November 20, 2015

The Choice Between Sanders and Clinton

I have been a member of this board for more than a decade, but I have not posted all that much. In 1972, at age 19, I organized my precinct for George McGovern and was a delegate to the Texas State Democratic Convention. From then until now, a recurring theme in the Democratic Primaries is the tension between ideological affinity and what was usually called "electability." Carter vs. Udall. Carter vs. Ted Kennedy. Bill Clinton vs. Harkin. Gore vs. Bradley. Dean vs. Kerry. Hillary Clinton vs. Obama. And now Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton.

Every election, I have favored the more progressive candidate, but I have always enthusiastically and energetically supported the nominee. This led me to argue against supporters of Ralph Nader, and against the purists who maintain that they won't vote for the lesser of two evils. I remember an internet argument with a Green Party advocate who said that he would only vote for somebody he would be proud to vote for. I still think that guy was an idiot.

And, even now, as I have come to the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is not the more electable candidate, and that her Presidency will probably be an utter disaster for our country and our party -- the current GOP is so insane and horrifying, I will vote for her.



I am baffled by the overwhelming majority of Hillary supporting posts on this board. It seems to me there are two logical rationales for voting for her.

1. You do not agree with Sanders' policy proposals. If you don't want to see Single Payer or Tuition for All and the other items on his wish list, you should definitely vote for Clinton rather than Sanders.

2. You do not believe that Sanders' can win or you do not believe that he could ever get anything enacted. If in your most sober judgment, you really believe that America will not support Sanders, you should vote for Clinton.


Very few posts are based on the first rationale. Most are variation on the second -- and a very troubling percentage of them are nothing more than taunting. My personal favorite is some nice member of this Board offering to bet their life on the inevitability of Hillary Clinton winning.

Vote for me because I am going to win is a very weird appeal.

Rather than recite a prediction as though it were a fact, I would like to hear some actual analysis of why you think that. I thought that Dean was far more electable than Kerry and he turned into a truly lousy candidate. And Hillary does NOT have an impressive electoral track record. She killed the Democratic Brand in 1994 and delivered us Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In 2008, as so many Sanders supporters repeat so often, she had the same kind of lead over Obama in 2007 that she has now in the utterly meaningless polls this autumn.

Since the record cannot sustain any faith in Hillary's charm on the campaign trail, I can't help thinking that all this taunting is not about how great a candidate you think she is, but rather a belief that our party's Franklin Roosevelt legacy can't win an election.


All of the Hillary supporters I know are in that camp.

I find it sad.

September 27, 2015

Latest Privitization Scheme -- Local TV Frequencies

The company that owns USA Today bought 23 TV stations in 2013, then dumped all the debt from its newspaper chain onto a spinoff company called Tegna which is now one of the biggest local broadcast companies in the USA. Meanwhile, this new company is proposing to all the unions at its TV stations what Tegna calls "non exclusive jurisdiction language." This would allow them to have other people report and photograph the news, effectively busting out their unions.

Those labor organizations have formed a coalition to resist this attack on professionalism. In researching that employer, the unions discovered the most likely reason why USA Today bought those stations -- to speculate on the bandwidth, rather than to broadcast. In 2012, Congress passed legislation obliging the FCC to set up a Spectrum Auction, allowing every local TV station license holder in the country to sell all or part of its assigned frequency to the highest bidder.

The rationale for this is that the low frequency of the TV spectrum travels farther and penetrates walls better than the higher frequency bandwidth used by cell phones and other digital technologies. The old analog method of broadcast used far more bandwidth than is necessary today, and it makes sense for Congress to direct the FCC to arrange a method for reallocating this public resource.

But it makes no sense to just sell the bandwidth to the highest bidder. And it is a travesty for the proceeds of this sale of a public resource to go to the temporary holder of a broadcast license. It is our air, not theirs.


Here is a video from a Town Hall meeting in Seattle last Wednesday night that addressed this issue. It is long, but I think you will find it interesting.

September 27, 2015

American conservatives

Stopped being conservative with Ronald Reagan and supply side economics. Instead of adhering to skepticism about all the various utopian schemes of dreamers, the GOP became the font of a new Utopian Dream -- the Free Market.

Get the government off America's back and we will have Morning in America forevermore.

Instead of a principled philosophy concerned with Original Sin and the baseness of human nature, today's "conservative" is a radical and a purist.

