During the end stages of my late mother's illness, I did not want to write publicly about what she was going through. But now that she is gone, it can be instructive.

In late September, Mom had an "episode" which landed her in the hospital. Always in denial about the reality that she had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, she continued to smoke and only used her supplementary oxyten when in bed. After she had fallen asleep sitting at her kitchen table, she spent the next two days in bed, unable to even speak properly. The following night she went completely psychotic, screaming terrible things and demanding to be taken to a hospital.

As far as I know, she was given only oxygen at the hospital (where she arrived with a blood oxygen reading of only 83%), and within a few days she was coherent again, though the nightmarish scenario she still viewed as real didn't become acknowledged as a hallucination until a week later.

After two months in an assisted living residence (which she hated), Mom went back home and died 36 hours later, peacefully, in her sleep.

In the last few months of her life, there had been a few times when she had found herself having panic attacks, unable to catch her breath. This is characteristic of COPD patients. My sister had arranged entry into a hospice program for her, but when she proved too "healthy" for inpatient hospice, she began as an outpatient. For all that Mom had suffered from severe depression her whole life, she clung to her incapacitatingly miserable life. What she had described ini September seemed that she had gone to the brink back then and then decided she wasn't ready yet. But by the time she came home, once again incoherent, unlikely to improve significantly, I think the antianxiety meds that hospice provided allowed her to let go and pass quietly.

This was such a blessing, as we had had nightmare scenarios of Mom, always a wuss about discomfort, screaming in terror as her damaged lungs and heart gave out. Hospice was able to provide her with at least some measure of comfort and dignity as she ended her journey.

For those in Louisiana, who may be poor and also dealing with a terminal illness, exiting will not be as painless as it was for my mother. Because 2016 GOP Presidential wannabe and Teabagger Darling Bobby Jindal, has decided that death with dignity is only for those who can afford to pay for it or those fortunate enough to live in communities that have sufficient funding to pay for indigent care:

he has authorized elimination of the state’s hospice program for Medicaid recipients. According to a local New Orleans news station, Louisiana residents over the age of 21 will stop receiving hospice benefits at the end of the month. As of February, low-income Louisianans with terminal illnesses and disabilities will lose access to long-term home and medical care.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals defends this as a cost-saving measure: Over the next two years, Louisiana will save $8.3 million by ending state-funded hospice care. But that’s a paltry sum compared to the state’s $900 million deficit. And in the same way that raising Medicare eligibility increases costs by moving seniors into more expensive private insurance plans, these cuts will, in the end, place a greater burden on the state, as low-income Louisianans turn to nearby hospitals and ICUs, shifting the burden to localities.

In isolation, it’s a disaster of a plan. When coupled with existing cuts to education and a large tax increase on the bottom 80 percent of Louisiana residents, it’s a catastrophe. Indeed, Jindal seems devoted to engineering a Louisiana that works little for its most vulnerable citizens, and does as much as possible to satisfy the wants of wealthy, entrenched interests.

It's one thing to buy into this notion of "makers and takers." It's one thing to fancy yourself to be a religious man, walking around with an aura of faux-piety, and decide that terminally ill poor people can die in excruciating pain, or gasping for breath, if already-strapped localities can't foot the bill.

Whether Barack Obama follows through on his inauguration speech is yet to be determined. But in his speech, which Republicans quite rightly saw as an attack on their cold-hearted social Darwinist agenda, this is what he was talking about. We do have an obligation to care for those unable to care for themselves. Hospice is part of that for end-of-life care. And no one who would cut people out of hospice deserves to ever invoke any kind of deity again.

Labels: Bobby Jindal, end of life care, social Darwinism

Rick Scott had better get cracking on that disenfranchisement, because this pick may very well just have delivered Florida to Obama.

Read all about the Randian Ghoul Who Would Be VP here. Or a short summary here.

Labels: 2012 election, Greedy Republican Bastards, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, social Darwinism

When I was a kid, we always lived in what I remember my mother calling "the $25,000 house." The $25,000 house had three bedrooms and a bath and a half. Her dream was to be able to live in "the $30,000 house" that was the next level up. That house would have two full baths and a family room with sliding glass doors to a patio. The $35,000 house would maybe have a pool. That was about as far as I remember the aspirations going. It wasn't that my parents didn't work hard and didn't want more for their children. My mother worked part-time as a legal secretary at a time when it was scandalous for women to work outside the home. My father's ambition was to find the cure for cancer -- that's hardly thinking small.

While in college, I dated a guy whose father was a doctor. Their house wasn't all that much bigger than ours was. Yes, the furnishings were more expensive, and his father drove a Cadillac (which was the prestige vehicle nameplate for the nouveau-riche at that time). But they didn't live in a mansion with a bridal staircase and palladian windows and tray ceilings in the bedroom and a home theatre. The guy I was dating may have had top-of-the-line audio equipment in his room, but it was still a 10 x 10 bedroom in a suburban house. And he didn't have his own bathroom.

I don't know when this business about being rich started. Perhaps it was when cash-strapped states in the 1970's started legalizing lotteries, where all you needed was "a dollar and a dream." Or perhaps it was 1984, when a shaggy-haired guy named Steve Jobs emerged out of a middle-class neighborhood in California to unveil the Macintosh; and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous began to air, bringing "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" into living rooms of the middle class seemingly every single night. It was important that the middle class start seeing these lifestyles every night, and regarding them as something to which they should aspire, despite the fact that most of the people profiled on the show made their money in the ferociously competitive maw of the entertainment industry, where luck plays as much of a role, if not more, than talent:





What's interesting about these two clips from the show is how ordinary these "lifestyles" look today. Micky Dolenz' English mansion resembles from the front about half the McMansions built in Bergen County during the last decade. A kitchen like that shown in the 1980s as being part and parcel of the life of the toffs was regarded on real estate programs on HGTV during the last decade as mandatory in even the most modest POS cape cod if you wanted to be able to sell your house. Places like Bobbie Brown's "luxury vacation spot in Arizona" are now all-inclusive resorts like the Sandals/Beaches chain, visited by the kind of people you surely know who take their kids out of school for a family vacation at a posh resort.

It isn't that there wasn't interest in celebrities before Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Photoplay and Motion Picture Story were founded in 1911, and People had been around since 1974. But the effect of Lifestyles was to start people thinking "I could live like that," especially with the kind of money Wall Streeters were making at the time.

Somewhere along the line, just living "a good life" wasn't enough anymore, and it seems to have coincided with the ramping up of income inequality right around the heyday of Lifestyles, when Ronald Reagan first cut taxes on investment income -- a practice continued with enthusiasm under Presidents George H.W. Bush and, yes, even Bill Clinton. A great deal of money was made by a few during the Reagan era, and even more made by a few during the dot-com bubble. But for average workers -- people like my parents for whom sliding doors to a patio was a big deal -- the pie was growing ever-smaller. So if the entertainment industry that had spawned Ronald Reagan could dangle enough shiny in front of ordinary Americans and get them longing for stone mansions with French country kitchens, they might not notice how the lifestyle they were actually living was in danger.

And so we came to the 1990's, when guys in blue jeans and T-shirts became multimillionaires and even those who weren't wanted to live like them. So the POS capes and ranches started coming down, and huge ersatz country houses with bridal staircases and designer French country kitchens and crown molding in every room and teensy-tiny windows on three vinyl-sided sides of the house allowed people who were not celebrities to "live the good life", even if only on a 75 x 100 lot instead of seven rolling acres in the English countryside. Car leases allowed entry-level programmers to drive BMWs. A middle-class family could go to a "posh" resort like Beaches ("Luxury included® Resorts for Everyone").

And then it all came crashing down in 2008.

It gets harder to dangle the shiny of fancy cars and luxury homes to a guy whose job ws sent overseas and now finds that his entire industry has. It's hard to sell "If You Just Work Hard Enough" to a guy who hasn't worked in two years and can't even get a job at Wendys because as a skilled machinist, or PC tech, he's "overqualified." It's hard to sell champagne wishes and caviar dreams to a couple who really did try to look at the numbers the mortgage broker was showing them to "prove" they could afford their house with the French Country kitchen and tray ceilings , but now they find the house is worth half of what they owe on it and they're both out of work and scrambling to find a rental that will take two unemployed people, their kids, and their dog.

