craven bunch that you really have to turn to Olde English to aptly describe them.

Consider that on Thursday, by a vote of 93-7, the Senate approved a National Defense Authorization Bill that effectively defines the US “homeland” as a war zone, and that allows for the indefinite incarceration without trial of anyone, including US citizens and Green Card holders, without trial, in blatant violation of the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution and of fundamental international judicial standards.

These elected representatives, so ready to sell out the fundamental rights of the people and the nation’s heritage, can be best described, using Olde English usage, as a “congress” of baboons, or a “cowardice” of curs, a “sneak” of weasels” or perhaps just a “stench” of skunks.

And it’s not over. Both houses of Congress are also considering a proposal by President Obama of a measure that will seriously undermine Social Security -- a further cut in the Social Security 12.4% payroll tax by 3.1% for workers and a matching 3.1% cut in the 40% share of that tax paid by employers--measures which taken together would gut the Social Security Trust Fund by more than $350 billion in one year.

This theft from the public is being deceitfully ...

The Rebirth of Social Darwinism
Moderator
Published: Saturday 3 December 2011
“In short, we rejected the notion that each of us is on his or her own in a competitive contest for survival.”

What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I’ve been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America.

They say they want a smaller government but that can’t be it. Most seek a larger national defense and more muscular homeland security. Almost all want to widen the government’s powers of search and surveillance inside the United States – eradicating possible terrorists, expunging undocumented immigrants, “securing” the nation’s borders. They want stiffer criminal sentences, including broader application of the death penalty. Many also want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of private life.

They call themselves conservatives but that’s not it, either. They don’t want to conserve what we now have. They’d rather take the country backwards – before the 1960s and 1970s, and the Environmental Protection Act, Medicare, and Medicaid; before the New Deal, and its provision for Social Security, unemployment insurance, the forty-hour workweek, laws against child labor, and official recognition of trade unions; even before the Progressive Era, and the first national income tax, antitrust laws, and Federal Reserve.

They’re not conservatives. They’re regressives. And the America they seek is the one we had in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.

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School Zero Tolerance Kills Dreams, Hurts the Economy
Taylor
Published: Saturday 3 December 2011
“Once assumed to be dropouts, many who leave are, in reality, pushed out.”

At a time when competition for jobs is fierce and even entry-level positions require a high school or college degree, anyone without a high school diploma need not apply. Yet, each year, more than a million students in the United States leave high school without graduating.


Once assumed to be dropouts, many who leave are, in reality, pushed out.'

They are casualties of punitive suspension and expulsion policies that rob students of their education for infractions as minor as being tardy, talking too loud, wearing flip flop sandals, or bringing a bottle of Advil to school.


The price of push out for students is high: it crushes their earning potential, destroys their dreams, and limits their ability to contribute economically to their communities. Many will be forced into the ranks of the unemployed, become trapped in poverty, or tangled in the justice system.

“These are our children, they deserve to go to school,” said Camille Odeh, executive director of the Southwest Youth Collaborative in Chicago. “This is a basic human rights issue.”

“Kids don’t want to be pushed out of school,” she said. “If they are doing something wrong, we have to look at the context. Maybe they don’t have the support system they need.”

The median income of a high school graduate is around $42,000, compared to about $23,000 for ...

Time to Retake Politics from the One Percent in Both Political Parties
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 30 November 2011
“There is no reason that the rest of us should be concerned about budget deficits when the rest of the country is struggling with the economic disaster created by the greed and incompetence of the 1 percent.”

The country is still celebrating the inability of the supercommittee to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it is important to move on from this victory to retake control of the political debate from the 1 percent. As it stands, the 1 percent are insisting that the country genuflect over the non-problem of the budget deficit, at a time when tens of millions of workers are unemployed or underemployed, millions of people are facing the loss of their homes and tens of millions of baby boomers are approaching retirement with little other than their Social Security to support them.

The deficit is the agenda of the 1 percent. There is no reason that the rest of us should be concerned about budget deficits when the rest of the country is struggling with the economic disaster created by the greed and incompetence of the 1 percent.

This is not a statement of morality, it is a statement based on economic reality. Budget deficits can be a problem when an economy is near full employment and the deficit can be pulling resources away from private investment, thereby slowing growth. However it is not a problem with large numbers of unemployed workers and vast amounts of excess capacity.

This is what the financial markets are telling us every day as interest rates on long-term government bonds hover near 2.0 percent. If deficits were really crimping the economy we would be seeing interest rates of 6 or 7 percent, or even higher. The deficit hawks do not have an economic case to support their argument, just money and influence.

In the longer term the deficit hawks can point to projections of outsized deficits, which they invariably attribute to Social Security and Medicare. The first part of this story is completely untrue.  

Under the law, Social Security is financed from its designated tax. It therefore cannot contribute to the deficit unless Congress changes the law. (The payroll tax credit in 2011, which was replaced with general ...

Decade-Old Bush Tax Breaks Continue to Loom Over Budget
Moderator
Published: Monday 28 November 2011
Hardly anyone in Congress, regardless of party, wants to end the tax breaks that benefit the middle class.

President George W. Bush's signature tax breaks were never an easy sell. They passed Congress only after Vice President Dick Cheney's tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Critics called them a giveaway to the rich. They cost the U.S. treasury trillions.

A decade later, those tax cuts continue to loom large, becoming central to almost every budget debate in Washington. Whether to maintain the reduced tax rates for wealthy Americans was a question that deadlocked the congressional "super committee" in its search for a plan to cut the government's long-term deficit. The expiration of the tax cuts at the end of next year will be a major issue in 2012 campaign.

The battle over the Bush-era breaks will determine what happens to almost every part of the federal budget - from the spending cuts that are now mandated as a result of the super committee's failure to the long-term outlook for Medicare and other entitlement programs.

"They've been hanging over the budget," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog organization. "If you're talking cuts to middle-class programs - like Social Security and Medicare - it becomes really difficult to argue for upper-income tax cuts. ... We have to resolve that tension between entitlement cuts and tax cuts - clearly we're not there."

The Bush-era breaks, approved in 2001 and accelerated in 2003, are a mix of rate cuts and deductions that benefit households across the income spectrum. The most controversial part of the package is the reduction of taxes for upper-income households; those account for ...

A Thanksgiving Reflection: Looking Beyond Election Day
Moderator
Published: Saturday 26 November 2011
“Economic stresses caused Americans to turn inward during the Great Depression, and we’re seeing the same drift this time around.”

Most political analysis of America’s awful economy focuses on whether it will doom President Obama’s reelection or cause Congress to turn toward one party or the other. These are important questions, but we should really be looking at the deeper problems with which whoever wins in 2012 will have to deal.

Not to depress you, but our economic troubles are likely to continue for many years — a decade or more. At the current rate of job growth (averaging 90,000 new jobs per month over the last six months), 14 million Americans will remain permanently unemployed. The consensus estimate is that at least 90,000 new jobs are needed just to keep up with the growth of the labor force. Even if we get back to a normal rate of 200,000 new jobs per month, unemployment will stay high for at least ten years. Years of high unemployment will likely result in a vicious cycle, as relatively lower spending by the middle-class further slows job growth.

READ FULL POST 33 COMMENTS

Thanks For The Memories: The Top Five Conservative Crazy Of 2011
Moderator
Published: Thursday 24 November 2011
“Tax the poor. Deregulate the rich. Drill Baby Drill. Filibuster the jobs bills. And to hell with Social Security and Medicare”

What am I thankful for this year? I am thankful the conservative movement has stopped trying to pretend to be something that they are not.

Instead of masquerading as "compassionate conservatives" who want "clear skies," "personal retirement accounts," protect Medicare" and "tax relief" for all, today's conservative just lays it on the table:

Tax the poor. Deregulate the rich. Drill Baby Drill. Filibuster the jobs bills. And to hell with Social Security and Medicare.

Before we enter the sweeps month of the "GOP 2012" reality TV show -- when the crazy will be turned up to 11 -- let's pause before Thanksgiving, and give thanks for the many wonderful crazy moments conservatives have shared with us so far this year, so we all know exactly what conservatives would do to America if given the chance.

The Supercommittee Should Go Really Big and Turn Against the One Percent
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 22 November 2011
“Since politicians have so much fun beating up on government employees, how about having a little fun beating up on the most highly paid government contractors?”

It looks the supercommittee is about to throw in the towel. Since the potential deals that had been discussed would have meant large cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other programs that the 99 percent depend upon, we should all be thankful.

In the world of the 1 percent that the supercommittee types inhabit, the big villains in the U.S. economy are not the rich who are pulling down an ever-larger share of national income, but rather the country’s older workers. Whenever the Washington 1 percenters raised the cry of “go big,” it invariably meant large cuts to Social Security and Medicare, the country’s two largest social programs that provide essential security for the elderly.

Most of the near-retirees who would be the primary targets of supercommittee cuts to these programs struggled with stagnant wages over most of their working lifetimes. Few have defined benefit pensions meaning that they have only the little amount they have been able to save in 401(k)s and other retirement accounts, plus the equity in their homes to support themselves in retirement. The latter was largely destroyed by the collapse of the housing bubble.