This change in right wing philosophy came about when clever political specialists realized that the Republicans never won a national election with their bitching about Deficit Spending. So they hoked up what David Stockman called a Trojan Horse -- the "theory" of tax cuts unleashing America from bonds if liberalism.

Bad economics and worse public policy -- but great politics for a generation.

Three decades later they have cut taxes and reduced regulation beyond any rational measure. The result has not been Utopia. More like hell.

The Pope, a spokesperson for getting into heaven himself, can spot a rival religion from a mile off. For whatever reservations one may have with The Papacy, at least the Catholics don't claim that you can live in heaven before you're dead.

September 17, 2015

American Caesar -- Reality Show Pitched in 2006

June 4, 2006

Here in LaLa Land, I have wrangled a pitch meeting with Paramount (now corporately related to CBS). I've been on site at the Gower Studio once before at a schmoozing lunch organized by one of my colleagues at the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists -- she knew a guy in labor relations there and she was egging me on to "switch sides" and go for the real money. So she and I were allowed through the gate one sunny day in 2003 and I was allowed to pick up the check for lunch at the very tony restaurant where all the studio suits ate every day.

So next Tuesday, my agent and I will go through that gate in the far more exalted role of "talent" rather than the squirrelly position of union rep trying to break into the upper half of the middle class.


My idea is pure gold -- I call it American Caesar.

The bottom line about America is that civics class democracy is dead as a doornail -- but -- the silver lining is that pop democracy is vibrant, booming and profitable.

American Idol and its various spinoffs have staked out the territory. All that's left is for somebody bold enough to capitalize on the new reality.

Every week, three potential dictators will "Cross the Rubicon" -- and undergo tests of their ability to rule the American Empire. I won't divulge the specific tests that our contestants will face, but the upshot will be to see if our potential Caesars have the nerve to wield American Power like it ought to be wielded in the 21st Century. To avoid legal complications about the mass death involved, production will take place off shore in Third World Countries that are hungry for hard Viacom dollars.

Every week, the viewing audience will vote on-line or by hard wire phone line for who would make the best Caesar. The first place finisher will go on to the next round while the second place winner will be given plane fare back to the USA. The loser, will, well -- lose. This is Reality TV.



The competition will lead up to November, 2008. If the hype catches on (like I know it will) we will clobber the election returns in the ratings. And if the current social trends continue apace (like all of you know it will) our new Caesar will have a genuine mandate that will shunt the conventional "president" off into the dustbin of history where he or she will belong.

Televised democracy -- it's better than the real thing.



June 6, 2006

I know I shouldn't count my golden geese until the first golden egg hatches, but I have plans for the development of this franchise after the climax of 2008. Viacom will probably not quite yet have the chutzpah to push the logic of our show to its conclusion, and I want to establish a brand that will last longer than Ricky Martin.

So, in 2009 as the new "President" assumes office based on the "vote" in the Electoral College, our new Caesar will go on hiatus, rather than try to upstage the "real" Chief Executive.

Instead, our production company starts another series, called Big Sister. Same premise, only this time it's girls only. We'll have all kinds of ambitious women – home-wrecking babes; real life business broads who have moved to the top rungs of corporate and institutional ladders; motherly types who have stayed at home but still kept on top of the world's problems; athletic Amazons to represent the Xena faction; even some seemingly mousy office help. Each week their ruthlessness and moxie will be tested in a far jungle, and by election night 2010, we will designate Big Sister, the New Dictatress, sure to scare the piss out of what's left of the Angry White Males.

Which sets up Season Three -- Caesar and Big Sister in the Final Confrontation -- Election Night 2012!.

I'm thinking by then that the tiresome and bankrupt "Federal Government" will be pretty close to irrelevant. Once the Final Winner is selected by the viewing audience, the next move will be into the White House. Backed by a camera crew and the will of the people, Caesar or Big Sister will just roll a moving van up Pennsylvania Avenue and proceed to move in to the Executive Mansion.

If anyone gets in the way, it will be great video -- The Revolution Will Indeed Be Televised.




We have a mountain of notes ready to answer any questions that come up, and I am prepared to plow on until interrupted with a description of the jungle tests for our wannabe tyrants -- a mixed bag of confrontations shamelessly ripping off Survivor and Fear Factor, ranging from silly and light hearted to perilous and lethal.

