Perfect example of what Daou is talking about.

the party that invented Social Security

That party doesn’t exist anymore. It died back in the Clinton administration, but news of the death was not released to the public.

Goosh! well said.

The D plan becoming clearer. Seems like they have to tweak trash SS to save it from R privatization.

Wonder where that gets them. They don’t get Wall St contributions for the privatization windfall Wall St would get, and they piss off voters.

Seems like all the other O eleventy mention chess: falls squarely between 2 stools, pissing off everyone.

The worst part is that in November the lesson these guys will “learn” is that we must move to the right.

And they will expect us to defend them from the rightwingers, who will believe they are soshulists no matter how much they compromise.

Kleptocrats are dismantling our republic and selling the parts for scrap. Both parties are so far beyond redemption, they know their behavior is destructive, they simply do not care.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen David Dayen and the firepup Freedom Fighters:

Help me out, Brother David….I have been confused and bewildered as to why folks like Brother Krugman and the few real progressive democrats left in the House of Representatives haven’t been pushin’ securin’ Social Security AND Medicare by reducin’ the FICA tax 1% and pullin the cap off. This shoulda been the Democratic Party response to Bushfucker when he was gunna cash in his political capital and privitize it. Politically it is a no brainer ‘cuz it’s a tax reduction for over 95% of folks AND it immediately pushes the reserves in SS so far into the future that Medicare for all would be the next logical step.

Politically and economically in a time of economic depression, it’s the only thing short of confiscatory taxation on the rich that makes any sense. Why hasn’t anyone with a microphone or a keyboard been pushin this?

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION AND FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T SHOOT YOUR OWN TROOPS!!

Citizen bayofarizona:

Rahm is runnin this game that he got away with in ’94 but it ain’t gunna work…Dems are gunna increase their margin in the Senate and hold the House. If that happens the corporatists will have nowhere ta go with Social Security cuts.

keep reflecting on how I would explain this self destructiveness to my now gone, but lifelong lunchpail Democrat, Union Man, daddy

Citizen cbl2:

It’s simple Citizen, don’t let it happen…mobilze like we did in ’08 in your district and local offices…getcher neighbors (alive and dead) out to vote and stop- whinnin’.

Greed. They no longer care if they are reelected, they all land lucrative jobs when they leave office so they do not feel accountable to voters.

I think this is not really explainable to anyone who was born before 1950. I sure have gotten a lot of headaches trying. I even think I’ve got it intellectually. But, as you say, my explanation boils down to destroying the country so that the MOTU can rip it off, simple as that. I still have a hard time thinking they’re actually doing that, though the evidence is overwhelming.

Half the explanation is printed on our currency. “In God We Trust.” The other half is “Money Is God.”

I still have a hard time thinking they’re actually doing that, though the evidence is overwhelming.

Copy that.

hey ya ol Flamethrower -

already there Citizen.

The party of FDR was doing well in the 90′s with 22 million new jobs and average family income for the bottom 50% rising for the first time since 1973 – hard to fault the Clintons unless you are still fighting for Obama against Hillary.

As to the Social Security “tweak” – I would guess that is a normal retirement age increase from Reagan’s 67 to either 68 – most likely – or age 69 (age 69 being a 14% benefit cut – age 70 is a 20% cut but is off the table I am told). No age increase should be agreed to unless the wage cap is also removed (for both tax and for benefit calculation). Better than an age increase with a modified cap to capture 90% of income (as is being discussed) is “NO CHANGE”.

Corporate welfare – esp. corporate welfare in the military and the agriculture business – must be heavily cut – or the deficit commission has no credibility. Likewise taking jobs back into the military and back into civil service so as to recapture the 30% wasted via contractor overhead and profit must be on the table and approved.

Democratic Death Wish, Part XXXVIII

We need to move the Overton Window here — raising the retirement age is idiocy; in the current jobs emergency, we need to temporarily LOWER the retirement age to 60. That will clear out some older workers, get them onto Social Security, and open up their jobs for younger people who are currently unemployed.

Spot on comment – it turns out the math supports the equality of a wage cap removal with no cap on tax and no cap on benefits – to – a 1% drop to 5.2% tax for both employer and employee.

You get “stimulus and fix social security” all in one change.

So why is our deficit commission not looking at this?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (a Professional Democrat).

Amazingly, Republican Lite doesn’t sell well in the hinterlands.

Per Clinton admin:

You’re looking at only the contemporaneous evidence during his admin. If you look at the lagged effect of Clinton’s policies (NAFTA, elimination of Glass-Steagall, sellout to corp donors more generally, to name but 3), you come out with quite a different conclusion.