The Pew Research Center recently published a study showing that the median wealth, including home equity, of the 55-64 age group was just 162,000. The median home sells for roughly $170,000. The Pew study implies that if the median household in this age group used all its wealth, it would still be $8,000 short of paying off their mortgage. And, they would then be entirely dependent on their Social Security check (which averages $13,000 a year) to support them in retirement.

And remember, this is the median.  Half of retirees have less.

In Washington, “going big” meant whacking these near-retirees yet again. The 99 percent can instead propose going really big, which would mean getting the economy back on track. It means attacking the 1 percent who have the real ...

Pfizer’s Latest Twist on ‘Pay for Delay’
Taylor
Published: Tuesday 15 November 2011
Pharmaceutical company Pfizer has developed a new way to stay on top and make you pay more.

Pharmaceutical companies have sought for years to protect their expensive brand-name drugs by paying generic rivals handsome sums of money to put off efforts to introduce cheaper, generic alternatives that could steal market share.

The controversial practice, known as “pay for delay," occurs as part of patent litigation settlements and typically buys a brand-name drug company more time to sell its blockbuster drug exclusively until its patent on the drug expires. Federal Trade Commission regulators have said the practice costs consumers an estimated $3.5 billion each year, and have pushed for a ban.

But now it appears the drug company Pfizer is adding yet another twist to its efforts to delay generic competitors. As The New York Times reports, the company seems to have struck a deal with certain pharmacy benefit managers — the middlemen in the ...

Super Collusion: Will Obama and Capitol Dems Betray the Middle Class, Seniors, and the Poor?
Taylor
Published: Saturday 12 November 2011
Democrats may turn their backs on everything they stood for and betray the people with the super committee proposal.

Two new reports suggest that the President and Congressional Democrats are about to betray everything Democrats once stood for. Under pressure from Barack Obama, Democrats on the "Super Committee" have sketched out an appalling "compromise" proposal that would almost certainly doom both their 2012 electoral chances and his own.

They'd have it coming. Their draft plan that literally takes crutches away from poor people to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

Unfortunately, middle class and impoverished Americans would suffer much more than they would. Career politicians can always look forward to comfortable sinecures from the wealthy interests who will benefit from their proposal. But the rest of us would once again be punished for the excesses of the rich, then left to the untender mercies of our new Republican leaders.

That, and not the fate of a President or a party, would be the real tragedy.

READ FULL POST 36 COMMENTS

Trigger Happy: Why Deficit Cuts Should Be Triggered Only When Unemployment Reaches 5 Percent
Moderator
Published: Friday 11 November 2011
“Democrats on the supercommittee are acting as if they haven’t met an unemployed person.”

On planet Washington, where reducing the federal budget deficit continues to be more important than creating jobs, everyone is talking about “triggers” that automatically go into effect if certain other things don’t happen.

Yet no one is talking about the most obvious trigger of all — no budget cuts until the official level of unemployment falls to 5 percent, its level before the Great Recession. 

The biggest trigger on the minds of Washington insiders is $1.2 trillion across-the-board cuts that will automatically occur if Congress’s supercommittee doesn’t come up with at least $1.2 trillion of cuts on its own that Congress agrees to by December 23. 

That automatic trigger seems likelier by the day because at this point the odds of an agreement are roughly zero.

READ FULL POST 11 COMMENTS

Report Says a Quarter of Hospitalized Medicare Patients Got Improper Treatment
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 9 November 2011
“[Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services]’s response to the report was generally positive, and Berwick noted that CMS would incorporate the inspector general’s recommendations into its new program.”

Surgeries performed on the wrong body part, instances of sexual assault and incorrect blood transfusions—these are just a sampling of the adverse events that more than a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries experienced while they were in treatment at hospitals, according to a month-long survey conducted as part of a recent Department of Health and Human Services inspector general’s report.

The Oct. 2008 survey of 81 hospitals found that 27 percent of Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events — medical errors or other improper treatment that result in patient harm — while in hospitals. But reduction of such adverse events has been hampered, the report says, by a complex and confused hospital oversight structure. The report, Adverse Events in Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Recipients, was released last week.

Hospitals bear the primary responsibility for investigating adverse events, but who dictates how outside investigations should proceed is less clear. Hospitals that participate in the Medicare program must either be accredited by the independent, nationally recognized Joint Commission or demonstrate to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that they are in compliance with a list of 23 Medicare conditions of participation, called CoPs.

Outside the scope of a hospital’s governing ...

The One Percent Turns Class War into Generational War
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 8 November 2011
“One might think that Congress would convene a supercommittee to get people back to work rather than figuring out a way to undermine programs that people need, but it’s the 1 percent that pay for elections, not the 25 million workers suffering from their greed and incompetence.”

Major news outlets like the Washington Post and National Public Radio constantly bombard us with news pieces on the budget deficit. Invariably these stories focus on the cost of “entitlements,” which most of us know as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The story pounded home in these pieces – often explicitly – is that these programs, that primarily benefit the elderly, are creating the basis for a generational war between the young and the old.

The media focus both contributes to and follows the Washington policy debate. At the moment, we have the congressional “supercommittee” scheming to produce a deficit-reduction plan that will almost certainly involve large cuts to all three programs. There is a commonly repeated view in Washington policy circles, based on no evidence whatsoever, that there will be a disaster if the supercommittee comes up empty handed. This means that members of the committee are feeling great pressure from the 1 percent to produce a package with big cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

It is truly impressive how the Washington elite have managed to make these modest protections for the country’s working population (the 99 percent) into the greatest problem facing the country. The obsession with cutting these programs is occurring at a time when we have more than 25 million people unemployed, underemployed or who have given up looking for work altogether. One might think that Congress would convene a supercommittee to get people back to work rather than figuring out a way to undermine programs that people need, but it’s the 1 percent that pay for elections, not the 25 million workers suffering from their greed and incompetence.

Since almost no one can be immune to the hysteria that the media have created around the cost of these programs, it is worth putting it in some context. Starting with Social Security, the

Losing the Public Relations War
Moderator
Published: Monday 7 November 2011
The authors of the report wrote that “access to health care (has) significantly eroded since 2006.”

Support for ObamaCare has fallen to just 34 percent of the American public, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s most recent tracking poll.  That’s down from 41 percent in just one month.

Can’t say I’m surprised. Just as they did during the debate on health care reform in 2009 and 2010, the special interests who profit from the status quo have been winning the messaging battle in their ongoing effort to scare people away from the new law. They have a well-planned and executed strategy to mislead people so thoroughly they will vote next year for candidates who promise to repeal the law, even if that means they will be voting against their own best interests. The strategy of the law’s backers—if indeed there is one —is simply not working.

One reason reform advocates cite for the decline in support:  relentless attacks on the law by GOP presidential candidates, especially during those free-for-all debates. At one of the recent get-togethers, Newt Gingrich even resurrected the biggest of the big lies —  that the law creates government-run death plans that will decide when to pull the plug on sick Medicare beneficiaries. Supporters can’t expect debate moderators to challenge the candidates on such baseless accusations, and they don’t have comparable forums to communicate how the law is helping millions of Americans. At least not yet.

Another factor in falling support for ObamaCare is that opponents are outdueling  supporters in placement of op-ed commentaries and letters to the editor. While I haven’t seen detailed analyses of the op-ed placement war, my own observation, as someone who reads a lot of newspapers, is that the critics have gotten way more ink than the ...

Herman Cain, David Koch, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan and the Smoking Man
Moderator
Published: Thursday 3 November 2011
“The scandal surrounding Block, coming parallel to another controversy involving Cain’s alleged harassment of women who worked for him when he headed the National Restaurant Association, could derail the Cain campaign or at least its manager.”

Herman Cain’s smoking campaign manager, Mark Block, was the Koch Brothers’ man in Wisconsin until two days before Governor Scott Walker’s inauguration. That’s when he made the switch from controversy-plagued campaigning at the state level to controversy-plagued campaigning at the national level.

In January, 2005, Block appeared at Walker’s inaugural ball in a tuxedo to celebrate what “we did” to elect Walker, whose assaults on collective bargaining rights and public education and services sparked some of the largest protests in recent American history and who now faces the prospect of a citizen-sponsored recall.

Block’s presence at Walker’s inaugura was something of a triumphal return to the fold for a veteran political player after he had been unwillingly sidelined politically for a number of years. In 2001, Block paid a $15,000 fine and agreed to refrain from participating in campaigns in an agreement that ended an investigation of illegal coordination between a 1997 Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign he ran and the smearing of the opposition ...

Supercommittee of the One Percent Won’t Even Think of Taxing Wall Street
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 1 November 2011
While whacking our parents and grandparents with a big cut in Social Security benefits apparently draws bipartisan support, the supercommittee will not even score a plan to tax Wall Street financial speculation.

If anyone still questioned who owns Washington, the congressional supercommittee charged with reducing projected deficits by $1.2 trillion seems determined to end any doubts. According to press accounts, both the Republicans and Democrats on the committee support a plan to reduce average Social Security benefits by 3 percent.