My agent thinks I'm crazy, but I intend to pitch the sequels on Tuesday as well -- including my demented idea for challenging the results of the 2012 election with that Michael Moore style confrontation at the White House gate. Can you imagine the buzz it will create between the November election and the Janaury inaugural? I'm seeing a massive advertising/talk show blitz with the Duly Elected Dictator describing his/her plans for redecorating the White House and what wars he/she might be ready to start. I'm seeing T-shirts and bumper stickers celebrating the Televised Revolution.

On January 20, 2013 it all goes on Pay Per View -- will the Secret Service honor the 18th Century or the 21st Century conception of democracy? Will the citizenry take direct action or stay home and watch it on TV?

I am really jazzed about the chance to spin this yarn before the suits. It will be one of those post-modern moments when I try to tell corporate executives that they have even more power than they realize -- when they already figure they are the Masters of the Universe.


June 8, 2006

Just last night at dinner I told my agent that I had posted this stuff on a pissant little message board with a few dozen participants and she almost gagged on her halibut. But she calmed down and actually bought into my explanation for doing this: I'm not worried about anybody "stealing" this idea; it is infinitely more difficult to get the pitch meeting than it is to dream up this kind of scam. Contrary to what you might think, it is actually to my legal advantage to have this time-stamped publication fixed in cyberspace to document the fact that I created this concept in advance of Tuesday's meeting.

If this thing produces the multi-billions I know it will, as an outsider I will be the first one the suits try to throw off the gravy train. This thread will be Exhibit A in my Eight Figure Lawsuit if I need to file it. And by having this option, it makes it much less likely that I will have to exercise it.



Here are a few more production notes --


The mainly inaccurate comparison to Rome will fix the framework for the show. The three contestants each week will be called "The Triumvirate."

Act I of each hour will introduce the potential dictators with some biographical detail and candid interview footage, followed by the results of the previous week's voting. We will spend some time documenting the travails of the loser who has to find his way home on his own nickel. I'm expecting great footage of these humiliating encounters -- hell, we can always hire some hungry locals to fuck with the losers if they don't run into enough trouble on their own. We want to establish that something is at stake in this show.

Act II will put them into some horribly embarrassing scenario to see who maintains an Imperial bearing. Here is where we put both the Sid Caesar and the oily bodies into the mix. Nudity, local mores and a language barrier in the backwaters of the Third World will be mixed and matched each week to see who can look the part under stress.

Act III explores the edge of Reality TV. Life and death will be involved, and, for other legal reasons, I do not chose to reveal these details in this venue. For this idea to work, however, Viacom is going to have to step up to the plate.



I'm thinking that the ratings challenge to the election returns on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2008 will be a national hoot. Nobody will take us literally, yet, about our Caesar doing anything in the "real" world other than spend his $100,000,000 prize money. But if the real time vote tally does clobber all the "straight" news reporting on the "real" election -- as we all know it will -- the rest of the campaign will be a breeze.



The Big Sister series is the grabber. It closes the circle opened by All In The Family in 1971 -- Yes, you don't have to be a white guy to get somewhere anymore; a woman might even become an Orwellian Dictatress. We'll bring Caesar into the mix to offer color commentary as the gals fight it out for domination of the erstwhile free world. I don't see how the midterm elections can stand a chance against the Selection of Big Sister. The last event before the voting starts will offer a Miss America throwback -- we'll get some Bert Parks lookalike to MC a "Question in the Fishbowl" segment. We'll set it up with a montage of grainy kinoscope footage of real Miss Americas giving us their breathy testimony in favor of World Peace. It will be delicious.



By 2010, I expect the brand to be established. I expect major buzz as we "develop" our final series.

We'll keep it a semi-secret that Caesar and Big Sister and our production company will have decamped to some uncivilized province in a semi-civilized country. We will hire 75 mercenaries at $1 million each who will be contractually obligated to follow the orders of one or both of the contestants in order to collect their money. Once again, I don't want to create evidence of a conspiracy to do anything illegal, so I am not going to post the details of what our mercenary army with two competing leaders will do -- but by way of comparison, think of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid robbing banks in the outback of Bolivia.

We will film for four months and then edit out eight two hour segments to air in September and October of 2012. On election night, we'll show a best-of, followed by the final bloody segment and then let the contestants make their last pitch to the viewing audience before opening the electronic polls.



Looking six years down the road is not easy, of course. A nuclear war might come along and fuck up my dreams. But I doubt it.