Do you honestly believe the Catfood Commission has honorable intentions? They are not interested in fixing it, they are looking for ways to kill it.

Nor is the catfood commission……..

Woodhouse is no Democrat but he is a Dee Cee Pig of the worst type. Recall this chickenhawk wants war forever and ever. He is no different from any of the Bushie war profiteers. He attacked Michael Steele who in a brief moment of sanity, suggested the Afghan Clusterfuck was not worth the blood or money. If Woodhouse likes war so much he ought to go fight instead of encouraging others to to fight and die.

It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.”

Of course, the Obama Administration is lousy with war monger chicken hawks including Obama. But Woodhouse is a corporate shill from a family of corporate shills.This neo-con ratfucker Woodhouse needs to be kicked out of the Democratic party instead of speaking for it.

Wow. The return of that good ol’ time cluelessness. Here’s a tip: Progs aint got the numbers and they ain’t got the money. We got better ideas and policies but that ain’t gonna cut it in a nation as thoroughly shot thru with stupidity and evil as the United States of America.

The Dems only hope is that they are utterly destroyed so that they can be rebuilt as something resembling a party that represents the people. Anything else is just “electing better Democrats” and voting for the lesser of 2 evils nostrums that have landed us in this jalopy headed for the cliff at 60 mph. With R’s you are going 75, but it is still over the cliff. Do not vote for either of the 2 legacy parties. Please.

Here’s what I posted to the trolls on HP who are talking about “gaining control of their money”. I think it’s pretty close to what may be happening with this mess:

No one’s being offered a “choice” here in this deal. Everyone will still have to pay FICA taxes whether you ever receive SS or not.
When Bush spent like there was no tomorrow and added a housing bubble and exported our jobs down a whirlpool, economists were saying by the end of that spree that every man, womon, and child owed around $30,000 on the debt…which is in Treasury bonds….and that is where SS is.
This is why Obama is saying cuts to SS will give “credibility to the markets” because all that debt that you allowed Mr. Bush to run up because you were attacked on 911 and were scared and wanted to be safe at ANY COST, even personal liberty…now has to be paid back in a worthless economy.
So, an ultimatum was given somewhere, by someone and now, all that we have worked for is forfeit to our fears and Bush’s peccadilloes.
It won’t be a matter of “controlling your own money” the government will do that along with your lives until you drop like a 30 cent an hour Chinese worker.
Didn’t think you’d have to pay for the spree? Well you do. The rich will be let off the hook even tho THEY made BILLIONS and all you peons will be wage slaves for the rest of your lives.
if you’d read your Shock Doctrine, you’d know this, but you didn’t because it was “lefty”.

I could not have said it better.
Democrats all their life, Dad was a union President for the last 16 years of his employment. I resented it because of so much time spent at union activities.
At his funeral, almost the entire membership, including retirees showed up to say how important he was to protecting their rights. And the stories, well, lets just say I was wrong and so proud and could not tell him anymore.

Kinda sad. I feel the same about my old man; he died when I was 17

You have to give props all the way back to Nixon, really, for the cultivation of a stupid sheep-like citizenry. The elite do have us right where they want us, with those who are well-informed and even moderately logical in their thought processes only a tiny fraction of the population and therefore easy to control/silence. I cannot think of anything that would wake the sleeping giant, possibly to make huge cuts in SS, but I doubt even that would motivate the population as much as a, say, Terri Schiavo…

Right on the money. I argue with the old coalition type constantly that voting for these entrenched useless pols will not bring the needed change. I argue that the D’s rhetoric is more like selling soap to a gullible audience but they get petrified at the notion of republican control. Getting screwed by your friends is preferable to being raped by the other side I guess. I’m not looking forward to any I told you so moments, therefore I will (however counterintuitive is seems) hope enough D’s lose to bring them back to their roots.

P.S. Did I mention I will NOT vote this cycle. 1st vote I’ve missed since 68.

What do you expect from a party that has adopted a moderate conservative agenda? Remember, this is the party that radically reformed welfare, is afraid to stand up to the Pentagon and the CIA, gave us NAFTA and all the other fun free-trade policies, went along with TARP which did nothing for the people losing their homes but bailed out the people who caused the problem, hasn’t investigated the Bush constitutional violations, expanded a broken, wasteful, expensive health funding system, and on and on.

We progressives are like spouses who refuse to leave their alcoholic spouses because they think they will change. But they keep nagging them, expecting them to change. But they won’t change until they show them that they mean business and leave them.

What was their response? “B-b-but we’ve got pictures of almost-naked celebrities!”

