(I faxed this post to Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Bayh, Lugar, and Hill on November 19th, 2010.)
Sign the petition demanding that Obama not cave to the right-wing billionaires coup and the Republicans who are out to destroy the poor and the American Middle Class.
Go here President Obama: FIGHT Bush tax cuts for millionaires! and sign the petition now.
I added the following commentary before I submitted my signature to the petition.
It is absolutely disgusting that once more Obama is caving to the radical, insane right wing. We have socialism for the insanely rich, and capitalism only applies to the poor and middle class. We reward corrupt bankers, hedge fund managers, and mortgage companies, we ignore their manifest and multiple crimes and sweep them under the rug, but we put taxpayers up to their ears in debt to cover their bad bets and failed business practices. And now you want to destroy the social safety net for those who need it most. Social Security is the most stable, long term safe program in the government. Simply start taxing income over 185,000 dollars a year, and it is good FOREVER. This is just another move by the billionaires club coup to totally destroy the workers of America, while increasing their own wealth for the short term. END THE BUSH TAX CUTS. Any sane person who has looked at the current deficit and debt knows the two factors that caused it: 1) The Bush era tax cuts, and 2) the illegal war against Iraq, a quagmire that along with Afghanistan still continues to drain American blood and money.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist, once more nails it on the head with his commentary on the recommendations of the ‘Cat Food Commission’, the second disgusting outrage of the week. Note that Simpson and the right wing members of this commission leaked their results to the public BEFORE REPORTING THEM TO OBAMA! Just another sign that, thanks to his continued caving and kowtowing to the Right Wing, he is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the whole process.
Count me among those who always believed that President Obama made a big mistake when he created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — a supposedly bipartisan panel charged with coming up with solutions to the nation’s long-run fiscal problems. It seemed obvious, as soon as the commission’s membership was announced, that “bipartisanship” would mean what it so often does in Washington: a compromise between the center-right and the hard-right.
My misgivings increased as we got a better feel for the views of the commission’s co-chairmen. It soon became clear that Erskine Bowles, the Democratic co-chairman, had a very Republican-sounding small-government agenda. Meanwhile, Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chairman, revealed the kind of honest broker he is by sending an abusive e-mail to the executive director of the National Older Women’s League in which he described Social Security as being “like a milk cow with 310 million tits.”
We’ve known for a long time, then, that nothing good would come from the commission. But on Wednesday, when the co-chairmen released a PowerPoint outlining their proposal, it was even worse than the cynics expected.
Start with the declaration of “Our Guiding Principles and Values.” Among them is, “Cap revenue at or below 21% of G.D.P.” This is a guiding principle? And why is a commission charged with finding every possible route to a balanced budget setting an upper (but not lower) limit on revenue?
Matters become clearer once you reach the section on tax reform. The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh.
…
It’s no mystery what has happened on the deficit commission: as so often happens in modern Washington, a process meant to deal with real problems has been hijacked on behalf of an ideological agenda. Under the guise of facing our fiscal problems, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson are trying to smuggle in the same old, same old — tax cuts for the rich and erosion of the social safety net.The Hijacked Commission. By PAUL KRUGMAN.
Published: November 11, 2010
Further, in a separate post, Krugman seems to have finally lost his patience, and is just flat out calling Obama a wimp.
Mush From The Wimp
A bit of old history keeps running through my head these days. Maybe things like this and this explain it.
That’s it. The entire post by Krugman. Follow the two links his provides.
Frankly, I am just about ready to give up on Obama. As I posted on this topic elsewhere recently, and will quote here about the Democrats in general:
I have said this before in discussions advocating doing away with the filibuster rule.
Do away with it, let the Republicans get a majority in the Senate, and you are toast.
Instead, Democrats, GET SOME SPINE, GET SOME BACKBONE, and 1) filibuster when necessary, and more importantly, 2) MAKE THE REPUBLICANS REALLY FILIBUSTER.
Missing in all the blah blah blah about doing away with the filibuster is the simple fact that the Democrats in the Senate, being the spineless wimps they are, NEVER FORCED THE REPUBLICANS TO ENGAGE IN AN ACTUAL FILIBUSTER for the past two years.
All the Republicans had to do was snarl, threaten to filibuster, and say you had to have 60 votes to pass any legislation, and the Democrats rolled over like a dog whacked with a rolled up newspaper asking for another one.
