It could “the end of the New Deal” if President Obama falters. Who can predict if President Obama will fail to protect the bottom 99%. The plight of the bottom 99% has deteriorated with many selling their food stamps for other necessities. All of this is possible because of the GOP’s proficiency in brain washing their base-whose members vote against their own interests every time they pick a GOP candidate.
The article “The political fights the president chooses” makes you wonder how
Obama will sustain the revenue that Social Security depends upon.
It is common knowledge that, as the article states, “Democrats have never allowed the payroll tax rate to be cut, even temporarily, because payroll taxes feed the Social Security trust fund and create the political base of support for the program, said Nancy Altman, author of “The Battle For Social Security”, a history of the program, and head of the advocacy group Social Security Works. Republicans have won a long-sought victory, even as President Obama hails it as a win for his party.”
Remember, as the article states “Obama, as part of the Democratic package, secured a roughly 30 percent cut in the payroll tax, from 6.2 to 4.2 percent. Allowing it to expire in a year will mean that workers will see a nearly 50 percent jump in payroll taxes as the rate reverts back — an event that will surely be described as a tax hike. The cut is estimated to cost $120 billion per year….
Republicans acknowledged that the expiration of the tax holiday will be treated as a tax increase. “Once something like this goes into place, a year from now, when it expires, it’ll be portrayed as a tax increase,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.). So in a body like Congress, precedents matter and this is setting a precedent. I think that certainly is going to create some problems down the road if it passes.”
Since their inception the GOP has stood for giving the fat cats everything and as the article states “Filling the gap from the general fund is a temporary fix, but with the president himself buying into deficit worries, even as the economy screams for more robust Keynesian stimulus, and with a Republican House less than a month away, we all know that the temporary fix, unlike the tax cuts themselves, will in fact be temporary. So, the Obama tax plan carves a hole in Social Security funding, and with the president’s Catfood Commission already having recommended cuts in benefits, the way this plays out is obvious. The president didn’t fight the Republicans when he had a Democratic Congress, so it’s not realistic or pragmatic to expect him to fight them when they control the House. And by passing the Obama tax plan, the majority of Congressional Democrats have joined him in what may turn out to be the beginning of the end of the New Deal. And a very credible Congressman says the president was on the phone to House Democrats telling them that his presidency depended on the bill’s passage. The president may have been right. But not the way he thought. Because much more than his presidency is on the line and under open political assault; and in an unprecedented move, he and Congressional Democrats have just ceded them critical ground.”
It could be “the end of the New Deal” if Obama falters.
Progressive minds think alike as the following article makes the same analogy I did in “Is Obama an adept Gambler”.
The article “The Looming Debt Ceiling Shakedown” illustrates the machinations of the GOP operatives.
The article states “The Republicans have just taken Barack Obama hostage and he paid the ransom: More tax cuts for the rich, huge reductions in the estate tax for 2011 and many other goodies the Republicans can take home to their rich patrons. But like any hostage takers who have just made money by demanding ransom, the Republicans will soon be back asking for more and the next time [probably January/February], the Republicans will be demanding that cuts be made in Social Security and Medicare, or they will not agree to raise the federal debt ceiling. Raising the debt ceiling, of course, historically has been bipartisan, as it is no one’s real interest to upset the economy and default on government bonds. But with an accommodating President who already has proven his inability to resist Republican threats and hostage-taking, the Republicans are certain to make more demands and threats. What should happen in this scenario?”
The article describes how President Obama could play the GOP as President Clinton did years ago when the Newt Gingrich’s GOP shutdown the government and concludes “The Republicans are running a total bluff. They don’t want the government to default on government bonds anymore than Obama. It would cause economic chaos, cost Wall Street trillions and lead to a civil war within the Republican Party between the Wall Street Wing and the Lunatic [aka, Tea Party] Wing, with the Wall Streeters threatening to give the Democrats $2 billion in the next election if the Republicans don’t come to their senses. And it would provide Obama a chance to show the country what a bunch of dangerous lunatics the Republicans are.
So that’s what Obama needs to do, but what are the chances he would actually do it — that is, understand the strength of the hand he is playing and out-negotiate the Republicans? Based on his melt-down on tax cuts, I wouldn’t bet on it.”
The article “The New Tax Deal: Reaganomics Redux” explains that the relatively
recent GOP past predicts what they’ll do if they get a chance.
The article states “More than thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan came to Washington intent on reducing taxes on the wealthy and shrinking every aspect of government except defense.
The new tax deal embodies the essence of Reaganomics.
It will not stimulate the economy.
A disproportionate share of the $858 billion deal will go to people in the top 1 percent who spend only a fraction of what they earn and save the rest. Their savings are sent around the world to wherever they will earn the highest return.