This is the Information Age, friends -- electronic communication changes everything. The question of how to get rid of the Paper government cannot be answered by reference to 18th Century documents, procedures and habits of mind. Crane Brinton defined a successful revolution taking place when the troops refuse to fire on their countrymen. How can they fire on our Winner, when it will be clear to everybody that he or she won fair and square?



June 11, 2006

What a whirlwind of activity this week!!!

The bottom line is we signed the "development deal" this morning and I am going to drink my first ever bottle of Crystal in about an hour and a half.

The suits are going to do the Big Sister series first -- they thought it would jive better to have the women's contest in direct competition with the real election. If it turns out to be Condi vs. Hillary, we'll be able to upstage that second rate show; if it is the usual boy on boy action between the Pubs and Dems, we should have a HUGE advantage.

If and only if Big Sister hits really big, then, we will go to Caesar in the second season. And my third season concept of having it out for the Real Throne is not dead!

In fact, they are assuming that in 2012 there will be some lame ass putz trying to run for re-election. The idea will be to pitch participating in OUR show to the incumbent. It sounds bizarre, I know, and that would blow out my concept of knocking off banks in the Bolivian outback as the "real" President couldn't leave the country for 4 months of shooting (although I really don't know why not).

Nope, the early notion is to make the Third season more like the Apprentice -- instead of modeling the contest for the Next Dictator on Fidel Castro's mountain army, the current thinking is to make it more of combination trivia/lack of ethics contest . . . .

That's all too far down the road for me to worry about now. I am one of probably eventually 25 "Executive Producers" of You Are Watching Big Sister (my title idea -- the suits figure the audience won't get it, but they like how it sounds anyway.) My main concern now is learning how to play this Hollywood game on the fly, to make sure that I don't get fucked out of my share of the waste. . . .




I think what nailed it was getting CBS to be the first major network to relegate the election returns to a crawl at the bottom of the screen with a 90 second update at the top of each hour. Our fear is the other nets will blow off the election, too. We'll see.

I might be the guy who placed the final straw on the back of America's democracy.

Strange days have found us.

March 4, 2015

From the Folks Who Created USA Today

I am a union representative with 32 years of experience in the labor movement. I have watched the percentage of private sector unionization be cut in about a third during my "career." Unless something changes, we will be done in the next decade or two.

My union is called the International Alliance of Stage and Theatrical Workers (IATSE) Local 600. We represent people in the entertainment, news and commercial production industries. This is the summary of a campaign that that we are starting now in the Pacific Northwest.



Gannett’s Non Jurisdictional Contract Proposal


Gannett bought the Belo Corporation late in 2013, acquiring 23 TV stations, including KGW in Portland and KING in Seattle. IATSE, SAG-AFTRA and IBEW represent a combined total of about 175 employees at those stations, including on-air personnel, photographers, editors and broadcast engineers. Five of the six bargaining units are in negotiations as of now, and the IATSE photographer unit at KING will start negotiations in a few months.

Gannett has put on all of its union bargaining tables across the country, including Portland and Seattle, this language:

“Amend and replace current jurisdiction with non-exclusive jurisdiction language, including insertion of subcontracting and amend contract throughout in order to conform to a non-exclusive jurisdiction operation.”

The four relevant local unions representing KGW and KING have formed a coalition to resist this union busting language. Our respective memberships feel very strongly that this is a career destroying concept that has but one purpose -- to replace union work with non-union work.

The Coalition will be conducting a series of public events to call attention to what Gannett calls its "business model" -- a ruthless cost cutting regime that follows the example of Gannett's prime property, USA Today. In addition to cutting benefits and eliminating union jobs, other cost cutting measures are handcuffing the remaining staff, and the product is deteriorating.

TV stations are NOT simply profit making "assets." TV stations operate by license from the Federal Government to broadcast in the public interest. During snow, ice, storms, fires, earthquakes and civil unrest, the public's interest is in getting accurate news about what is happening at that moment. Gannett's business model abandons the public interest in favor of low or unpaid amateurs.

The Coalition will be asking other unions, faith based organizations, public interest advocacy groups and all like-minded friends to attend our events and to participate in demonstrations that will take place in the spring and summer of 2015.

We raise this question –


If Gannett succeeds at getting the non-jurisdictional language in all of its operations from coast to coast, do you think that it will stop there?

