Re-Post from correntwire 7/27/11
[UPDATE - Now according to the Democrats it is not 1 in 4 American children as cited below who go to bed hungry at night, it is only 1 in 5 (since this article was written last July). The unreferenced statistical update I heard from Nancy Pelosi on her visit to Jennifer what's her name's War Room show on Al Gore's Current TV, a network as willing as MSNBC to shamelessly shill for Obama and pretend we on the farther left (which doesn't take much movement to the left) don't exist. (This is the only time I have heard a national political figure refer to the horrifying proliferation of American poverty.) Nancy assured Jennifer that she, Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party cared about this poverty situation. That is rich!
No, this election seems to be coming down to mass corporate dollars and media manipulation -- bottom line: who is the more compelling "celebrity," Obama or Romney? Too bad they both don't have time or opportunity to compete via DWTS, which would really make it titillating to America's vast majority of citizens. Starving American and foreign children, gutting the US Constitution and bombing the shit out of foreign countries getting to be a tad "last year" it would seem.
Those of us left of Obama and left of the ever-rallying Obamacrats with their anti-conscience out-Republican-the-Republicans (and then pretend you aren't) gamesmanship are powerfully disenfranchised through absolute big media non-acknowledgement and little media vilification.
The mis-representing American politicians are pimped out for power and money. So are the media rat bastard amoralists. What are the American Obama "bubble people" in it for? Short term self-deluded righteousness at the cost of our republic? Tragically, it would seem so.]
I cribbed the above title from an oped by William Rivers Pitt entitled “So This is Despair.”
“I see a president on his knees, hands outstretched, offering the best ideas and policies liberal governance has ever devised up to the voracious carnivore of GOP opportunism. I see the end of the New Deal, and a far crueler America emerging from the aftermath. I see a Democratic president voiding his bladder on all that he is supposed to uphold.
Mr. Obama got on those knees again Monday night, on national television no less, and once again begged the GOP to devour Social Security and Medicare. He gobbled up the flawed, flayed premise of the far-right's deranged argument, again, and pleaded for the chance to give away the core of what he was elected to defend.
I thought I was done being ashamed of my president.
I was wrong.”
This is what Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report declares about Obama:
... Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete.
From community block grants to Section 8 housing vouchers to child care to Pell Grants to home heating oil for the poor, Obama has preemptively savaged all that decent people hold dear in the social safety net, and is in enthusiastic, principled agreement with the Republicans that the big cuts are still to come, in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
Ford reflects back on the craven selling of Obama as man of the people:
As we at Black Agenda Report and honest analysts like Paul Street pointed out all along, Obama has always been a dangerous, corporate creature. But like the frog that allows the scorpion to hitch a ride on his back across the swollen river, Black and progressive misleaders act shocked and hurt when Obama stings them with his deadly budget halfway through his term. But the frog should have known the nature of a scorpion. Obama’s corporate character was no secret to anyone except those who wished not to know.
Despite being dazzled by Obama's skin color and charm, there is still a consensus among Black Americans on issues of social justice. With his draconian cuts, President Obama is violating that consensus so sharply, it cannot be papered over for the sake of racial pride.
I hope Mr. Ford is right. There is nothing as ferocious as the denial invested in someone who so breathtakingly betrays. With a potential heartbreak so massive, some will will themselves to rationalize and justify for him seemingly forever.
I know the Tea Party Congressional freshmen are callow, vile and empathy-less along with their rabid rat bastard Congressional Republican brethren who obviously don’t care about the human welfare of all Americans, only their elite cronies. I understand, too, that the Tea Party hard-ball gamespeople, ironically, are thwarting gamesman (never "statesman") Obama’s timing of selling out the citizenry while he pretends he is that so-called "only grown up in the room" willing to be faux-bipartisan and bringing on home election 2012 by triangulating his lesser-of-two-evils pose.
Ralph Nader deservedly reams the Tea Partiers in a recent article but has this to say about Obama:
The Republicans are having fun with a spineless President Obama who already has given them 80 percent of what they want and seems ready to slip further into their budgetary abyss.
Obama is willing to give them 80% of what they want but they are too avaricious and power-mad to take it without some seriously arrogant grandstanding first. Say 'pretty please,' Mr. Prez, as you beg us to doom the welfare of millions of Americans, but as Michael Hudson pointed out recently, Obama still gets to play faux-good cop because the Repubs don’t even lie about not caring about the citizens. The citizens not elite enough to matter, that is.
New York Green Party’s Howie Hawkins spelled out reality in a recent email to Party members. Ignore the media omissions, disinformation and spin, babies, spin from ALL the networks. The real deal is simple and horrifying:
It appears that Obama has been willing to offer serious cuts in a host of domestic programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Food Stamps in exchange for a future promise to raise revenues through "tax reform" that would lower the overall tax rate for the wealthy.
The biggest problem facing the country isn't the deficit. And the deficit problem was created through huge taxes for the wealthy, massive increases in military spending and a great economic recession created through the misdeeds and greeds of banks, Wall Street and government regulators.
Instead of solving this problem, the Democrats are buying into the strategy developed by Bush and Rove to create huge budget deficits so that the Democrats would agree to cut domestic spending.
The Democrats are ignoring the recession and unemployment and climate change.
Patrick Martin wrote this a while back on the present state of hunger in America:
“In a society which took seriously the value of human life and the future of its children, the spectacle of 50 million people at risk of hunger, including 1 million children, would be a social emergency. Given that the United States once boasted of its ability to feed the planet, the indifference to the growth of hunger at home is a national scandal. A new report from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reveals 50 million Americans exist under the poverty line and were too poor to buy adequate food last year. That is approximately 17.4 million families. More than a third of these households, with over one million children, were forced to skip meals.”
Are these millions the people Obama is talking about when he advises DEEPER sacrifices? SHARED sacrifices? Obama promised to champion the middle class in all those campaign speeches (it concerned me that he never seemed to include mention of the lower or working classes or, God forbid, as like Clinton before him, publicly uttering concern about the "homeless"). I have come to realize that Obama relates to and is willing to champion the 6-digit income middle class. The man refuses to look left ideologically speaking, and down, economically speaking. All of us little people, struggling some since Reagan, particularly devastated by the empathylessness of Bush’s economic and military “wrecking crews”, saw Obama potentially as the next MLK or JFK. (Now we are supposed to be GRATEFUL for his not being Michele Bachmann?)
Here are a few profound and despairing statistics about conditions for the non-elites:
From the Dept. of Agriculture or Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine:
Nearly 1 in 4 American children live in households that struggle to put food on the table. That’s 16.7 million children.
Nearly 1 in 4 children in America is at risk of hunger. Among African-Americans and Latinos, 1 in 3. (16.7 million children)
1 in every 2 babies born in the United States is enrolled in WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children).
Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2009:
More than 1 in 8 people in the United States lives below the poverty line, which is $21,756 for a family of four in 2009. One in five children in the United States lives below the poverty line.
Most Americans (51.4 percent) will live in poverty at some point before age 65.
A person working full-time at the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. The official poverty line for a family of three—one parent with two children—is $17,285.
From Bread for the World:
The United States has gone from 1st to 9th place among nations in the percentage of its population that graduates from college.
The U.S. is 24th in the portion of children who have a high school degree. The main reason the U.S. economy was so dominant for much of the Twentieth Century is because U.S. workers on the whole were so much better educated than other workers across the world.
Michael Snyder writes:
The crumbling U.S. economy is putting an extraordinary amount of financial stress on American families. For many Americans, "flat broke" has become a permanent condition. Today, over half of all American families live paycheck to paycheck. Unemployment is rampant and those that do actually have jobs are finding that their wages are rising much more slowly than prices are.
snip
The following are 10 facts about the financial condition of American families ...
#1 Only 58 percent of Americans have a job right now.
#2 Only 56 percent of Americans are currently covered by employer-provided health insurance.
#3 The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261.
#4 The average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.
#5 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
#6 At this point, American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007.
#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
#8 According to one study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.
#9 Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, and nearly half of them are children.
#10 According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment.
Jeffrey Sachs focuses on Obama’s abandonment of the poor and middle class:
The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It's more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.
Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class. He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits; he refused to limit in a serious way the bankers' mega-bonuses even when the bonuses were financed by taxpayer bailouts; and he even refused to stand up against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich last December, though 60 percent of the electorate repeatedly and consistently demanded that the Bush tax cuts at the top should be ended. It's not hard to understand why. Obama and Democratic Party politicians rely on Wall Street and the super-rich for campaign contributions the same way that the Republicans rely on oil and coal. In America today, only the rich have political power.