The only practical effect of adding $858 billion to the deficit will be to put more pressure on Democrats to reduce non-defense spending of all sorts, including Social Security and Medicare, as well as education and infrastructure.
It is nothing short of Ronald Reagan’s (and David Stockman’s) notorious “starve the beast” strategy.”
The article spells out that giving the rich won’t gain us new jobs and will only hurt the bottom 99% and wonders “So why are Democrats voting for Reaganomics?
They say they have no choice – either vote for this or watch taxes rise on everyone starting January 1.
That Democrats have allowed themselves to get into this fix is a testament to either their timidity, obtuseness, or dependence on the campaign contributions of those at the top.”
Just how bad have things gotten for our poor? The article “Welfare Recipients Forced to Sell Food Stamps to Buy Basic Necessities” notes what the party of no has accomplished.
The article states “A new investigation from ColorLines Magazine supported by the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund shows that some poor families are forced to sell their food stamps on the black market for cash in order to survive this prolonged recession.”
This doesn’t sound like what would happen in the greatest country in the world. So much riches at one extreme and such utter poverty at the other. No, we don’t hear about because the GOP crowds it out of MSM with outright lies.
The article “PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care'” notes that research shows that among the many lies the GOP has devised none had more impact than as the article states “The claim that the Democratic health care law is a “government takeover of health care” is our 2010 Lie of the Year.
In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul America’s health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a “government takeover.”
“Takeovers are like coups,” Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. “They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.
The line stuck. By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the “public option” concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.”
Remember bullies? They’d typically repeat something like “Joey wets his bed” and if they did long enough some people who wanted to believe that Joey wets his bed eventually would totally believe the lie and would support the liars telling of the lie. That is our current GOP!
How would anyone other than his mother know if Joey wets his bed? They couldn’t, but so far as the GOP’s propaganda about health care reform the article states “The phrase is simply not true.
Said Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of health policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: “The label ‘government takeover” has no basis in reality, but instead reflects a political dynamic where conservatives label any increase in government authority in health care as a ‘takeover.’ “
It isn’t creeping socialism a s the article states “”Government takeover” conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market:
• Employers will continue to provide health insurance to the majority of Americans through private insurance companies.”
It isn’t just this one group’s assertion as the article states “Other news organizations have also said the claim is false.
Slate said “the proposed health care reform does not take over the system in any sense.’ In a New York Times economics blog , Princeton University professor Uwe Reinhardt, an expert in health care economics, said, “Yes, there would be a substantial government-mandated reorganization of this relatively small corner of the private health insurance market (that serves people who have been buying individual policies). But that hardly constitutes a government takeover of American health care.”
FactCheck.org, an independent fact-checking group run by the University of Pennsylvania, has debunked it several times, calling it one of the “whoppers” about health care and saying the reform plan is neither “government-run” nor a “government takeover.”
The article details how, and how often, and for how many generations the GOP used the line and concluded “By March of this year, when Obama signed the bill into law, 53 percent of respondents in a Bloomberg poll said they agreed that “the current proposal to overhaul health care amounts to a government takeover.”
Exit polls showed the economy was the top issue for voters in the November election, but analysts said the drumbeat about the “government takeover” during the campaign helped cement the advantage for the Republicans.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat whose provision for Medicare end-of-life care was distorted into the charge of “death panels” (last year’s Lie of the Year ), said the Republicans’ success with the phrase was a matter of repetition.
“There was a uniformity of Republican messaging that was disconnected from facts,” Blumenauer said. “The sheer discipline . . . was breathtaking.”
The article noted that Democrats aren’t anywhere near being as good at messaging as the GOP is. Well, Will Rogers said “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I am a Democrat.” That isn’t good enough.
Research shows that not only are the GOP excellent at propaganda, but that they are brainwashing the red staters at an alarming rate.
The article ” Fox News VP Attacks Maryland Study Finding The Network’s Viewers Are The Most Misinformed” states ” ThinkProgress reported yesterday on a study conducted by World Public Opinion – a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland – which found that that “greater exposure” to Fox News during the run-up to the mid-term elections this year “increased” daily viewers’ misinformation about specific issues.
That’s the Rove model. Attack the opponent’s strong point and thus make it into a weakness. The article states “Asked for comment on the study, Fox News seemingly dismissed the findings. In a statement, Michael Clemente, who is the senior vice president of news editorial for the network, said: “The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with.”
We have to realize that the GOP does march in lockstep as far as disseminating propaganda to the US common masses. As has been noted regarding GOP misinformation techniques “The sheer discipline . . . was breathtaking”
The GOP will try to attack the US social safety net and it is up to President Obama to win this battle. We have to realize that the red state proles readily believe GOP propaganda, and that the GOP doesn’t have any shame–consequentially there is no telling what the right-wing fanatics could be made to believe.