While whacking our parents and grandparents with a big cut in Social Security benefits apparently draws bipartisan support, the supercommittee will not even score a plan to tax Wall Street financial speculation.  No committee member from either party is prepared to make a simple request to the Joint Tax Committee of Congress that would allow a speculation tax to be one of the items considered in the mix.

It’s hard to know which part of this picture is worse. The plan to cut Social Security benefits at a time when seniors are more dependent than ever on them is incredibly pernicious. The people who would see their benefits cuts under this proposal paid for their benefits contributing to Social Security over their entire working career.

Most retirees have little other than Social Security to support them in their retirement. In large part, this is due to the economic mismanagement of the supercommittee types. If they or their friends, like former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, actually had been doing their jobs, we would not have had the huge housing bubble that wrecked the economy. The collapse of this bubble caused most of the wealth that retirees and near-retirees had accumulated in their home to disappear, leaving them with nothing other than Social Security to sustain them in retirement. Now, they want to cut Social Security as well.

This particular cut is especially ...

Fact Check: Will Health Care Law Raise Insurance Premiums?
Moderator
Published: Friday 28 October 2011
“This year, in late September, the Kaiser Family Foundation released its annual survey of employer-provided insurance , stating that the average premium cost for family plans had gone up by 9 percent from 2010 to 2011.”

Health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored family plans jumped a startling 9 percent from 2010 to 2011, and Republicans have blamed the federal health care law. But they exaggerate. The law — the bulk of which has yet to be implemented — has caused only about a 1 percent to 3 percent increase in premiums, according to several independent experts. The rest of the 9 percent rise is due to rising health care costs, as usual.

Furthermore, the increase caused by the law is a result of the increased benefits it requires, a factor Republicans generally ignore. So far, insurance companies have been required to do the following:

  • Cover preventive care without copays or deductibles.
  • Allow adult children to stay on parents’ policies until age 26.
  • Increase annual coverage limits.
  • Cover children without regard for preexisting conditions.

On the other hand, the fact that the law caused any increase at all cast more doubt on Obama’s promise that the law “could save families $2,500 in the coming years.” We’ve been calling that claim into question for several years now. The plain fact is that — so far — the law has caused an increase in premiums, though not so large an increase as some Republicans claim.

READ FULL POST 5 COMMENTS

Can Nonprofit HMOs Save Medicare?
Taylor
Published: Thursday 27 October 2011
Rick Perry Outlines Flat Tax, Social Security Proposals
Moderator
Published: Wednesday 26 October 2011
He also proposed reducing corporate income taxes from 35 percent to 20 percent to enhance American competitiveness and promised to eliminate corporate loopholes and special-interest tax breaks.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, hoping to reinvigorate his flagging bid for the Republican presidential nomination, unveiled a new economic plan Tuesday in South Carolina that would give Americans the option of paying a 20 percent flat tax or continuing to pay income taxes under the current 3 million-word tax code.

The optional flat tax is the centerpiece of a broad economic initiative that includes Social Security and Medicare changes, spending cuts, freezing pending federal regulations and other steps aimed at bolstering the economy and balancing the federal budget by 2020. Perry described it as a “bold reform needed to jolt this economy out its doldrums.”

The flat tax would offer a major break for America’s wealthiest taxpayers by enabling them to move from the current top bracket of 35 percent into the 20 percent bracket. On the other hand, some 46 percent of Americans pay no income tax under the current system, so by saying citizens could choose to remain under that code, Perry would invite the rich to take a tax cut and the less well-off to continue avoiding taxes.

Thus, the optional flat-tax feature could shrink federal revenue and undercut Perry’s goal of balancing the federal budget in ...

Recalling the Lost Paradise of Budget Surpluses
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 25 October 2011
“The analysts probably never dreamed that the next president, George W. Bush, and his Republican Congress would slash taxes, run two wars and create a $1 trillion Medicare drug benefit without a thought of paying for it.”

Hard to believe, but once upon a time, economists worried that the U.S. government would pay off all its debt. Also hard to believe, once upon a time was only 11 years ago.

President Clinton had bequeathed his successor budget surpluses "as far as the eye could see." He wanted some of them used to speed up repayment of the remaining $3.6 trillion still owed the public in Treasury bonds. He said it could all be paid off by 2013.

No magic there. A modest tax increase, controlled spending and a strong economy made more confident by disciplined budgeting had ended a scary era of deficit spending.

Can you imagine this causing concern? If the federal government didn't need to borrow and paid off outstanding debt, it was said, U.S. Treasury bonds would disappear. Where would investors find a safe haven for their money? And suppose the U.S. government ...

The Nihilist Party: Republicans Who Believe in Nothing
Moderator
Published: Thursday 20 October 2011
It’s not that Republican Presidential candidates’ beliefs are different than yours or mine. It's that, as now seems clear, they don’t actually believe in anything - anything, that is, except greater power for themselves and greater wealth for their financial backers.

Some people's only exposure to nihilism comes from the German gang in The Big Lebowski who said things like "We are nihilists, we believe in nothing" and "Tell us where the girl is or we cut off your johnson, Lebowski." Or the nihilist humor of comedian Brother Theodore, who liked to say things like "I looked at the void, the void looked back - and neither of us liked what we saw."

That's exactly how I feel when I watch the Republican Presidential debates.

The void that looks out through their eyes is the absence of any underlying principle, ideology, or ideas, especially on economic issues. It's not that their beliefs are different than yours or mine. It's that, as now seems clear, they don't actually believe in anything - anything, that is, except greater power for themselves and greater wealth for their financial backers.

Nothing in nihilism's long intellectual history has prepared the world for its latest incarnation as the 21st century Republican party, or in its ultimate flowering in the likes of Mitt Romney and Herman Cain.

READ FULL POST 4 COMMENTS

The Meagerness of The Republican Debates, The Smallness of The President’s Solutions, And The Need for A Progressive Alternative
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 18 October 2011
Americans are listening more intently this time around because they’re hurting and they want answers.

Republicans are debating again tomorrow night. And once again, Americans will hear the standard regressive litany: government is bad, Medicare and Medicaid should be cut, “Obamacare” is killing the economy, undocumented immigrants are taking our jobs, the military should get more money, taxes should be lowered on corporations and the rich, and regulations should be gutted.

Four years ago the most widely-watched TV debate among Republican aspirants attracted 3.2 million viewers. This year it’s almost twice that number. And for every viewer assume a multiplier effect as he or she shares what’s heard with friends and family.

Americans are listening more intently this time around because they’re hurting and they want answers. But the answers they’re getting from Republican candidates – tripping over themselves trying to appeal to hard-core regressives – are the wrong ones.

The Tax Hikes That Republicans Love
Moderator
Published: Sunday 16 October 2011
“Today, conservative politicians and pundits complain that some people, namely those too poor to owe federal income taxes, aren’t paying enough.”

From the tea parties to the corporate boardrooms to the presidential debate platforms, we hear a familiar droning whine about taxes — except the angry message is no longer simply that taxes are too high. Today, conservative politicians and pundits complain instead that some people, namely those too poor to owe federal  READ FULL POST 10 COMMENTS

The Rise of The Regressive Right And The Reawakening of America
Moderator
Published: Sunday 16 October 2011
Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest.

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward. 

We are going to battle once again.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy. 

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conservative what we have. It’s to take us backwards. 

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act. 

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it). 

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, ...

Rep. Peter King (R-NY): Do Not Allow Any Legitimacy for Wall Street Protests, Or It Will Be Like 1960s Again
Moderator
Published: Sunday 9 October 2011
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) blasted the media for providing fair coverage to the Occupy Wall Street protests. “They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone.”

Speaking with right-wing radio show host Laura Ingraham on Friday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, blasted the media for providing fair coverage to the Occupy Wall Street protests. “They have no sense of purpose other than a basically anti-American tone,” he said.

King also explained that he is “old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy.” He added, “We can’t allow that to happen.”

King is right that the 99 Percent Movement, with “occupation” actions from Sacramento to New York City and beyond, mirrors the broad-based protest movements of the 1960s. Back then, millions of American engaged in street protests which eventually led to the end of legal racial segregation, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, as well as other successful programs to reduce the level of poverty and human ...

Hank Williams, Jr: Bring Him Back, Buy Him A Beer - And Invite Him to #OccupyWallStreet
Moderator
Published: Thursday 6 October 2011
“I’m publicly offering to buy the man a beer, at the time and place of his choosing, with no strings attached and if he’s willing, I’ll do something else too: I’ll take him to an Occupy Wall Street demonstration.”

By now everybody knows that Hank Williams, Jr. was suspended from ESPN and Monday Night Football for that strange and now infamous interview where he seemed to compare the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler. I say: Bring Hank back. Bring him back with no conditions, limitations, fines, fees, or rules.

What's more, I'm publicly offering to buy the man a beer, at the time and place of his choosing, with no strings attached.

And if he's willing, I'll do something else too: I'll take him to an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. That'd get him off that weak, corporate-brewed Tea Party tea and onto the hard stuff (caffeine, that is). We all need some of that, because it's time to wake up and smell the coffee: The big banks and corporations are ripping us off, and we’re being distracted by big media, big banks, and big money.

 

You said what?!?