MOTU?

(Old person here.)

On NAFTA the initial 900,000 new US jobs after 3 years did indeed disappear so at the end of ten years it was no jobs lost, no jobs gained, with the observation that the jobs that were “exchanged” between countries effectively represented a movement of higher paying out of the country with more lower paying service and sales replacing them. Of course NAFTA was based on classic economics on trade helping all parties – and idea not challenged until MIT’s Paul Samuelson showed that trade screwed countries on occasion in paper published well after NAFTA. Just for the record NAFTA was negotiated and signed by H W Bush – not by Clinton. Clinton was president when the Senate gave its approval. Clinton introduced clauses to protect American workers and allay the concerns of many House members. It also required U.S. partners to adhere to environmental practices and regulations similar to its own. The ability to enforce these clauses, especially with Mexico, and with much consideration and emotional discussion the House of Representatives approved NAFTA on November 17, 1993, by a vote of 234 to 200. The agreement’s supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. NAFTA passed the Senate 61-38. Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1993; it went into effect on January 1, 1994. Subsequently Clinton obtained a further modification – a side agreement on the environment with Canada and Mexico, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which led to the creation of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in 1994. To alleviate concerns that NAFTA, the first regional trade agreement between a developing country and two developed countries, would have negative environmental impacts, the CEC was given a mandate to conduct ongoing ex post environmental assessment of NAFTA.

All in all not a big deal – the total US job impact was minimal – albeit with lower wage jobs in the US replacing high wage jobs – and Mexico’s agriculture was initially harmed but recovered – only Canada got a small plus out of the agreement.

As to “elimination of Glass-Steagall”(the modification of Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that allowed Travelers and City to merge) because G-S never regulated investment banks which were the cause of the start of and caused most of the continuing bank crisis, and because derivatives could have been regulated by Greenspan but he refused to do so, it is hard to place this at Clinton’s door – or even on the doorstep of the Democratic Party.

As to sellout to corp donors more generally, I am hard pressed to know what excess of Clinton or of the Democratic Party you are referring to. There were decisions that I fought and corporations won, but none that big a deal, and none where such that a politician or party post WW2 would have been surprised by the decision or would have expected to be seen as sleaze because of the decision. The GOP media war against Clinton sold the sleaze idea – but in every case where specifics were demanded, the accusation was easily refuted (except for the B.J. where there was admitted “misleading of the court” – but no perjury). Obama then resold the sleaze and corporate controlled idea – another one of his virtues that I do not admire – and see irony in given his corporate obeisance.

What a comment! (Standing on chair, cheering!) Please don’t feel bad or guilty about the late recognition of your father’s worth – i’m sure that he suffered the loss of more participation in your life due to the obligations of the job perhaps even more, as his choice was after consideration of the high personal cost. On the other hand, you really know – having lived with and borne the sacrafices of your parents to the labor movement – what would you tell your younger self today, knowing what you know. Is the struggle worth the effort? Is there still dignity in labor?
The answer you tell your younger self is the answer we ALL need to hear.

The party of FDR was doing well in the 90’s with 22 million new jobs and average family income for the bottom 50% rising for the first time since 1973 – hard to fault the Clintons unless you are still fighting for Obama against Hillary.

The problem is, Clinton was doing a lot of damage going along with policies that have only now come home to roost. It was Clinton who went along with weakening a lot of the Wall Street regulations. It was Clinton who opened the floodgates to free-trade policies that washed our manufacturing jobs out to sea. All because he fed into the myth that “What’s good for Wall Street is good for America.”

I think they feel that they can act with totally impunity and utter contempt for the rest of us and our opinions , no matter what the polls say. They basically showed us the pattern last yr. with how they spit in our collective faces over the Public Option. This year so far same thing with the so called Financial reforms and coming soon the rejection of Elizabeth Warren. Moving right along next up is the gutting of SSI and then on to gutting Medicare. We only have the choice of a right wing solution or a reactionary solution. Also, does anyone remember Obama running on SSI and Medicare reform? I don’t. It seems Obama had his whole play book written for him in advance and he’s very obediently moving right along doing what his Corp. pals have paid him up front to do.

Just for the record NAFTA was negotiated and signed by H W Bush – not by Clinton. Clinton was president when the Senate gave its approval. Clinton introduced clauses to protect American workers and allay the concerns of many House members.

Like you note, Clinton SIGNED the law. He didn’t have to.