Obama could have cut hundreds of billions of dollars in spending that has been wasted on America's disastrous wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen, but here too it's been all bait and switch. Obama is either afraid to stand up to the Pentagon or is part of the same neoconservative outlook as his predecessor. The real cause hardly matters since the outcome is the same: America is more militarily engaged under Obama than even under Bush. Amazing but true.
... Obama is on the verge of abandoning the poor and middle class, by agreeing with the plutocrats in Congress to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and discretionary civilian spending, while protecting the military and the low tax rates on the rich (if not lowering those top tax rates further according to the secret machinations of the Gang of Six, now endorsed by the president!)
Laura Flanders writes of the preposterous degree of abundance for the super-rich in our recent past, escalated not reduced thanks to the Obama administration:
In 2009, as million of workers lost their jobs, on Wall Street at the thirty-eight biggest firms, investors and executives earned $140 billion -- the highest sum ever.
James Madison famously wrote that the new American republic was to be "a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people," not aristocratic privilege or hereditary right. Yet in 2010 undisclosed private donors and multinational corporations funneled millions of dollars into our media, saturating the airwaves and skewing the election.
As all this has been shaping up, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson point out, government in our era not only failed to push back on the tide rising at the top but "put its thumb on the scale, hard... on the side of those who had more weight."
This is what Derrick Crowe says on the money draining into one of many of our military misadventures:
The costs of this pile of failure are huge. It costs us $1 million per troop, per year to maintain our occupation of Afghanistan. That's $2 billion every week. Politicians at the federal level are contemplating ugly cuts to social safety nets, while politicians at the state level are already shredding programs that protect people suffering in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. In this context, the admonitions from the White House and the Pentagon to be patient while this misbegotten strategy limps along the progress-road-to-nowhere seem perverse. The American people have been patient for roughly a decade now, but that patience has run out.
Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn recognize that Obama could profoundly change -- CHANGE -- the plight of the poor and middle classes of America with a "stroke of his pen," if he had the moral and political imagination and will. Apparently he is not emotionally, politically and/or ideologically capable of such an FDR moment! But the opportunity was and still is there. He just needs to care enough about the people he took an oath to represent, rather than his criminal elite cronies!
The WPA was quickly implemented. By March 1936, 3.4 million people were employed and an average of 2.3 million people worked monthly until the program ended in June 1943. During its existence the WPA employed more than 8,500,000 different persons on 1,410,000 individual projects, and spent about $11 billion. The average yearly salary was $1,100, a living wage at the time. During its 8-year history, the WPA built 651,087 miles of highways, roads, and streets. It constructed, repaired, or improved 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks, and 853 airport landing fields.
Today our infrastructure is crumbling, and loss of revenue is forcing many cities and states to cut basic services. About 15 million people have become unemployed since the crisis hit in late 2008; a million and a half of them are construction workers. The need for a direct jobs program is either as great, or even greater than during the Depression. But, in light of the election results, is such a program possible? Can the President directly create jobs by executive order? The answer is a resounding yes. Remember when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was passed, one of the purposes was to preserve homeownership, and promote jobs and economic growth.
Much of the TARP money has been repaid and the administration refers to the profit on the payments. If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, 6 million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. 12 million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it. This direct job creation would be bold. It would also be highly stimulative. It would not add to the deficit because it is already appropriated money. Furthermore, one third of it would come back immediately in taxes, and more importantly, the growth in demand from this number of added jobs would expand private sector job growth and grow the overall economy.
This country has a lot to do to get its economic house in order. It is heavily dependent on the financial services industry which only promotes speculation and unregulated bubbles. It is largely controlled by the defense industries which have promoted two and possibly more wars. It is beholden to the extractive energy industries, whose owners are funding the “tea party,” thus putting environmental amelioration on indefinite hold. And it is more and more influenced by the prison industrial complex which promotes hostility to immigrants, and takes resources from education and other vital areas. For the last 30 years it has relied on anti-union and anti-worker policies, which has forced the hemorrhaging of high paid manufacturing jobs to low cost countries and driven down wages for U.S. workers which can no longer be papered over with unsustainable debt.
The President cannot solve all these problems overnight, but with a stroke of a pen he can use already appropriated money to create millions of good green jobs, and move down the road to recovery much faster. Any opposition to this from the Republicans will expose their hostility to anyone but the richest members of society, and give the progressive movement ammunition to take the offensive.
With Obama, whether he is spineless as Nader contends or soul-less as Ford does, the results are the same. He is a catalyst for the fast hardening of soft fascism in America! $14 trillion was extorted from the American citizenry by the oligarchs who did their deregulated evil and are ready to perpetrate more -- and what would and could stop them -- in accountability-free (for the elites, at least -- don't be an immigrant or a whistleblower here) Obama world. Obama had and has a lot of help and cover from both sides of the aisle and the corporate media for his inhumane betrayals, but if you aren’t feeling despair about HIS choices by now, you don’t really get it. And if you don't get it, you are part of the problem -- the PROFOUND problem -- not the solution.
--------------
Too tired, except to thank You and rate.
Enshrined forever in my Pantheon of heroes, along with some VERY special women and men.
-R-
Enshrined forever in my Pantheon of heroes, along with some VERY special women and men.
-R-
Thanks, Mark. :-)
For my night time reading I am turning to "The Little Train That Could", and for my night lullaby the one about the ant moving the rubber tree plants.
Disenfranchised maybe, but we are spiritually aligned, as we brace ourselves for the ever bumpy kill-the-messengers ride from those seemingly permanently trapped in the "negotiating" stage of the post-Obama election 5 stages of grief.
Best, libby
For my night time reading I am turning to "The Little Train That Could", and for my night lullaby the one about the ant moving the rubber tree plants.
Disenfranchised maybe, but we are spiritually aligned, as we brace ourselves for the ever bumpy kill-the-messengers ride from those seemingly permanently trapped in the "negotiating" stage of the post-Obama election 5 stages of grief.
Best, libby
Thanks, toritto. 80 million of us helped Obama get in and we got betrayed, betrayed, betrayed. I wonder how many of us really get the depth of horror. The American heart of darkness. Big media sure as h*ll won't explore or address such a statistic. Thank God some people prefer living without blinders of denial and grotesque minimization. best, libby
If he is the 'lesser of two evils' Libby,
our corrupt system needs a broom and mop and a recycling bin.
our corrupt system needs a broom and mop and a recycling bin.
Wow, Howie Hawkins is still at it! Reading his name takes me back to 1990, and The Green Committees of Correspondence (GCoC) when we formed the Santa Clara River Greens and mounted a write-in congressional campaign against Mike Huffington (Ariana's gay Republican husband) in Santa Barbara. I wonder if there are any Greens out here in San Bernardino County... maybe I'll come down off of my mountain.
It does not hurt, of course, to continuously display how Obama and his corporate friendly crew are destroying even the hypocrisy that the USA claims as the spirit of freedom and democracy in the world but as is obvious by the deluded posters even at this site that there is any merit whatsoever in a vote for Obama, there seems no effective point in throwing a vote to a party which is merely a scream of protest against the police state rapidly solidifying in the country. What is needed is something that will make the corporate-financial-military bastards scream in terror. What this is I have no idea but it is the strongest medicine required and I see it nowhere. Until the people of the country become wide awake with the pain of being scammed, robbed, imprisoned, and led by the nose to commit economic and social suicide things look entirely grim.
Something as simple as checkbook arithmetic will conquer the most ardent socialist philosophy every time. This is a lesson of history, both ancient and modern. This is a lesson of current events. Yet, it seems to escape your comprehension.
Whine on. It won’t get you anything permanent.
Those who see what you cannot will remain in the majority, hopefully. Your best chance for retaining the social welfare state that we have now is to send all your money to our national government and reject any benefits that it may offer you.
Whine on. It won’t get you anything permanent.
Those who see what you cannot will remain in the majority, hopefully. Your best chance for retaining the social welfare state that we have now is to send all your money to our national government and reject any benefits that it may offer you.
If you want to know how the economy is really doing, go to http://www.shadowstats.com/
It shows all the little manipulations by the Obama administration to make it appear the economy is improving.
They probably didn't report it in the US, but 2 days ago the BBC reported the number of jobs in the US has declined to the level it was at in 1981. It boggles the mind when you realize how much the total population has increased in 30 years.