Mitt Romney is out there talking about his father's humble beginnings, moving ever-closer to declaring himself as having been born a poor black child. When confronted about his net worth, he tosses off comments that he wants EVERONE to be rich. This is red meat to guys like Gene Marks, who thinks every small business owner wakes up every day dreaming of the day he too can be like Mitt Romney. I used to work for one of those small business owners. He's about as Republican as they come. His wife and co-owner had an autographed photo of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on the wall in her office the way tween girls have Justin Bieber posters. He's an unrepentant supply-sider. But I know that most days, he's not dreaming of being able to expand a fancy house in La Jolla. He'd be just as happy to be able to keep his business going. I think he works pretty hard, trying to drum up business, but he's not Mitt Romney. And I have to wonder just how hard Romney had to work. I mean, how difficult is it, really, to buy up companies and wreck them?

The bottom line is that not everyone is going to be rich. If a company employs 100,000 people, only one is going to be be the CEO. Most people are going to make less, and that's OK, as long as they can actually find work and earn a living. I think people are starting to realize that not everyone needs a 6000 square foot house with a French country kitchen, tray ceilings, and a bridal staircase. They're scaling back their aspiration, not because they want to be lazy (though I do think people are getting sick of working 80-hour weeks and foregoing vacations to "prove their dedication to the company", then finding themselves shitcanned anyway in favor of someone overseas who'll work for a dollar a day), but because the cost of pretending to be one of the toffs is just too high.

For Mitt Romney to get up there and say that further tax cuts for the already rich are a step towards everyone being rich is ridiculous on its face. Not everyone is going to be rich, and I think most people know this. All most people want is just a fighting chance.

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, rant, social Darwinism, supply-side economics

In case you thought that we might be able to survive four years of Mitt Romney:

Speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s annual meeting, Mr. Romney said his plan would cap spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2016, and would require $500 billion a year in spending cuts. To accomplish this, Mr. Romney explained, he would eliminate all nonessential government programs, including Amtrak, return federal programs like Medicaid entirely to the states and improve the productivity and efficiency of the federal government. He would also immediately cut all nonsecurity discretionary spending by 5 percent across the board.

Mr. Romney’s proposal for Medicare is similar to the hotly debated plan that Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, introduced in April. Mr. Ryan’s plan would replace Medicare and offer payments to older Americans to buy coverage from the private market.

Mr. Romney’s proposal would give beneficiaries the option of enrolling in private health care plans, using what he, like Mr. Ryan, called a “premium support system.” But unlike the Ryan plan, Mr. Romney’s would allow older people to keep traditional Medicare as an option. However, if the existing government program proved more expensive and charged higher premiums, the participants would be responsible for paying the difference.

He presented his plan as offering more choice — though younger Americans would need to be prepared to possibly pay more, for instance, depending on which plan they selected.

“Younger Americans today, when they turn 65, should have a choice between traditional Medicare and other private health care plans that provide at least the same level of benefits,” he said. “Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care.”

He concluded, “The future of Medicare should be marked by competition, by choice, and by innovation, rather than by bureaucracy, stagnation and bankruptcy.”

Yes, because health insurance companies are stumbling all over themselves to get your business, each one offering a better plan than the one before. And they're so innovative -- like the way they fight every claim just to see how long it'll take to wear you down before you stop fighting.

I've had a pretty decent health plan for Mr. Brilliant and I the last few years. We get it through my employer, so we're "only" paying about $3600 of the annual premium. It's got a $20 co-pay for preventive care, a $250 per person deductible, and covers 90% of "usual and customary" after that. Now "usual and customary" seems to be based on medical fees back in the days when Don Draper was taking little Sally to the pediatrician, but this plan has worked out OK for us.

So of course 2012 is the last year we'll have it.

After 2012, we'll be offered two plans -- an 80% plan with a low deductible, 80% coverage in-network and only 60% outside; or an high-deductible plan with an HSA. The difference in employee premiums is about $2000, so perhaps if I put that $2000 into the HSA along with the $500 the company will kick in, it'll offset most of the $2700 deductible for two people...assuming of course that we could pay for all $225 of your standard office visit out of the HSA, rather than the sixty bucks that in Insurance Delusionland is "usual and customary."

This is the world into which Mitt Romney wants to spill all the elderly. Oh he's making noise now about how there'll be a choice, but what senior citizen in his right mind would choose to try to buy an individual insurance policy instead of Medicare?

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney is worth a quarter of a BILLION dollars, and a health insurance premium is like lunch money to him.

And yet he and his buddies just can't kick even one more nickel apiece. Good heavens, no. After all, Mitt Romney worked so hard to get his money -- working hard to buy up companies, dismantle them, and throw their employees in the trash can. And the Koch brothers certainly shouldn't be asked to kick in anything else. After all, they're billionaires, which means they worked harder than we do, right? And the fact that they inherited their business from their father means nothing, right? How about the Walton children? They have $87 billion. And they made it by starting out as greeters, right? Hardly -- they inherited it from old Sam Walton. But they can't kick any more, can they? Not without extreme hardship.

After all, America has to be kept safe for the Walton children, and Prescott Bush's children, and George Romney's son, and Fred Trump's son, and so on.

And if that means that the poor and the sick and the elderly have to lay down and die, so be it.

So where does that leave us? Do we hold our noses and vote again for a President who's already shown that his futile, quixotic quest to be liked by a bunch of greedy, racist bigots is more important than anything to him? Do we stick with a bunch of corporatist Democrats who give lip service to the middle and working class but behind the scenes know full well that it's all over, and they're going to get their piece of the pie before it all goes to shit and the rest of us start killing each other for cans of baked beans?

In the past we could rely on Democrats to at least be the guardians of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, even if they sold us out on everything else. But thanks to the so-called "supercommittee", and Obama's willingness to let mandatory cuts kick in if this small group of intransigent Republians and sellout Democrats can't come up with a compromise (as if that were even possible), and this tendency they have to learn all the wrong lessons when they get clobbered and move even further to the right, it's hard to have any faith in them either.

So we're left with a choice -- we either let it all go to shit now, or have a few more tolerable years before it's all Mad Max.

Hardly what we had in mind in 2008, is it?

Labels: Democratic sellouts, despair, Greedy Republican Bastards, Medicare, social Darwinism, Social Security, The Right Wing War on the Middle Class, We Are So Screwed

I want you to bookmark this post, in which I once again note what George Carlin said back in 2005, barely three years before he decided he'd had enough of this Goddess-forsaken level of reality and checked out of this mortal coil. Bookmark it and watch it every single day for the rest of your life, just to make sure that you're not surprised when the social safety net is completely eliminated because we have to shovel more and more and more and more and more and more and more cash into the pockets of people who already have more than they can spend in 1000 lifetimes. At the very least, watch it every single fucking day until the 2012 eletion, just in case you're ever inclined to believe it again when Barack Obama says he's fighting for you, or Nancy Pelosi says NEXT time we'll draw a line in the sand. You can donate to Blue America candidates if you want, like I did yesterday because I wanted a shot at winning a Green Day-autographed Fender Stratocaster for Mr. Brilliant that he didn't even want because he has a Fernandes electric guitar that he insists is a nicer guitar than today's Strats, but that I figured we could sell and donate the proceeds to some worthy cause because while I adore my colleague whose 12-year-old loves Green Day, I'm not giving a 12-year-old a Stratocaster.

Anyway, if you're like me, you kept checking the bloodbath on Wall Street yesterday, wondering just how much less your retirement savings were going to be worth by the end of the day. I'm not going to say I've done everything right financially in my life. If I had back the money I spent on clothes I bought because they were on sale and never wore and eventually took over to the Caring About the Strays thrift shop I'd probably have at least a few thousand dollars to show for it. Seriously -- I've sold at least 36 pairs of leggings at garage sales for a buck a pair and still kept a few for working out. At one time I thought those were the only pants I'd ever be able to wear, so I bought them whenever they were ten bucks in the Newport News catalog. Then there's the small collection of antique cloche hats that I bought during my Roaring Twenties phase, and the Edwardian costume hats I bought during my Gilded Age phase, and all kinds of other assorted crap I didn't need. But while I didn't start putting any real money into 401(k) plans (yes, Gen-Xers, I came along too late for defined benefit pensions) until I was well into my thirties, I've been diligent ever since and lucky enough to work for employers for the last decade who also kicked in a fair amount. You see, I've always assumed that Social Secrity wouldn't be there for me, because Republicans have been making noise for the last thirty years that they want to get rid of it.

