Stating the Obvious: Obama wants to gut social security

Obama intends to gut social security.

Will it be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for someone to launch a challenge to Obama in January? Or, will the deteriorating economy and democratic party losses in November have already decided that? “No point in backing a loser…”

President Rick Perry has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

President of the Republic of Texas?

This has been apparent since Obama put Social Security on the table in 2007 before the first caucus.* Why else would he do that? It’s kind of an odd thing to attack another Democrat over in a Democratic primary isn’t it? What is she going to do to solve the Social Security crisis? Sure, he backpedaled, but that was the tell – he put it on the table because his backers wanted it on the table.

* Atrios was right to pick up on the bat signal, he just apparently didn’t realize what Obama was signaling.

BDBlue, yes, that post by Atrios was noticed by some, who turned out to be prematurely correct. Unfortunately. Thanks, “progressives”!

Personally, I’d like to see the actually still progressive wing of the netroots and the Democratic party and non-Republican wing of the Green Party all agree to vote for one candidate in the 2012 primaries. I’d like to see that we send a strong message that we won’t vote for the hardly lesser evil. That’s my suggestion for the primaries and the general. I don’t think that person would win, but the message would be clear that progressives can only be ignored at cost and with consequences. I’d vote for anyone with truly progressive politics that was put forward who was the agreed-upon candidate, e.g. Ian Welsh, Marcy Wheeler, Jim Hightower. There are many others who could be the agreed-upon candidate.

I’d get strongly behind promoting this if someone with a well-read blog wants to start the organizing ball rolling.

A third party Candidate I believe is impossible for 2012, but an independent run could win if…a ticket were chosen that had big name draw [media coverage] competence Foreign, Domestic & Military, a short platform of carefully prioritized the fed into AND relieved discontent.

For an independent run…you need to start with a ticket.

Perot won 19 percent [don’t laugh 33.3 is a winning number] of the vote in the 1992, with a squeaky voice, short stature, butt ugly profile and a questionable past.

Republicans get 29% to start, Obama gets about 40% of Democrats, peel the independents, woman voters and you are at 24%, figure who could get you to 33.3

I also do think that time is ripe for a new party. Especially, women and adults 20-3o are very unhappy. But forming that party will take years, and it will not be the progressive saints party.

When did the ossification of reason happen? It is incredible there are still references to the Obama/Clinton primaries, as if years have not passed. Those still there, some advice, get a life!

The big tent that was the FDR coalition has, unbeknownst to those of that coalition, been taken over by what remains of centrist, semi-sane Republicans after the Republican party was overwhelmed and ideologically cleansed by the conservative/John Birch movements. These DINO’s have gained the leavers of power of the Democratic party by stealth and have marginalized the traditional democratic coalition into an ineffective fringe of their own party, their voice in council has been silenced. There is no way the liberal/progressive will be able to recapture control of the party, it has been sold to the highest bidders by the DINO’s. To believe there is any hope of recovery of the party is a delusion.

If you ever wish to find who actually controls any political party, look carefully at who owns the members of the board of finance for that party. It is there you will find the real owners, shakers and movers of that party. Always, follow the money.

@ lambert strether

Yes lambert, you and mandos make a fine pair of asses.

Call Lambert an ass all you like.

I’ve been reading both your comments for years and Lambert is the one who has been proved right again and again.

On getting over the primaries — I have trouble doing it, but then I haven’t gotten over the 1980 election in which the challenger negotiated with our designated enemy to hold hostages to help him electorally, or continuation in Iran-contra, or the 2000 and 2004 elections with their magic disappearing votes. Guess I just don’t listen when I tell myself I ought to forget what’s happened, look forward instead of backward, and practice the great consumer skill of distinguishing between indistinguishable products regardless of their past performances.

Proved right again and again? About what, exactly? That the Democrats are right-wing chundernozzles? Exactly one gazillion people could have told you that twenty years ago, and many of them actually did.

But this is where Lambert is very, very wrong:

For many of us, it could hardly be worse, and it might be better.

In fact, it could be worse. It could be much, much worse. I’d think I might even be willing to agree with everything Lambert says if it were not for that.

Marcy Wheeler has suggested that she may get behind Elizabeth Warren in the new year if Obama does not appoint her to lead the new Consumer Protection Agency.

Unfortunately, MW made it contingent on EW being appointed by the end of the year. What if EW is appointed, but Obama&Pelosi go forward with gutting Social Security and Medicare? Will Elizabeth Warren resign if that happens, and if not, then would there be any point in bothering to recruit her to resign and run?

