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Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson will be joining us at 7pm ET tonight for an emergency FDL member Town Hall on the looming threat to Social Security and Medicare. Today they respond to the statement issued by Bob Greenstein of the CBPP in support of cuts to Social Security benefits.
Nancy Altman
Specifically, Bob states:
Adoption of the chained CPI would raise some issues for elderly people, because a larger share of their consumption than of the average person’s consumption consists of out-of-pocket health care costs. Since health care costs rise faster than the overall inflation rate, the fact that older people have larger health care cost burdens modestly raises the level of inflation they experience. As a result, both the regular and the chained CPI somewhat understate inflation for the elderly population as a whole.
On the other hand, policymakers will agree to switch from use of the conventional CPI to the chained CPI only if they make this change government-wide — in benefit programs and the tax code alike. And doing so would produce substantial deficit reduction over time, and also would somewhat narrow Social Security’s long-term financing shortfall. We have long favored this policy change, provided that policymakers couple it with measures to soften the impact on the very old and people who have been disabled for an extended period of time (since the effects of moving to the chained CPI mount with the number of years that an individual receives benefits).
Eric Kingson
Even so, he is making a judgment that it is okay to compromise the idea that OASDI and SSI benefits should maintain their purchasing power no matter how long someone lives, in exchange for some revenues that help to reduce the long-term deficit. He is willing to make this trade even though two-thirds of the savings would come from the benefit, not the tax, side. (That one- third from taxes assumes that taxes are not lowered elsewhere to offset the increased revenue. Perhaps, most serious, the revenue raised disproportionately hits low and middle income taxpayers.
He also assumes that a “birthday bump” or some such change will be instituted to offset the impact on people who will see their benefits cut for many years, though none is included in the Gang of Six materials and none has been mentioned as part of the Obama-Boehner negotiations.
We respect CBPP, Bob and all associated with the Center. However, we think Bob and some other well-intentioned persons are making a serious miscalculation in their measured support for the chained CPI benefit cuts because:
First, Social Security policy (and a significant change in the program) should not be made in the context of deficit reduction discussions. As many pay lip-service to, even as they violate this fact, Social Security does not contribute to the federal deficit. Americans should not be stampeded into accepting any changes in this program in the context of last minute and bizarre deficit reduction negotiations by elites, many of whom seem to have forgotten their promises to the Americanpeople that they would not cut Social Security for anyone aged 55 or older.
Second, benefits are modest on average, just $14,000 a year for retirees. The cuts that are being proposed in the name of shared sacrifice, mean that 10 years hence, the typical retiree would receive about $600 less in that one year than under current law; 20 years hence, about $1000 less. Moreover, this change hits all beneficiaries – people with disabilities and their families, as well as children and spouses of workers who have died. For all beneficiaries, benefits average just $13,000.
Third, in supporting the “chained CPI,” CBPP, a deservedly-respected institution, is making it known that it is open to giving up a “piece” of Social Security, without getting anything in exchange for the program (e.g., restoration of the cap to cover 90% of earnings).
Fourth, in the current political environment, it is possible that we’ll end up with the chained CPI applying to benefits, but not to tax brackets as Bob considers critical.
And fifth while it is comforting to think we can get a change that ameliorates the pain of cutting benefits (e.g., the birthday bump that Bowles-Simpson proposed), there is no guarantee and, like the Bowles-Simpson Birthday bump proposal, an increase in benefits after twenty years of receiving benefits, it is likely that an offset would fall far short of undoing the damage for done to today’s and tomorrow’s beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries would experience annual erosion of their purchasing power for decades, only to be rewarded, if they should live into their eighties, to have a portion of those lost benefits returned.
Mert Bernstein, Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University and another respected expert, cautions that “The advocates of a strong Social Security program should not do anything that encourages the President’s propensity to make concessions as a way of showing that our side is willing to give up things of value to spur on the bargaining process. That is all the more the case when the reasoning in support of the chained COLA is so poor.”
Bernstein is right. Progressives need to send a strong message that a COLA cut is unacceptable, no matter what it is called and most especially when it is being used to show that Democrats are willing to give up their historic support for Social Security in exchange for getting Republican sign-on to a disastrous deficit-reduction deal.
82 Comments
Thanks so much Eric and Nancy for doing this. When Greenstein came out with this it sent a real strong dog whistle to so called “progressives” in Congress that it was okay to lie down on this one. If you guys weren’t responding, it would just hang there unanswered.
