Thursday, October 25, 2012
How Unions and the Left Brought Each Other Down
Make no mistake: the real enemy of both Labor and the Left is repugs and the corporations who own them. But 40 years ago we stopped fighting them together and let them put us at each other's throat.
Digby:
Joan Walsh wrote a very nice piece about McGovern that's well worth reading. This excerpt speaks to my point above and, I think, may explain to some younger folks the dynamic that created so much of what we see today:
When I asked labor historian Jefferson Cowie in an interview whether he could identify one crucial moment in the Democratic Party’s post-’60s unraveling, I expected him to fudge like a good academic, but he surprised me; he had one: “The 1972 decision by organized labor…to destroy McGovern. Because that solidified a moment. It said, ‘We can’t work with the unions,’ to the left and to the women’s movement and the rest. It said organized labor is just about guys like George Meany, and Mayor Daley, it’s really the same monster, we can’t deal with them. And that creates a natural alliance between the New Left and the New Democrats, who were much more sympathetic to important issues of diversity than to labor.”We now bemoan the loss of the labor movement in America and for good reason. But the rift between labor and the left during that earlier era deprived both of a necessary ally. Labor thought perhaps in those days that they were powerful enough that they could ally themselves with the right on cultural issues without weakening their political clout. And after the defeat of their idealism, the left thought they could co-opt business and industry for their own aims. Both were completely deluded about the reactionary nature of the American Right.
McGovern’s campaign manager, Gary Hart, would pioneer the idea of “New Democrats” who owed no allegiance to labor. When he ran for Senate in 1974, Hart titled his stump speech “The End of the New Deal.” That same year he proclaimed that his new generation of Democrats were not just ”a bunch of little Hubert Humphreys,” slandering labor’s longtime champion. A young Bill and Hillary Clinton got their start on the McGovern campaign, and it’s hard not to see the impact of McGovern’s defeat on Clinton’s careful centrism and Democratic Leadership Council politics. The DLC was formed in direct reaction to Walter Mondale’s 1984 loss, which was even more lop-sided than McGovern’s. But it was designed to eradicate McGovernism from the party – to define Democrats as tough on crime and welfare, friendly to business, hawkish on defense – everything McGovern supposedly was not. It also involved the party running away from its proud New Deal legacy, and defining itself more as what it wasn’t than what it was.
Joan sees the coming back together of the left and labor in the Obama coalition of 2008. I wonder if that's true. And even if it is, it's with a much diminished labor movement and a Party as divided as ever on issues of war and peace. It was a very costly rift.
George McGovern was a fine politician and a good man. Like Joan, I think he may have deserved a better party than the one he had.
Obama comes at the end of a 30-year cycle of narrowing and narrowing what passes for the liberal agenda. The landscape was so different in the 1970s that Nixon was calling for a guaranteed income. Now when Democrats are really feeling bold, they highlight policies that they are proud to reveal were based on Republican ideas of just a few years earlier, things like the Heritage Foundation’s health care plan or the market-based solution of cap and trade. I would disagree that liberalism – although that’s probably the wrong phrase – has disappeared. It’s just become hidden beneath a thicket of campaign contributions from wealthy donors. The decline of unions as a political counterweight means that Democrats chase big money, and not surprisingly they respond to big money concerns. Issues like poverty, hunger, and need go unremarked upon on the national stage, even while they remain core concerns at the community level.Liberals and Unions are not just natural and traditional allies; we are essential allies. Labor and the Left are symbiotic. Only working and fighting together can we prevail; apart, we cannot even survive.
Defenders of the current Democratic Party would say that the structures set up through the Great Society have sustained the poor through the Great Recession, eliminating the need for more or better programs. They would point to this Congressional Research Service study showing a 33% increase in anti-poverty programs since 2008 (with “anti-poverty” defined incredibly broadly by Sen. Jeff Sessions, who commissioned the study to ensure that the welfare state looked as big as possible). The automatic stabilizers for the poor worked, they would say. And a majority of the new spending came from the stimulus, which contained lots of boosts for the poor. Heck, the Affordable Care Act, they would argue, represents a transfer from the pockets of those tapped to pay for the legislation to subsidies so poor and near-poor people can purchase health insurance.