My point is that Social Security & Medicare are far more important than the new CFPA, and if MW is willing to recruit a challenger to Obama over the CFPA, then she should be even more intent on recruiting someone if Obama&Pelosi bring forward proposals to cut Social Security & Medicare (whether they pass or not), not on the availability of EW. In fact I would expect both Wheeler and Hamsher to be recruiting someone.

Odd that Eve, Marcy, and the host did not bring up the plans to cut Social Security & Medicare during their discussion.

Robert Reich had a good column in TAP the other day:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=fire_on_the_left

Speaking of liberal advocacy groups:

“Each has a narrow bandwidth (health, environment, labor, women’s rights) with a national constituency that donates money and sends members of Congress e-mails as requested about particular initiatives.

These groups are staffed by overworked 20-somethings and headed by people who enjoy being minor celebrities at Washington fundraisers and occasional visitors to the White House. But these groups don’t mobilize people back where they live, and they’re no substitute for a broad progressive movement.

A movement connects the dots across issues and reveals a larger wrong that must be righted. When it comes to misuse of power, Americans carry two deep-seated fears — of big government taking over and of big business and Wall Street running amok. Both are sometimes justified, but the political response is lopsided. The conservative movement adeptly fits almost every morsel of news to the first fear, giving its members an animating cause: Reduce government.

A progressive movement would focus on the second fear, seeking to protect average working people from the depredations of big business and Wall Street. Given what has occurred in recent years — from Enron and WorldCom through the devastation brought on by Wall Street, to the price-gouging by health insurers like WellPoint and Big Pharma, right through BP — there is no absence of dots to be connected.”

He’s hardly pushing for a 3rd party/primary opponent, but this is a largely accurate read of the present landscape. I read a piece by Chris Hedges about Howard Zinn’s FBI file yesterday and realized that if “the left” used their language, we’d be getting somewhere.

Except if, one were *really* betting on collapse, one would be writing about fortifications, ammo, etc, etc, and then maybe gardening and self-sufficiency at the end of the list. When mass starvation arrives, no amount of squash-growing is going to save anyone from the mobs. Or the government, or whatever. It’s just another variant on gold-fetishism. A more fun variant, I’ll grant you that, but a variant.

(“Prophylactic”?)

See, I don’t think that collapse is going to look like a Russian-style collapse, because unlike Russia (which has oil) we are looking at what may well be a resource-depleted future, at least in terms of energy available to the USA for recovery. I think *real* collapse is going to look at least a few smidgens more like Mad Max than like Russia.

That said, I’d pick Russia rather than Mad Max (or Weimar) because I think our sclerotic political economy is a lot like the USSR’s (especially in actually subtracting value from its inputs, like the USSR’s automobile industry)

Or, maybe like occupied Iraq: a few hours of intermittent electricity each day, long, dark nights with too much heat or too much cold, decaying infrastructure, random violence and roaming bands of men with guns, no more garbage collection. But worse, since there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

I think anon2525’s version of collapse is more what I was thinking of, especially the roaming bands of men with guns. Or maybe—to carry the Russia theme forward—more like a giant Chechnya.

But Russia and the USA are not really comparable. On the political surface, it may seem to some people that the sclerosis of the USSR and the USA have some similarities, but US political culture, mass movements, history, self-image, etc, are completely different. The USSR grew out of a socialist-ish revolution following the Romanov dynasty which was completely annihilated. It’s leaders spoke socialist-ish rhetoric, and people had a particular, USSR-specific way of relating to the state.

None of this really applies to the USA. The USA revolution happened too far in the past, and was justified by a different set of philosophical premises. At its fringes, its political culture produces weird survivalist/individualist phenomena with weapons-hoarding and so on. And by their fringes, ye shall know them. The difference in political langauge and public culture, plus matters physical/geological/geographic would likely lead to a kind of collapse that’s quite different from that of Russia.

Perhaps Dave Anderson would have some views on whether Mexico is living through collapse, or only on the verge of doing so.

…their more homogenous ethnicity/culture, would render their experience different from the Russian and United States empires…

Agreed. That is why I listed both North Korea and Cuba. We can expect Alaskans to experience different problems from Floridians, who will experience different problems from Ohioans, who will experience different problems from Arizonans, and so on.

When Obama came into office it was not unreasonable to expect that he would address the problems of climate change, ecological destruction, and resource depletion differently than bush&cheney had. Unfortunately for us all, he hasn’t addressed them differently. He hasn’t addressed them at all. They’re not “political” problems that have lobbyists paying money to get them addressed. He should have pointed out to the country that these are the highest-priority and most severe problems the country and the planet faces, instead of the economy, the financial system, the medical services industry (AKA, “health care reform”), the weapons and military services industries (AKA, the “wars”). With the exception of ending the immediate killing of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no higher priority than these problems, either in gravity or urgency.

Sorry to be late to the party, but I need to put in my two cents worth.