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Here’s Occupy Wall Street’s “One Demand”: Sanity
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 4 October 2011
As movement participant Nelini Stamp told the Take Back the American Dream conference this morning, “We don't have demands. If we make demands of Wall Street, we’re saying that Wall Street has the power.”

Even the sympathizers don't always get it. I'm sure I get a lot of things wrong too, but here's one thing I do understand: Change doesn't begin with policy. It begins with perception. And you don't change things by asking. You change them by acting.

But it begins with perception. "All money is a matter of belief," as someone once said.

In the New York Times, Nick Kristof shows that he understands the #OccupyWallStreet movement more than most of his peers. "The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills," he writes, "and impressive in their organization."

But like many other sympathetic observers, he misses their most important point when he says "the movement falters in its demands" because "it doesn't really have any."

As movement participant Nelini Stamp told the 

To Win in 2012 ‘Democrats Are Going to Have to Distinguish Themselves from The President’
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 4 October 2011
Progressives and populists have begun to argue that Democratic congressional candidates can and should run on issues that work for them—including tougher-than-the-president positions in support of job investments, taxes on financial speculators and the defense of Medicare.

Barack Obama’s approval rating is hovering around 40 percent, falling as low as 38 percent in a recent Gallup survey and 39 percent in the latest McClatchey-Marist poll.

That's bad. But it gets worse.

The new ABC News/Washington Post poll says that 55 percent of Americans now expect that whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 to take the presidency. Only 37 percent believe Obama will win.

That’s really bad. And the numbers from the battleground states are even more unsettling, A new Quinnipiac survey of Florida voters finds that only 39 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the presidency, while 57 percent disapprove. Only 41 percent of those surveyed say they think the president should be reelected.

Polls are transitory. The president’s numbers can and probably will improve, especially if he stays focused on the message he has been delivering in recent days: invest in job creation, establish fairer tax policies that make the rich pay their share, defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But his decision to submit ...

Fiscal Trivial Pursuit
Moderator
Published: Sunday 2 October 2011
While Perry inveighed against overpriced muffins, Washington was embroiled in its own game of fiscal Trivial Pursuit, once again getting to the verge of a government shutdown in a dispute over $1.6 billion.

About that $16 muffin — it didn’t actually cost that much.

You may have heard about the muffin, how conference planners at the Justice Department blithely forked over that inflated sum — your taxpayer dollars — to a Washington hotel for a training conference on immigration law. It seemed a classic tale of government waste, up there with the iconic $600 Pentagon toilet seat.

Except, as it turns out, the receipt on which the Justice Department’s inspector general based that assessment was written in a kind of catering short-hand. The muffin billing actually included: free meeting space, complimentary coffee, fresh fruit, assorted baked goods, taxes and tip. In short, a decent price for a continental breakfast.

Is there wasteful spending in government? Of course — and some of it was detailed in the inspector general’s report. It should be investigated and eliminated, not least because it does damage far in excess of the amounts involved, eroding public confidence in government’s ability to spend its money wisely.

Worse, though, episodes such as the tale of the $16 muffin give ...

Gutting Social Security Would Devastate Blacks And Hispanics
Moderator
Published: Saturday 24 September 2011
The recent census report found that the number of Americans in poverty has hit a near all time high with a disproportionate number are blacks and Hispanics.

The GOP presidential candidates are calling for partially privatizing social security in recent stump speeches and statements. The idea is nothing but a rehash of the idea floated by George W. Bush in 2005. Bush proposed giving younger workers the option of stashing some of their Social Security payments in private accounts. The idea mercifully went nowhere. 
 

And Bush dropped the idea. Most economists called it a prescription for financial disaster. The stock market crash in 2008 punctuated the dire warnings that if billions of middle and low income workers had put their Social Security savings in private accounts a lifetime of earnings would have been instantly wiped out. The economic misery and chaos would have been catastrophic. Those hurt the most would have been those least able to take the financial hit.


The other danger is the soaring poverty numbers. Social Security stands squarely in the middle of the two dangers. The recent census report found that the number of Americans in poverty has hit a near all time high. A disproportionate number are blacks and Hispanics. This is where privatizing or any tweak, reduction, or down size of Social Security would virtually guarantee that the economic pain to blacks and Hispanics would be unimaginable. 
Nearly 40 percent of African-American recipients rely solely on a Social Security check for their income. One out of three African-Americans and Hispanics would sink below the official poverty line without their Social Security payout. 
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Can A Movement Save The American Dream?
Moderator
Published: Friday 23 September 2011
Historically, whenever America has reached this extreme of what Citigroup analysts dubbed “plutonomy,” popular mass movements have arisen to champion economic justice.

On October 3 activists from across the country will gather in Washington at the Take Back the American Dream conference, in the belief that only a citizens movement can save an American dream that grows ever more distant. In the face of a failed economy and a corrupted politics, the only hope for renewal is that citizens lead and politicians follow.

The modern American dream was inspired by a growing middle class that was the triumph of democracy after World War II. Its promise was and is opportunity: that hard work can earn a good life—a good job with decent pay and security, a home in a safe neighborhood, affordable healthcare, a secure retirement, a good education for the kids. The promise always exceeded the performance—especially with regard to racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and women—and America never did as well as Europe in lifting the poor from misery. But a broad middle class and a broadly shared prosperity at least provided the possibility of a way up.

Now that middle class is sinking, imperiled by an economy that does not work for working people. Twenty-five million Americans are in need of full-time work, wages are declining and one in six people lives in poverty, the highest level in fifty years.

Every element of the dream is imperiled. Wages for the 70 percent of Americans without a college education have declined dramatically over the past forty years, although CEO ...

A Good Fight
Elizabeth
Published: Monday 19 September 2011
Republicans accuse the President of instigating “class warfare”, but it’s not warfare to demand the rich pay their fair share of taxes to bring down America’s long-term debt.

So the really big fight — perhaps the defining battle of 2012 — won’t be over Medicare. It won’t even be over Obama’s jobs program.

It will be over whether the rich should pay more taxes.

The President has vowed to veto any plan to tame the debt that doesn’t increase taxes on the rich. The Republicans have vowed to oppose any tax increases on the rich.

It’s a good fight to have.

In a Rose Garden ceremony this morning, Obama proposed new taxes on the wealthy — including a special new tax for millionaires, the closing of loopholes and deductions for people making more than $250,000 a year, and an end to the portion of the Bush tax cut going to higher incomes.

Republicans accuse the President of instigating “class warfare.” But it’s not warfare to demand the rich pay their fair share of taxes to bring down America’s long-term debt.

After all, the richest 1 percent of Americans now takes home more than 20 percent of total income. That’s the highest share going to the top 1 percent in almost 90 years.

And they now pay at the lowest tax rates in half a century — half the rate they paid on ordinary income prior to 1981.

(Unfortunately, the President isn’t proposing to raise the capital-gains tax — which, now at 15 percent, creates a loophole large enough for the super-rich to drive their Ferrari’s through. About 80 percent of the income of America’s richest 400 comes in the form of capital gains. Here’s where billionaire hedge-fund and private-equity fund managers make out like bandits. As I’ve noted, I also wish he aimed higher — for more brackets and higher rates at the very top. But at least he’s drawn a line in the sand. The veto message is clear.)

Anyone who says the American economy suffers when the rich pay more in taxes doesn’t know ...

America is Diseased: Mocking the Dying, Profiting off the Work of Uninsured Artists
Elizabeth
Published: Monday 19 September 2011
The morally challenged scum who heartily and heartlessly cheered for the death of a hypothetical 30-year-old were really cheering for the death of my friend, and millions like her.

The first thing that needs to be said to the heartless boneheads who, at the last Republican presidential debate, cheered at the idea of letting a hypothetical 30-year-old cancer victim who hadn’t bought health insurance die, is that this is no mere hypothetical situation. The second thing that needs to be said is that most such people in real life don’t “refuse to get” health insurance. They either cannot afford it (and their employer doesn’t provide it), or they are rejected by insurers because of pre-existing conditions.

If you are a young person, earning a take-home salary of perhaps $20,000, are trying to raise two kids on your own, and you live in Texas, for example (Medicaid eligibility is set state by state), you would not be eligible for Medicaid coverage. Your two kids would supposedly be eligible, but not you. Meanwhile, if your employer, like most employers who are paying minimum wage, doesn’t offer some kind of group policy, if you were lucky enough not to be rejected for some pre-existing medical condition like diabetes or a heart murmer or something, you’d have to come up with perhaps $3,000 to cover yourself with a plan that would not pay for doctor visits, just major hospital bills. But say you were paying $800 a month for rent, and another $3000 a year to keep some 12-year-old rust-bucket of a vehicle insured and on the road to get you to work and home. That would only leave you $7,000 to feed and clothe your kids and yourself. Would you take $3000 of that to pay for health insurance for yourself and reduce your money for living expenses to $4000 for the year?

Of course not! It would be coming right out of your childrens’ mouths!

All over America, especially these days with one in five of us either out of work or working at some job like the one described above or worse, while looking for a decently paying job, millions of individuals and families are struggling with this ...

