Mr. Obama isn’t compromising with Republicans—he is a Republican

it's getting harder and harder to witness the charade that is the 2012 election season... the ugly lie of government of the people by the people makes it really difficult to give a shit...

rob urie in counterpunch...

Mr. Obama selected the members of his deficit
commission with a particular outcome in mind—to cut the social programs
long derided by the right as ‘entitlements’ while maintaining tax cuts
for the rich and pushing more of the same neo-liberal reforms that led
to the current bifurcated economy. To be clear, with this commission Mr.
Obama was not defending against the wing-nut economics of the radical
right, he was straightforwardly promoting them.

To assure the outcome that he wanted he loaded his commission with
deficit-hawk Democrats and Republicans. Even so, the commission couldn’t
 come to consensus and the required votes for ratifying its
recommendations weren’t found. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama continued to push
 the most onerous of these recommendations as if consensus had been
found in subsequent negotiations with congressional Republicans.


This tale, generally known to folks who are paying attention to
politics and economics, is retold in response to the ongoing pleas from
liberals, progressives and New York Times columnists that Mr. Obama stop
compromising with Republicans on economic issues. Clearly from his
actions, Mr. Obama isn’t compromising with Republicans—he is a
Republican. And Mr. Obama has demonstrated time and again that he isn’t a
defender against the predations of our economic elite; he is an active
proponent of them. How much more evidence is needed for this to be
clear?

[...]

As is the case in American presidential politics, the
choice is never between ‘good’ candidates. It is always a contest in
lesser-evilism. But at least Mitt Romney is straightforward about whose
interests he represents. Despite the use of seemingly different
rhetoric, Mr. Romney and Barack Obama serve the same masters. Those
putting forward the pretense that there is a great difference between
them are not paying attention to Mr. Obama’s record. Sure Mitt Romney
would be a disaster. Barack Obama already is a disaster. What we need is
a revolution, not more delusion that either candidate would serve our
interests.

maybe succumbing to helplessness and hopelessness is precisely the strategy... people who believe that nothing is ever going to change tend not to be troublemakers...
meanwhile, the barrage of requests for donations to candidates and causes is approaching a fever pitch...

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Chomsky: We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke.

as always, chomsky's ability to recognize and describe the patterns and structures of our socioeconomic and political realities is unmatched...

tomdispatch...

There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.  Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn’t really much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits.

The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country.

For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh -- and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less -- the .1% -- it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?

[...]

[T]he Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories.

[...]

We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke.  And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted -- and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures.  It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

the 1% or, more accurately, the .1%, our ruling super-rich elites, will not go gently into that good night, but it would sure be nice to give them a hearty push...

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Who would be on a deficit commission if we lived in a real democracy...?

we can only dream...

Here is the real deficit commission that you would expect to see if we were a democracy instead of a plutocracy: It would have 100 members:

# 98 of the 100 members would make less than $250,000 a year.
# 50 of the members would come from households in which the total income of all wage-earners is less than $50,221.
# 17% of the commission members would be un- or underemployed, and would be wondering why they are on a deficit commission instead of a jobs commission.
# 19 people on the commission would receive some form of Social Security benefits, 12 of those as retirees. And on this deficit commission they get to talk when the ones making over $250K propose cutting Social Security.
# 43 of the commission members would have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. 27 of those less than $1,000.
# The commission would include the right proportion of factory and construction workers, and people who work in a kitchen, and waiting tables, and teaching, and nursing, and installing tires, and all the other things that people do except, apparently, those on DC elite commissions. (People who do manual labor get an extra vote each on what the retirement age should be.)
# Include people who are on active duty in the military – the people who said they don’t need that expensive plane, but couldn’t get body armor.
# 60 members would not have college degrees.
# 13 members would be receiving food stamps.

simply because such stuff is my life's work, i have to smack myself on the forehead when i think about organizing the work of a 100-member commission but i do like the idea of a truly representative commission trying to address ANY national issues of significance...

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The whole point of the Deficit Commission

even though glenn didn't post this with a specific focus on labor day, having in mind instead a snide tribute to the honesty of alan simpson, it's still highly apropos for today's national holiday...

The whole point of the Commission is that the steps which Washington wants to take -- particularly cuts in popular social programs, such as Social Security -- can occur only if they are removed as far as possible from democratic accountability. As the economist James Galbraith put it when testifying before the Commission in July:

• Continue reading

Your proceedings are clouded by illegitimacy. . . . First, most of your meetings are secret, apart from two open sessions before this one, which were plainly for show. There is no justification for secret meetings on deficit reduction. No secrets of any kind are involved. . . .

Second, that some members of the commission are proceeding from fixed, predetermined agendas. Third, that the purpose of the secrecy is to defer public discussion of cuts in Social Security and Medicare until after the 2010 elections. You could easily dispel these suspicions by publishing video transcripts of all of your meetings on the Internet, and by holding all future meetings in public . . .

Conflicts of interest constitute the fourth major problem. The fact that the Commission has accepted support from Peter G. Peterson, a man who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare, raises the most serious questions.

That's why Commission co-chair Alan Simpson -- with his blunt contempt for Social Security and and other benefit programs (such as aid to disabled veterans) and his acknowledged eagerness to slash them -- has done the country a serious favor. His recent outbursts have unmasked this Commission and shed light on its true character. Unlike his fellow Commission members, who imperiously dismiss public inquiries into what they're doing as though they're annoying and inappropriate, Simpson -- to his genuine credit -- has been aggressively engaging critics, making it impossible to ignore what the Commission is really up to.

[...]

One of the most significant developments in the U.S. is the rapidly and severely increasing rich-poor gap. A middle class standard of living is being suffocated and even slowly eliminated, as budget cuts cause an elimination of services that are hallmarks of first-world living. Because the wealthiest Americans continue to consolidate both their monopoly on wealth and, more important, their control of Congress and the government generally, we respond to all of this by enacting even more policies which exacerbate that gap and favor even more the wealthiest factions while taking more from the poorest and most powerless. And now, the very people responsible for the vulnerable financial state of the U.S. want to address that problem by targeting one of the very few guarantors in American life of a humane standard of living: Social Security.

i would ask just exactly when my country became the bought and paid for property of our super-rich elites but that would be seriously disingenuous on my part... it's been going on for the better part of my nearly 63 years... it's just taken me well over 2/3 of that for me to see it for what it is...

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