You can assess these arguments on their own. But I would say that the agenda at the upper echelon of the Democratic Party has narrowed over the past 50 years, and it’s not like the safety net is so stable and robust that there’s nothing more to do. In fact, our social safety net is among the tiniest in the industrialized world. But poor people don’t have lobbyists, and that’s how Washington works these days.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Nationalize the Crazies
In a statement emailed to ThinkProgress, NARAL Pro-Choice America called on Romney to withdraw his endorsement of Mourdock: “Mr. Mourdock’s lack of compassion for rape survivors is callous, insulting, and completely out of touch,” NARAL president Nancy Keenan said. “What is equally disturbing is the fact that Gov. Romney has endorsed Mourdock and appeared in a TV ad on his behalf. Unless Romney takes back his endorsement, women voters should assume that he embraces these same extreme anti-choice views of Mr. Mourdock.”
No, no, no. Don't let that motherfucker off the hook. Do it like this:
"Mitt Romney thinks rape is a gift from God. He may not have
uttered those exact words, but he has endorsed the republican U.S.
Senate candidate who did say them."
Richard Mourdock: saying out loud what Mitt Romney and every republican really believes."
Another Republican religious rightist has doffed the sheep's clothing and said what a large percentage of them believe:
... tea party-backed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock ... who's been locked in one of the country's most expensive and closely watched Senate races, was asked during the final minutes of a debate Tuesday night whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest.This is mainstream thinking on among religious rightists -- don't let them tell you otherwise.
"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Mourdock said....SNIP
And National Review's Katrinko Trinko says that Mourdock was impolitic but not wrong.
Mitt Romney has distanced himself from Mourdock's remarks. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has called on Romney to remove his recently released Mourdock endorsement ad from the airwaves.
But what Democrats rarely do is make a sweeping case that the election of any Republican empowers the most repellent Republicans -- Mourdock, Todd Akin, and so on.
Whereas Republicans routinely nationalize campaigns -- every Democrat is the equivalent of some hated Democrat (Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid now, Ted Kennedy a while back). In the right-wing media, Democrats in and out of campaign season are expected to be responsible for the words and deeds of ACORN, the New Black Panthers, Sean Penn, Code Pink, PETA, and Rosie O'Donnell.
Why not say that if you elect Romney, you risk empowering Akin and Mourdock, and you certainly empower dozens of Republicans who think just like them (like, say, Romney's running mate)?
It won't happen. Democrats occasionally say that voting for one mild-seeming Republican empowers scarier others (Elizabeth Warren has a good ad to this effect), but it's the exception, not the rule. For Republicans, it's the rule.
What Liberal Value Will Dems Abandon Next?
Want to see abortion and birth control become the non-issues
surrendered to the freakazoid wingnuts the way gun control has? Then sit
home, don't vote, let Romney win and watch the Democratic Party help
the xian taliban take over.
All over the morning talk shows and on the various chatter streams, I'm hearing Republicans claim that talk about women's issues, particularly abortion, is a sign that the Democrats are losing. I don't agree with that, but I do know that if Romney wins, the Democrats will almost certainly blame their emphasis on women's issues as the cause (and will likely start thinking of abortion the same way they think about gun control.)Yes, voting for many Democratic candidates feels like rewarding bad DINO behavior, and it is. But it's also the only way to keep from power people who will not just annoy us, but actually kill us.
How do I know this? Because the GOP is setting it up that way and the Democrats always blame the left side of the dial for their losses. It's just a matter of finding the right left wing faction to pin it on. I'm going to guess it's the women's turn to pay.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
It's the Turnout, Stupid.
Every Democratic voter you know personally who does not vote by November 6 is your fault. Make sure you don't have a single lost Democratic vote on your conscience.
Steve Benen at Maddowblog:
Late last week, a CNN poll of Florida voters found something interesting. Among likely voters, Mitt Romney enjoys a slight edge over President Obama, 49% to 48%, but among registered voters, the president has a large advantage, 50% to 43%.