What I didn't bank on is that they also wanted us to get sick and die quickly once we reached a certain age. I know now that it was silly to think that way, especially since I knew that Republicans, blinded with greed as they are, HAVE no souls and HAVE no empathy with those who are poor, or elderly, or disabled. But would they be monsters enough to pull the rug out from the Federal health care system that provides medical care for those who could never possibly buy insurance on the open market, either because they are too sick already or because the actuarial tables don't favor them as profitable?

Well, now we know the answer. Yes they would. And that shandeh far di goyim Eric Cantor is leading the charge:

If you, like me, are over 55, do NOT take any comfort in Cantor's statement that you will be "indemnified" from being cast out on the street. The only thing that Cantor wants to "indemnify" is the Republican Party against a wholesale rejection by every single person in this country who is over 55. Because what Cantor is doing here is not just trying to shore up Republican support among the elderly and soon-to-be-elderly, but also to foment generational warfare. I mean, Gen X would line up all baby boomers against a wall and shoot us TODAY if they thought they could get away with it. What do you think is going to happen in the near-term future, as more Marco Rubios enter Congress, and the now-elderly boomers, having seen our retirement savings collapse and can't even vote anymore because we are now living on the streets, no longer have ANY political clout? If you're already on Social Security and Medicare today, they'll leave you alone because not even David Brooks would tolerate them yanking your benefits from you. But if you are NOT yet in the system, if you are age 61 or under, heed George Carlin's words: They're coming for your Social Security. If you are age 64 or under heed his larger point: they're coming for your Medicare. And the Democrats have proven with this debt ceiling cave-in that they will do absolutely nothing to stop them.

Labels: economic death watch, Greedy Republican Bastards, Medicare, social Darwinism, Social Security, We Are So Screwed

Today's honoree: The Rude Pundit, who demonstrates what "shared sacrifice" looks like in the lives of real people. The whole thing is one big money quote, so I'll just share two paragraphs here and urge you to go read the whole thing.

The old lady at the pharmacy counter obviously wore an adult diaper. That tell-tale sharp urine scent half-masked by sweet-smelling chemicals emanated from her, and the Rude Pundit stood right behind her yesterday, waiting to pick up the pills that prevent him from going on a five-state killing spree. She was getting three prescriptions. The total was $6.00. This puzzled the old lady. She had never paid anything before, and even this seemingly small amount was obviously causing her consternation. The cashier checked with the pharmacist, who said that there had been a minor change to her plan, and now she had to pay a little for the scrips, a buck-fifty, three bucks. She apologized and put aside the couple of other things she was going to purchase to pay for the medicine.

The Rude Pundit didn't know if the change had been to Medicare or to a supplemental plan, but, either way, she was being asked to contribute more than she had before, which she did. He also thought of another story, one that he thinks about a great deal these days.

[snip]

A drug benefit cut for an old lady in a diaper and a closed tax loophole on private jets are not balance. That six bucks cut into that woman's limited income in profound ways. To use the friend's equation in reverse (times ten), $6 is like $3000. And even that's not a big deal to the wealthy because you can bet that the woman is living paycheck to paycheck. The millionaire has shitloads of money that don't even count as taxable income.

Our savage economic inequality in this country is coming to a head. We talk about "spending cuts," as if what we're not really talking about is "making the poor pay more for stuff." We talk as if the services that are cut will be picked up by the aching states and cities. And we talk about nonsense like "shared sacrifice," as if that's the rational position in any of this. When the wealthy actually sacrifice something, we can talk about sharing.

(via)

Labels: Big Blue Smurf Blogging, social Darwinism

How can Social Security be a contributor to the deficit when it is a holder of some of that debt in the form of Treasury bonds? To say that we have to cut Social Security to reduce the deficit is like saying we have to nuke China to reduce it.

Labels: belaboring the obvious, Republican lies, social Darwinism, Social Security

I don't know.

Maybe Barack Obama really in his heart still believes, despite being depicted as a monkey, the target of an e-mail depicting his parents as chimpanzees, called a liar in the middle of the State of the Union message, described with lynching metaphors by a leading presidential candidate, and a nonstop barrage of obstructionism by Congressional Republicans during the last two-and-a-half years, that he still can negotiate with Republicans; that he's so special that he can part the waters. Maybe he has some deep-seated self-loathing that's so pervasive that he gets some kind of perverse gratification out of being abused by Republicans.

Maybe he's even just doing what he's wanted to do all along -- set himself up for a nice cushy eight-figure job with an investment bank after he leaves office and join the ranks of the very people we elected him to keep under some kind of control.

Whatever it is, it's pretty clear that the poor and the elderly in this country are going to be sacrificed, not by some right-wing Republican greedmeister, but by a Democrat that those very poor and elderly elected:

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

Rather than roughly $2 trillion in savings, the White House is now seeking a plan that would slash more than $4 trillion from annual budget deficits over the next decade, stabilize borrowing, and defuse the biggest budgetary time bombs that are set to explode as the cost of health care rises and the nation’s population ages.

That would represent a major legislative achievement, but it would also put Obama and GOP leaders at odds with major factions of their own parties. While Democrats would be asked to cut social-safety-net programs, Republicans would be asked to raise taxes, perhaps by letting tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest households expire on schedule at the end of next year.

The administration argues that lawmakers would also get an important victory to sell to voters in 2012. “The fiscal good has to outweigh the pain,” said a Democratic official familiar with the discussions.

Yup. Cuts to the social safety net that have been in place for decades and that keep the elderly from living out on the street are going to really be a big seller in 2012, especially in states like, oh, say, Florida, and North Carolina, where there are both a lot of retirees AND a lot of poor people. That's gonna go over BIG.

Americans have drunk the deficit kool-aid, but they don't really understand what the kind of BIG CUTS NOW they seem to be asking for are going to mean. A poll in March of this year showed that while 80% of Americans are concerned about the deficit, they oppose cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and K-12 education. Believe me, when Grandma has to move into a house where Dad has been out of work for two years and the family income is a third of what it was; where the son has been out of college for a year and is still working at the Piggly-Wiggly for $7.25 an hour because he can't find a programming job; where the daughter who's an A student is living at home and going to community college because the money that Dad and Mom had put away from her college lost 40% of its value during the 2008 financial crisis and still hasn't recovered -- because Grandma can no longer afford her apartment and food after her Social Security checks have been cut, families like that are going to find their concern with the deficit disappearing mighty quick.

Americans don't favor cuts to these programs, but they DO, contrary to the relentless drumbeats of Republicans, favor increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, especially when the questions are framed as a choice between just cuts, just tax hikes, or a combination of both:

Several polls ask people if taxes should be increased on people who make more than $250,000. Polls show substantial majorities support the idea. We found majorities of 72 percent, 64 percent, and 59 percent. (Those are from April polls by ABC News/Washington Post, McClatchy-Marist, and USA Today/Gallup, respectively.)

On whether corporations pay enough in taxes, Gallup found that 67 percent said they pay too little.

Finally, we should note one area where we found contradictions on tax increases --in polls that ask people if they favor spending cuts, tax increases, or some combination thereof.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted at the beginning of May found that most people, 52 percent, favored a combination of cuts and tax increases. The NBC/Washington Post poll from April found that number was even higher, at 59 percent.

On the other hand, when you don't give people the option of both, they favor spending cuts over tax increases by significant margins. We found a Reuters/Ipsos poll from March that found people favored spending cuts over tax increase by 56 percent to 30, and a CBS News/New York Times poll from January that put it at 62 to 29.

But then we found polls that asked participants if they preferred cuts to benefits such as Social Security and Medicare over tax increases. In those cases, the results favored tax increases. The CBS News/New York Times poll found that 62 percent favored increasing taxes before Medicare benefits are cut.

