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CSPAN also has a livestream here.
Last year, my livestream interview with Alan Simpson on FDL following a closed door meeting of the Catfood Commission helped expose the backroom shenanigans and attempts to destroy Social Security that were being hidden from the American people.
Now we face an even greater threat to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from the Supercommittee. I’ll be livestreaming again today, and after the meeting I hope to catch up with some of the committee members once again.
You can sign a petition to be delivered to the president, telling him to protect Social Security here.
Please leave any ideas for questions to ask supercommittee members in the comments below, if I don’t get to them this time I will try again at their next meeting.
You can also call Senator Murray and Rep. Hensarling to demand they broadcast all meetings, not just the opening statements and canned speeches. Click here for phone numbers and a script.
56 Comments
The only way to save SS/MC/MC is to elect a R prez. Only partly sarcastic, since from the debate it looks like it’ll be used more of a hot button front page topic in the R primaries. On the D side it’ll be crickets.
Watching the Stupor-Committee without eating catfood right out of the can is simply not a complete experience.
Copy. It would appear that Perry did great damage to himself last night by doubling down on the “Ponzi Scheme” meme. If, that is, the MSM runs with it.
“Your job is to look extreme,” GOP superman says to Demoncrat supergirl.
“And I’ll pretend to be 10% less extreme,” Dem supergirl replies.
And walking off hand-in-hand to a Washington D.C. bar, they laugh and make a joint phone call to their corporate masters, now gathered in a nearby hotel room, awaiting the result.
“You’ll get 95% of what you want,” the super people say in unison on the android. “Aren’t you happy, oh elite ones?”
Long silence. Short answer. “Adequate effort, but 100% would be more aceptable.”
Reply from the supers: “there’s always tomorrow!”
What kind of whine goes well with that?
The fix is in and they are going to gut SS/MC and so long as we allow this BS system to govern us they will continue to rape us.
Pepsi and Fedx were among five corps who raked in billions in defence contracts (taxpayer dollars) Where is their shared sacrifice??? LOL
Also, we might get enough Dems to stand up to it if a GOPer was pushing it. Clearly, they won’t stand up to Obama.
Which is odd, because Obama ALWAYS surrenders when forcibly confronted.
Boxturtle (Obama could be holding a full houce and I could bluff him with a busted flush)
The internet in the room keeps booting Alex off, so I put up a CSPAN link as well. Alex will still catch up with members after the meeting, so stay tuned.
Is the Enabling Committee, meeting in secret, just the type of Democracy we want to export to those closed secret dictatorial countries ?
Alex,
Thank you for what you are doing. As far as transparancy, I think we are just blowing in the breeze with that one as far as all these congresscritters are concerned. They want to do their damage behind closed doors.
Any petition to Obama will be dismissed by him as just more whining from the “professional left”
Sad, but accurate. As long as a D is doing the wrecking of SSMM, the D elite and their minions will either remain silent or cheer and say the left is plagued with magical thinking. *spit*
Our Hospitals CEO recently communicated to us that there is a severe budget shortfall created by cuts to MC that they had not projected.
There is a hiring freeze, and there will be layoffs. Obviously, this translates into more patients per fewer staff. Care will not improve.
How many people do they think will die as the result of their actions?
They absolutely KNOW this will happen, no matter the bullshit.
Thunderbird is all a senior could ever hope to afford.
Only problem with that scenario is that the Masters are in the room with the Catfood droids while we’re on teh outside looking in like Pip in Great Expectations
Hmmm. That couldn’t be intentional, could it?
“You CANNOT petition the Lord with Prayer!!!!” – Jim Morrison
Heh. Way to create jobs, O!
Single Payer Universal Healthcare sure would be a great investment for the country and a fabulous way to create long-lasting jobs, not to mention the best way to bend the cost curve. Oh well. No one in government is really interested in fixing unemployment or healthcare.