Wall Street sure took note, which was why the Dow Jones, S&P index and Nasdaq all tanked. Meanwhile the price of oil, a strong indicator of world economic health, has dropped below $100 for the first time in 2012.
It shows all the little manipulations by the Obama administration to make it appear the economy is improving.
They probably didn't report it in the US, but 2 days ago the BBC reported the number of jobs in the US has declined to the level it was at in 1981. It boggles the mind when you realize how much the total population has increased in 30 years.
Wall Street sure took note, which was why the Dow Jones, S&P index and Nasdaq all tanked. Meanwhile the price of oil, a strong indicator of world economic health, has dropped below $100 for the first time in 2012.
I got my weekly email from John Mauldin, while I took brief nap. It was such a humdinger as to the reality behind Friday's unemployment figures thatI sent him an email requesting permission to reprint it, here.
I read TWICE two of his recent two books:
" Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How it Changes Everything," and
" Bull’s Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market."
I read TWICE two of his recent two books:
" Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How it Changes Everything," and
" Bull’s Eye Investing: Targeting Real Returns in a Smoke and Mirrors Market."
It's actually surprising that it's gone on this long but as I keep saying, still not enough of the middle class are suffering yet. It's still easy to watch TV and ignore that both parties are in the same pockets. I keep wondering when we'll hit the tipping point and wondering if I might be one of the ones that won't survive, or maybe a close friend.
I suppose I am resigned to what I've seen as the inevitable for over a year. It will be very strange to see the truth dawn on those who never wanted to see it. Strange to see those who've had it easy struggle as adults to accept and adapt to harsh. I'm grateful I fall into detachment easily, it will be strange and sad.
I suppose I am resigned to what I've seen as the inevitable for over a year. It will be very strange to see the truth dawn on those who never wanted to see it. Strange to see those who've had it easy struggle as adults to accept and adapt to harsh. I'm grateful I fall into detachment easily, it will be strange and sad.
libby - so you will you vote for this time?
l'Heure Bleue, I monitor two dozen stock market sites daily. Many prohibit political talk.
Blood on the streets used to refer to stock market losses. On all the sites, they now use the term more and more often to refer to insurrection.
Many of the sites speculate that the next jobs report will be obama's last chance to deter them from jumping ship.
Blood on the streets used to refer to stock market losses. On all the sites, they now use the term more and more often to refer to insurrection.
Many of the sites speculate that the next jobs report will be obama's last chance to deter them from jumping ship.
Even though I vote republican most of the time, I really don't mind that you “bad mouth” Republican politicians, after all, they are Half the problem-
But left and right become an issue - I am so far right I'm left, and you are so far left you're right. What we both want is personal Liberty and a state of Reason that allows for both exceptional ism and disability. I because I am a self identified “christian” and a human being you because you are a “progressive” and a human being.
I do not so much mean to “take issue” with you as try to explain what I view as a problem of perception. In the '60's, I was a crew cut “jock”, but, as a student at Ohio State, I had many friends who were “Flower Children”. I had a great deal of trouble explaining to the “rednecks” at the Goodyear factory where I worked in the summer making tank treads, that the “Flower Child” conception of “Free Love” was much more akin to what they thought of as “Christian Love” than the “let's get drunk and get naked” orgies of their imagination.
It isn't that they didn't understand “Agape” love- many of them studied Aramaic and Greek so that they could better understand the “Love of God” ( Did I mention the Goodyear Factory was 30 miles from the international headquarters of “The Way”?- http://theway.org/index.php?page=home&lang=en)
It wasn't that they didn't understand “Love” as in “God is Love” or even “all you need is love” It was that they couldn't conceive that “those evil commie hippies who were out to destroy our country” were part of that "Love"- coming at it from the other side. When “hippies” said “Love” my redneck friends and co-workers heard “Sex”- which is of course, evil.
I mentally “winced” when I heard them carry on about the satanic “hippies”, but, having had my run ins with the SDS, which was not about “love” but about “power”, I never got into discussions trying to convince my co-workers to differentiate one kind of “lefty” from the other. There is a certain redneck / fundamentalist resistance to being convinced of anything he doesn't already believe that discourages debate with anything other than a tire iron. But then, you undoubtedly know “progressives” like that ( I certainly do- and with them I discuss computers and things other than “politics”) Needless to say, I still know the rednecks, cause most of them are relatives.
All that to say, I've gotten involved with what I would call the “True” christian community lately, and they couldn't care less about your race, religion, politics, or class. They love you and care for you as fellow human beings, in the same way you do as a “progressive”. They truly want to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the homeless. The only thing they differ with you about is how to do it.
I don't speak as an “Elder” of my church, I'm only in my 60's, and the “Elders” are 80 and up. They've seen depression, and they’ve seen war, most of the men fought in WWII, many killed, and are neither proud, nor ashamed that they killed for their country- They don't talk about the killing, but they sorely miss the camaraderie. Most are retired and “comfortable” Most are looking for ways to find and give meaning at the end of their lives. They understand “love” and they understand “need”, but they also understand greed and waste.
If you show up hungry for our Wednesday evening community meals, you will be asked to buy a ticket for $6. If you and your family don't have $6 dollars a head to eat, the “youngster” at the door selling tickets may grumble at you, but one of the “Elders” who hang around the door will quietly get you tickets and slip them to you. And you will be told that if you come back the next day, the secretary will call my wife, who will hook you up with food pantries. Our youngsters object to a lot of the“charity” things that the “elders” quietly nod in agreement that, “it shouldn't be done that way”, and then find a way to do anyway. ( our "government workers" (eg my wife) also operate that way)
What the elders object to is that they clearly see that sending money to Washington at this time in our history means that we're into Reagan's “Trickle-Down” economy where we give it to the politicians in Washington and they give it to their crony capitalist mega-corporations and megabanks to piss away, and if we are lucky, some of it will “trickle down “ on us.
An example is the sort of schemes that the government pulls with food stamps and unemployment.
Who is the biggest beneficiary of “Food Stamps” and “Unemployment Insurance”?
Chase Bank -Obama buddy Jamie Dimon CEO
How is that you say?
Chase administers the Debit Cards the Government hands out instead of cash. Chase takes a good chunk for administration. Then it takes more with fees it charges the recipients for the same reasons they charge you fees on your debit card. They get paid twice.
What does this get the Recipient? A “customer service” department where $12 an hour operators have 2 minutes tops to tell the customer with a problem, “I'm sorry, I can't help you” ( I worked for them for 6 months)
On the Wednesday before thanksgiving, I got to tell a father with his three hungry kids standing with him on the streets of New York that yes, he could not use his newly issued EBT card because he was homeless and didn't know the zip code he had been registered as living in, and so he'd just have to wait until the holiday was over to feed his kids, because the welfare office wouldn't open until that Tuesday so he could learn what his zip code was. ( I managed to hint his zip code until he got it, for which I was thoroughly reamed and threatened with being fired on the spot by my monitoring supervisor)
Thanksgiving day, I helped serve meals for the homeless from our church.
It's fun being my age, and still sitting at the kids table.
All that to say, none of the “grown ups” in the room want to do anything less than care for those who need to be cared for. There certainly are people on “The Right” who hate, but as you are aware, so are there people on the left. It's the difference between being motivated by “Power” , "Fear", or “Love”
Please don't doubt that, despite all the anger and fear (and fear mongering) the majority of people in the T-party DO care what happens to their fellow creatures. They are (even if they sometimes have to be reminded by their elders what it really means) Christians. Just as I do not doubt that after all the anger and fear mongering, the majority of those on the left are still “Flower Children”
What we are involved in currently is an elaborate game of “keep Away”, where the “Playground Bullies” throw our “Welfare” back and forth and laugh “I'm not to blame- HE is!” as we run back and forth, crying, trying to catch up.
When I was in the 1st grade, I solved the problem of 3rd grader playground bullys playing “Keep away” with 1st graders hats. I simply got my friends together and beat the crap out of each 3rd grader who touched the hat, whether he still had it or not.. It was amazing how quickly I had my hat back. After we'd done that a few times, no one “played” keep away anymore.
Let's not fall for the "Keep Away" trick of “Someone else is responsible” And let’s not fall for “3rd Graders” telling us that “one of the 1st graders ” “has the hat”.