I really, really admire you both and thank you so much for all you do.
Recommended! But how do we get those who are determined to cut SS and Medicare to listen to reason? Now they propose to have a coronation of 12 super congresscritters to decide for us, and they’ve put cuts to SS and Medicare front and center. What can we do?
Yes indeed. Thanks so much. This is the kind of thing that most people simply don’t have time or will to figure out. “Just another government piece of red tape that won’t affect me today.”
By explaining it clearly for what it is one can hope, first the Congress will be more fearful of passing it because, second the people will know just what they are doing.
Recommended!!
And very seriously appreciated.
Thank you, Nancy and Eric.
DW
These proposed changes break a promise to those over 55 too. Thanks for pointing that out. Like Unions allowing pension cuts to future hires in the out-years, these thieves have been pitting the generations against each other with the over and under 55 differences in what they plan to cut. Now everyone should sit up and pay attention; everyone of all ages.
As my late mother, who lived to be 92, told me every year since she started collecting social security, the COLA was always offset by a commensurate raise in the amount she had to put out for medicare supplemental insurance, and so she always experienced a loss in buying power each year for 27 plus years of being a senior.
Now the President, and those who would put the burden of balancing the budget on the backs of those who have already paid for a lifetime into the system and worked for this country, would like those who are already on, and those who will be in the near future, social security to be prepared to know that they are now to be considered useless relics you can discard and ignore.
Thank you Eric and Nancy, hope to join the discussion this evening.
Talking Stick, I hope too that “the Congress will be more fearful of passing it because, second the people will know just what they are doing”.
How do we make sure that people are informed when the corporate media has neither the attention span nor the inclination to do so?
FDL offers its readers an extraordinary opportunity to explore this type of issue, but I wonder what percentage of voters still depend on the MSM for their information.
I have enjoyed reading your comments and look forward to more.
victoria
These cuts will serve to reduce SS in the eyes of the public, not only for the elderly but perhaps overlooked and equally important, the young. They will come to see SS as not a very good program and that opens the door to still more cuts in future years. The impact needs to be shown to everyone by specific example.
This Syndicate of Twelve is a disturbing development. Jane, maybe this will be the sinking of the shrimp boat moment.
Mods — several attempts to open thread on Bill Daley and Meet the Press defaulted to this thread. Last attempt to comment on Bill Daley thread produced Mozilla Firefox warning that page was attempting to “redirect in a way that would never complete.”
Man oh man I hope we can come up with some more ideas on the call to combat this.
It’s a “man the barricades!” moment if there ever was one.
Try clearing your cache. That works for most folks using FF.
You may very well be right about that.
Also switch browsers. Firefox has some bug in it that makes it happen — doesn’t happen with Safari or Chrome.
Junta.
Jane:
I am watching the madness happening all around us, and I feel as if there are fires erupting everywhere, and you and the well meaning lefties are in a fire truck running from one fire to another. As soon as a fire is put out in one place, you have to jump into the truck and go to another. There will never be an end to this, because you are dealing with the symptoms, not with the root cause. The root cause is money, and particularly the fact that our political system allows private money to be used in elections.
What you need is a system of publicly financed elections. Since we both know that this will never happen within the framework of our political system in this country, the only way to solve is a Constitutional Amendment. This will change the kind of people going into politics, and since these people will not have profit at heart, they will serve the country. Enact severe penalties for corruption. You are wasting your energy trying to put out fires. Instead, put your energy into stamping out the root cause of these eruptions. Otherwise, I fear, we are going to slip into internal violence, and I think this will not benefit the corporations fueling this madness, as they may wind up at the receiving end of the stick. They may get consumed by their own greed. Terrorism is used as a reason for repression. Maybe what happened in Norway is just a beginning of what may be ahead for all of us, with violence directed at the multinational corporations. They are the “vampire squid sucking the blood wrapped around the face of humanity” as Matt Taibbi said of Goldman Sachs.
An amendment is the only way to cut the blood supply of the squid.
So the CPBB is all for cutting Social Security, so long as it also means there’s also a regressive tax increase on the poor and middle class to go along with it. Tell me again why I’m supposed to hold the CPBB in high regard? The poor and middle class are supposed to eat catfood and when they get sick, they’d better die quickly. Are there no prisons? No workhouses? If they had rather die, they’d better do it now and decrease the surplus population.