In other words, Florida voters overall clearly prefer Obama, but a whole lot of Obama supporters in Florida just don't intend to show up. Though the results weren't quite this dramatic in the new NBC/WSJ poll, the national trend is pointing in a similar direction.
I put together this chart to help illustrate the gap -- among registered voters, the two candidates are tied at 47% each, while among registered voters, the president leads by five. Other recent national polls also point to the same phenomenon, with Obama faring much better with the adult population overall, and worse with those most likely to actually vote.
At a distance, this is a mixed bag for both sides. The good news for Obama is that he has room to grow -- there are voters out there who want him to win, but are inclined to stay on the sidelines. If they can be motivated to cast a ballot, the president's odds improve considerably.
The bad news for Obama is that, with just two week to go, he may very well lose because his supporters made a choice not to show up when it counted.
Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "The Internationale"
In
response to the woman in Danville, KY, before the Vice Presidential Debate, who insisted without evidence that President Obama is a communist.
No, ma'am, "communist" is not a euphemism for "ni**er."
Uploaded by dphusion on Sep 9, 2008
New Atkins Commercial: "Tom Massie in His Own Words"
What Tom Massie says in this commercial is unbelievably scary and completely undeniable.
Massie is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He claims to support the Brent Spence bridge project, but watch how he brags about turning down federal money for a bridge in economically devastated Lewis County.Watch Massie declare war on coal, condescend to women, spread paranoid conspiracy theories about his neighbors, and arrogantly boast of his Texas SuperPac funding. Best of all, watch him ask "You aren't taping me, are you?"The Courier-Journal was right yesterday when it said "Washington doesn't need any more tea party freshmen".
Watch this video and more Massie nonsense at MassieNoWay.com. Please share and forward this video and help make sure voters learn the truth about Tom Massie before it's too late.
Real "War on Coal" Not What Partisans Claim
Sometimes, watching coals miners, their families and their communities blame the federal government for the coalfield economic disaster caused by coal companies and global economic forces is like watching a battered wife blame her injuries on everybody but the motherfucker actually administering the beatings.
The refusal of the media to look behind the slogans just encourages the mendacity and increases the confusion.
Vicky Smith at AP digs beneath the surface :
The war on coal, observers say, is a sound bite and a headline, perpetuated by pundits, power companies and public relations consultants who have crafted a neat label for a complex set of realities.Read the whole thing.
It's easier to call the forces reshaping coal — cheap natural gas, harder-to-mine coal seams and slowing economies — some kind of political or cultural "war" than to acknowledge the world is changing and leaving some people behind.
War, after all, demands victims. And in this case, it seems, the victims are demanding a war.
Monday, October 22, 2012
RIP, Russell Means
Criminal lawyers have a standard response to character attacks on their witnesses: priests and nuns rarely witness violent crimes.
In the same way, leaders of civil and human rights movements are rarely polite, soft-spoken, diplomatic types.
The disgraceful treatment of Native Americans in the 1960s demanded someone loud, rude and willing to at least threaten violence.
It demanded Russell Means.
Russell Means never shunned attention. Whether leading Native Americans in railing against broken federal treaties, appearing in a Hollywood blockbuster or advocating a sovereign American Indian nation within U.S. borders, the activist who helped lead the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee reveled in the spotlight.
Read the whole thing.But it was only on his terms. Openly critical of mainstream media, the onetime leader of the American Indian Movement often refused interviews and verbally blasted journalists who showed up to cover his public appearances. Instead, he chose to speak to his fan base through YouTube videos and blog posts on his personal website.
When he did speak out publicly, he remained steadfast in his defense of AIM. He found himself dogged for decades by questions about the group’s alleged involvement in the slaying of a tribe member and the several gun battles with federal officers during the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, but denied the group ever promoted violence.