Thousands Cheer Bernie Sanders’s Appeal to Obama: Make the Rich Pay for Deficits
Moderator
Published: Monday 19 September 2011
If President Obama and other Democrats in Washington want to know how to leap the enthusiasm gap that will be needed to win battleground states such as Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania next year, Bernie Sanders has provided the answer.

Declaring that “Social Security is the most successful government program in our nation’s history,” and decrying threats to Medicare and Medicaid that would punish Americans who did not cause the current economic crisis,Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders brought thousands of progressives from across the Midwest to their feet Saturday, as they cheered his message to President Obama and the Congressional “super-committee”: “We can deal with deficit reduction in a way that is fair and responsible.”

“Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the most vulnerable,” Sanders said, “it is time to ask the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country to pay their fair share.”

In several speeches to crowds numbers in the thousands who gathered for Fighting BobFest events in Madison, Wisconsin, Sanders continues to spell out the progressive economic agenda that argues against cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to balance budgets and address deficits and for tax policies that end special breaks for the wealthy and multinational corporations that offshore jobs from the United States.

President Obama is expected to deliver a major speech Monday on deficit reduction, and the White House has indicated that the president’s plan will not include “changes to Social Security.” ...

How Global Trade Can Rein in Health Costs
Elizabeth
Published: Sunday 18 September 2011
It remains to be seen how much the Affordable Care Act will accomplish, if Congress even allows it to take effect.

The notion of international trade in health care may seem strange. The issue may also seem far removed from the current policy preoccupations in Washington. However, we believe it is finally time trade played a central role in the current debt debate.

One of the basic facts that the congressional super committee must confront is that the debt problem is not excessive current deficits, but rather a problem with the longer-term budget. And the main reason for the large projected deficits well into the future is the growth in health care costs. Public sector programs like Medicare and Medicaid will be increasingly unaffordable. The health care system must be reformed -- no easy task.

President Obama and Congress sought to do it last year. But it remains to be seen how much the Affordable Care Act will accomplish, if Congress even allows it to take effect. With the future uncertain, anything that we can do to contain costs significantly in other ways must be exploited. We have a partial solution: medical trade, or allowing Americans to take advantage of different forms of international transactions in medical services. The fact that medical care of comparable quality is available at much lower prices elsewhere in the world can be used to rein in costs in the United States.

The idea holds remarkable promise. Here's how it could work:

Patients go overseas for major medical procedures: Modern medical facilities in Thailand, India and other countries would allow patients to have procedures such as heart bypass surgery for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars less than in U.S. facilities.

Medicare and Medicaid could allow patients to use such facilities. The savings to these programs could be split between the patient and the government. This might mean tens of thousands of dollars for both, even after covering travel costs.

Buy into other countries' health care ...

Where Are the Compassionate Conservatives?
Elizabeth
Published: Sunday 18 September 2011
The lowest point of the evening of the debate — and perhaps of the political season — came when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man who elects not to purchase health insurance.

We heard plenty of contradictions, distortions and untruths at the Republican candidates’ Tea Party debate, but we heard shockingly little compassion — and almost no acknowledgement that political and economic policy choices have a moral dimension.

The lowest point of the evening — and perhaps of the political season — came when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a hypothetical question about a young man who elects not to purchase health insurance. The man has a medical crisis, goes into a coma and needs expensive care. “Who pays?” Blitzer asked.

 
 

“That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul answered. “This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody. . . .”

Blitzer interrupted: “But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?”

There were enthusiastic shouts of “Yeah!” from the crowd. You’d think one of the other candidates might jump in with a word about Christian kindness. Not a peep.

Paul, a physician, went on to say that, no, the hypothetical comatose man should not be allowed to die. But in Paul’s vision of America, “our neighbors, our friends, our churches” would choose to assume the man’s care — with government bearing no responsibility and playing no ...

The Election of 2012: Why The Most Important Issues May Be Off The Table (But Should Be On It)
Moderator
Published: Saturday 17 September 2011
Neither party’s presidential candidate will propose to tame CEO pay, create more tax brackets at the top and raise the highest marginal rates back to their levels in the 1950s and 1960s (that is, 70 to 90 percent), and match the capital-gains rate with ordinary income.

We’re on the cusp of the 2012 election. What will it be about? It seems reasonably certain President Obama will be confronted by a putative Republican candidate who:

Believes corporations are people, wants to cut the top corporate rate to 25% (from the current 35%) and no longer require they pay tax on foreign income, who will eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, raise the retirement age for Social Security and turn Medicaid into block grants to states, seek a balanced-budged amendment to the Constitution, require any regulatory agency issuing a new regulation repeal another regulation of equal cost (regardless of the benefits), and seek repeal of Obama’s healthcare plan.

Or one who:

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Preserving Life (Except the Uninsured)
Elizabeth
Published: Friday 16 September 2011
Every one of the candidates vehemently insisted, with predictably enthusiastic applause, that President Obama's health care reform must go, immediately, if not sooner.

Watching the Republican presidential candidates and their agitated tea party supporters at the CNN/Tea Party debate, an ordinary citizen might feel confused. Those people sound angry, but exactly what do they believe our government should (and shouldn't) do on behalf of its citizens?

Ensuring affordable READ FULL POST 16 COMMENTS

The White House Won’t Touch Social Security. Great! Now, about Medicare ...
Moderator
Published: Friday 16 September 2011
The decision to protect Social Security is a smart one, but if the President goes ahead with his plan to raise the Medicare age it will still be a political and policy disaster.

Washington, DC felt like a city on a deathwatch this week, after a series of White House news leaks said the President would announce cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits next Monday.

One plan was to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security. Another involved an accounting gimmick that would cut the already-inadequate cost of living adjustments for Social Security benefits - and raise taxes on the middle class, too.

The response was negative, as most people might expect. Very, very negative.

Come Monday

Many elected Democrats have been dreading next Monday's speech ever since these trial balloons were first floated. They saw these proposals, probably rightly, as a fatal blow to their reelection chances.

Another dark cloud was hanging over public interest groups who represent older Americans, sound economic policy, or improvements to our health care system. They understood the damage these ideas could cause.

That was then, this is now. Today the clouds lifted ... some of them, anyway.

Partly Cloudy

Three Things to Love (And A Few More to Hate) About Obama’s Jobs Plan
Moderator
Published: Friday 16 September 2011
Even if Congress passed Obama’s bill “now,” as he demanded, we would be lucky to see even one-third of this money spent in 2012.

President Obama created big expectations last week for the speech where he announced his new jobs plan. Remarkably, his rhetoric came close to fulfilling them. But what about the actual plan he sent to Congress on Monday? If it were to be enacted in its current form (which it won’t), would it have a shot at turning around the economy? As it turns out, there are definitely some things to like in Obama’s roadmap, even while there are some very big warning signs as well.

On the plus side, President Obama asked for a sizable package. The cost would be $450 billion, with most of the expense in the 2012 fiscal year. By contrast, after removing the fix to the alternative minimum tax, the 2009 stimulus package came to about $300 billion a year in both 2009 and 2010. After seeming determined to think small, Obama is asking for something resembling real money. Of course, this is still well short of what is needed to get the economy back to full employment. The collapse of the housing bubble led to a falloff in housing and consumption demand that together is close to $1.2 trillion annually.

The mix in the plan is also better than might have been expected. President Obama proposed $35 billion in aid for state and local governments to prevent more layoffs of school teachers, police, and firefighters. This is a great way to boost the economy since there is no quicker way to increase demand than to prevent cutbacks that would otherwise occur. While the request in this area is good news, it could have usefully been two or three times as large, although a larger request would face a greater risk of being laughed off by the Republicans in congress.

President Obama also proposed $80 billion for infrastructure. 30 billion of this is for repairing and renovating schools and $50 billion is for other infrastructure needs. The downturn has provided a great opportunity to modernize our infrastructure. We can essentially borrow at zero cost (real interest ...

Defeats in New York And Nevada Demand A Democratic Reset
Elizabeth
Published: Thursday 15 September 2011
The danger is that Democrats will not learn from their losses, and, make no mistake, these were serious losses.

A New York congressional district that has been sending Democrats to Washington since 1922 elects a Republican to the House.

A Nevada district that includes the key battleground counties of what has become a pivotal swing state votes Republican by a 22-point margin -- despite the fact that the district has a large population of voters who are unemployed or underemployed, and despite the fact that one of the most critical issues of the contest was the future of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. 

By any measure, Tuesday's special elections in New York and Nevada produced the worst set of results for Democrats in such a circumstance since the party lost Ted Kennedy's US Senate seat in the January, 2010, special election in Massachusetts. To suggest otherwise, is comic, and politically dangerous for Democrats.

The danger is that Democrats will not learn from their losses. And, make no mistake, these were serious losses.

In New York's 9th district, Barack Obama ran two points ahead of his national average to take 55 percent of the vote in 2008. Two years later, in 2010, Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner won reelection with over 60 percent of the vote. On Tuesday, the guy Weiner trounced in 2010 won with 53 percent of the vote. That's a 13 percent swing from the Democrats to the Republicans from 2010, and a 15 percent swing from 2008.

In

The Oddness of The President’s Upcoming Deficit-Reduction Plan
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 13 September 2011
Why didn’t Obama make his jobs bill big enough to do the job?