Not only does the “Super Congress” imply unstoppable cuts to SS and Medicare, it also, effectively, locks the current TWO political parties, which through their “bipartisan” embace of the Twelve “solution”, demonstrate that they are completely aligned and all else is mere Kabuki, into ENDLESS control, thereby doing a cynical end-run around ANY attemps by the people to establish a third political party to challenge the status quo, OmAli.
DW
Without the political orientation overtones, I’m starting to think of these “gangs” as a “Central Committee”. Seems that Obama and the ruling elites want a grand high council to decide what policy is and the rest of our elected representation to rubber stamp it.
Too often I find myself having to use the same phrases the right wing does in criticism of this president, although for considerably different, and certainly more logical, reasons. Where’s the transparency, Obama? Where’s the open debate that is at the heart of a representative democracy? Where’s the real shared sacrifice?
It’s like hearing about Rep Paul Ryan and his $350 bottle of wine, all the time spouting about honesty in government and sacrifice. Geez.
I agree with the thrust of you post but IMO the solutions you suggest won’t happen either.
I certainly have thought long on all this with no better ideas however.
I think perhaps attacking the virtues the money moguls who hold them dear by way of the culture, media, the arts etc. may be a beginning. This in fact is how they gained ascendancy — by many years ago attacking our transitional democratic, especially values and those of us practicing them. It stopped being cool to care about the less fortunate and be compassionate etc. Just thinking out loud.
That’s just delusional, wishful thinking because it ain’t gonna happen in the universe I inhabit first and second there’s the part about Social Security not contributing one penny to the “deficit” to begin with. I agree this is just a way to get the wavering Obamabots back into line and give them an excuse to support gutting social programs.
Thank you Nancy and Eric.
This could be a time to make common cause with the Tea Party. They are likely to be against the “super committee” for the same reasons we are–they fear they will have no voice in the legislation that emerges.
Chained-CPI (Consumer Price Index) is a con. Using “substitution” means it’s no longer a Price Index and is instead a Spending Index. And OF COURSE a spending index will be flatter, and more stable, because most peoples amount for spending each month is stable.
If a person spends $1,000 a month on steak, potatoes, fresh vegetables and fruits, but then all of those increase in price and the same person spends $1,000 a month on catfood, dogfood, and stale bread then according to the “substitution” method no increase has occurred.
This is why it’s a CON,, and why it is NOT even a PRICE INDEX. It intentionally is a SPENDING HABIT INDEX which will ALWAYS be more stable because WAGES (and thus people’s spending money) never, ever fluctuates as much as prices.
As we think out loud, TS, let us ponder the greatest protection possesses by those individual men and women who hide behind the facade of Corporate personhood.
It is their essential anonymity.
We may know of the Koch brothers, and Rupert Murdoch, and certain others, but the vast majority of the other “people” who comprise the 1% are unknown, and thereby, safe from criticism and being held, in any way or fashion, responsible and brought to personal account.
As an aside, it is ironic that those who would dare to question or hold the powerful to account must have as much noteriety as possible, that they not disappear from the face of the earth.
DW
Perhaps we need a constitutional Amendment regarding Congressional pay that links their pay, and benefits, to those the rest of us have. Example: “The pay of members of congress shall be determined to be equal to 1.5 times the median family income from the latest census”. So instead of $174,000, congress would get $75,000. (2009 median household income = $50,221) (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html) Members of Congress would also only get payment into the social security system, and a money stipend equaling 1/2 of the “average” (go define that) medical insurance policy.
Frankly, I’d rather have them only get a per diem, in the same way as the founding fathers. Again, basing that on the median income of 50,221, that would be a per diem of approx $137 for every day a member was in congress. Of course, we would all assume that their moneyed buddies would help them past this “limitation”.
Too many silver spooned babies in the Government. Those who remember what it was really like growing up and having to work for what they got are few and far between.
There’s got to be a way to bring our “leaders” back into the fold of reality for the rest of us.
Is Bob and the CBPP part of the “veal pen?” Seems when candidate Obama promised to push back on the special interests, he was talking about progressives and the 80 percent of the American people who agree with us. Seems he wants to govern at the pleasure of Ignani, Tauzin and Dimon, the plutocrat tri-fecta.
with respect, i strenuously disagree… but probably not in the way you expect.