‘‘You people who want to continue to put AIM in this certain pocket of illegality, I can’t stand you people,’’ Means said, lashing out an at audience member question during an April gathering commemorating the uprising’s 40th anniversary. ‘‘I wish I was a little bit healthier and a little bit younger, because I wouldn’t just talk.’’Means, who announced in August 2011 that he had developed inoperable throat cancer but told The Associated Press he was forgoing mainstream medical treatments in favor of traditional American Indian remedies, died early Monday at his ranch in in Porcupine, S.D., Oglala Sioux Tribe spokeswoman Donna Salomon said. He was 72.
American Justice
It's outrageous enough that the Wall Street gamblers have not been prosecuted, much less imprisoned, for stealing trillions from the American middle class in pursuit of yet more obscene wealth.
But when the motherfuckers skate even for actual, physical, violent assault that draws blood, we've reached a new level on our long skid toward banana republic status.
David Atkins at Hullabaloo:
The law only applies to the little people:
What kind of person argues, much less uses violence, over what amounts to pocket change?Charges against William Bryan Jennings, the former Morgan Stanley (MS) U.S. bond-underwriting chief accused of stabbing a New York cab driver over a fare, will be dropped, police said.Jennings car service didn't show up after a Christmas party, so he hailed a cab. Jennings says the cab driver agreed to a $204 fare, but the driver asked for $294. Jennings also claims the cab driver changed his story.
“I’m aware that the charges are being dropped,” Detective Chester Perkowski of the Darien, Connecticut, police department said today in an interview. He declined to comment further.
Jennings was accused of attacking the driver, Mohamed Ammar, on Dec. 22 with a 2 1/2-inch blade after a 40-mile (64 kilometer) ride from New York to the banker’s $3.4 million home in Darien. Ammar, a native of Egypt and a U.S. citizen, said Jennings told him, “I’m going to kill you. You should go back to your country,” according to a police report.
Jennings faced assault and hate-crime charges, each of which brings a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He was also charged with not paying the fare, a misdemeanor. He pleaded not guilty March 9.
Eugene Riccio, Jennings’s attorney, wouldn’t confirm that the case had been abandoned.
“All I’m saying is we’re showing up,” he said today in a phone interview. “We have a court date Monday, and we’re going to be there.”
It's possible the police are dropping the charges because the driver's testimony wouldn't be considered trustworthy by jurors. But it's also extremely likely that a poor person without good lawyers who had pulled this stunt would be getting the maximum sentence.
A rich banker confronting a cab driver over a fare dispute, attacking him over it after a Christmas party, and then getting the charges dropped at the last minute, is pretty much a microcosm of criminal and economic justice in this country today.
An obscenely rich Wall Street motherfucker, of course.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Covering Up Mitt's Stupidity
Digby wonders what repugs are really trying to do by pimping this Benghazi non-story:
Pat Buchanan responded to Eleanor Clift's similar question by saying they all lied to protect Obama's reputation as a terrorist killer. That's the best explanation I've heard for why the right is pimping this so-called scandal, but it's mighty thin in my opinion. Most of the country doesn't even know where Benghazi is and don't consider a "terrorist attack" there to be particularly relevant to their lives. To think they would vote for Romney on this basis strikes me as a reach.Isn't it obvious? Attacking what President Obama said about the attacks that killed four Americans is a distraction from Mitt Romney's stupid, ridiculous and un-American remarks attacking American diplomats in Libya.
On the other hand, it is a perfectly magnificent example of their ongoing power to invoke "the smell test" with the political press and create a controversy out of confusion. It's always telling when they can't really tell you what it is they suspect is happening, but it just "looks bad."
SNIP
Clearly, the deaths were a tragedy and an investigation should take place. Americans have a right to know exactly what's going on in Libya. But obsessing over what the administration said in the first days after the attack is the stupidest right-wing manufactured pseudo-scandal I've come across in quite some time. And it's pathetic that the mainstream press is still so willing to chase after these shiny objects.
When Ambassador Stevens died, Romney was the object of near-universal opprobrium for criticizing our diplomats while they were under attack. He was revealed as dangerously unprepared to be president - until the repug lie machine geared up and turned the attention to what President Obama said.
Romney's near-treason fell off the media radar and hasn't been heard from since.
