The Bi-Partisan Attack on Social Security: "Obama's Deficit Commission is all smoke and mirrors."

[Better Believe It]

The Latest Bi-Partisan Attack on Social Security: Let Them Eat Cat Food
by: James Ridgeway
JAMES RIDGEWAY is senior Washington correspondent for Mother Jones Magazine. For 30 years he was Washington correspondent for the Village Voice.
August 23, 2010

President Obama’s Deficit Commission is all smoke and mirrors. Its members are making a big show of laboring over ”painful” choices and considering all options in their quest to bring down the deficit. But inside the Beltway everyone knows what’s going to happen: The commission will reduce the deficit on the backs of the old and the poor, through cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Some opponents have taken to calling it the Cat Food Commission, since that’s what it’s victims will be forced to eat once the commission gets done slashing away at their modest entitlements.

In fact, the true intent of the Deficit Commission was evident before it was even formed. That intent was only driven home when Obama appointed as its co-chair Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming who is well known for voicing, in the most colorful terms, what Paul Krugman calls the zombie lie” that old-age entitlements will soon bankrupt the country.

So why the big show? Because neither Obama nor the Congress wants to get caught cutting Social Security and Medicare in public, certainly not before the November elections. (Medicaid will be cut as well, but politicians tend not to worry so much about poor people, since they don’t go to the polls in the numbers we middle-class geezers do.) So instead, they are foisting off this unpleasant task onto the Deficit Commission, showing what the lawyers call “due diligence,” sucking their thumbs and pretending to study how to cut the deficit. They’ve got $1 billion in walk-around money to pay for propaganda so the PR industry ought to be plenty happy. So too, should billionaire Pete Peterson, as he and his foundation lackeys push forward towards a victory in their longstanding attack on so-called “entitlements.”

Quite frankly, if the Republican Right could get itself together and shove the Tea Party nuts back into their cave–as Reagan did with the crackpots hanging around him–they too could reap the benefits of the Cat Food Commission’s work. Ever since the New Deal, the Right has been kicking and screaming about Social Security. Things just got worse in the 1960s with Medicare and Medicaid. And now, thanks to our supposedly “socialist” president, they are within a few inches of cutting a nice hefty hunk out of the largest social programs this nation.



Read the full article at:

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/178

[Poboy]

1. K&R

[DJ13]

2. Kick, but the DLC'ers have this in zero rec land

[daleanime]

3. But not for long...

:banghead:

[Autumn]

4. I brought it up to #5 and to the greatest

this is something I am keeping my eye on. I don't trust, at this point in time, their idea of "reform".

[Edweird]

9. Their numbers are few no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise.

The truth rises eventually.

[disillusioned73]

5. ...

:kick:

[Vincardog]

6. The OP is all true. WE need to start fighting NOW to stop it. Call your Congress Critter and make

them pledge
1) No privitization of Socal Security
2) No cuts to Socal Security
3) No raising ages of Socal Security

[Greyhound]

7. K&R.

That there are even the few defending this abomination just shows how deluded we've become.
:kick: & R

[Better Believe It]

8. The Democratic Party now supports "tweaks" in Social Security. "Treaks" is the code word for cuts.

That's according to Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4515602

[Edweird]

10. DLC =GOP

[bullwinkle428]

11. I want chicken, I want liver, Kick & Rec, please deliver!!

[lib2DaBone]

12. Mr. Obama's Deficit Commission Bullish on China....

Pete Peterson , head of Blackstone Investments (and Mr. Obama's DRC)... says he will invest in CHINA.. not the USA. These are the people who want your Social Security Money...

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iIiYxqVDrGAyXhPyNuz7yxipY-AQ

Blackstone 'signs first major China housing deal'


HONG KONG — US private equity giant Blackstone Group has signed a deal to make its first major investment in China's booming housing market, a report said Monday.

The Financial Times said Blackstone and Great Eagle Holdings, one of Hong Kong's largest property developers, agreed to a deal involving the construction of luxury apartments and a hotel in the coastal city of Dalian in the north.

The report of the deal comes less than a week after Blackstone said it planned to double its India investments to as much as three billion US dollars over the next five years.

[Hannah Bell]

13. defunding social programs in the us to free up more cash to invest overseas.