FIRST, we should not be wasting time with deficit deduction discussions.. this needs to be front and center because when progressives concede that deficits are somehow intrinsically bad, we have conceded to making our case within the false conservative frame of “fiscal responsibility.” and when we do that progressives lose.
it’s just as james k. galbraith warned in in jan, 2010: Why Progressives Shouldn’t Fall For the Deficit Reduction Trap, “The fetish of long-term deficit reduction is politically poisonous — and economically pointless. In reality, we need big budget deficits. We need them now — and down the road.”
here is some more from galbraith from last year from a reply to paul krugman). my bold:
repeated for emphasis:
“The so-called long-term deficit is not a real problem.”
Yes! I couldn’t agree more and there is no longer true investigative reporting. I have on another thread suggested doing away with corporate taxes as a way of taking away some of that anonymity and shield to accountability. It is people who plan and do these things.– not some mindless virtual machine.
It’s a good idea, but unless it was accompanies with limits on outside income, including family members, and future income, it would likely not amount to much.
Who wouldn’t mind making $75,000 a year right now (instead of $174,000) if they’re guaranteed $3,000,000 a year the day after they walk out of Congress??? Or, if they make $75,000 a year now, but XYZ Corporation hires their wife at $3,000,000 per year.
There have been lots of attempts to get money out of politics. I don’t think it will ever happen. Even if we passed 100% taxpayer funded campaigns, there’s still the promise of individual riches for each Congressperson after he/she leaves office that will be just as effective as the campaign donations are today.
In other words, the “long-term deficit” is a phony “problem”, a deliberate distraction and “concerns” about it mere Kabuki and and nothing but self-serving deceit on the part of those who should know AND do better.
Thank you, selise, and Jamie, as well.
DW
i don’t know how deliberate it is. maybe innocent ignorance?
either way, dangerous as hell.
FWIW I have started the process for a meeting with my Congressman. I want him to tell me to my face what his position is on this issue. I know it isn’t much but at least he will know someone is paying attention to him. My 2 cents.
I love the way these experts spout their BS about things of which they have no Knowledge. These individuals have never tried to survive (it’s not living) on the amount that is paid to SS individuals. First in order to have medicare approx. 100 per month is deducted before a check is received. Medicare then has a deductible and co-pay which further depletes your money. If you have a disability it requires constant meds and sometimes oxygen monthly. Then you have utilities, if you are on oxygen your elec. is higher each month. Then you have, gas, ins., local and state taxes, etc. If there is any money left you try to figure how to buy enough food to finish the month without starving.
This great existence is what the idiots in Congress view as to luxurious and needs to be cut. SS hasn’t been raised in two years, thanks to Obama, while everything else has risen. Obama and Congress made sure they received HUGE raises for the crap they are doing.
I would gladly walk a mile in their shoes if they will just take a few steps in mine.
OT:
Halp! I can’t get into Caturday!
“The Love Police: Megaphone the Drone” (the first of three from July 2010 but you get the idea).
exactly right.
I just encountered that with Caturday. I clicked “submit” on a comment and wound up here. Then couldn’t get back to Caturday; kept landing here. When I switched to Chrome, I had no problem, and my comment had posted.
Try copying this and pasting it directly into your browser:
http://my.firedoglake.com/southerndragon/2011/07/24/caturday-71/#recommend-77482-206
You know, I’m ready to drop firefox. Ever since that newest version came out I get nothing but headaches from it. IE is better and I never say that.
Appears that some of the diaries are shut out – maybe all.
I saw you comment, TS, and, if implemented as you suggest, it is, indeed, a most stellar suggestion.
As well, it would do away with the “shield” of incorporation that limits liabilty and resposibility for wonton destruction and murderous deceit.
DW
another example of the danger posed by deficit doves such as CBPP.
quoted from the post (my bold):
unfortunate? how about bat-shit-crazy?
long-term deficit reduction.
this is why progressives should be fighting tooth-and-nail to counter the the toxic and false notion that long-term deficits are necessarily bad.
this is something bob greenstein gets completely wrong. see, for example, his testimony before the house judiciary committee earlier this year: “We, like most others who analyze fiscal policy developments and trends, believe that the nation’s fiscal policy is on an unsustainable course.”
“i don’t know how deliberate it is. maybe innocent ignorance?”
No this a a very deliberate effort to steal Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid from the working class for the rich!!!
No problems with Chrome. Pretty stable program and fast as well. :)
“innocent ignorance”, ah I shall have to add that to “stupid”, “incompetent”, and “complicit”.
And yet, it is no more encouraging, or “comforting to consider” than the rest …
When the question arises, “What is wrong with the representative of the people?”