Mission accomplished.
Silencing Workers
Whatever else you may think about a particular union or unions in general, there is one basic law of workplace physics that cannot be denied:
The only institution on the planet that has as its operating principle, its raison d'etre, its single purpose protecting workers against management, is the union.
And the existence of unions in the economy is the only thing standing between corporations and their goal of turning all workers into dependent serfs without rights.
Which is why the number one goal of corporations and the repug politicians who support them is not eliminating taxes, but eliminating unions.
Mitt Romney may have trouble delivering a clear message on most issues. But there’s no mistaking where he and his allies stand on the question of whether working people and their unions should have a voice in American politics. The candidate, who has relied on the support of billionaire-funded Super PACs to stay in the running, told NBC’s Education Nation Summit in late September, “We simply can’t have a setting where the teachers unions are able to contribute tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of politicians…. I think we’ve got to get the money out of the teachers unions going into campaigns. It’s the wrong way for us to go.”Republicans like Romney and their biggest donors know that after Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United, corporations and wealthy individuals can dominate the debate through unlimited spending. They also know that as long as union members are able to pool dues and small contributions to challenge the corporate agenda of cutbacks, layoffs and privatization, there is going to be a debate on fundamental questions about education, social services and whether America is going to have a middle class.
So Romney wants to silence the voices of teachers, cops, sanitation workers and firefighters. And he’s not alone. Some of the biggest donors to GOP campaigns—including the billionaire Koch brothers—have gathered their resources to do just that. Working with the ultraconservative Lincoln Club of Orange County, a key player in the Citizens United case, they spent millions to get an initiative on the California ballot in November. Proposition 32 would bar automatic deductions from the paychecks of union members to fund campaigns on their behalf. But it doesn’t stop there; Prop 32 would prevent public and private sector unions from aiding state and local candidates.
Unions like the California Teachers Association and the California State Council of Service Employees are among the largest and most politically engaged in the nation, and though they are often outspent, they have held their own against the campaigns of GOP candidates like Meg Whitman and billionaire-funded initiative proposals. If Prop 32 passes, however, unions “could become almost extinct in California politics,” says UC San Diego political science professor Thad Kousser. Labor activists agree. “First they silence our voice,” says the California Labor Federation. “Then they will come after our jobs, wages and retirement.”
SNIP
In an honest fight, voters will protect collective bargaining rights, as they did last fall in Ohio by a 62–38 margin. That’s why Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers and their billionaire pals are spending so heavily—and campaigning so dishonestly—to silence the voice of unions. And that’s why, as important as the presidential race is, it’s also vital to win fights to maintain the capacity of working people to speak truth to power.
The Healthcare Dodge
Corporations will always fuck over their employees and work against the national interest, because immorality in pursuit of profit is their guiding principle.
From Firedoglake:
From Firedoglake:
Here comes the dodge. Darden Restaurants owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster. Darden Restaurants “is putting more workers on part-time status in a test aimed at limiting the impact of looming health coverage requirements.” By 2014, employers must provide health care to all full-time employees.
Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Testify"
You know what's going on. Tell everyone you know.
Uploaded by RATMVideosHD on May 18, 2010
The movie ran through me
The glamour subdued me
The tabloid untied me
I'm empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you
Yes the car is our wheelchair
My witness your coughing
Oily silence mocks the legless boys
Who travel now in coffins
On the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside your door
Now testify
Now testify
It's right outside your door
Now testify
Yes testify
Its right outside your door
With precision you feed me
My witness I'm hungry
Your temple it calms me
So I can carry on
My slaving sweating the skin right off my bones
On a bed of fire I'm choking on the smoke that fills my home
The wrecking ball is rushing
Witness your blushing
The pipeline is gushing
While here we lie in tombs
While on the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside your door
Now testify
Yeah testify
It's right outside your door
Now testify
Now testify
It's right outside your door
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Mass graves for the pump and the price is set
And the price is set
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now controls the past
Who controls the past now controls the future
Who controls the present now?