The tax cuts that were instituted by George W. Bush in conjunction with his spending spree on two futile have been in place for a decade -- and there are still no jobs. But that isn't stopping Republicans from continuing the trickle-down meme that when the rich have stuffed all the cash into their pockets that will fit, they will start just tossing it on the floor in the form of jobs and let us pick up the scraps. The reality that we're seeing is that when their pockets are full, they just start stuffing cash into the pockets of another jacket.

And yet there is our President -- the one we elected in 2008, along with a Democratic Congress, to protect Social Security and Medicare, to protect public education, and to protect a woman's sovereignty over his own body -- selling us out on EVERYTHING.

Wo which is it? Are we once again dealing with a president who's willing to sacrifice a nation to his primal childhood wounds, or just another greedy asshole who rode a Trojan Horse into the White House?

Labels: despair, Medicare, social Darwinism, Social Security, We Are So Screwed

I have to wonder about a Democrat who seems bound and determined to go down in history as The President Who Gutted the New Deal.

Gaius Publius:

How should a progressive think about Obama? Just in the last few news cycles, several items scream for attention.

First this, the budget cave, Paul Krugman's observation ("Celebrating Defeat", my emphasis):

Ezra Klein gets this right, I think; it’s one thing for Obama to decide that it was better to give in to Republican hostage-taking than draw a line in the sand; it’s another for him to celebrate the result. Yet that’s just what he did. ... It’s worth noting that this follows just a few months after another big concession, in which he gave in to Republican demands for tax cuts. The net effect of these two sets of concessions is, of course, a substantial increase in the deficit.

Cave Week 1 was the Lame Duck for the ages, in which Obama promised never to give in to the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, then gave in. That blew a multi-trillion dollar hole in the long-term budget, which spending cuts are expected to fix.

Now we have Cave Week 2, Obama vs. the Teabags, in which the Teabags win big and Obama does a victory dance.

Next we find this, Obama vs. the Entitlements, a "major speech" on Wednesday, via Teagan Goddard (my emphasis again):

President Obama plans to deliver "a major speech" on Wednesday laying out an aggressive plan for deficit reduction -- including reform of entitlements, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Cave Week 3? "Reform" of Social Security by Obama will mean the death of the Democratic Party, and yet Obama wants it bad.

So which is it? Was Obama always a Republican Trojan Horse, or is his childhood baggage of trying to straddle two racial worlds without pissing off either so pervasive that he will throw our most vulnerable citizens out into the cold in a vain and ultimately futile effort to continue his hopeless quest?

Labels: Barack Obama, economic death watch, social Darwinism, We Are So Screwed

I can't even begin to tell you how many arguments I've had with people who are my FRIENDS about how they think everyone born during the post-WWII baby boom is responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, and how we're clogging up the workforce and hogging all the good jobs and we didn't have to deal with AIDS and we had it so good and left them nothing and why don't we just die already.

And these are people who are FRIENDS.

I have a boss in her 40's. All of my colleagues in my department at work are significantly younger than I am. The next youngest one is 51.

Imagine what my life at work is going to look like when this becomes reality:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted Sunday that he didn't expect Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to be around when he retires.

"What we [House Republicans] have said is this: We'll protect today's seniors and those nearing retirement, but for the rest of us, all of us, who are 54 and younger, I know the programs are not going to be there for me when I retire," Cantor told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"They can't," he added.

Cantor is 48. No wonder he takes so much money from the securities, real estate, and insurance industries. He's lining his own pockets for when he's successful in dismantling Social Security. Oh, and by the way, HE gets a government pension and taxpayer-funded health insurance FOR THE RESET OF HIS LIFE after he leaves office.

You think everyone hates baby boomers now? Just wait.

This is how Republicans are scapegoating public sector workers now:

Wait till you see what they say about those of us who manage to slip in under the wire. Wait till you see what they DO to those of us who manage to slip in under the wire. Rest assured, if you are in your mid-fifties or early sixties and you think you have nothing to worry about, guess again. The public sector workers who are now being scapegoated for the misdeeds of bad state governments making bad investments of pension fund money with sleazy bankers and hedge fund managers are the canary in the coal mine for tomorrow's Social Security recipients.

If you were making plans for your elderly years that included Social Security, you'd better start making other plans. Because you might get your check for a couple of years, but there are going to be a lot of angry younger people coming after you; some of them your own kids.

And the bankers are going to be grabbing the Orville Redenbacher and laughing as we tear each other apart.

Labels: America Gone Mad, economic death watch, social Darwinism, Social Security, We Are So Screwed

Today's honoree: Karen Garcia of Sardonicky, on "pathological zombie politician Paul Ryan".

Money quotes galore, I'll just pick one:

The obvious point of the Ryan plan is to Scare Us All To Death, as well as start a generation war between Millennials and their grandparents. Ryan is fine with leaving Medicare alone for the 55-plus crowd around today, but if you're in the unlucky below-55 age group, you will only get a few thousand bucks to buy crappy junk insurance when you retire. Meanwhile, you'll be paying to keep old geezers on life support through your payroll deductions. It's the tried and true "divide and conquer" formula all bosses and overlords use to keep their disgruntled workers and subjects in their places. Pit colleague against colleague, private sector versus public sector, young college graduate minimum wage McDonald's hamburger flipper against the Grandma living in retired "comfort" on his FICA/Medicare deduction dime. Destruction of the social safety net is the goal.

Labels: bloggers, economic death watch, social Darwinism

Paul Ryan thinks he can buy my vote by keeping me, at age 55, in the current Medicare system when I'm old. Of course those who are 55+ and think they can heave a sigh of relief because they won't be part of the group that's given vouchers to buy health insurance on the private market that will cost in the high five figures even if they can get it are fooling themselves. If you think resentment by screwed-over private sector workers towards not-yet-screwed-over public sector workers is ugly, wait till you see what happens when you have one segment of the elderly population that has Medicare and another that's paying $25,000/year for health insurance (if they can even get it).

But if you have a soul, you can't look at those a few years behind you on the continuum and feel any kind of relief, particularly people like Steven D. of Booman Tribune, to whom I've linked on a number of occasions and who posts about his own predicament over at What Used To Be Known As The Great Orange Satan Until John Boehner Took That Title Away:

The Republicans have a plan to destroy Medicare.

If enacted I will likely die an early death as will my wife.  

A little background: I have a chronic autoimmune disorder that forced me to retire from my profession over ten years ago.  The drugs I take each year (and I take mostly generic versions of those medications) cost roughly $5,000 last year.  With insurance, the amount I paid for those drugs cost about $1,200.

My wife is not so lucky.  She is a pancreatic cancer survivor (since 2006) who, as a result of the chemotherapy drugs she received, suffered permanent brain damage.  The details regarding the cognitive problems she struggles with are described in this post at Booman Tribune for those who are interested.  She is also a Type 1 Diabetic since the cancer and cancer treatments effectively destroyed her pancreas.  The drugs she takes for her health issues are much more expensive than mine.  They cost roughly $16,000 last year of which we paid roughly $4,000.  

>My wife, as a fully disabled person who receives SSD benefits, was shifted to Medicare A for doctor visits, etc.  Her drugs (as are mine, my daughter and my son), however, are still covered under the group insurance plan of her former employer.  The cost of those premiums is roughly $7000 per year and we pay the full amount.  Though the premiums have increased each year (roughly 5% give or take), we manage.  In this we are fortunate, since if we had to buy individual policies for health care the cost would be much higher.

In New York, where we live the average cost of an individual family health care plan in 2009 was a little under $14,000, but due to my wife's chronic condition (Type 1 diabetes and organic brain disorder), my chronic autoimmune disorder, and my daughters' chronic ADHD condition and anxiety disorder I suspect the cost of an individual health care plan for our family would be significantly higher if we had to purchase one on the open market in 2011.  

At present, including the costs of insurance premiums, drugs, dentist visits, doctor visits and other forms of medical treatment for our family we pay out of pocket roughly 21,000 per year.

Neither my wife or I will turn 65 before 2021, when the Republican voucher system would go in place and also at which time the eligibility age for Medicare would be raised to 67.  As an aside, I don't know what would happen to us at 65.  I can only assume our health insurance from my wife's plan would terminate but we would not be eligible for vouchers, leaving a two year gap.  I am presently 54 and my wife is 52, by the way.