;~DW
I am finally getting around to reading “Shock Doctrine” and this phony debt ceiling/deficit crisis coupled with the new Super Congress of 12 anointed members with absolute control sure reminds me of a Shock scenario such as Naomi Klein describes in the book.
I tried and abandoned Chrome when I discovered that AdBlock Plus on Chrome still allows commercial messages in video clips (it doesn’t allow them in Firefox). But it’s useful to have Chrome as a backup.
I wonder how we frame the problem if we want to file a bug report to the Mozilla folks?
And how did you include that smilie in your comment. A bunch of people were trying to do that the other day with no success. I wouldn’t like to see FDL cluttered up with lots of those emoticons, but an occasional smilie would be OK.
Thanks. I *still* get a random redirect. gah.
i have a hard time with innocent ignorance. more likely, i think, is ignorance combined with hubris. after all, hubris always “knows best” so no need to listen to anyone not a member of the in club.
CBPP is chock full of board and staff people from the veal pen and worse. Brookings, Burson-Marstellar, Hill & Knowlton, Urban Institute etc. etc. Industry poodles. Jared Bernstein is their federal fiscal policy person. They are not going to trade in their careers to mount the barricades for grandma.
http://www.cbpp.org/about/index.cfm?fa=board
ding!
after shock doctrine, i recommend predator state.
I just used the colon key with a right parenthesis. Maybe that is a built in function of Chrome. I think Mozilla has a comments function IIRC where you can let them know things that you would like to see.
This in a nation pursuing endless war?
I wonder, selise, what the concept of “unsustainable” actually might mean, in terms of its definition, to the very brightest and best of the astute elites?
;~DW
Use the “Report site problems and bugs” link (in the right sidebar in the “About MyFDL” box) and describe what you’re seeing. The problems seem to be mostly with MyFDL and not the other FDL sites.
These people have become so insulated and separated from the reality outside their comfortable protected circle that they feel like they can dispose of people’s lives and deaths by making a game of numbers. The COLA is already so far behind the reality of the “Cost of Living”, that there has been no COLA at all for the last two years, despite the manifest costs I pay every month for food and utilities.
They want to tell me that this is just an anecdotal illusion, and to them it is. To me it is hard reality, but my reality is not theirs. They can maintain their reality by “adjusting” mine, and keep their lives comfortable by making mine harder.
They will not begin to see reality until their comfortable ride to work is blocked one day by broken glass and burning cars in the street. It can happen here.
Anyhow isn’t it just a moot point since the “unchained” COLA is already zero and they can keep it way by jiggering the figures as they are? What is their actual goal here, the one they are not telling us?
Brilliantly and most humanly, well said, PR!!!
DW
Don’t disagree with you. That’s what sentence 3, paragraph 2 was all about. I wonder what ever happened to the phrase “public service” and why it got replaced by “self-serving”?
Thanks, Jane. But this is new today. I always use Firefox, both on my Mac and on this PC. Never had this “redirect” error before.
I was having the “redirect” error on the thread about Bill Daley on Meet the Press. But, as you say, that thread is currently addressed under http (colon)(frontslash frontslash) my (dot) firedoglake (dot) com (frontslash) scarecrow …. [etc]
Spot on -
AND WE WILL END UP with chained CPI applying to benefits, but not to tax brackets.
And they can take the reward for living 20 years with lower benefits (the birthday bump) and put it in the same grave being used by those that died within 20 years after retirement.
One actual goal is to shift all pension monies including what would be SS into the high risk market. The other could be to gradually decrease the age at death through defunding and restricting benefits on the basis of statistical — data mining — studies. Yes a kind of “death panel” philosophy by bureaucracy.
(We hear so often chanted how much money goes to the last six months of life care but never just what services that covers. In my experience in reality it is not for machines and meds. It is for humane bedside care by persons that is basically the same for any dying person. Cutting benefits will not really change that. Besides most of my age group are not into machines etc but demanding more autonomy to commit suicide. )
Spot on,
GDP increases faster as the CPI correction is lower with “quality improvement” and “substitution” – which we have thanks to Greenspan post 1998.
Chained CPI is “substitution” across categories – high gas is mitigated by going to an all rice diet.
A lower living standard increases GDP – what a great idea.