But left and right become an issue - I am so far right I'm left, and you are so far left you're right. What we both want is personal Liberty and a state of Reason that allows for both exceptional ism and disability. I because I am a self identified “christian” and a human being you because you are a “progressive” and a human being.
I do not so much mean to “take issue” with you as try to explain what I view as a problem of perception. In the '60's, I was a crew cut “jock”, but, as a student at Ohio State, I had many friends who were “Flower Children”. I had a great deal of trouble explaining to the “rednecks” at the Goodyear factory where I worked in the summer making tank treads, that the “Flower Child” conception of “Free Love” was much more akin to what they thought of as “Christian Love” than the “let's get drunk and get naked” orgies of their imagination.
It isn't that they didn't understand “Agape” love- many of them studied Aramaic and Greek so that they could better understand the “Love of God” ( Did I mention the Goodyear Factory was 30 miles from the international headquarters of “The Way”?- http://theway.org/index.php?page=home&lang=en)
It wasn't that they didn't understand “Love” as in “God is Love” or even “all you need is love” It was that they couldn't conceive that “those evil commie hippies who were out to destroy our country” were part of that "Love"- coming at it from the other side. When “hippies” said “Love” my redneck friends and co-workers heard “Sex”- which is of course, evil.
I mentally “winced” when I heard them carry on about the satanic “hippies”, but, having had my run ins with the SDS, which was not about “love” but about “power”, I never got into discussions trying to convince my co-workers to differentiate one kind of “lefty” from the other. There is a certain redneck / fundamentalist resistance to being convinced of anything he doesn't already believe that discourages debate with anything other than a tire iron. But then, you undoubtedly know “progressives” like that ( I certainly do- and with them I discuss computers and things other than “politics”) Needless to say, I still know the rednecks, cause most of them are relatives.
All that to say, I've gotten involved with what I would call the “True” christian community lately, and they couldn't care less about your race, religion, politics, or class. They love you and care for you as fellow human beings, in the same way you do as a “progressive”. They truly want to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the homeless. The only thing they differ with you about is how to do it.
I don't speak as an “Elder” of my church, I'm only in my 60's, and the “Elders” are 80 and up. They've seen depression, and they’ve seen war, most of the men fought in WWII, many killed, and are neither proud, nor ashamed that they killed for their country- They don't talk about the killing, but they sorely miss the camaraderie. Most are retired and “comfortable” Most are looking for ways to find and give meaning at the end of their lives. They understand “love” and they understand “need”, but they also understand greed and waste.
If you show up hungry for our Wednesday evening community meals, you will be asked to buy a ticket for $6. If you and your family don't have $6 dollars a head to eat, the “youngster” at the door selling tickets may grumble at you, but one of the “Elders” who hang around the door will quietly get you tickets and slip them to you. And you will be told that if you come back the next day, the secretary will call my wife, who will hook you up with food pantries. Our youngsters object to a lot of the“charity” things that the “elders” quietly nod in agreement that, “it shouldn't be done that way”, and then find a way to do anyway. ( our "government workers" (eg my wife) also operate that way)
What the elders object to is that they clearly see that sending money to Washington at this time in our history means that we're into Reagan's “Trickle-Down” economy where we give it to the politicians in Washington and they give it to their crony capitalist mega-corporations and megabanks to piss away, and if we are lucky, some of it will “trickle down “ on us.
An example is the sort of schemes that the government pulls with food stamps and unemployment.
Who is the biggest beneficiary of “Food Stamps” and “Unemployment Insurance”?
Chase Bank -Obama buddy Jamie Dimon CEO
How is that you say?
Chase administers the Debit Cards the Government hands out instead of cash. Chase takes a good chunk for administration. Then it takes more with fees it charges the recipients for the same reasons they charge you fees on your debit card. They get paid twice.
What does this get the Recipient? A “customer service” department where $12 an hour operators have 2 minutes tops to tell the customer with a problem, “I'm sorry, I can't help you” ( I worked for them for 6 months)
On the Wednesday before thanksgiving, I got to tell a father with his three hungry kids standing with him on the streets of New York that yes, he could not use his newly issued EBT card because he was homeless and didn't know the zip code he had been registered as living in, and so he'd just have to wait until the holiday was over to feed his kids, because the welfare office wouldn't open until that Tuesday so he could learn what his zip code was. ( I managed to hint his zip code until he got it, for which I was thoroughly reamed and threatened with being fired on the spot by my monitoring supervisor)
Thanksgiving day, I helped serve meals for the homeless from our church.
It's fun being my age, and still sitting at the kids table.
All that to say, none of the “grown ups” in the room want to do anything less than care for those who need to be cared for. There certainly are people on “The Right” who hate, but as you are aware, so are there people on the left. It's the difference between being motivated by “Power” , "Fear", or “Love”
Please don't doubt that, despite all the anger and fear (and fear mongering) the majority of people in the T-party DO care what happens to their fellow creatures. They are (even if they sometimes have to be reminded by their elders what it really means) Christians. Just as I do not doubt that after all the anger and fear mongering, the majority of those on the left are still “Flower Children”
What we are involved in currently is an elaborate game of “keep Away”, where the “Playground Bullies” throw our “Welfare” back and forth and laugh “I'm not to blame- HE is!” as we run back and forth, crying, trying to catch up.
When I was in the 1st grade, I solved the problem of 3rd grader playground bullys playing “Keep away” with 1st graders hats. I simply got my friends together and beat the crap out of each 3rd grader who touched the hat, whether he still had it or not.. It was amazing how quickly I had my hat back. After we'd done that a few times, no one “played” keep away anymore.
Let's not fall for the "Keep Away" trick of “Someone else is responsible” And let’s not fall for “3rd Graders” telling us that “one of the 1st graders ” “has the hat”.
FWIW: Thanks for reading and rating and commenting, all those who have. How satisfying to at this point on a Sat. night get this headline positioned on the coveted list to our right, right below Mr. Emmerling's blog proclaiming Obama die-hardness (or maybe teasing) in I am sure a droll entertaining way -- I have not had opportunity to read -- but his title and so much pro-Obama msnbc et al. bull shit really influenced me in selecting this former blog of mine and keeping its title for a re-post.
This blog's content and certainly ITS TITLE MESSAGE capture the mood I was and am in having been watching ad nauseam neo-lib traitorous MSNBC and Current TV RE-MYTHOLOGIZING Obama (and which I will terminate soon enough watching except for maybe a peek at times at Chris Hayes or Cenk, both of whom should be ashamed, too, for cold-shouldering third party vanguards).
Those who know the truth, recognize the heart of darkness at the source of power in this country and now infecting an alarmingly large segment of the citizenry coexist in the state of DISENFRANCHISEMENT A/K/A MARGINALIZATION OR MORE ACCURATELY INVISIBILITY. The propaganda machines with their personality over character front men and women are in full force now and all the clever seductions that corporate money can buy is beginning to flood over us from the magic teebee box and the magic internet box, radio, papers, magazines, etc. to keep this quicksand of a status quo destroying us all for profiteering and power-exploiting purposes of the one percenters.
WE PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE DO EXIST OUT HERE WHETHER THE TEEBEE WILL ACKNOWLEDGE US OR NOT. AND WE WILL KEEP CALLING OUT THE GROTESQUE AMORALITY OR OUR LEADERSHIP, AND SADLY, OF AN ASTOUNDING NUMBER OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS.
Did you know that on the morning of May 1st NYC'S Mayor Bloomberg sent out storm troopers to burst into the apartments of known OWS "insurgents" who had demonstrations planned for that day? I mean, the right of assembly and free speech -- why would that stop police state intimidation????? WTF? Don't they know what year this is and we whose at the helm of our ship of state???? The American Judas. With an astonishing number of disciples, sadly!
best, libby
This blog's content and certainly ITS TITLE MESSAGE capture the mood I was and am in having been watching ad nauseam neo-lib traitorous MSNBC and Current TV RE-MYTHOLOGIZING Obama (and which I will terminate soon enough watching except for maybe a peek at times at Chris Hayes or Cenk, both of whom should be ashamed, too, for cold-shouldering third party vanguards).
Those who know the truth, recognize the heart of darkness at the source of power in this country and now infecting an alarmingly large segment of the citizenry coexist in the state of DISENFRANCHISEMENT A/K/A MARGINALIZATION OR MORE ACCURATELY INVISIBILITY. The propaganda machines with their personality over character front men and women are in full force now and all the clever seductions that corporate money can buy is beginning to flood over us from the magic teebee box and the magic internet box, radio, papers, magazines, etc. to keep this quicksand of a status quo destroying us all for profiteering and power-exploiting purposes of the one percenters.