At 67 (or 65), my wife and I will no longer have the luxury of relying on her former employer's group health care plan.  Under the Republican plan to eliminate Medicare and replace it with a "voucher" system we will be screwed.  Whatever insurance plan we might be able to buy would either cost far, far more than the voucher provided to us or not be worth the paper its printed on (i.e., the deductible would be so high that the insurance would be essentially useless).  But don't take my word for it.  Here is what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the Republican plan to kill Medicare:

Voucher recipients would probably have to purchase less extensive coverage or pay higher premiums than they would under current law, for two reasons. First, most of the savings for Medicare under the proposal stem from reducing the amounts that the federal government would pay for enrollees on a per capita basis, relative to the projections under current law. Second, future beneficiaries would probably face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.

So we would have no choice.  We could eat or buy extremely crappy health insurance.  In the event of a health crisis, it is highly likely that the person with the health issue would die because we could not afford the cost of even barely adequate health care such as we have today.  Certainly that would be the case if my wife suffered a recurrence of her cancer, or my condition worsened from merely a chronic condition to one that is life threatening.  

At that point the only rational decision for either of us might be to forego any medical treatment and die so as to salvage whatever savings and life insurance payments for our children we can, who lord knows will need all the help they can get in the coming years of this century.  Luckily, we have some savings and some life insurance that could be passed on to our children if we don't raid it to pay for health care, shelter and food we could no longer afford.

If you can read about Steven and his wife and still feel relieved that you'll get yours, you'd better go find out what happened to your soul.

Labels: economic death watch, Greedy Republican Bastards, health care, social Darwinism

Think about it: How would you rather check out of this God-forsaken level of reality? Would you rather be in a warm bed somewhere, perhaps lying on sheets nice and warm out of the dryer, with the sun streaming in your window and soft music playing into your room, perhaps with the aroma of peppermint, or fresh bread, or whatever your favorite aroma might be, while a doctor slips a needle into your arm and you wooze into a delightful drowsiness and then unconsciousness, and then another needle containing the drug that stops your heart is administered...or would you prefer to die out in the street, old, sick, and alone, huddling from a bitter wind, because you have no home, no shelter, no food, and no medical care?

I know which one I'd take.

But it's hard to imagine that the GOP will be kind and compassionate enough to offer the elderly the first one, not if the current House majority gets its way:

House Republicans are preparing to introduce a 10-year budget Tuesday that will eliminate Medicare and replace it with a private insurance system that closely resembles the new health care law, and end Medicaid as an entitlement program all together.

This plan, which also will include major restructuring of the tax code and cap discretionary spending, will reduce the deficit by over $4 trillion in 10 years, according to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Here's what this means if you're elderly, disabled, or poor.

Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries will lose their guaranteed benefits altogether. Currently, Medicaid is jointly financed by the federal government and states, which are required to provide comprehensive health care benefits to people in poverty. Ryan's plan turns the program into block grants for the states -- states get a bunch of cash from the feds and have to make the best of it. For many states, that will mean severe benefit rollbacks.

Seniors, and others on Medicare, would be in a slightly different predicament. Currently seniors 65 and over are guaranteed a defined benefit program: taxpayers finance the system, and the government agrees to pay for seniors' health care services (though seniors have to pitch in too). Ryan's plan would leave that system intact for anybody currently on Medicare, or expecting to be on Medicare within 10 years. For everyone else the program would be radically overhauled. Future beneficiaries would no longer have a single payer system to rely on. Rather, they'd be given a menu of private insurance plans to pick from, and subsidies to help pay their premiums. If those premiums skyrocket, that's on them. If the insurers themselves aren't required to pay for whatever the doctor orders, then the guaranteed benefits will erode.

I'm going to be fifty-six years old this year, so it's possible that I may just sneak in under the wire. But because I'm not a Republican, I don't subscribe to the "I Got Mine And Fuck You" doctrine. I take no comfort or satisfaction in the reality that my friends and colleagues who are in their twenties, thirties, and forties -- or who are fifty-four right now, are going to be consigned to the latter option described above.

It's probably too late to stop this plan -- or something even worse. The executives of major corporations -- the ones whose multimillion dollar annual compensation packages already assure them of that nice warm bed only with no doctor slipping them a needle -- own this country. They own both parties, Democratic and Republican. The Republicans are more expensive whores, because they demand to be paid more to do the billionaires' bidding, whereas the Democrats have long been content to settle for the scraps. But we've already seen what calls for "shared sacrifice" mean -- they mean sacrifice for everyone EXCEPT those who already have more money than they AND their heirs can spend or use in a thousand lifetimes.

I still have a soul. And it grieves me to think of my friends, who simply because of a few short years are going to be left clutching coupons they're supposed to use to buy health insurance that doesn't promise to be there when they need it -- while billionaires continue to rake in ever more cash, because no amount we let them have seems to be enough.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, scumbaggery, social Darwinism

Has Barack Obama just had enough of his thankless job and is essentially saying "Take this job and shove it", or is he really living in so much of a bubble that he can't hear anyone but Republicans and Washington pundits?

It's one or the other.

OR, he was a Republican mole the whole time and it's all just kabuki.

Because unless we are all being misled somehow, it's very likely that in his upcoming State of the Union address, the President Of All Wall Street is going to talk about "tough choices" and "having an adult conversation" and "belt tightening" -- all in the context of cutting Social Security.

President Barack Obama's apparent willingness to consider cuts in Social Security benefits may be winning him points with Washington elites, but it's killing him with voters, who see the program as inviolate and may start to wonder what the Democratic Party stands for, if not for Social Security.

That's the conclusion of three top progressive pollsters who spoke to reporters Wednesday at a briefing sponsored by the Economic Policy Institute, the Century Foundation and Demos.

"For the public, cutting benefits is the problem, not the solution," said Guy Molyneux, a partner at Hart Research Associates.

As a result, the pollsters said that any Democrat seeking elected office in 2012 should be begging Obama not to say anything about Social Security cuts in his State of the Union address later this month.

A post-election poll by Celinda Lake's Lake Research Partners found that, by a margin of 3 percentage points, Americans now trust Republicans in Congress more than Democrats when it comes to Social Security -- surely the first time since the program became a signature issue for the Democratic Party in the 1930s.

The poll found confidence in Democrats on the issue dropping 14 points just since January 2007, accompanied by a 13-point increase for Republicans.

The public favors congressional Republicans over Obama on Social Security by an even larger 6-point margin. Obama's 26-percent rating is not only less than half Bill Clinton's (53 percent), it's even lower than that of George W. Bush (37 percent), whose proposal to privatize the program went down in flames.

Imagine that. The very people who would have signed on to George W. Bush's privatization plan to hand over Social Security to Lloyd Blankfein now poll better than Obama does on Social Security.

I'm starting to long for the good old days when Bill Clinton wanted EVERYONE to love him. This guy only wants REPUBLICANS and Wall Street investment bankers to love him.

It was one thing when he threw the progressives under the bus. But alienate everyone who is over the age of 30 (and yes, young people are also concerned about their own future benefits) and it's a sure one-way ticket back to Cubs games. As Blue Girl noted on Tuesday, the entire concept of the Social Security Trust Fund was designed to get the elephant that is the baby boom generation through the snake, and then with a better balance of workers to retirees, it can go back to the pay-as-you-go system it was before WWII veterans were told to Be Fruitful And Multiply after returning home. But since most people think of Social Security as a bank account anyway, it's far easier for people to envision a passbook with only fifty cents in it than the complexities of how a system that's worked for over a half a decade will work once everyone who's over 45 today meets all their old pets at the Rainbow Bridge.

So in his effort to be Nixon in China, and therefore perhaps part of his quest to become a throwaway line uttered by Zachary Quinto in a future Star Trek movie, Barack Obama seems not content to try to suck up to politicians who want to "repeal" him by returning to the Golden Bushian Age of Deregulation and ensuring that old people who lose their retirement savings to his good friends at investment banks and brokerage firms have NO money to live on in their old age.

So which is it?