On Monday the President will offer ways to pay for his $467 billion American Jobs Act mostly by increasing taxes on the wealthy.

I’m all in favor, but it’s an odd strategy. If any Republican was prepared to vote for the jobs bill, this will send him or her scurrying.

So if the President was never really serious about getting Republican votes in the first place — if his jobs bill and the tax increase on the wealthy were always going to be part of his 2012 election year pitch — why didn’t he make his jobs bill big enough to do the job?

Here’s another odd thing.

The deficit-reduction plan the President will present Monday to Congress’s special super committee on the debt (now struggling to come up with $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction) will also propose some $2 to $3 trillion in additional deficit reduction over the next ten years — including changes in Medicare. 

According to the President’s plan, those tax increases and spending cuts would go into effect in 2013.  

But there’s a strong likelihood the American economy will still be anemic in 2013, if not on life support. Even if we avoid a double dip the jobs picture we’ll almost certainly be terrible. Even if by some miracle job growth soared to the average monthly growth over the past decade, the unemployment rate wouldn’t get back down to 6 percent until 2024.

When unemployment is still in the stratosphere, it would be insane to start cutting the deficit by $3 trillion to $4 trillion. That would push unemployment into outer ...

Perry, Romney Twist Records in Debate
Moderator
Published: Saturday 10 September 2011
Among the stretches of truth: Texas has reduced emissions as Perry described, but most of those reductions were required under the federal Clean Air Act.

When Mitt Romney and Rick Perry thumped their chests over their job-creation records as governor during the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night, they left the bad parts out.

Yes, employment has grown by more than 1 million since Perry took office in Texas. But a lot of those jobs are not well paid.

True, unemployment dropped to 4.7 percent when Romney was Massachusetts governor. But the state's employment growth was among the nation's worst.

A look at some of the claims in the debate, and how they compare with the facts:

___

PERRY: "Ninety-five percent of all the jobs that we've created have been above minimum wage."

THE FACTS: To support the claim, the Perry campaign provided federal statistics for December 2010 showing only 5.3 percent of all jobs in Texas pay the minimum wage.

But those figures represent all workers, not just the new jobs, for which data are unavailable. And that does not account for low-wage jobs that may be barely above the minimum wage. According to the Texas Workforce Commission, 51 percent of all Texas workers make less than $33,000 a year. Only 30 percent make more than $50,000 a year. Nationally, Texas ranked 34th in median household income from 2007 to 2009.

About 9.5 percent of Texas hourly workers, excluding those who are paid salaries, earn the minimum wage or less, tying Mississippi for the highest percentage in the nation.

___

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Obama Has Steered The Debate Back Toward Jobs; Now, He Must Go Out and Win It
Moderator
Published: Friday 9 September 2011
Obama has proposed, now Republicans will reject. And that’s that.

Barack Obama delivered a credible if uninspired jobs speech Thursday night.

He communicated that the United States cannot meet the challenges of an unemployment crisis with an austerity agenda that owes more to Herbert Hoover than Franklin Roosevelt. But he muddied the message with too much debt and deficit talk.

He signaled to organized labor and progressives that he at least understands the point of a “go big” response to the challenge—even as his instinctive caution erred against going big enough.

In fact, his rhetoric was good deal better than the specifics of his plan.

“The people of this country work hard to meet their responsibilities. The question tonight is whether we’ll meet ours,” the president explained, to considerable applause. “The question is whether, in the face of an ongoing national crisis, we can stop the political circus and actually do something to help the economy. The question is whether we can restore some of the fairness and security that has defined this nation since our beginning.”

Obama’s “it’s time to do what’s right” proposal touches at least some of the right bases—even if it is a clumsy circumnavigation. He proposes to spend $450 billion. The $253 billion in tax cuts he wants go mainly to working folks. The $194 billion in new spending is aimed at hiring incentives, infrastructure projects and other job-creating and retaining programs that the moment demands and that polls suggest Americans are more than willing to fund.

Obama Jobs Plan Bolder Than Expected, But Is It Enough?
Moderator
Published: Friday 9 September 2011
The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, and the White House is predicting the rate will not fall below six percent until 2017

Before a joint session of Congress, President Obama laid out a $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending Thursday night to help stimulate the economy and create new jobs. His speech comes at a time when 14 million people are unemployed and another 8.8 million are working part-time but seeking full-time work. The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, and the White House is predicting the rate will not fall below six percent until 2017. The jobs crisis is particularly severe for African Americans, who face an unemployment rate that soared to 16.7 percent in August—the highest it’s been since 1984. We speak with Dedrick Muhammad, senior director for economic programs for the NAACP, and Scott Paul, founding executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

Transcript: 

JUAN GONZALEZ: Before a joint session of Congress, President Obama laid out a $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending Thursday night to help stimulate the economy and create new jobs. The President’s speech comes at a time when 14 million people are unemployed and another 8.8 million are working part-time but seeking full-time work. The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent, and the White House is predicting the rate will not fall below six percent until possibly 2017. The job crisis is particularly severe for African Americans. The black unemployment rate soared to 16.7 percent in August, the highest it’s been since 1984.

On Thursday night, Obama urged Congress to quickly pass the jobs package.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The purpose of the American ...

Labor Day: A Day to Rest, Remember, And Act - for “Entitlements” And Jobs
Moderator
Published: Saturday 3 September 2011
As the Department of Labor explains, “Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers.”

Rest. A time of rest from long hours of work. That's the principle enshrined in Labor Day, a 125-year-old American holiday that celebrates the spirit of organized labor. It's the spirit behind the six-day workweek, too. A day of rest was enshrined in monotheism's holy texts, after all, but it didn't become law until labor unions demanded it. ("Thou shalt remember the Sabbath and keep it holy" - did your boss forget?)

It's also the spirit behind the principle that people who work all their lives deserve a financially secure retirement. Our forebears fought to win us this time of rest, too, and now we're called on to defend it once more.

The White House keeps hinting that the President will once again propose cuts to Medicare and Social Security - either when he presents his jobs proposal next week, or shortly afterwards. That would roll back the hard-won principle that people who work hard deserve their time of rest. It would also be a harsh blow to a struggling economy after a devastating jobs report.

If Americans return from their Labor Day celebrations to hear their President announce these cuts, it will feel like the breaking of an ancient compact. Voters should encourage him not to make that mistake, and not to break that promise.

Days of Struggle

As the Department of Labor explains, "Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers." The first Labor Day celebration took place in New York City in 1882, organized by one of the first trade unions. States and municipalities began recognizing it as a holiday in the years that followed, and ...

Challenged At Town Hall, Romney Misleads Voters On Social Security Reform
Moderator
Published: Friday 26 August 2011
“In an effort to explain his opposition to raising the payroll tax cap and his potential support for other proposals, Romney played loose with the facts.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has ramped up his campaign efforts in August, appearing at the Iowa State Fair and at town hall events across New Hampshire. But in his emergence from what Politico dubbed the “Mittness Protection Program,” Romney has encountered voters who aren’t thrilled about some of his policy prescriptions, including his potential supportfor reforming Social Security by raising the retirement age or changing the way benefits are calculated.

Romney was challenged on Social Security by fair-goers in Iowa and again in New Hampshire last week. Last night, he ran into yet another voter concerned about the ...

“Don’t Kill the American Dream”
Moderator
Published: Thursday 25 August 2011
Programs like Social Security and Medicare, regulations that protect the air that we breathe and water that we all drink, and collective bargaining rights that have long provided a counterweight to wealthy corporations have all come under threat since the far right seized the initiative after last year’s elections.

Something’s in the air. Our friends at Democracy for America have also recognized the huge threat to the American Dream posed by the austerity agenda pushed by conservatives in Congress and echoed by the Beltway media.

Now DFA will take to the air to hold conservatives in Congress accountable for their votes to gut essential, successful government actions that have helped to protect and grow the middle class. Programs like Social Security and Medicare, regulations that protect the air that we breathe and water that we all drink, and collective bargaining rights that have long provided a counterweight to wealthy corporations have all come under threat since the far ...

Just One Week Into His Campaign, Rick Perry Disavows His Nine-Month-Old Book
Moderator
Published: Monday 22 August 2011
“Fed Up is not some 20-year-old graduate school thesis that Perry wrote before he served in elected office.”

Last November, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) published Fed Up, a 240-page ode to tentherism, which argues that everything from child labor laws to the Clean Air Act to Medicare violates the Constitution. As it turns out, however, claiming that America’s entire social safety net is unconstitutional isn’t a very popular position — so Perry’s now trying to take it all back just one week into his presidential campaign:

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Why We Aren't Like Greece
Elizabeth
Published: Wednesday 17 August 2011
“The analogy to Greece is a farce from the word go.”

“What’s the difference between the United States and Greece?” should be the setup line for a joke. Unfortunately, it’s a question that seems to be stumping many of the people involved in Washington policy debates. Now that Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the US government’s credit rating (along with that of government-controlled mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and other entities), the policy-wonk community is likely to find this question even trickier.