WE PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE DO EXIST OUT HERE WHETHER THE TEEBEE WILL ACKNOWLEDGE US OR NOT. AND WE WILL KEEP CALLING OUT THE GROTESQUE AMORALITY OR OUR LEADERSHIP, AND SADLY, OF AN ASTOUNDING NUMBER OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS.
Did you know that on the morning of May 1st NYC'S Mayor Bloomberg sent out storm troopers to burst into the apartments of known OWS "insurgents" who had demonstrations planned for that day? I mean, the right of assembly and free speech -- why would that stop police state intimidation????? WTF? Don't they know what year this is and we whose at the helm of our ship of state???? The American Judas. With an astonishing number of disciples, sadly!
best, libby
Mission, I so agree. This swamp is now up to our lower lips or eyeballs. Obama or Romney, Obomney, are not going to drain it. They are going to keep on raising it. A rising swamp lifts all one percenter yachts! We are like the victims of Katrina waiting for the government to do something serious to help us. We know how that turned out. best, libby
jmac, thanks for your comment and how exciting you have that history and continued interest in promoting the Greens. I worked hard in Manhattan for Howie Hawkins when he ran as Green candidate for Governor of NY 2012 against BFF of Wall Street Andrew Cuomo who ultimately won. I gotta tell you, I tried to broadcast Hawkins' always pointed and reality-based messaging, but when I finally met him in person was disappointed he is not much of a "glad-hander", maybe shy or reserved or burning out or maybe he was having a bad day, whatever, though he gives a good speech. I find the in-person charisma and enthusiasm of Jill Stein now running as Green for Prez, and her listening skills to curious and frustrated and new Greens and all citizens, really inspiring.
How wonderful for you to help the Green's movement in California! :-) best, libby
How wonderful for you to help the Green's movement in California! :-) best, libby
Jan, it is nice to see you again. I relate to your sense of frustration. I see the media as being a universal common denominator and mass communicator and the corruption within it make the efforts to pass along the real truth by us individuals so formidable. It is like shouting into the wind. Into hurricane winds -- a hurricane of relentless and ferocious propaganda! I feel voting for the Dem Party is throwing away a vote, not in voting for Jill Stein of the Green Party. That is not throwing a vote away. It is a spiritual opportunity to say NO, I MAY BE ONE PERSON, BUT I AM ONE PERSON WHO SAYS NOOOOOO!!!!! I WILL NOT REWARD CRIMINALITY AND HYPOCRISY!!!! I am not conned by the duopoly of profiteering one percenters pushing for the faux-lesser evil default! And for those who tell me and people like me we are enabling a Republican win in November, I say we are not the enablers of anti-humanity governance. The excuse not to support justice and empathy promoters because they are not strong enough to prevail does not illuminate those of us supporting them as lacking in wit, it is a reflection of those who have a profound lack of moral will and vision and are so very codependent to follow the herd even over cliff-falls guaranteed by the present status quo!!! 80 million people who had a strong dose of will and vision in 2008, they just had the wrong man and candidate, could certainly be felt if they stopped embracing learned helplessness or authoritarian following of neo-liberal tv celeb blowhard sell-outs!!! best, libby
correction: I meant to say" they just had the wrong man and party" above.
Are you really writing this to me with a straight face, UncleChri???? The oligarchs soaked the citizenry for $14 trillion and are still siphoning more away and you are preaching about socialism? We are talking reverse socialism flowing to the rich. You offer little to this discussion besides snark.
Thanks for visit, Stuart! Yes, the Obama propaganda machines are spinning those horrifying statistics of joblessness as evidence of "healing" and "recovery". Total bullshit!! It is like watching those cognitive dissonance commercials where people are frolicking in a meadow and the monotone narration is talking about suicide, projectile vomiting and/or erectile dysfunction. Obama brags about GM. Yeah, helping GM was an opportunity to gut living wages for workers of the few manufacturing jobs in the US. I am researching what is going on with our shameless and mind-numbingly huge prison population and the exploitation of it for outsourcing purposes. 23 cents an hour, 24/7. no protections on the prisoners, either, basic stuff like sane hours and health support, or to reduce outrageous health-endangering toxicity at times. Who is monitoring? Who cares about the welfare about citizens even let alone incarcerated ones, non-violent or not. The privatizing companies work hand in hand with saturated with corruption legal branch of our government to keep that cheap work force growing and going. lose/lose once again for humanity as the ruling class sociopathic elite hoards its profits. I heard someone on Charlie Rose exclaim, "They seem to be trying everything to end the recession." Right. Everything except exerting any pressure or REMOTE inconvenience on our rich captors. God forbid they pay more taxes even on the money they have stolen from us. best, libby
Joseph Cole, I will vote for Green Party Jill Stein in a New York City minute. I detached from the Democratic Party and registered with the Green Party. I see voting for Obama as an insane exercise of enabling. The Bush cabal raped America. Obama and the Dems date raped America. Some choice. Choosing the rapist or the date rapist. Will too many of the victims of the Obama et al. rape wake up enough to acknowledge the violation? National healing won't begin until more of them do. libby
Bleue! so nice to see you! Its amazing what a swamp we are all settling for and into. Poverty in America. Obama's incredible indifference to reality should be a wake-up call. Instead his denial and minimization are being clung to by Americans as they demonize the demon Republicans and pretend the demon Dems aren't the traitors they have been for so long now with their deregulation and selling out of the progress of the New Deal. I got a cute picture of the Obama family in the mail from Michelle O. asking for my support. They are really good at impression management. Just turn off your heart and your mind and TRUST THE DEM PARTY for more shearing of the sheeple. The War on Empathy ... whoever wins the November election, it will be the BIG winner. best, libby
Mark, reality is duking it out with denial. Big Media and even little media enables the enablers of Obama and the corporate Dem legacy party. bleue is right about Americans needing to hit bottom, but it is clear that the thickness of denial, the smoke and mirrors con game propaganda, is guaranteeing a very low and profound bottom to be hit before a real first step to national recovery can be made. We have an opportunity as a national family to do the right thing and tell our betraying leaderships to take a hike. But these six months will fly by and instead the bubble people are throwing snark at the messengers of reality! best, libby
Rudy, what a juicy long comment. thank you.
You kinda crack me up when you write: "But left and right become an issue - I am so far right I'm left, and you are so far left you're right."
I am listening. When you are so disenfranchised for so long, one wonders where one is.
I am a Christian, too, Rudy. In my heart and self estimation. Not a fundamental and traditional one, but a Christian. I am also a humanist which I think should go along with both categories and too often doesn't.
I am a liberal. Progressive has become a dirty word for me now, it began to be one when the public option progressives went after the single payer liberals instead of the rabid rat bastards manipulators using the irrational cries of "socialism" to rob this generation's opportunity to embrace universal health care that every other industrial nation already embraced. The public option was one more trojan horse trick by the backstabbing Dem party and the media.
Now the name liberal is also tainted with that vile little prefix "neo" before it. Neo meaning anti- as far as I can see.
I really admire the generosity of your Christian group. Kind of a metaphor for what a functional and empathetic government should be.
Yes, we have a VERY BAD GOVERNMENT NOW THAT DOES NOT DESERVE OUR TRUST AND OUR TAX DOLLARS AND OUR YOUNG PEOPLE TO USE AS CANNON FODDER OR FOR PRISON CHEAP LABOR OUTSOURCING.
I have no problem believing your disclosures about how government programs are being Orwellianly tapped by the oligarchs. Rahm Emmanuel is setting that up in Chicago right now, letting the one percenters at the public trough one more time to swill down whatever is still left at their economic pillaging. It is all done like smoke and mirrors magic, like his buddy on the national level. You lie and you makes things not transparent!
Yes, the divide up and conquer game. On so many of these bullshit shows on msnbc people go tch tch and they insist that the naughty partisanship is causing dysfunction in this government. But the reality is there is plenty of bipartisanship. slyly by the Dems less slyly by the Republicans enabling a new fascism engineered by sociopathic oligarchs.
best, libby
You kinda crack me up when you write: "But left and right become an issue - I am so far right I'm left, and you are so far left you're right."
I am listening. When you are so disenfranchised for so long, one wonders where one is.
I am a Christian, too, Rudy. In my heart and self estimation. Not a fundamental and traditional one, but a Christian. I am also a humanist which I think should go along with both categories and too often doesn't.