Labels: Barack Obama, deregulation, DINOs, social Darwinism, Social Security

Still believe that Obama is a real progressive who's just playing 11-dimensional chess? On economic issues, at least, he's serving his corporate masters:

The tax deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is just the first part of a multistage drama that is likely to further divide and weaken Democrats.

The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan — including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.

The idea is to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in April.

White House strategists believe this can also give Obama “credit” for getting serious about deficit reduction — now more urgent with the nearly $900 billion increase in the deficit via the tax cut deal.

Barack Obama's pathology about being Moses parting the waters is so intense that he's going to sell future retirees down the river in perpetuity just so he can say he played nice with Mitch McConnell. But why should he worry? The financial community will reward him handsomely with a nice fat paycheck and bonus plan for the job it will give him when he leaves office. He'll be only too happy to join the "I got mine and fuck you" crowd, and he'll sleep like a baby knowing that he played nice with the people who matter in this country. The rest of us had better stock up in 9-Lives.

Labels: social Darwinism, Social Security, We Are So Screwed

I really don't know what this right-wing jihad is against President Obama. He's attempted to be the agent of a health insurance industry shakedown of every American citizen (until a Federal court in Virginia struck that down yesterday). He's kept all of the worst offenses of the Bush Administration in terms of the so-called war on terror and also on civil liberties, he's given massive sums of cash to the banking industry so they can pay huge bonuses to banking executives. He's keeping us in Afghanistan, probably indefinitely (despite the literal last admonition of the late Richard Holbrooke), while the true Bush/Cheney agenda there begins.

And best of all, he's bound and determined to do what no Republican could do -- gut Social Security:

OBAMA: And so the payroll tax provision that is included in this package is going to help spark economic growth that will help. Now, it doesn't solve our medium- and long-term problems, so we're going to still have to make some very tough decisions — and these, too, are going to be unpopular.

And I promise, I'm going to get criticism from Democrats and Republicans throughout the year in terms of the choices that I am going to be forcing Congress to take a square look at. Because, look, the fact of the matter is that for a decade now, we have had the tendency to think that we can keep on having all the services we want and we keep them — can keep cutting taxes as much as we want and that somehow things are going to magically balance out.

The American people understand that's not the case, and so we're going to have to be responsible about thinking: What are the programs we don't need, that don't contribute to growth, don't contribute to competitiveness, don't make sure our kids are — aren't contributing to making sure that our kids are learning and able to compete in this 21st century economy, and which things are vital investments that we have to make?

And that conversation is going to be one that can't just happen in Washington; it's going to happen all across the country. And I'm looking forward to leading that conversation.

INSKEEP: Won't Republicans argue — and, in fact, won't reality argue that any cuts will have to be even deeper because this package that you're pushing for now will mean there's even less government revenue?

OBAMA: Actually, I think that if you talk to economists, both conservative and liberal, what they'll say is the problem is not next year. The problem is, how are we dealing with our medium-term debt and deficit, and how are we dealing with our long-term debt and deficit? And most of that has to do with entitlements, particularly Social Security and Medicaid.

We've made some progress as a consequence of my health care bill in identifying areas where we can start bending the cost curve on health care. But we're going to have some more work to do across the budget.

I think there's going to have to be a fundamentally different approach to things. And I described earlier what I think that approach has to be. It's not an issue of big government versus small government. It's an issue of smart government.

But there are very few people who think that we would be better off if we've got a contracting economy or economy that's growing very little over the next year — that that somehow is going to be good for our deficit.

INSKEEP: Let me ask you about two or three years out. I'm thinking of the 1990s when President Clinton famously said, "The era of big government is over."

Because of the medium- and long-term need to restrain or cut spending, are you going to be in a position where the era of big government is going to be over again; there's going to have to be a fundamentally different approach to things?

OBAMA: I think there's going to have to be a fundamentally different approach to things. And I described earlier what I think that approach has to be. It's not an issue of big government versus small government. It's an issue of smart government.

You know, when — when families sit around the kitchen table, they say to themselves, what are the things we have to have? College education for our kids. Paying our mortgage. Getting the roof repaired. A new boiler. What are the things that would be nice to have? A vacation. Eating out. Some new clothes. And if they can afford it, they'd buy things that they'd like to have. But the first thing they do is take care of the things that we have to have.

And under that category, I'd put things like research and development, education, making sure that we're sending our kids to college, rebuilding our infrastructure to compete on the 21st century, making sure that this country is safe.

The other stuff, then, we have to debate and figure out, can we get by with a little bit less in some of these other spending categories? And that's going to be a tough discussion, but it's one I’m confident we can have.

You'll — when — when we look at the deficit and the debt, I — I think it's important to understand this doesn't need to be Armageddon. This — this is not a situation where we've got to slash and burn everything. It does mean we've got to make choices. And it means that discussions have to be serious and they've got to be based on fact.

We — we're not going to be able to deal with our deficit just by eliminating foreign aid, for example, which some people suggest. Well, you know what? That only accounts for 1 percent of our budget. It's not going to happen just because we eliminate earmarks. I happen to think that that's a bad way of doing business, but earmarks account for 1 percent or less of the federal budget.

We've got to look at a whole range of things — where the money goes. And that includes entitlements; that includes defense; that includes a whole host of discretionary spending where we can probably do more and do it smarter with less money, if we are actually making some tough choices.

If anyone actually believes that defense is going to take this hit, guess again. The defense industry puts too much money into the pockets of Washington politicians to take a hit. And isn't it funny how Social Security is now called an "entitlement" -- as if no one pays into it but expects a handout.

Tell you what: Give me the almost $200K that I and my employers have put into Social Security over my working life, with accumulated returns according to the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1975, and I'll shut up about Social Security.

Labels: Barack Obama, Democratic sellouts, social Darwinism, Social Security

I realize that this country has been dumbed-down enough that people like Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell, and Sarah Palin can be considered viable candidates for national office. But have we really sunk so low that we need a news organization to figure this out:

Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work, government auditors told Congress.

The projected spike in disability claims could harm Social Security's finances because disability benefits typically are higher than early retirement payments, the Government Accountability Office concluded.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Friday, provides fodder for those opposed to raising the eligibility age for benefits, as proposed by the leaders of President Barack Obama's deficit commission.

"There's more to consider than simply how much money the program would save by raising the retirement age," said Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. The report shows an unequal effect on certain groups of people, he said Thursday, and many of them "would have little choice but to turn to the broken disability program."

Under current law, people can start drawing reduced, early retirement benefits from Social Security at age 62. Full benefits are available at 66, a threshold gradually increasing to 67 for people who were born in 1960 or later.

The deficit commission's leaders, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, last week proposed a gradual increase in the full retirement age, to 69 in about 2075. The early retirement age would go to 64 the same year.

Under their plan, the new thresholds wouldn't be fully phased in until today's 4-year-olds are ready to retire.

AARP criticized the recommendations and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called them "unacceptable." Experts, however, warn that Social Security is on a financially unsustainable path that will worsen as people live longer and collect more benefits.

For many workers, reducing early retirement payments or delaying eligibility would provide an incentive to put off retiring, resulting in more earnings and potentially more savings for later in life, according to the watchdog agency's report.

But it "could create a financial hardship for those who cannot continue to work because of poor health or demanding workplace conditions," the report said.

Or those who get kicked out of the workplace in their 40s and 50s and can't get hired anywhere ever again because they're too old, too expensive, too experienced, too expecting to be treated like a human being.

That these recommendations are coming from a committee called by President Obama just shows you how deep his "make nice with everyone" childhood baggage is, and how much it permeates everything he does. Can we please, please, please have a president who isn't crazy or greedy or a religious nutball or insistent on playing out his or her childhood baggage and family dynamics on a national stage?

Labels: economic death watch, social Darwinism, Social Security

I've always found Cenk Uygur to be a bit of a blowhard. It's one thing for me to set up a blog because I need to blow off steam, and rant and rave in print. It's quite another to do it as a broadcaster. I'm not one for yelling on radio, which is one reason I'm not crazy about Ed Schultz. It tends to become a question of who yells the loudest, and whoever loses their head loses the argument. I do enough yelling myself, thank you very much. And talking about defense spending only leaves the door open for Republicans to say that you oppose national security and don't respect our troops.

But when it comes to the Republican (and yes, the White House) plans to gut Social Security, only yelling is going to get through to people.