The analogy to Greece is a farce from the word go. Greece had chronic deficits even in the good years. Its debt-to-GDP ratio was rising in the years before the crash, when its economy was experiencing strong growth. It now has a debt-to-GDP ratio approaching 150 percent. By contrast, in the United States, even with the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the debt-to-GDP ratio was stable during the housing bubble years. It is now just above 60 percent.The problems faced by the Greek economy—and now, through contagion, perhaps the entire eurozone—are nothing like the problems facing the US economy. However, people with a clear political agenda are doing their best to confuse the public and claim that a crisis created by the collapse of the housing bubble is really a crisis of excessive government spending. Their goal is to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and they are prepared to use their money and their influence over the media to achieve it.

The second key difference between Greece and the United States is that we borrow in our own currency. At the end of the day, if we cannot tax or borrow the money needed to pay our bills, we can print it. That may ...

The Jobs Question
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 16 August 2011
“Twenty-five million Americans are in need of full time work. One in four teenagers not in college can’t find a job.”

President Obama is, in the lingo of the day, “pivoting to jobs.” His bus tour through the Midwest began the process, with the president recycling his current jobs-lite agenda: payroll tax cut extended, infrastructure bank, trade deals, tax cuts for companies that hire veterans, and patent reform—“things the Congress could do right now,” but nothing near the scope of the need.

Reports are that the president will unveil new proposals in September on jobs, and challenge the Congress to act. So what would a real jobs agenda look like?

Get the Challenge Right

Twenty-five million Americans are in need of full time work. One in four teenagers not in college can’t find a job. Wages aren’t keeping up with prices. Our trade deficit is rising, as more and more good jobs get shipped abroad. It’s projected that a staggering 48 percent of homes with mortgages could be underwater – worth less than the mortgage – by the end of the year.

Moreover, there is no recovery to an old, healthy economy. The old economy didn’t work for most Americans even when it was growing. The cancer was spreading before it metastasized in the financial panic. In the so-called Bush recovery years before the collapse, the few captured all the rewards of growth. The average income of the bottom 90% dropped. That economy was built on debt and bubbles. We were hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs and borrowing $2 billion a day from abroad. And we were in complete denial about global warming and the ...

President Obama Joins the Cult of Economics Deniers
Moderator
Published: Monday 15 August 2011
President Obama intends to ignore the path for getting the economy back to full employment.

A front page story in Sunday’s New York Times gave the country the bad news. President Obama is no longer paying attention to economists and economics in designing economic policy. Instead, he will do what his campaign people tell him will get him re-elected, presumably by getting lots of money from Wall Street.

The article said that President Obama intends to focus on reducing government spending and cutting programs like Social Security and Medicare.  This is in spite of the fact that:

"a wide range of economists say the administration should call for a new round of stimulus spending, as prescribed by mainstream economic theory, to create jobs and promote growth."

In other words, President Obama intends to ignore the path for getting the economy back to full employment that most economists advocate. Instead he is going to cut government spending because his chief of staff and former J.P. Morgan vice-president Bill Daley and his top campaign adviser David Plouffe both say this is a good idea.

While people are justified in having little respect for economists – almost the entire profession missed the $8 trillion housing bubble that crashed the U.S. economy – it is still scary to see that policy will be determined by people with no knowledge of economics whatsoever. After all, do Daley and Plouffe even have a theory as to how cutting government spending could help the economy?

There of course is a theory as to how budget cuts could boost growth. The theory is that lower deficits in the present and/or near future will reduce fears that government spending will be crowding out private economic activity. This would lead to lower interest rates. Lower interest rates will provide a boost to ...

Why the New Healthcare Law Should Have Been Based on Medicare (And What Democrats Should Have Learned By Now)
Moderator
Published: Monday 15 August 2011
Had the President and the Democrats stuck to their guns during the health-care debate and insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option, they wouldn’t now be facing the possible unraveling of the new health care law.

Two appellate judges in Atlanta — one appointed by President Bill Clinton and one by George H.W. Bush – have just decided the Constitution doesn’t allow the federal government to require individuals to buy health insurance.

The decision is a major defeat for the White House. The so-called “individual mandate” is a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s 2010 health care reform law, scheduled to go into effect in 2014.

The whole idea of the law is to pool heath risks. Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions, or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.

The issue is now headed for the Supreme Court (another appellate court has upheld the law’s constitutionality) where the prognosis isn’t good. The Court’s Republican-appointed majority has not exactly distinguished itself by its progressive views.  

Chalk up another one for the GOP, outwitting and outflanking the President and the Democrats.

Remember the health-care debate? Congressional Republicans refused to consider a single-payer system that would automatically pool risks. They wouldn’t even consider giving people the option of buying into it.

The President and the Democrats caved, as they have on almost everything. They came up with a compromise that kept health care in the hands of private insurance companies.

The only way to spread the risk in such a system is to require everyone buy insurance.

Which is exactly what the two appellate judges in Atlanta object to. The Constitution, in their view, doesn’t allow the federal government to compel citizens to buy something. “Congress may regulate commercial actors,” they write. “But what Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product ...

Top Veterans Groups to White House: Chained CPI Will Mean "Real Sacrifice" for Veterans
Elizabeth
Published: Saturday 13 August 2011
“The chained CPI would reduce Social Security and VA benefits by cutting the annual COLA, as well as increase taxes, by slowing the rate at which tax brackets rise.”

Eight leading veterans’ groups sent letters to President Obama, and members of the House and Senate this week, urging them not to adopt the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI) for determining cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security and VA benefits. The letter relied on information from a new analysis by the Strengthen Social Security Campaign showing that the chained CPI will have an especially large effect on veterans and their families.

The letters from the American GI Forum, AMVETS, Blinded Veterans Association, National Military Family Association, Paralyzed Veterans of America, VetsFirst, a program of United Spinal Association, Vietnam Veterans of America, and VoteVets.org identified significant cuts that would occur to 9 million veterans receiving Social Security retirement benefits, 3.2 million receiving VA Disability Compensation Benefits, and 310,000 receiving VA Pension Benefits if the chained CPI was used to calculate the annual COLA.

The letters from veterans groups said: “Many veterans who rely on these programs live on fixed incomes and very tight budgets. For them, every dollar of hard-earned benefits counts in meeting basic expenses, attaining quality of life, and building a better future for themselves and those who depend on them. For many of them, reducing the annual COLA would mean real sacrifice. We ask that you not do that for those who ...

The Economic Illiterates Step Up the Attack on Social Security and Medicare
Elizabeth
Published: Monday 8 August 2011
"The basic story is that the economy needs demand."

Standard and Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt should be seen as the joke it is.  The rating agency, which gave investment grade ratings to hundreds of billions of dollars of subprime mortgage backed securities, made an accounting error of $2 trillion in doing its assessment of the U.S. financial situation. However, when this error was called to S&P’s attention, it still went ahead with the downgrade. Just like the war in Iraq, the policy was decided in advance of the evidence.

The nonsense with the S&P downgrade is yet another distraction – after 4 months of haggling over the debt ceiling idiocy – from the real problem facing the country: a downturn that has left 25 million people unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor force altogether. Tens of millions of people are seeing their career hopes and family lives wrecked by the prospect of long-term unemployment.

The incredible part of this story is that the people who are responsible are all doing just fine, and most of them are still making policy. Furthermore, they are using their own incompetence as a weapon to argue that we have to take even more money from the poor and middle class, this time in the form of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

The basic story is that the economy needs demand. The housing bubble generated more than $1.4 trillion in annual demand through the construction and consumption that it spurred. Now that this demand is gone, there is nothing to replace it. President Obama’s stimulus was replaced some of the lost demand, but it was nowhere near large enough. We tried to fill a $1.4 trillion hole in annual demand with around $300 billion in annual stimulus in 2009 and 2010. In 2011, most of this boost has been exhausted and the economy is coming to a near standstill.

If we had ...

What Bernie Would Do On The Super Committee
Moderator
Published: Saturday 6 August 2011
An interview of Sen. Bernie Sanders on what he would do if named to the committee

O'DONNELL: Senator, the Campaign for America's Future is circulating a petition reading, "we need leaders like Senator Sanders, Representative Ellison, and Representative Grijalva on the super committee if we are going to protect our retirement security and finally tax the rich."

Senator Sanders, what are the chances of you getting a seat on that committee?

SANDERS: I wouldn't hold my breath, but I would certainly like to serve. But the fact of the matter is the Republicans are not going to ask the wealthiest people and the largest corporations to contribute one cent toward deficit reduction.

The real issue is whether the Democrats will hold firm and make sure that they protect Social Security, which has not contributed one penny toward our deficit, whether they are going to protect Medicare and Medicaid and other important programs. That's what the issue is.

O'DONNELL: So, senator, you think the fight now is -- are you saying, look, forget about taxation. Those guys are locked in. It's hopeless.

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"Class Warfare": Fox Desperately Defends The Wealthy From Tax Hikes Most Americans Support
Elizabeth
Published: Thursday 4 August 2011
"Obama calls for "balanced approach" to deficit reduction -- one where wealthy "pay their fair share"

Since passage of the deal to avoid a default crisis, Fox News figures have attacked President Obama and Democrats for calling for a "balanced approach" to lowering the deficit and asking the nation's wealthiest to pay "their fair share." In fact, economists across the political spectrum agree that the deficit cannot be lowered in the long term without revenue increases; a majority of Americans support such an increase; and taxes for the wealthy are at the lowest rate they have been in decades.