I am a liberal. Progressive has become a dirty word for me now, it began to be one when the public option progressives went after the single payer liberals instead of the rabid rat bastards manipulators using the irrational cries of "socialism" to rob this generation's opportunity to embrace universal health care that every other industrial nation already embraced. The public option was one more trojan horse trick by the backstabbing Dem party and the media.
Now the name liberal is also tainted with that vile little prefix "neo" before it. Neo meaning anti- as far as I can see.
I really admire the generosity of your Christian group. Kind of a metaphor for what a functional and empathetic government should be.
Yes, we have a VERY BAD GOVERNMENT NOW THAT DOES NOT DESERVE OUR TRUST AND OUR TAX DOLLARS AND OUR YOUNG PEOPLE TO USE AS CANNON FODDER OR FOR PRISON CHEAP LABOR OUTSOURCING.
I have no problem believing your disclosures about how government programs are being Orwellianly tapped by the oligarchs. Rahm Emmanuel is setting that up in Chicago right now, letting the one percenters at the public trough one more time to swill down whatever is still left at their economic pillaging. It is all done like smoke and mirrors magic, like his buddy on the national level. You lie and you makes things not transparent!
Yes, the divide up and conquer game. On so many of these bullshit shows on msnbc people go tch tch and they insist that the naughty partisanship is causing dysfunction in this government. But the reality is there is plenty of bipartisanship. slyly by the Dems less slyly by the Republicans enabling a new fascism engineered by sociopathic oligarchs.
best, libby
Joseph Kishore of wsws on the employment figures (speaks of Obama's TYPICAL DISPLAY OF INDIFFERENCE!):
"Wages were also stagnant, with hourly earnings up only a penny from last month. This is below the inflation rate, continuing a long-term trend of declining real income. These figures actually obscure the extent of pay cuts for working people, as they are averaged in with the increasing incomes of the top one percent."
"The Obama administration responded to these figures with the typical display of indifference. Chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, said the report “provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”"
"Krueger called on Congress to move ahead with the administration’s “jobs” proposals, which in fact consist largely of tax cuts for corporations and the roll-back of corporate regulations."
"From the beginning of the crisis, the administration rejected any federal program to put people to work. Both Democrats and Republicans are united on the need to slash government programs, including massive austerity measures to be implemented after the elections. This will further exacerbate the jobs crisis."
"This weekend, Obama is officially beginning his reelection campaign with stops in Virginia and Ohio. He will be touting the federal government’s bailout of the auto companies, which were premised on cutting in half the pay for new hires and slashing benefits for all workers and retirees."
"While the administration will cite the auto bailout for supposedly saving jobs, mass unemployment is in fact a crucial component of a deliberate strategy to use the economic crisis to enforce a permanent reduction in wages for workers."
"Wages were also stagnant, with hourly earnings up only a penny from last month. This is below the inflation rate, continuing a long-term trend of declining real income. These figures actually obscure the extent of pay cuts for working people, as they are averaged in with the increasing incomes of the top one percent."
"The Obama administration responded to these figures with the typical display of indifference. Chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, Alan Krueger, said the report “provides further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”"
"Krueger called on Congress to move ahead with the administration’s “jobs” proposals, which in fact consist largely of tax cuts for corporations and the roll-back of corporate regulations."
"From the beginning of the crisis, the administration rejected any federal program to put people to work. Both Democrats and Republicans are united on the need to slash government programs, including massive austerity measures to be implemented after the elections. This will further exacerbate the jobs crisis."
"This weekend, Obama is officially beginning his reelection campaign with stops in Virginia and Ohio. He will be touting the federal government’s bailout of the auto companies, which were premised on cutting in half the pay for new hires and slashing benefits for all workers and retirees."
"While the administration will cite the auto bailout for supposedly saving jobs, mass unemployment is in fact a crucial component of a deliberate strategy to use the economic crisis to enforce a permanent reduction in wages for workers."
Actually, it is heartening to see the far left getting so extreme that it is in effect jumping off a cliff like the far right did.
It is much easier for the far left extremists to make themselves irrelevant than for true advocates of a progressive agenda to show them to be extraneous.
In a sense, as you get more and more extreme—more and more outlandish, you help promote what some of us want for our country and do more damage to the mistakes you want to promote than we can do.
I think thanks are in order.
THANKS!
It is much easier for the far left extremists to make themselves irrelevant than for true advocates of a progressive agenda to show them to be extraneous.
In a sense, as you get more and more extreme—more and more outlandish, you help promote what some of us want for our country and do more damage to the mistakes you want to promote than we can do.
I think thanks are in order.
THANKS!
@Frank
Actually, it's heartening to see the "liberals" getting so far left that they meet their co-believers in true Liberal self government, coming around on the Right. We are all finally getting the message that no matter what Puppets are currently on stage, this Government is the problem - The Left calls it "Corporatism and Crony Capitalism", the Right Calls it "Ruling Elite and Crony Capitalism" We all call it Evil.
Actually, it's heartening to see the "liberals" getting so far left that they meet their co-believers in true Liberal self government, coming around on the Right. We are all finally getting the message that no matter what Puppets are currently on stage, this Government is the problem - The Left calls it "Corporatism and Crony Capitalism", the Right Calls it "Ruling Elite and Crony Capitalism" We all call it Evil.
libby, you said, "... progressive has become a dirty word for me now, it began to be one when the public option progressives went after the single payer liberals instead of the rabid rat bastards manipulators using the irrational cries of "socialism" to rob this generation's opportunity to embrace universal health care that every other industrial nation already embraced. The public option was one more trojan horse trick by the backstabbing Dem party and the media."
I'm confused by this (not the ridiculous arguments over who is a liberal and whether they are rat bastards or not) and don't know how I could have missed the nuances at the time because although I actively supported a single-payer state-level plan, I thought that a public option would increase competition and drive private insurers out of the market. The lobbies certainly reacted in a way that made me believe that.
Was I wrong? (or was I just thinking ordinarily, as Your Friend would say over and over, seriously believing he is being witty?)
I'm confused by this (not the ridiculous arguments over who is a liberal and whether they are rat bastards or not) and don't know how I could have missed the nuances at the time because although I actively supported a single-payer state-level plan, I thought that a public option would increase competition and drive private insurers out of the market. The lobbies certainly reacted in a way that made me believe that.
Was I wrong? (or was I just thinking ordinarily, as Your Friend would say over and over, seriously believing he is being witty?)
Frank,
I know I am becoming more intense at times in my frustration over the UNDER-REACTION of fellow citizens that I expect so much more from in terms of sane demonstrations of moral courage and awareness.
You know the logic of psychological dynamics, when one party under-functions there is a strong likelihood the other party will over-function. Like the dynamic of active addicts not taking responsibility for things and the partners of these addicts overdoing a codependent behavior to counterbalance. I feel like I am on that kind of seesaw.
I sometimes feel like Kevin McCarthy in that old Invasion of the Body Snatchers Movie, as he wonders why his fellow human beings are more and more zombie-like. The metaphor of that movie was that if one let himself or herself doze off (not stay morally and mentally awake I read that message as) one becomes a pod person!
Jumping off the cliff you consider writing an angry titled blog with a lot of statistics and statements from people who are qualified to appraise the profound failings of the Obama administration?
Go ahead and crony up, Frank. It is you, the enablers of a CORRUPT system that are dooming the republic.
best, libby
I know I am becoming more intense at times in my frustration over the UNDER-REACTION of fellow citizens that I expect so much more from in terms of sane demonstrations of moral courage and awareness.
You know the logic of psychological dynamics, when one party under-functions there is a strong likelihood the other party will over-function. Like the dynamic of active addicts not taking responsibility for things and the partners of these addicts overdoing a codependent behavior to counterbalance. I feel like I am on that kind of seesaw.
I sometimes feel like Kevin McCarthy in that old Invasion of the Body Snatchers Movie, as he wonders why his fellow human beings are more and more zombie-like. The metaphor of that movie was that if one let himself or herself doze off (not stay morally and mentally awake I read that message as) one becomes a pod person!
Jumping off the cliff you consider writing an angry titled blog with a lot of statistics and statements from people who are qualified to appraise the profound failings of the Obama administration?
Go ahead and crony up, Frank. It is you, the enablers of a CORRUPT system that are dooming the republic.
best, libby
Rudy, I am happy to be in your club! :) best, libby
Hey Joe!