Social Security is the only safety net for a majority of people when they are past the time when they can work. For many (too many) it is all keeps them from being Medicaid beneficiaries. “Gutting Social Security” would only shift an already indigent population into being certifiably destitute. Policy makers may lack principles but they are not that stupid.

People with additional retirement income are indifferent to the fact that there is a difference between SOCIAL security and INDIVIDUAL security. Those for whom Social Security is their sole source of income know better.

The big shift is not happening in Social Security but in supplemental retirement income. Company paid plans (pensions) are being replaced by employee paid plans (IRA’s, 401-k’s, etc). The next generation may find themselves more impoverished in their retirement years than those of us now in retirement, not because their Social Security benefits have vanished but because for many a lifetime of personal negligence has left them worse off than the old-fashioned pension plans (now a vanishing species).

The Diamond-Orszag Plan is a model for transition which may or may not survive the political sausage grinder if it ever gets considered.
http://bit.ly/bcsdgE (9 pages pdf)

I think that the process of collapse will take us longer than it did Greenland, simply because we’re a continental and transnational empire, and not a small isolated colony. But the direction is the same, at least, right now. Who knows? It’s interesting to see how long the Roman Empire was able to stagger along…

“will take us longer”? Interconnected and hierarchical systems are the order of the day. I don’t know that it will take us longer. These interdependent systems may collapse faster.

Keep in mind that 1) we now have a world economy that has been built on 150 years of fossil fuel use and that this foundation is disappearing with nothing comparable to replace it; 2) we have a world population of nearly seven billion people (“mass panic” can take on new meaning); 3) there are countries that have nuclear weapons (what did north korea do when its supply of oil collapsed? threaten to develop nuclear weapons until clinton negotiated with them to send them fuel. when bush didn’t deliver, north korea went ahead with its threat); 4) we’re disrupting (ending) ecosystems that have been stable throughout human history (for example, the warming and acidification of the oceans, which have been stable for millions of years).

To people who are saying they know how this will play out, I ask, “based on what historical precedent?” There is none, not even the ones that Diamond describes have three of the four factors listed above, although exhausting a natural resource that the economy crucially depends on has occurred many times before.

John: I understand exactly what you meant by “negligence.” That is why I wrote I don’t equate not wanting to put my money into the hands of thieves with “personal negligence.” If any of the SS reform plans were honest, they’d have an option simply to increase my Social Security contribution. Of course, that’s not on, since one of the main purposes of the “reforms” is to generate fees for the money managers.

I don’t support tiny urls by clicking on them.

I think being able to grow your own food makes sense in most of the scenarios I can think of, so it’s a good thing to know. Probably the ability to repair broken stuff will be useful, too.

Anything that moves you in the direction of lower fossil-fuel use (direct or indirect use, such as coal-powered electricity) and less complexity and interconnectedness to non-redundant systems surely cannot hurt. But it does assume that any economic decline will be gentle. If it isn’t, then you’ll likely be overwhelmed.

The country is not responding well to the signals:

1) In the winter of 2005, we had a significant price spike in natural gas. There were horror stories which people told of monthly bills over $1000. There’s been no significant move to make buildings more energy efficient since then.

2) In the spring/summer of 2008, we had a significant price spike in gasoline ($4/gal, $150/bbl). Since then there has been no significant move to rebuild the energy-efficient mass transportation that the country had up until the ’50s.

3) In Sept. 2008, the financial system was shown to be a highly-interdependent house of cards that could not be relied on as a foundational element for a modern economy (we literally cannot function without the millions (billions?) of electronic transfers that the system built up over the past thirty years now makes possible). Any responsible group of adults should have responded to this by restructuring the system that we have to rely on so that it is one that we can rely on.

Diamond Orszag Plan is easily accessed via Google.
First screen, first item.

Anyway, whatever the postdiluvium looks like, the point is that only in the rosiest scenarios does such a putative collapse look like one where most of us can sigh resignedly and bend over to plant our potatoes.

The point of calling something a rentier class is that it demands rent, or whatever you want to call it. In the case where collapse threatens the ability to collect rent, the next step is to collect peons. In that case, hoarding gold or growing vegetables will only help a lucky few.

Whatever the environmental roots, the initial manifestations of collapse will be social, so sustaining any sort of large-scale social organization is going to be important.

They are signals to adults about danger, not “price signals” to consumers. Try to climb out of the pool of Friedmanite thinking that the country has been immersed in for the past thirty years. People are ignoring these signals because they are ignoring their adult responsibilities, not merely because they are being “rational economic actors.”

Well, in that sense we shouldn’t need prices to tell us anything in the first place. Not like any number of other warning signs haven’t been reported on for the last n years…