It's really too bad that Cenk loses it here, because he really gets to the crux of what has happened to the American people: We paid into Social Security assuming the good faith of the government to pay Social Security benefits, and now we're being told, "Sorry...we spent it all and we can't pay it back. Tough shit. You fucked up...you trusted us."

I wouldn't have gone right to defense spending, not without concrete examples such as the $9 billion that went completely missing in Iraq and no one in our government -- not one Republican, not one Democrat, certainly not the Bush Administration -- seemed to care. Because without concrete examples of the waste and corruption that pervades our military contracting, you leave the door open to the Republican reptilian brain pokes of "You want to leave us vulnerable" and "You don't support our troops." There's a good way to demolish those arguments too, but you can't do it while you're yelling. And Cenk really blew it here. After all, these stories may be just breaking now, but there's plenty of waste, fraud, and abuse in military contracting.

But the fact that he's used to a Webcast, where he can do pretty much whatever he wants and may not be ready for prime time doesn't change the very valid and important point that he made: that when the government borrows from China, it's expected to pay it back. But when it borrows from its own people, there's no obligation.

The answer is not to privatize Social Security. After all, the guys into whose hands they want to deliver it are the very same ones who developed the practices that ran the country into the ground, then said they needed a government bailout, and are now spending the money on bonuses...and they say THEY can't pay it back either. As everyone who has an IRA or 401(k) knows, not only are returns not guaranteed, but hanging onto principal is not guaranteed. Unless watched like a hawk, these guys will churn an investment account, charging commissions and fees every step of the way, buying and selling things that most of us don't understand, until you find that not only has your account not made a dime in ten years, but that you have less than you had before. And this is what they want to do with Social Security?

The whole "We can't pay it back" argument demonstrates the contempt that our government, ever since Ronald Reagan started raiding Social Security to pay for tax cuts, has for its own people. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 raised the withholding taxes paid by employees and employers, for the express purpose of funding baby boomer retirement. WE paid that increased tax, even as we knew that they were just going to steal it. And steal it they did.

In 2000, Al Gore talked about a "lockbox." The only thing that made the concept ridiculous was that the money was already gone, and had been for years. But the idea that the Social Security surplus should sit there and be used for the purpose for which it was collected received nothing but laughs from the media and from Republicans, who knew that whatever was in there could very easily be distributed to Bush family cronies and the rest of the 1% who already have almost half the wealth in this country. If the lockbox idea wasn't already dead when Sandra Day O'Connor handed the presidency to George W. Bush on December 12, 2000, it was dead the evening of September 11, 2001. Because that night, in the face of a tragedy, that cokehead Larry Kudlow, who to that network's eternal shame, has a show on MSNBC's sister station, CNBC, was on TV grinning from ear to ear and crowing happily that this meant an end to any and all talk of a Social Security lockbox.

ALL THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE to address ANY long-term problems with Social Security funding (which don't kick in for another thirty years under the WORST of circumstances), is to lift the cap. Or RAISE the cap. Right now, Social Security is only withheld on the first $106,000 of income. Raise it to even $250,000 and the problem is solved. But of course then those who already have more money than they can spend in twelve lifetimes might have to pay a bit more for the benefits of being able to live and be rich in America. And we can't have that, now, can we.

The other day I was talking to a colleague who had just returned from a month visiting her parents in China. She told me how much corruption there is in China. She said that there are the very rich and the very poor, and the government is entirely in the pocket of the very rich. She said the deterioration has largely occurred in the last ten years. It is in those ten years that China has been accelerating its march from communism to socialism and now towards capitalism. She said capitalism has NOT been good for her country outside of the very rich. Newsweek reported in June that China has a growing white-collar underclass of educated young people who can't find jobs. We like to crow in this country that as China has moved away from Marxism, it looks more like us. If life was better in China under even the last vestiges of Maoism than it does now in a more American-looking capitalist system, what does that say for that system?

We're seeing it in the faces of people like Congressman McEwen and would-be Senators Joe Miller and Sharron Angle -- a society in which the rich live in armed fortresses to protect themselves from an increasingly large, increasingly poor, increasingly desperate rabble.

I'm going to post this video from George Carlin as often as it takes and as long as I can find it on YouTube without it being taken down:

Labels: Cenk Uygur, China, Greedy Republican Bastards, social Darwinism, Social Security

Well, well, well...look who was subbing on the Ed Schultz show:

Now, I've never been a big Young Turks fan, and the extent of my familiarity with Cenk Uygur was him strutting around Yearly Kos 2007 with the other Big Boiz of Blogging. But I have to admit to feeling thrilled at seeing another veteran of progressive talk radio get some TeeVee exposure. More importantly, Cenk takes on that sleazy weasel Chris Van Hollen after NAILING the Social Security lie. As Gaius Publius notes, Van Hollen talks about opposing benefit cuts, but he doesn't say a thing about raising the age to the ridiculous levels adovcated by John Boehner. At a time when people over 50 constitute a large proportion of the "99-ers", deemed unhirable because of myths about our inability to learn and our health care expenses, I have to wonder at what jobs these corporate whores and bankster fellators expect us to work.

Good on Cenk here. More like this, please.

Labels: Cenk Uygur, progressive media, social Darwinism, Social Security

Barack Obama and his bought-and-paid-for allies in Congress must be so proud at the way he's going to make people work until they drop dead in yet another vain effort to make Republicans happy:

Is there a new, bipartisan consensus forming on Capitol Hill about whether (and how) to scale back Social Security benefits? A surprising number of signs point to "yes" -- and that has many progressives looking ahead a few months to what they believe could become a serious fight.

Several of the most powerful members of the House -- Republicans and Democrats -- have recently voiced real support for the idea of raising the retirement age for people middle-aged and younger as part of a larger plan to reduce long-term deficits, inching closer to what not too long ago was the third rail of American politics.

The strongest backer of this plan is House Minority Leader John Boehner, who recently told a Pennsylvania newspaper, "I think raising the retirement age going out 20 years so you're not affecting anyone close to retirement, and eventually getting the retirement age to 70 is a step that needs to be taken."

There's no big surprise there. The Republican minority in the House doesn't have a lot of power, but if Boehner had his druthers, he might well take things quite a bit further. He's the one, after all, who won't take Social Security privatization off the table if Republicans retake the House.

It's the Democrats who have progressives feeling queasy.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer explicitly put the idea on the table as well in a speech last month. "We should consider a higher retirement age or one pegged to lifespan," Hoyer said.

He echoed House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who put it this way: "With minor changes to the program such as raising the salary cap and raising the retirement age by one month every year, the program could become solvent for the next 75 years." One month a year may not sound like much, but if you're 30 years away from retirement, that adds up to almost three years.

In the House, though, Nancy Pelosi is the linchpin, and she's not nearly as enthusiastic as her colleagues. But, notwithstanding the enthusiasm gap, she also left the possibility of raising the retirement age on the table. When asked about it by TPMDC at her press conference last week, she criticized the plan, but mainly to say she disagrees with putting Social Security on the chopping block ahead of other measures. "Why they would start talking about a place that could be harmful to our seniors -- 70 is a relative age," Pelosi said. "Around here, there's not a lot of outdoor work or heavy lifting. But for some people it is, and 70 means something different to them. So in any event let's talk about growth, lets talk about how we can reduce spending, lets put everything, those initiatives: promoting growth, tightening the belt, looking at entitlements. But let's not start on the backs of our seniors."

There's one catch, though. Last week, Democrats included a rider to the supplemental war spending bill that will likely force the House to vote on a forthcoming fiscal reform plan, if the Senate passes it first. That package is being put together by President Obama's deficit and debt commission, and will be ready to go after the midterms. Pelosi had already pledged to give the package a vote, so perhaps nothing has really changed. But in a way, she also tied her own hands: if the Senate passes a broad tax-and-entitlement reform package at the end of this Congress and her own caucus is willing, she'll be hard-pressed to stop the Social Security reforms she thinks should come last.