Long-lasting and well-paying jobs with adequate benefits and retirement. Can’t have that, can we?
Oh, and all those people that die? The loss in premium income will be more than offset in the higher prices that will inevitably result from having shorter staff.
“How many people do they think will die as the result of their actions?”
About 10%. What’s current unemployment? About 10%.
Boxturtle (See, this WILL reduce unemployment!)
Obama is a fraud.
The National Democratic party is a fraud.
De-elect them all.
I don’t know but my doctors hurt me about 75% of the time these days rather than helping me. they are so careless and don’;t seem to knwo nor care what they are doing.
Pffft. It’s magical thinking to even imagine that we could have long-lasting, well paying jobs with retirement benefits.
Point taken.
Obama successfully helped Senate Republicans win the health care debate, successfully helped turn over the House to the Republicans, and now will successfully begin the process of dismantling the New Deal.
What an asshole.
My grandpa was a local bigshot with the Texas Democratic party. I am glad he is not around to see what they have devolved to. Useless, clueless, and worthless.
He is a fraud and ALWAYS was. How anyone can vote for him again is beyond me and I don’t buy “the lesser of two evils” mantra. Forget the democrats and republicans – we have to start working toward a third party. That’s our only chance to break this vicious cycle of evil.
A recent WSJ poll found that a MAJORITY wanted to throw every member of congress out, including their own.
You are wrong and that, in all seriousness, is the problem.
The Democratic Party is useful, clued-in and worth much… to the elites.
Regular people? Not so much.
I’m beginning to have a lot more respect for Germans who lived through the 1920s and 1930s.
We were brought up to think fascism a specifically German character flaw (despite the Italians, etc who disproved this).
There’s a hidden history that the Oligarchy did not want us to understand, just fluff it off on some German factory worker, baker, candlestick maker mesmerized by a mustache.
We were lied to by the same old gang who rules the world and who almost pulled it off back then.
Theyyyyy’reee BAaaaackkkkkk!
John Engler of the Business Roundtable on the Super Committee and the opportunities. Up CSPAN-3 now.
“Business Roundtable’s Position on Regulatory Reform” (BusinessRoundtable.Org, Feb. 11, 2011) – position piece.
Jim Gould – “the Committee can do what it wants”
Jim Gould, Former Staff Director and Chief Tax Counsel Senate Finance Committee.
Next year tax cuts take effect.
Renames the Super Committee “The Dirty Jobs Committee.” Gould says it is tax reform. Talks about the prospective institutionalization of the Super Committee (process).
William Hoagland, Former Staff Director, Senate Budget Committee.
I used to agree with you but if you remember, the Dems didn’t stand up to Bush either even after we begged and pleaded with them to stop the Bush attack on our civil liberties.
Thank you for your efforts, Alex and Jane. This is very very important. I take heart from all the dedicated citizens seeking to shine the light on what others would prefer to be taking place in the shadows. All of it matters; all of it gives us strength and hope for a better tomorrow.
This is a fight for the good things our government did, in many and most cases before we were born. And the charlatans who have benefited from the system, even if indirectly, now want to destroy it. They’ve got theirs so who cares about the folk who need these programs, or the ones who will need them in coming years? They indeed think of Social Security as a ponzi scheme, and they are the ones skimming the cream off the top and denying it the universality its founders intended.
A ponzi scheme? Just by saying that very thing you condemn yourself, politician, whoever you are. And conducting secret meetings of rich, distainful bigwigs is not the way to ‘fix’ Social Security either.
The people know full well what Social Security is, and the first candidate who comes along in truthful, open support for this excellent, proven program will be the next President of this country.
‘disdainful’ -sorry.
1:00p.m. Alice Rivlin asks for two stages, in which they restructure ‘entitlements’ in the second stage. First stage would be cuts in tax expenditures. She’s like a zombie, always showing up to feast on the good social programs for the living humans.