Obama Calls For "Balanced Approach" To Deficit Reduction -- One Where Wealthy "Pay Their Fair Share"

Obama: Bipartisan Support For "A Balanced Approach" To Deficit Reduction -- "One Where The Wealthiest Americans And Big Corporations Pay Their Fair Share, Too." From President Obama's July 25 address to the National Council of La Raza:

So I've already said I'm willing to cut spending that we don't need by historic amounts to reduce our long-term deficit and make sure that we can invest in our children's future.  I'm willing to take on the rising costs of health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid to make sure they're strong and secure for future generations.  

 But we can't just close our deficits by cutting spending.  That's the truth, and Americans understand that.  Because if all we all do is cut, then seniors will have to pay a lot more for their health care, and students will have to pay a lot more for college, and workers who get laid off might not have any temporary assistance or job training to get them back on their feet.  And with gas prices this high, we'd have to stop much of the clean energy research that will help us free ourselves from dependence ...

Kucinich: Why I Voted Against S. 365, the Budget Control Act of 2011
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"This bill fails on its own terms, which are allegedly about fiscal accountability."

S. 365, the Budget Control Act of 2011, is a landmark in American history, but for the wrong reasons. It is a fake solution to a phony crisis. It provides for a radical transformation of the structure of government. It is an attack on the principle of government of the people. All this in the name of fiscal accountability.

The choice we have today, default or dismantling of the social compact through draconian spending cuts, is a false choice. The President could have simply told Congressional leaders back in December of last year that the debt ceiling was not negotiable, and invoked the 14th Amendment as a backstop.

The “debt crisis” was spurred on by credit rating agencies of dubious integrity threatening a downgrade of the nation’s credit unless the government cut spending. Most of the cuts are guaranteed to hurt those who live at society’s margins, while S. 365 protects the investor class whose interests are served by the rating agencies.

Unelected credit ratings agencies like Standard and Poor’s, the self-declared arbiter of U.S. government creditworthiness must themselves be subjected to a new level of scrutiny absent in the run-up to the Wall Street crisis. The credit raters helped to create that crisis too by procuring business through selling rating marks. The very idea that the sovereign United States must genuflect to dishonest rating agencies is antiquated and counterproductive to America’s economic recovery.

This bill fails on its own terms, which are allegedly about fiscal accountability. The debt has three main drivers:

The first is the recession. If we want to reduce the debt, we have to stimulate the economy, which is hobbled by a jobless recovery. America has 14 million people out of work. We have over three trillion dollars of infrastructure which must be replaced or rebuilt.We should be investing in America, rebuilding America, stimulating the American economy, priming the ...

Four Myths About the Debt-Ceiling Deal
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"The 'debt ceiling' deal has been crafted so that 'centrist' Democrats and Republicans can finally implement the draconian measures they both want."

Today we're watching the end of a brief manufactured crisis - and the beginning of a long national nightmare. The "debt ceiling" deal has been crafted so that "centrist" (i.e., right-wing) Democrats and Republicans can finally implement the draconian measures they both want, but in an indirect way that gives them as little accountability as possible.

As might be expected, there's a lot of confusion around the deal -- in fact, it's designed to create confusion. Here are four myths about the deal, followed by four ways it's likely to hurt you personally if it isn't stopped:

Myth #1: The deal "preserves Social Security and Medicare."

Right-leaning Democrats are busy telling this story this morning, but it's not true. It only defers the day of reckoning. Social Security and Medicare are exempted from the first and smaller round of cuts, but not from the larger $1.5 trillion in cuts that the unelected "Super Congress" must find. Half of this unelected group will consist of Republicans pledged to gut these programs, and it's looking likely that at least half of the Democrats will include Senators like Kent Conrad, the entitlement-cutting solon who briefly shuttled messages between the two parties as this "deal" was being crafted.

The likeliest outcome? Unnecessary and drastic benefit cuts to Social Security that probably involve raising the retirement age even more than it's already scheduled to rise, the "chained-CPI" that artificially lowers cost-of-living standards to well below what seniors need for their expenses, and possibly a means-testing system that sounds reasonable but will quickly target middle-income Americans.

This isn't a deal to protect Medicare and Social Security. It's a deal to deliver those cuts through a body that's not accountable to voters (except in their own states and ...

Capitulation
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"The Republic, common sense and decency have been trampled."

The raw deal on the budget ceiling has been cut. The Tea Party terrorists – the extremist faction willing to hold the economy hostage to get their way – have won. The Republic, common sense and decency have been trampled.

With the economy deeply depressed, 25 million people in need of full time work, the raw deal will impede any recovery. It precludes any serious action on jobs from the federal government. It will cost jobs as spending is cut. Instead of getting serious about a plan to revive this economy and put people back to work, Washington will remain fixated on what and how much to cut. From the President to the Tea Party zealots, politicians will tell Americans that this agreement is “important to our economy.” Yes, it is important – important in the way a virus is important to a sickly patient. It will make things worse.

With Gilded Age inequality, and hedge fund billionaires paying a lower effective tax rate than their secretaries, the deal contains no tax hikes. Poor and working Americans are asked to pay to clean up the mess that Wall Street’s excesses created.

Although the terms of the agreement are complicated, the capitulation is clear. There will be deep cuts in discretionary spending—$900 billion over 10 years, one-third from the Pentagon—in the first step. There are no tax revenues, much less higher taxes on millionaires in that mix. (The President touts that domestic discretionary spending will be ...

Ransom Paid
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
"The radical right has now won a huge tactical and strategic victory."

Anyone who characterizes the deal between the President, Democratic, and Republican leaders as a victory for the American people over partisanship understands neither economics nor politics.

The deal does not raise taxes on America’s wealthy and most fortunate — who are now taking home a larger share of total income and wealth, and whose tax rates are already lower than they have been, in eighty years. Yet it puts the nation’s most important safety nets and public investments on the chopping block.

It also hobbles the capacity of the government to respond to the jobs and growth crisis. Added to the cuts already underway by state and local governments, the deal’s spending cuts increase the odds of a double-dip recession. And the deal strengthens the political hand of the radical right.

Yes, the deal is preferable to the unfolding economic catastrophe of a default on the debt of the U.S. government. The outrage and the shame is it has come to this choice.

More than a year ago, the President could have conditioned his agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts beyond 2010 on Republicans’ agreement not to link a vote on the debt ceiling to the budget deficit. But he did not.

Many months ago, when Republicans first demanded spending cuts and no tax increases as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, the President could have blown their cover. He could have shown the American people why this demand had nothing to do with deficit reduction but everything to do with the GOP’s ideological fixation on shrinking the size of the government — thereby imperiling Medicare, Social Security, education, infrastructure, and everything else Americans depend on. But he did not.

And through it all the President could have explained to Americans that the biggest economic challenge we face is restoring jobs and wages and economic growth, that spending cuts in the next few years will slow the economy even ...

Congressional Left Slam Obama's Debt Deal
Moderator
Published: Monday 1 August 2011
The question that remains is: How much damage?

“Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time,” said Harry Truman.
 
If the thirty-third president was right, then Barack Obama just did himself and his party a world of hurt.
 
Faced with the threat that Tea Party–pressured Republicans in the House really would steer the United States toward default, and in so doing steer the US economy over the cliff, Obama had to do something. But instead of bold action—borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan to demand a straight up-or-down vote on raising the debt ceiling; borrowing a page from Franklin Roosevelt to pledge to use the authority afforded him by the Constitution to defend the full faith and credit of the United States—the president engaged in inside-the-Beltway bargaining of the most dysfunctional sort.

In cutting a deal with Congressional Republicans that places Democratic legacy programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—at risk while cutting essential programs for working families and the poor, Obama has positioned himself and his administration to the right of where mainstream Republicans such as Howard Baker, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush used to stand in fights with the fringe elements of their party.

Now, the fringe is in charge of the GOP. And Obama is cutting deals to satisfy Republicans that Britain’s banking minister describes as “

Nurses Warn Washington: Don’t Cut Care
Moderator
Published: Tuesday 26 July 2011
The real reason nurses care so much is that it's personal. Further cuts will kill patients they know.

Registered nurses have pledged not to endorse candidates who cut social security, medicare, and medicaid. For weeks nurses across the U.S. have been bombarding members of the Senate with calls demanding they hold the line. Why do they care so much? Here's the data: A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, picked up by the Washington Post notes that nearly half of Medicare recipients have incomes at or below 200 percent of poverty, and are already spending nearly a fourth of their budgets on health care. The Economic Policy Institute notes that for the poorest 40 percent of 65-and-older households, Social Security payouts constitute more than four-fifths of total income - and as RN Deborah Burger points out in this interview with Laura Flanders, patients are already making deadly choices between medications, rent and food. The data is damning but as Burger reveals, the real reason nurses care so much is that it's personal. Further cuts will kill patients they know. Does no one on Capitol Hill go to hospital? Burger is a co-president of the NNU.

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