There's just one problem with this: Where are all these people in their fifties and sixties who have been downsized supposed to be working until age 70? Dave Johnson reports at Campaign for America's Future:

Here is a fact: There. Are. No. Jobs. I'm in Silicon Valley where the official unemployment rate dipped in May to 11.2%. This dip was, of course, because of so many people just giving up trying to get a job, certainly not because of some wave of hiring. The underemployed figure, known as "U-6," is 21.7% in California, 16.7% nationally.

You have to know someone to get a humiliating job standing on a corner waving a sign. And if you are over 40, things are even worse than that. Don't give me any conservative Rush Limbaugh-Ayn Rand dehumanizing nonsense about parasitic lazy people who won't look—there are no jobs.

I know so many people here who are over 40, were laid off in the 2000-era dot com crash, still haven't found a regular job and aren't going to. They have had occasional "contract" positions—which means no benefits, no security, a 15% "self-employment" tax and no unemployment check when the job ends. And now, 10 years later they're a lot over 40 and are not going to find a job because so many employers here won't hire people over 40.

And now there are so many more who lost their jobs in the mass layoffs of 2008-2009 and can't find a job. So many of them are also over 40. In fact, many were laid off in obvious purges of over-40 workers, offered a small severance that they could only receive if they promised to take no age-discrimination action against the employer. (I don't say "company" because some of these worked at nonprofits.)

Most of these people will not find another job, but are too young for Medicare and Social Security.

One Person's Story

I ran into a friend this weekend who I hadn't seen for a couple of years. He had been a computer engineer who had been making 6 figures in the dot-com years. Laid off in the 2000 crash, he moved in with his parents back in the Midwest and worked in a bakery. He came back out here when things picked up a bit and worked in one "contract" job after another. (Contracting is just a scam to get around employment laws—but the government doesn't enforce the rules.) But now he just can't find anything. He managed to get unemployment but now that is running out. He has no health insurance. He can't afford a place to live; he "house sits" for people or visits friends, and doesn't know what he is going to do even two days from now.

What is he going to do? Can you tell me? He has gotten a few interviews, and when they are computer-related is always told he is way overqualified, doesn't seem energetic, probably won't be willing to work 20 hours a day, doesn't look like he is up to date on things that are happening with computers, etc. (How many ways can you say "too old?") He's about 45. If things pick up he will get another job. But people just a few years older will not.

And from the comments in response to that post:

I'm 56, and trying to find work OUT of the Los Angeles area. I'd like to move to Kentucky, where my fiancee is.

Nothing.

Nada.

Not so much as a call back, and I've got 30 years of experience in copy editing, publication design, advertising design and speaking/presentation training. I've been doing web design since '94, when we had to optimize everything for dial-up modems.

I'm "too old".

I -was- told plainly by one recruiter that his employer client wouldn't consider me because health insurance for me would be too expensive, Fred. It seems experience and talent are no longer valued.

I live in Missouri and lost my 13 year job with a municipality 16 months ago because of a political turnover. Previous to this position, I was with another municipality for 18 years. Management in both positions, first as Finance, then in Human Resources. I am 56, with a Master's Degree and 31 years of municipal management experience. And - I can't get a job, to save my soul - or my house! I am either under-qualified or over-qualified or just plain don't even warrant a response at all!

If I get a response to an application or resume at all, it is that they received many applications from highly qualified people and I am not being considered. A recent submission was to a City almost the same size and budget as my previous position, doing exactly what I had been doing, and I wasn't highly qualified enough to even get an interview. Give me a break!

I lost my computer programming job in February this year.

It was nothing more than simply not having the new skill set the company required and feeling that with my workload the company would look askance at doing any on the job training. So I'm out of work and most likely out of luck.

I've had one interview since then with a local company who stated that they wanted someone who could do the work immediately without further training and who would be around for the long term. This from a company that was looking for a programmer after laying off people due to the bad economy.

Lora W., California:

I have been unemployed since 2008. I have fought to keep my home and pay the bills. I look for jobs 10 hours daily. I have filled out applications that ask if you’re under 40 or over 40. I didn’t know that was a legal question to ask. I am over 40 and I believe that is one of the reasons I do not have a job offer. I have had few interviews with one call back to say I did not get the job and another said I had the job but when I called back to inquire about my application; He said they filled the position from within the company. I cannot believe this! Where am I to go? If I cannot pay the mortgage, no home, cannot pay the phone bill, no phone, cannot pay the internet, no internet. I am at an all time low. I have always worked; you do not know how this makes me feel that I cannot support my family. How would you feel if you had to face your family with no job? I am trying but that is not good enough!

Donna K., Ohio:

I have been unemployed since Feb. 2009. It is now July 2010. I live in Highland Co., Ohio. It now has the 2nd highest unemployment rate in the state. When DHL in Clinton Co. went out of business, half of the people in Highland Co were also thrown out of work. So how can you find a job with that many people out of work. When one job opened up at a factory , 3000 people applied to it!!!! How to you compete with that many people hunting for work. All I want is to keep a roof over my head and buy groceries. There are no JOBS in my area. The stimulus that was for creating jobs has only helped those that do road work. Great for them, but what about me? I got laid off from a BANK. How ironic that is.

Nancy Ikeda's story:

After working for eight and a half years at IBM, Nancy Ikeda, 55, lost her job 13 months ago. She had lived in Binghamton, N.Y., since her daughters were in high school, but after spending most of the year looking in vain for another job, Ikeda decided she couldn’t stay any longer.

[snip]

Unskilled workers undoubtedly have the hardest time finding jobs today: many of the manufacturing jobs that fueled the engine of prosperity in the decades following World War II no longer exist in the U.S.: they have moved to Asia and Latin America. Unions have grown weaker and so are no longer able to protect workers as they once did. The corporate focus on the bottom line mandates efficiency at the expense of workers: whenever possible, expensive manpower is replaced by machinery, and even white-collar work is moved overseas, where wages are lower. In the past decade alone, 5.6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost to automation, Goodman reports.

But Ikeda has an M.B.A. “You’d think I’d be employable,” she says.

You’d think—but Ikeda belongs to the cohort of women 45 to 64 years old, and they have been hit particularly hard in this recession.

Meanwhile, here's what the people who are deciding that you and I will have to keep working, whether we can find jobs or not, until we drop dead, have to look forward to for their own retirement:

Members of Congress are not eligible for a pension until they reach the age of 50, but only if they've completed 20 years of service. Members are eligible at any age after completing 25 years of service or after they reach the age of 62. Please also note that Members of Congress have to serve at least 5 years to even receive a pension.

The amount of a congressperson's pension depends on the years of service and the average of the highest 3 years of his or her salary. By law, the starting amount of a Member's retirement annuity may not exceed 80% of his or her final salary.

According to the Congressional Research Service, 413 retired Members of Congress were receiving federal pensions based fully or in part on their congressional service as of Oct. 1, 2006. Of this number, 290 had retired under CSRS and were receiving an average annual pension of $60,972. A total of 123 Members had retired with service under both CSRS and FERS or with service under FERS only. Their average annual pension was $35,952 in 2006.

Got that? Congresspeople receive a PENSION. This is guaranteed money, not subject to the vicissitudes of the financial markets.

And here's what Barack Obama has to look forward to, even if after only four years (and not including speaking fees):

Under the Former Presidents Act, each former president is paid a lifetime, taxable pension that is equal to the annual rate of basic pay for the head of an executive federal department -- $193,400 in 2009 – the same annual salary paid to secretaries of the Cabinet agencies.

Each former president and vice president may also take advantage of funds allocated by Congress to help facilitate their transition to private life. These funds are used to provide suitable office space, staff compensation, communications services, and printing and postage associated with the transition.

But YOU have to work until you are seventy.

It's one thing to be Ringo Starr, and to tour the world doing what you love with your friends. It's quite another to be subject to management whims and moods, bad acquisitions, personality conflicts, the need to post numbers Wall Street will like every quarter, and the reality of being jettisoned simply because we are no longer young.

It would be better for them to just line us all up against the wall and give us a merciful bullet to the head. Of course that would require things like empathy and humanity -- and acknowledgement that they don't give a shit about actual people. But instead they will starve us out of our jobs and our homes until we die, unknown and forgotten, on the street.

THAT is Congress' and Barack Obama's American Dream.

Labels: Democratic sellouts, futility, greed, hopelessness, social Darwinism, Social Security