=========================


Related to this labor dispute is a little known initiative by the Federal Communications Commission -- called a Frequency Auction. Over the air television uses lower frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. This bandwidth is coveted by the cell phone companies and internet providers. So our government is attempting to facilitate the transfer from local TV to those profit making corporations through a government sponsored auction of frequency ranges.

There are at least a couple of problems with this scheme.

First, FCC TV and radio licenses are provided free of charge to broadcasters who are obligated by law to operate in the public interest. This scheme allows companies to sell this gift from the government at a profit, yet another example of public assets being privatized. I am outraged by this premise, and our campaign will attempt to advise the public of this travesty.

Second, while it is easy to mock television -- and it deserves it -- during local emergencies, local TV is the most important means of people finding out what is happening right now. Whether it is a flood or an earthquake or ice storm, local TV meets its Federal mandate by deploying cameras and skilled professionals throughout the community to report on current conditions. This requires a minimal infrastructure of locally based news operations.

If a company like Gannett can buy a local TV station and then make a killing liquidating it as an "asset" and transferring it to an internet provider, there is no way that it can provide the vital information in times of crisis.



We are lining up support for our campaign -- I ask the DU community for your thoughts on the line of argument we are developing.

October 4, 2013

Why Is It So Hard to Be Objective About the President?

Like all politicians -- like all human beings -- Barack Obama has both positive and negative attributes. In some areas, he has infuriated me, while in others I reflect on how lucky we are to have won the elections of 2008 and 2012. But a very large number of the posters on this board cannot seem to cope with ambivalence -- we must either worship at the altar of 11th Dimensional Chess Grandmastery or we must condemn him at every opportunity for his many un-progressive stances. What's worse, it often becomes a debate about predicting what he will do next. Those of us who are critical of him tend to attack him in advance for what we expect him to do. Many of his fans offer the equally preposterous line of thinking that everything he touches will eventually turn to progressive policy gold in time.

You saw a very good example in the recent affair in Syria. Some people say that he tried but failed to start a war, while others say that he cleverly attained a foreign policy triumph without going to war. While the story was still unfolding, there was a furious debate about what he would do next -- and with very few exceptions, his critics expected a Bush-type of war while his fans cheered him on through all the twists and turns.

Trying to avoid the pre-judging of events, I had this to say about the Syrian bullshit:

[link:http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3554684|]



Although I remain a critic on a wide variety of the President's efforts, I do tip my hat and I am grateful for him for fending off the rush to war coming from the usual array of Neo-Cons warmongers. A major plus, in my opinion. It does not tip the overall balance in my opinion, but I am not about to gainsay or minimize the result. If we had a GOP President, we would be occupying Damascus by now, and I am grateful to Obama for avoiding that idiotic war.



Speaking of idiocy, in our idiotic culture, all that is ancient history now. Today we are obsessing over the next right wing offensive -- the effort to shut down the Federal Government. Within the confines of this "news" story, I support the President wholeheartedly. I might quibble with minor details of how he is waging the political fight, but at least now he is treating it as a political fight. And, in general, his is doing a very effective job in rallying the country AGAINST the Tea Party.

Finally.

But I cannot pretend that the previous four years of appeasement did not happen. He should have been relating to them this way from the very start of his presidency. And I am not being a Monday morning quarterback. His admitted failure to defend the Affordable Care Act and to counterattack the GOP for lying about it was the direct cause of the blow out election of 2010. Occasionally, you will see the opinion expressed that "voter apathy" created this monster that took over the House and then Gerrymandered itself into perpetual power. And, that is not altogether false. But it is at best an incomplete assessment of how 2010 played out.

The President spent those first two years courting the Republicans in a forlorn search for the post partisan universe that he and his team pretended to believe they lived in. The progressive base of the Democratic party saw nothing worth fighting for and did not not bother to vote, and now the Republic is facing a Constitutional Crisis due to the outcome of that miserable midterm election. At both the Federal and State levels, we now have a gaggle of lunatics firmly entrenched in public office with very little prospect of getting most of them out.

Here is what I had to say on another message board in 2011 as Obama caved in to the last episode of Tea Party extortion in 2011;





So I was wrong about the issue -- instead of abortion or immigration or the environment, it is health care. But it is obvious that Cruz and the rest of the Tea Party blackmailers believe that the President will cave in again, just as he did two years ago.