William Hoagland, presently with CIGNA Health Insurance, Public Policy Vice President
Rudy Penner, Urban Policy Institute
Former Congressional Budget Office Diretor
1983-1987
Maya MacGuineas
Committee for Responsible Federal Budget
President
Penner and Gould each voted 40% chance of cuts to get to the 1 trillion mark. Penner said potential for failure (implied high) as this is an election year and setting the size of the sequester is tricky– too gentle does nothing, too harsh and the Congress walks away (Grahm-Rudman [1985] is example of latter). Penner said the ultimate trigger is POTUS’ veto to restore the US to current law. { Hmmm … }
Business Roundtable calling the “Super Committee” also “The Apostolic Committee.”
Second panel starts.
Dan Crippen
Former Congressional Budget Office Director
1999-2003
Calls for paradigm shift for real Health Care reform so more costs aren’t shifted back to the states versus focus on cutting the deficient.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Former Congressional Budget Office Director
2003-2005
The Super Committee is a political effort to show that Congress has a role in the eyes of the public.
Alice Rivlin started talking so I’m stopping here. See CSPAN for this video to hit the archives.
Rivlin asking for secret deliberations so that no one outside the committee can influence them. Nice.
What actually is a tax expenditure?
Got it.
Isn’t Rivlin a piece of work?
It looks like this Business Roundtable has performed most of its self-comforting that nothing is really changing during the first panel.
I recommend the 2011 Importunate. Shrill with a hint of litter box on the nose, followed by crisp, icepick-in-the-ear finish.
She tried to equate the anticipated resistance to cuts in healthcare programs to the resistance she received in the past when trying to cut the federal government’s “helium reserve” after the need for a ‘helium reserve” had passed. I would like to ask her if she would be willing to forego her healthcare because she is willing to forego her share in the mythical “helium reserve”.
But in 2005-2006, Bush’s plan to privatize social security was met with a resounding NO from congressional dems as well as the public, and he quickly dropped it.
So, I do think that a repub admin proposing this sort of poop is more likely to fail than a dem admin doing the same thing.
I have signed so many petitions, written so many letters, just not sure I see the point anymore.
The only positive feeling I get from politics nowadays is the thought and hope that Obama loses next year.
Good thing I wasn’t sipping coffee while I read that. LOL!
That’s encouraging.
It seems that in the past, everyone hated congress in general but liked their own congressperson. Sort of like the public’s view of lawyers.
Glad to see it’s reached this point of contempt.
The economic, social, and cultural tensions are so great in this country that I don’t think it will take too much more for things to break or implode.
Why it’s come to this is something I don’t really understand–with a few crumbs here and there for the public, the elites could have kept the whole ball of wax creaking along indefinitely, like they’ve done in this country for the past 65 years.
But their greed is insatiable.
Oh, you mean this helium reserve?
http://www.google.com/search?q=helium+shortage&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
… and again the elites will profit from a crisis that they caused.
Helium reserve? { LOL } What nonsense. She can still sounds like Donald Duck without hitting on the party balloons.
One more highlight I think worth mentioning:
Bill Hoagland, CIGNA (time point 53:59 – 54:30) regarding Section 258 of the Budget Act (“Suspension in the Event of War or Congressionally-Declared Low Growth”) … “I am not clear [..]– if the economy doesn’t recover– whether or not that suspension still applies or not.”
“Business Roundtable Discussion on Joint Deficit Reduction Committee” (video, Sept. 8, 2011) available.
Yeah, I’ve read enough history to understand there are families of descent for hundreds of years, institutions of even MORE years, all about the planet, who have the wealth and influence to wage wars at their behest, squash the rises of the masses, and more.
It ain’t tinfoil history, either . . . it’s always been class warfare, since the earliest of the feudal era.
Always.
Correction: William Hoagland
Pennersaid the ultimate trigger is POTUS’ veto to restore the US to current law (starting a little earlier for context at time point 51:15 and proceed to Hoagland’s statement).