Once again the media manipulated the message re the public option and the ENTIRE universal health care movement. The media made it seem like that the choice of the left was the public option and there was no other. Universal health care was never brought up on the teebee.
The progressive programming back then IGNORED all the hard working long time single payer advocates.
Most of the single payer people I was hanging with in the cyberworld then were at firedoglake and Jane Hamsher, its founder, was appearing on the progressive tv shows periodically, and was suddenly pitching hard for the "public option" much to our dismay.
There was such a logic and a pro-humanity as well as economically pragmatic solution with universal health care, not letting the vendors milk the patient victims or government tax dollars.
I think it was a Jacob Hacker who conceived of a public option but Jane Hamsher seemed to invest so much of her own political capital and EGO into having it be embraced by the left as an incremental plan you would think it was her idea. I once compared her to Alec Guiness in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai because she was so obsessed with building the public option she was missing the big picture and really enabling the corporatists the way Guiness in that movie missed the BIG picture and was aiding the enemy he was so narrow sighted.
She seemed to have no moral imagination. She was a great political strategist and with some, not me, a great motivator. But why such rage and animosity about the single payer purists as she called us, the Naderites she sneered? WHY? Why not go for the gold after so many decades it should have been in place? And why try to knock the wind out of our sails since we should be all pulling in the same direction?
But the high profile media access-obsessed progressives decided to embrace public option and run with it and thus sabotaging the natural momentum the single payer movement had been reaching, much to the dismay of those working hard to rally people and support the long timers who had been fighting for universal health care for decades. And that played into corporate media's and corporate Dem Obama and party's hands. Just like what the neo-libs have done to the anti-war liberals.
The public option became a soon to evaporate bubble political football. It had no serious arithmetic attributed to it. It was giving all these wonderful "fair" attributes when it was just being used by the Obama administration to stall and snuff out the efforts for single payer, he would put all these vague promises toward it with no hard commitments (sounds like Obama), and use it to divide up the left which it did crazily. Remember, Obama refused to let single payer ON THE TABLE FROM THE GET-GO. Nurses and doctors who knew what they were talking about if you remember weren't allowed into Max Baucus panel on health care, only the avaricious corporatists could attend. Maxie had Dr. Flowers and some other advocates thrown in jail for speaking out from the gallery. It was disgusting.
I and so many single payer folks on FDL were dismayed by how vitriolic the public option people progressives were becoming toward us because they claimed we were too stubborn (well, okay, I am still the same), we insisting we wanted universal health care for ALL of the citizenry, it was time, it was doable, and the cost savings on efficient paperwork, bulk-ordering and using the prototype already set up of the medicare program or the VA program could be expanded for all.
That was when I had to weather and fight to fathom why the farther lefties seemed to enrage those who were playing it "pragmatic". I didn't see them as an enemy of us until they made us enemies of them. WTF???? You would think that if they let us fight hard for universal health care GOD BLESS US!! But I was treated so shabbily and fellow bloggers there we ended up leaving. Some got kicked out by a volatile Jane Hamsher who did not want her members not following her public option party line. And she never acknowledged she had been unwise to follow the public option path later on. She was a real disappointing leader in my eyes. Her ego got in the way in a BIG way and it got played by the teebee manipulators. It would have been a big and major moment if Jane had let us work with her troops to help advance health care in this country. I think of the saying about how the Dems are like a circular firing squad. I was lucky enough to be reached to by correntewire who really saw the selling out of the so-called pragmatic progressives.
Some sturdy single payer people stayed on. I stayed on as long as I could stomach it but finally left.
At that time. I was also getting a lot of info and updates from the pnhp, physicians for a national health plan iirc who were pushing so hard for single payer medicare for all. Their website was exciting and so supportive. still is. The California Nurses were also incredible in pushing hard.
Obama didn't just drop the ball. He didn't even bring it to the game. And as for the invisible political football of the public option the Progressive Political Caucus gave lip service to, the corporate pressure on Congress and the Prez was way too much. The public option evaporated so fast. And once again, millions of us across the country who had supported it were never acknowledged. The invisible citizens of conscience once again.
It sounded to me, Joe, like the public option if it had survived all the bullshit would have been overwhelmed with patients with highly problematic health conditions which would not be sustainable and would be a dumping ground to help out the corporate firms from having to deal with troubled cases. The corporate insurance companies could cherry pick the healthier patients.
Many of us had no trust that a robust public option plan would be developed. If one were, and it never even made it to the drawing board, it was exploited as a TEMPORARY fig leaf to shut up the shallow progressives who chided us for not making the perfect the enemy of the good. The public option imho would not have been good. It would have been one more loop-holed piece of crap to help the money suckers.
I am sure you can google the skinny on the public option by people more articulate than me and probably less emotional about it. :-)
Meanwhile, Joe, again, ONLY the public option was mentioned on the tube and NEVER THOSE OF US FIGHTING FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. Grrrrrr. Once again, the media disenfranchised us, and so many of us were not even die-hard liberals on all the issues who were backing single payer. We appreciated the sanity and humanity of universal health care. We saw it as a national right of citizens.
Writing this fast and I hope it is what you were looking for. I am sure more than enuf. Best, libby
Once again the media manipulated the message re the public option and the ENTIRE universal health care movement. The media made it seem like that the choice of the left was the public option and there was no other. Universal health care was never brought up on the teebee.
The progressive programming back then IGNORED all the hard working long time single payer advocates.
Most of the single payer people I was hanging with in the cyberworld then were at firedoglake and Jane Hamsher, its founder, was appearing on the progressive tv shows periodically, and was suddenly pitching hard for the "public option" much to our dismay.
There was such a logic and a pro-humanity as well as economically pragmatic solution with universal health care, not letting the vendors milk the patient victims or government tax dollars.
I think it was a Jacob Hacker who conceived of a public option but Jane Hamsher seemed to invest so much of her own political capital and EGO into having it be embraced by the left as an incremental plan you would think it was her idea. I once compared her to Alec Guiness in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai because she was so obsessed with building the public option she was missing the big picture and really enabling the corporatists the way Guiness in that movie missed the BIG picture and was aiding the enemy he was so narrow sighted.
She seemed to have no moral imagination. She was a great political strategist and with some, not me, a great motivator. But why such rage and animosity about the single payer purists as she called us, the Naderites she sneered? WHY? Why not go for the gold after so many decades it should have been in place? And why try to knock the wind out of our sails since we should be all pulling in the same direction?
But the high profile media access-obsessed progressives decided to embrace public option and run with it and thus sabotaging the natural momentum the single payer movement had been reaching, much to the dismay of those working hard to rally people and support the long timers who had been fighting for universal health care for decades. And that played into corporate media's and corporate Dem Obama and party's hands. Just like what the neo-libs have done to the anti-war liberals.
The public option became a soon to evaporate bubble political football. It had no serious arithmetic attributed to it. It was giving all these wonderful "fair" attributes when it was just being used by the Obama administration to stall and snuff out the efforts for single payer, he would put all these vague promises toward it with no hard commitments (sounds like Obama), and use it to divide up the left which it did crazily. Remember, Obama refused to let single payer ON THE TABLE FROM THE GET-GO. Nurses and doctors who knew what they were talking about if you remember weren't allowed into Max Baucus panel on health care, only the avaricious corporatists could attend. Maxie had Dr. Flowers and some other advocates thrown in jail for speaking out from the gallery. It was disgusting.
I and so many single payer folks on FDL were dismayed by how vitriolic the public option people progressives were becoming toward us because they claimed we were too stubborn (well, okay, I am still the same), we insisting we wanted universal health care for ALL of the citizenry, it was time, it was doable, and the cost savings on efficient paperwork, bulk-ordering and using the prototype already set up of the medicare program or the VA program could be expanded for all.
That was when I had to weather and fight to fathom why the farther lefties seemed to enrage those who were playing it "pragmatic". I didn't see them as an enemy of us until they made us enemies of them. WTF???? You would think that if they let us fight hard for universal health care GOD BLESS US!! But I was treated so shabbily and fellow bloggers there we ended up leaving. Some got kicked out by a volatile Jane Hamsher who did not want her members not following her public option party line. And she never acknowledged she had been unwise to follow the public option path later on. She was a real disappointing leader in my eyes. Her ego got in the way in a BIG way and it got played by the teebee manipulators. It would have been a big and major moment if Jane had let us work with her troops to help advance health care in this country. I think of the saying about how the Dems are like a circular firing squad. I was lucky enough to be reached to by correntewire who really saw the selling out of the so-called pragmatic progressives.