I am very happy to see that the President is fighting back and doing it effectively. I expect him to win this fight and I will tip my hat again if he can bring this thing to the happy conclusion of thoroughly humiliating his opponents. After all is said and done, we progressives should care more about the issues than about vindicating our preconceived notion of how good or bad a President he is.

He is the only President we have and the only Democratic President we have. I am glad when he does good and I am pissed off when he does bad.

Why don't more progressives look at it that way?

August 29, 2013

The whole WMD obsession

is absurd, an invention of the Bush Administration.

From 1945 until 2003, there was a national security consensus, supported whole heartedly by both parties, that deterrence was the best way to deal with the threat posed by Stalin, Mao and their successors. This was overthrown with no debate by the Bush Administration with the invasion of Iraq.

Most people see the criminality of the Bush Administration in its dishonest depiction of Iraq as a bristling arsenal of WMDs. But I think that it was even worse -- far worse -- that they succeeded utterly in the abandonment of deterrence as national policy. We turned Nuremburg on its head, and we adopted the philosophy of Tojo by not waiting while threats developed. Instead, we took pre-emptive action and we now have a standing policy of Attack First.

Now President Obama has inherited this moral abomination and idiotic strategy of starting wars to prevent potential threats from maturing into actuality. His rhetoric on this Syrian bullshit is firmly rooted in the Bush Doctrine of using America's allegedly infinite power to prevent the Syrian government from employing WMDs, explicitly citing the possibility that those weapons might someday be used against the USA.

This policy is insane and one of my many disappointments in Obama is that he has not repudiated the Attack First doctrine of George Walker Bush and the Project for a New American Century.

August 29, 2013

Finally found a silver lining

to the cloud of the Tea Party campaign of perpetually discrediting Obama.

The core of political support for the Bush invasions has been persuaded that The Commander In Chief is a fraud -- the Kenyan Socialist who pals around with terrorists. So now when there's the prospect of a splendid little war, the wingnuts are more skeptical than the peaceniks -- with nobody in-between jazzed up about those dreaded WMDs anymore. That is a far better political environment than we had when Rove was coaching Bush on how to rev up the knuckle draggers.

I doubt that Obama will get us into the Syrian War, not because I have any faith in his anti-war bona fides, but because it would be even stupider than the last two stupid wars. Nothing to gain, much to lose and politically disastrous, no matter what.

If he does start such a preposterous miltary adventure, all doubts about him should finally be resolved. His mixed record has undeniable plusses and his defenders have my respect, even as I disagree with them. But this combination of mass slaughter and geopolitical folly would clinch the case against him.

Conversely, if the President manages to hold the neo-con war hawks at bay, and avoids going to war, I will tip my hat and add a major plus mark on my personal ledger -- which now has far more big red minuses. The consenus on this thread seems to think it is going to happen, in spite of that 9% poll result.

I'm not so sure about that.

April 8, 2013

Tactics, Schmactics

The idea that proposing a budget with Social Security cuts in it does anything bad to Boehner or the Republicans is nonsense. Polling shows no demographic group favors it -- neither Democrats, nor Republicans nor Independents. The Republican Party as an institution does not favor it.

The GOP is always careful to phrase their demented attacks on Social Security as strengthening it or saving it.

Now our 11th Dimensional Chess Master owns the idea of cutting SS benefits -- he is the only major voice in our entire political culture favoring it. The assumption that this is not a serious proposal, but instead a gimmick to trap the GOP is based on nothing more than cognitive dissonance. It does not put the GOP into a "box." It puts President Obama into his own trap, just as in his first term when his continuous groveling before the Tea Party turned the Congress and many State Legislatures over to the Republican Party -- and subsequent gerrymandering to keep the House in GOP hands.

The Average Voter does not follow the blow by blow of legislation. The only thing that the general public will hear out of this is that Obama wants to cut Social Security -- not the purported, Obama is even willing to cut Social Security to get the GOP to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Nobody thinks that cutting Social Security is a good idea. On a parallel issue, Romney and Ryan grasped the populist point and attacked Obama from his left on his "cuts" to Medicare. This did not teach Obama anything -- and now that he has won re-election he is free to pursue his stated goal of the "Grand Bargain" to trade entitlements for tax increases.



I would like to hear from Obama defenders who claim that he is not really going to cut Social Security and that this is just a tactic -- what do you think of the President's basic premise of fiscal "balance" -- getting some form of tax increase in exchange for cuts in entitlements?

I believe that approach is bad public policy and even worse politics. What say the loyalists?