And remember the huge stink raised by the Tea-O-P about a Medicare benefit to allow patients a meeting with their physicians about end of life options. Horrible people. Just horrible.
victoria
They want to lower the costs of Medicare by cutting off the first two years of eligibility, but obviously it would be much more effective “cost-wise” to cut off the last two years. I am looking for this proposal soon.
Yeah, ’cause they would get to choose which will be the last two. /s sort of
That is actually hilarious. “We will continue to support you with Medicare except for the last two years of your life. After you die, we will force all your children & grandchildren and relatives to pay us back for everything we spent on taking care of you in your last two years. You will be indentured and your children and their children and their children and their children to the end of time.”
Wow
Every click comes to this diary
The thing about Social Security is that it doesn’t just protect older people, it also makes it possible for someone like me to scramble my way into the middle classes. I’m my mother’s only child, and she lives on Social Security and a small stipend from her older brother. I had to take over paying her bills because the budget is so tight, and as it is, I spend about 3-5K per year just to keep her head afloat. After her rent, expenses and food are paid for, there’s no money for drugs, or the occasional emergency (fingers crossed her car keeps running).
Cutting her social security endangers *my* ability to save for my own retirement, thereby cascading the whole problem and forcing me to make terrible choices between putting on my own oxygen mask first, or letting my mother what? starve? go without meds she needs?
She was a difficult, often impossible mother, but I still can’t let her just go down. And so here I am — bankrupting myself so some rich asshole can write off his corporate jet.
Thanks Obama. So glad I fucking canvassed for you.
amen, wsmoke.
Charlotte, those are the very real choices now. My mother was on Paxil or equal to it for many,many years for depression. On S.S. it got so she had to choose between which meds to take and not take. As she needed those other meds physically she cut Paxil.. I told her I’d pay for it. She wouldn’t allow it. I begged her to come live with me so I could get it for her. We were in that process when..she got a severe reaction to one of her meds, a lung infection requiring hospitalization. Because she was already so depressed after many months off her life long anti depressant she refused any treatment for the lung infection at all and decided to go home on hospice. She died in Feb. I am still convinced if her various “plans” and S.S. had covered all her drugs she might not have made the decision she did.
Her insurance company had doubled her rates the year before.
Nursing homes are already laying off staff and hospices are too. My sister works as a social worker for hospices. Their staff has laid off half the people they have as they are anticipating cuts to medicaid. She told me last week that nursing homes seeing the cuts are going private now. 3000 dollars a month or more.
Who will be able to afford senior care? Seniors are barely making it now. This is really going to get ugly for the elderly and those who love them.
Who will run on the left against the Gang of 12?
‘Gang of 12′ definitely catchier than ‘uniparty’ btw.
Yes and impoverishing the elderly and the disabled only impoverishes those who try to care for them. I have always said SS and Medicare are the best friends young families have.
Have you heard of Medicaid Estate Recovery?
A Super Congress? This smacks of Hitler and Nazi Germany when the elected officials turned over the power to the Nazi Party. How soon for the concentration camps and the ovens?
Check out this Health and Human Services link:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/estaterec.htm
Interesting.
Scary isn’t it. I wonder, are there any members out there who lived through and can recall the takeover of Germany by the Nazi’s. How much does our situation parallel that of Germany in the 20s and 30s? Will we see the rise of an “Austrian Corporal”? Or, are things more similar to that Mussolini’s Facist Italy (i.e. corporate governance by Wall Street). Strange and spooky times we live in.
Excellent. I want pictures!
That is just tragic freeb. I am so sorry.
Does not Greenstein, for all the good analysis he may have done in the past, officially declare himself a disgusting slimeball with this grossly unprincipled cave?
OK, so why? What possible justification is there for doing this? Obama going to cut him off from access somehow?
If they let me take them I will post them. I had to fill out a long ass form explaining who what why when and where. I hope they give me the meeting. If all goes well with him I am going to request the same with C. McCaskill. You have inspired me and I hope everyone visits their reps and senators between now and Nov 2012. They need to see that people are fired up and ready to go.
Evil succeeds when good people do nothing and everyone here are good people.
Thank you Jane. I only told that story to illustrate how devastating it can be when we put our seniors out there as a bargaining chip. They are already having serious problems.
I am reading the “Nazi Hydra in America” It is a pretty eye opening account of how the USA has been under the influence of the Nazi’s for a long time. Over 300 corporations supported Nazi Germany during the war. Many members of Congress as well as H. Hoover were Nazi supporters as well. It is a history that will never be taught in our schools. Indeed scary times.