Some sturdy single payer people stayed on. I stayed on as long as I could stomach it but finally left.
At that time. I was also getting a lot of info and updates from the pnhp, physicians for a national health plan iirc who were pushing so hard for single payer medicare for all. Their website was exciting and so supportive. still is. The California Nurses were also incredible in pushing hard.
Obama didn't just drop the ball. He didn't even bring it to the game. And as for the invisible political football of the public option the Progressive Political Caucus gave lip service to, the corporate pressure on Congress and the Prez was way too much. The public option evaporated so fast. And once again, millions of us across the country who had supported it were never acknowledged. The invisible citizens of conscience once again.
It sounded to me, Joe, like the public option if it had survived all the bullshit would have been overwhelmed with patients with highly problematic health conditions which would not be sustainable and would be a dumping ground to help out the corporate firms from having to deal with troubled cases. The corporate insurance companies could cherry pick the healthier patients.
Many of us had no trust that a robust public option plan would be developed. If one were, and it never even made it to the drawing board, it was exploited as a TEMPORARY fig leaf to shut up the shallow progressives who chided us for not making the perfect the enemy of the good. The public option imho would not have been good. It would have been one more loop-holed piece of crap to help the money suckers.
I am sure you can google the skinny on the public option by people more articulate than me and probably less emotional about it. :-)
Meanwhile, Joe, again, ONLY the public option was mentioned on the tube and NEVER THOSE OF US FIGHTING FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. Grrrrrr. Once again, the media disenfranchised us, and so many of us were not even die-hard liberals on all the issues who were backing single payer. We appreciated the sanity and humanity of universal health care. We saw it as a national right of citizens.
Writing this fast and I hope it is what you were looking for. I am sure more than enuf. Best, libby
ps to Joe, correntewire AND sacramento for democracy, two wonderful websites, took me in after fdl. I should have mentioned s4d, above! libby
Thank you so much libby, for all that good information and an enlightening perspective on the politics. All I can say, is that I wasn't keeping up with the debate because of other preoccupations, and now I am glad I didn't get involved. I was pretty burned out after the SP initiative flopped where I was, so just kept a dispassionate eye on the Obamacare debates, knowing in my heart what the outcome would be, given the big bucks on the table.
joe, THANK YOU! My long-winded comment I just skimmed and it really needs editing in places which is too late to correct now but I am glad you got the jist of it all. You really brought it home for me by asking about this -- what an enemy to the people the national media was and is. About this constant disenfranchising of large numbers of people of conscience in America. Of real citizens. The consumer identity they encourage, but NOT the citizen identity. That they try to squash. It is profound. The internet for now still allows us to find each other and that is good. But except for Democracy Now and Bill Moyers ... duh ... is there anything else on the tube??? .... there is no mirroring of the people of conscience. The tea party got mirrored, often in a cynical way, but they wouldn't acknowledge us. Just like the tv wouldn't let Ralph Nader get near any presidential debates when he wanted to. Because he would have talked profound common sense and morality and pitted that against corporate power. They didn't want an awakened and moral citizenry, they wanted consumers in pens while they exploited the government and captured money and used the army for their own horrifying profit-making agendas. Now they won't even mention Green Party Jill Stein. No air time. I think Fox let her on once. But so-called progressive MSNBC, NO WAY. PSEUDO-PROGRESSIVE on steroids!!!
Obama with his indifference to the torture program and torture accountability, his betrayal about ending the wars, and then his betrayal of universal health care. People wonder why I am so frustrated with the Obama administration???? I can't understand why they are not!!! best, libby
Obama with his indifference to the torture program and torture accountability, his betrayal about ending the wars, and then his betrayal of universal health care. People wonder why I am so frustrated with the Obama administration???? I can't understand why they are not!!! best, libby
People wonder why I am so frustrated with the Obama administration???? I can't understand why they are not!!!
I am not one of the people wondering why you are so frustrated, Libby. I can understand someone getting to where you are…and perhaps I did too much of it with Dubya.
What I am wondering about is why you would allow your frustration to cause you to lose judgment and allow it to lead you to opt for something much more destructive of your supposed goals. Because, Libby, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, your work to divert votes from Obama and the Democrats WILL AID the Republicans…and unless you have already fallen off the edge, you have got to see that the Republicans WILL IMPACT MUCH, MUCH more negatively on the goals you champion than Obama and the Democrats….especially the goals that deal with decreasing economic disparity.
I suspect you will not agree…that you will see this as the much mentioned “good German” mentality, but you are way off base on that.
I only hope that if the worse comes to pass and the Republicans get in because of people like you…you do not come to a realization of your contribution to the carnage that will result while fixing a roof or climbing a ladder. My hopes are that if the fog finally lifts, you will be sitting or in bed so the impact of the realization does not cause you harm.
I am not one of the people wondering why you are so frustrated, Libby. I can understand someone getting to where you are…and perhaps I did too much of it with Dubya.
What I am wondering about is why you would allow your frustration to cause you to lose judgment and allow it to lead you to opt for something much more destructive of your supposed goals. Because, Libby, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, your work to divert votes from Obama and the Democrats WILL AID the Republicans…and unless you have already fallen off the edge, you have got to see that the Republicans WILL IMPACT MUCH, MUCH more negatively on the goals you champion than Obama and the Democrats….especially the goals that deal with decreasing economic disparity.
I suspect you will not agree…that you will see this as the much mentioned “good German” mentality, but you are way off base on that.
I only hope that if the worse comes to pass and the Republicans get in because of people like you…you do not come to a realization of your contribution to the carnage that will result while fixing a roof or climbing a ladder. My hopes are that if the fog finally lifts, you will be sitting or in bed so the impact of the realization does not cause you harm.
People wonder why I am so frustrated with the Obama administration???? I can't understand why they are not!!!
I am not one of the people wondering why you are so frustrated, Libby. I can understand someone getting to where you are…and perhaps I did too much of it with Dubya.
What I am wondering about is why you would allow your frustration to cause you to lose judgment and allow it to lead you to opt for something much more destructive of your supposed goals. Because, Libby, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, your work to divert votes from Obama and the Democrats WILL AID the Republicans…and unless you have already fallen off the edge, you have got to see that the Republicans WILL IMPACT MUCH, MUCH more negatively on the goals you champion than Obama and the Democrats….especially the goals that deal with decreasing economic disparity.
I suspect you will not agree…that you will see this as the much mentioned “good German” mentality, but you are way off base on that.
I only hope that if the worse comes to pass and the Republicans get in because of people like you…you do not come to a realization of your contribution to the carnage that will result while fixing a roof or climbing a ladder. My hopes are that if the fog finally lifts, you will be sitting or in bed so the impact of the realization does not cause you harm.
I am not one of the people wondering why you are so frustrated, Libby. I can understand someone getting to where you are…and perhaps I did too much of it with Dubya.
What I am wondering about is why you would allow your frustration to cause you to lose judgment and allow it to lead you to opt for something much more destructive of your supposed goals. Because, Libby, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, your work to divert votes from Obama and the Democrats WILL AID the Republicans…and unless you have already fallen off the edge, you have got to see that the Republicans WILL IMPACT MUCH, MUCH more negatively on the goals you champion than Obama and the Democrats….especially the goals that deal with decreasing economic disparity.
I suspect you will not agree…that you will see this as the much mentioned “good German” mentality, but you are way off base on that.
I only hope that if the worse comes to pass and the Republicans get in because of people like you…you do not come to a realization of your contribution to the carnage that will result while fixing a roof or climbing a ladder. My hopes are that if the fog finally lifts, you will be sitting or in bed so the impact of the realization does not cause you harm.
And I pray, Frank, one day you come out from among the trees and behold the entire forest.
Terminally ill, chronically misfiring neurons - can't find a place where his redundant message will be received - resorts to harassing those who have principles, convictions, and morals.
Just heard from ANOTHER OS member, who he's chosen to pounce upon.
Go write some more cat-leash letters, boob.
Just heard from ANOTHER OS member, who he's chosen to pounce upon.
Go write some more cat-leash letters, boob.
gold/silver/oil/healthcare ONLY.
So tell us which oil and healthcare stocks are ok for radicals to invest in.
So tell us which oil and healthcare stocks are ok for radicals to invest in.
One I think you'd like joe is GFY.
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