Now testify
Testify
It's right outside your door
Now testify
Testify
It's right outside your door
"Come Home, America"
RIP, George McGovern.
First, Charles Pierce on the first and best presidential vote he ever cast.
I voted for George McGovern. I continue to this day to be prouder of that vote than of any other I ever have cast, and not merely because, by voting in my home state, I was part of the only electorate in the nation to spit in the eye of Richard Nixon, who actually was a crook.Read the whole beautifule thing.
McGovern was the last of so many things — the last true prairie populist, the last truly antiwar war hero, and, really, the last true insurgent to rise through the primaries and capture the nomination of a major party. (Carter me no Carters. The party establishment fell in line behind him the way it never did behind McGovern. There was no "Democrats for Ford" operation run against him. It only turned against him once he was in office.) Accepting that nomination, at a time when the Vietnam War was still raging, and when the country was not yet aware of the depths of the crimes committed by the incumbent and the men around him, McGovern delivered one of the great acceptance speeches of all time, and the only thing that anyone remembers is that it took place in the whiskey hours of the morning.
Second, John Nichols at The Nation on the genius of "Come Home, America."
George McGovern’s vision makes even more sense now than it did in 1972.
When McGovern ran for president in 1972, his slogan was “Come Home, America.”
The South Dakota senator’s message was a necessary and appropriate one for that moment, when the United States was mired in what seemed to be a war without end in Southeast Asia—a war that emptied the US treasury into the coffers of a military-industrial complex that demanded resources that could have been spent on job creation, education and healthcare.
And it still resonates:
Together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning,” McGovern told the convention that nominated him almost four decades ago.
From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America.
From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.
From the entrenchment of special privileges in tax favoritism; from the waste of idle lands to the joy of useful labor; from the prejudice based on race and sex; from the loneliness of the aging poor and the despair of the neglected sick—come home, America.
Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.The wisdom and hope that was inherent in McGovern’s call that year was not sufficient to defeat Richard Nixon. In a matter of months, however, polls would reveal that Americans regretted their decision, as they came to recognize the extent of Nixon’s corruption.
Forty years on, McGovern’s vision that America might come home to the ideals that had nourished it from the beginning is less a matter of hope than necessity.I often long for another FDR. I think what the Democratic Party really needs is another George McGovern.
Demanding Religious Oppression in Louisville
Yes, freedom of religion is also freedom from religion.
Which is why any claim that your religion allows you to violate a civil law is unconstitutional, un-democratic and un-American.
Greg Kocher at the Herald:
A Rally for Religious Freedom at Lexington's Phoenix Park on Saturday featured speakers who questioned a new federal mandate requiring religious organizations to provide health care coverage for employees that covers abortion drugs and contraception.First, the law applies to the businesses and organizations run by religious groups: catholic hospitals, muslim soup kitchens, baptist childcare, jewish schools. Churches, mosques and temples themselves are exempt.
The Obama administration has "seized the power to define what faith is, who the faithful are, and when, how and where we get to practice our faith," said Bryan Beauman, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, a socially conservative legal consortium.
About 40 people turned out to listen to five speakers at the rally, the third in Lexington since the administration's Jan. 20 announcement regarding implementation of the 2010 health care law.
As Charlie Pierce puts it, catholic bishops have no right to deny contraceptive coverage to the minimum-wage housekeepers who keep their hospitals clean.
Secondly, note that the freakazoids have no objection to religious organizations paying for Viagra. No, no war on women going on here, not at all.
Ensuring that employees have basic health coverage is not "seiz(ing) the power to define what faith is, who the faithful are, and when, how and where we get to practice our faith," that's protecting the religious freedom of the 99 percent of us who are not freakazoid motherfuckers.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Real Fight Starts November 7
Fabulously
wonderful Joe Biden weaseled on this one in the VP debate, which tells us that that regardless of the outcome of the election, Job One on Nov. 7 is
going to be stopping the gutting of Social Security.
Don't be fooled by the reference to "tweaks;" those are massive benefit cuts.