But it’s not just the free trade with Mexico. My husband starting working as an electrical engineer in 1990. At that time he started working, there were many unskilled assembly jobs for workers in the companies he worked for. Then, slowly these workers were laid off because their jobs had been outsourced to Asia. A few people complained, but they were drowned out by those (among the loudest — Democrats) who kept saying, “we just need to fund more education to get them into new fields”.

Well, most of these people did try to be re-trained, but new jobs that paid as well weren’t there for them. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met over the years who are now working in much lower paying jobs like big box store employees or low-tech medical field jobs.

Unfortunately, what none of them anticipated is that even the jobs of the educated would soon be cannibalized as well. Every year my husband sees more and more jobs moving to Asia and now Mexico. Engineering jobs. And worse, they are IMPORTING engineers here AFTER LAYING OFF AMERICAN ENGINEERS. (My husband has worked with many engineers hired under the H1B visa program. He currently works with three engineers who moved here in the last five years from Mexico.) And his job is on shaky ground right now because of rumors about them outsourcing all of their jobs to Mexico.

When we were in college, they told us that electrical engineering was THE job of the future. Now the trade magazine for the electrical engineering society my husband belongs to is running articles asking members, “Would you recommend the engineering profession to a young person?” Many said “no” (my husband among them). The only industry that is actively seeking engineers right now is defense. Disheartening for a pacifist.

I knew I’d been tweaked the day after inauguration. I just didn’t appreciate how badly until now.

Well, at least it was posted. this one guy claims Bush’s deficit at the end of his “term” was “was only $161 Billion”
These people are hopeless dittoheads.

Masters of the Universe

“folks like Brother Krugman and the few real progressive democrats”

Krugman is not a progressive. he is a reformist/liberal(in the traditional economic sense) economist. he loves the capitalist class system and thinks, with some justification, that new deal-like reforms are needed to save it. the problem is we had a new deal, 70 years ago. in the time since the ultra reactionary finance capital sector has consolidated economic and political power, destroyed and liquidated most of the other parts of our economy, and they have bought the govt. the bus seems to be out of gas. there is no real left in the US anymore, and no energy for the kind of movement it would take to rebuild new deal refoms.capitalism is the problem.it cant be permanently reformed, there is no kind and gentle capitalism. America is not exceptional.

Good grief — Obama et al’s policies in some areas have been painfully similar to BushCo’s, but now it appears Obama et al have adopted the misleading statements, lies by omission, and obfuscation of BushCo’s worst moments.

He has to have decided to simply destroy the Democratic brand. Or else he’s so beholden to his Corporate Overlords he can’t think straight….

Time to change my registration.

i think its probably the or else option, but hes thinking straight. i believe the federal govt at evey level is obsessed with and controled by money, in other words bought and paid for by whoever can afford to pay for and buy it. its always been like that in the US but we seem to have reached a point where there is no more balance and the koch bros,are just representatives of a powerful 1% class who are no longer held in check by a more or less stable system that has the good of the whole in mind.citzenship and representative government is now an expensive luxury product and they dont even shrink from calling it that.

Very early in the primaries, Obama talked about the financial problems facing SocSec — and greatly disturbed Prof. Krugman who wondered why he was even bringing up a program which had no real financing issues. Now, Medicare was different and did need, well, real health CARE reform like Medicare for All.

Maybe Obama played these Republican cards bcz his Wall Street early, early backers told him there were problems coming down the pike and they needed a new pot of money to play with….

Here’s Krugman wondering why Obama would bring up Republican talking points about SocSec. From Nov. 11, 2007, “Why, Barack, Why/” Krugman wrote several more blog entries that fall on this topic.

It’s one of the first things which made me concerned about Obama and what his actual polices would be. Then, of course, continuing his use of Repub talking points, he put out the infamous Harry and Louise rip-off ad to attack Hillary…. (More commentary links)

These were some worrisome and even scary hints of how Obama might actually govern. But I never expected he would be a bad as his has been….

Jane Hamsher is upstairs!
Obama Appointed Deficit Commission Co-Chair Alan Simpson: Social Security Is Like “A Milk Cow With 310 Million Tits”

We need to move the Overton Window here — raising the retirement age is idiocy; in the current jobs emergency, we need to temporarily LOWER the retirement age to 60. That will clear out some older workers, get them onto Social Security, and open up their jobs for younger people who are currently unemployed.

Keep banging this drum. No more defense – it is time to go on offense.

Speaking of which, while Woodhouse would not care much if we complained about him, he would care if party officials at the state and local levels started making some noise. And those officials would care if they suddenly found themselves facing angry calls about why the DNC is supporting cuts in Social Security.

THANK YOU for this.

It is downright spooky. Seems Dr. Krugman does have a crystal ball. Unbelievable.