Digby:
Here is a good piece on the Democrats' emerging position on Social Security and what it will meant to you if it happens. The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight this one section on the "tweaks":So how big are these so-called "tweaks"? Let's take them one at a time, keeping in mind that the average monthly retirement benefit under Social Security is $1,230, and most people have little or no other income in retirement. For single persons who do not own homes, benefits are 92 percent of net worth. Hello old people living alone in rental housing, we need you to tighten your belts!
1. Benefits are determined by applying cost-of-living changes to a worker's wages. Explaining exactly how here is boring and unnecessary. All you have to know is that a small change in a factor applied over many years adds up to a big change at the end.
SNIP
2. The second favored tweak is an increase in the retirement age. This reform is designed by people who work sitting on their ass.
SNIP
An increase in the retirement age might not look like much to someone just starting out, but it will look quite different to people in their 50's who do not find joy in their daily work. Moreover, a later retirement means less benefits. After all, retiring later doesn't mean you get to die later. A higher retirement age is a benefit cut. How big a cut, you will ask. But first, there is an additional malignant feature of this device: It has a bigger negative impact, the lower one's income. The reason is that those with lower income have shorter life spans on average, so their years of retirement benefits are reduced by a higher proportion than those with higher income. So it is unnecessary and unfair to boot.
SNIP
3. The third celebrated tweak is described as means-testing, which means reducing benefits for those with higher income.
SNIP
We might note that Social Security is already means-tested -- benefits for those with higher incomes are taxed. If we were absolutely compelled to means-test, the income tax would be the logical tool, since it takes into account family size, other income, dependents, etc. Done on the Social Security side, however, means-testing benefits (= taxing benefits more) is a crude method of economizing. You all can guess why the income tax will not be used for means-testing. Don't make me do all the work here, people.
SNIP
The bottom line is that for the majority of retirees with little or no savings, a benefit tweak IS a slash in benefits.
To even consider "tweaks" in Social Security while billionaires are paying a third of the taxes they paid in the 1950s is fiscal treason.. And that Democratic officials are leading the charge rather than manning the defenses is an obscenity.
Keep in mind that this is likely to be done while snowing you into believing that it's "shared sacrifice" because oil companies could be required to end some superfluous subsidies and wealthy people will be "asked to pay a little bit more." You are supposed to feel good about this because "we're all in it together." Except, of course, that's nonsense. The wealthy will feel nothing, will suffer not at all, will not even know it happened. Their lives will go on completely unchanged. And possibly the upper middle class will make some minor adjustment and carry on unscathed as well, assuming they aren't unlucky enough to have a catastrophic illness or some bad luck that makes them lose their financial security. (Keep your fingers crossed, suburban professionals!)
But it will make a difference for the majority of Americans who struggle through life paying their taxes, working at average or low paying jobs and who, for a variety of reasons (mostly because they don't get paid enough money) are unable to save much for their retirement. Those people are going to hurt. A lot. Especially as they get really old.
Social Security is perfectly fine for the next 75 years. To make it solvent for eternity, all we have to do is lift the cap on income so people have to pay into Social Security on their income over $110.000. Now that's a tweak we can live with.
Why "Cheap" Coal is Way Too Expensive
The truth is that if the true cost to the nation in avoidable illness and death, pollution, devastated communities and ruined food sources of using fossil fuels of all kinds were actually expressed in the market price of fossil fuels and petroleum products like plastic, we'd never extract or import another drop of oil, ounce of coal or cubic inch of natural gas.“What if we factored the environmental and health impacts of burning coal into its cost?” Results would be $500 billion/year, or 17.8 cents/kilowatt hour. Included is a tender collection of photos and descriptions of what is happening to ordinary people directly affected by coal.
Because it would be too fucking expensive.
If our electricity and gas bills included the real cost of coal, oil and gas, there would be riots in the streets demanding solar, wind and geothermal energy. Right now.
We're paying the real cost of fossil fuels not in the price at the pump or the electric meter, but in the taxpayer dollars spent to clean up the pollution and treat the illnesses we don't make Big Oil and Big Coal pay for.
Renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels by an order of magnitude. Demand it now.
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