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"Writing to reach you" by Wim Mulder on flickr
(Note: This was originally posted in the comments of Jane’s diary here.)
Jake Terpstra is an octogenarian who has led the fight for child welfare as a career administrator in both Michigan and Washington. He is widely known as an authority on the subject and his counsel is still sought by civic leaders and government officials – and the foregoing only begins to touch on his diverse career and staunch activism for old-line Progressivism.
Jake just forwarded me this letter, which he sent to the President:
President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Obama,
Even though you are the president, you have NO RIGHT to dismantle parts of Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. These are the peoples’ programs, well established for many years, and are life and death issues for many of us. They also affect EVERY American who attains eligibility age.
If there were no good alternatives, and if Congress initiated legislation because there were no good alternatives, it could be reasonable but not by a president, one person, who uses our rights as bargaining chips, making a unilateral decision to accommodate the republican agenda.
Why don’t you talk about alternative expense reductions, such as cutting military spending by about a third, eliminating or reducing farm subsidies to family farms, eliminating earmarks and tax subsidies to oil companies that didn’t pay taxes in the first place. With the space shuttle program ended, those costs now can be reduced.
You also seem weak on increasing revenue. For example, instead of wanting to tax
millionaires and billionaires at the starting rate at $250,000, increase it to $500,000. You would frighten far fewer people. And why do many defense industries that make huge profits from government money, and oil companies, pay NO taxes at all.
Need I remind you that Social Security is NOT an entitlement program, and that
it not only does not affect the national debt. The GAO states that it will be fiscally solvent until 2036. This is the peoples’ program not your bargaining chip, or plaything.
I know that one citizen cannot cause you to act in the interests of the people, but I hope that you will think about the consequences for your election if you make life unnecessarily more difficult for most people.
We are frightened by a president who seems to be willing to be a traitor.
Very seriously,
Jake Terpstra
cc: Sen Levin
Sen. Stabenow
64 Comments
Let me be the first to recommend this.
I hope it circulates far and wide.
Highly recommended, as well as asking good & accurate questions. The Kabuki Show in Wash DC is messing with “average” citizens’ lives in a way that is increasingly deleterious and completely unnecessary.
Thanks for the post. Spot on.
Forget the letter — no one will even read it.
Chain yourself to the White House fence, and call the press.
Better yet, get a group of seniors together, and all of you chain yourselves to the White House fence.
Obama hates that optic enough that he finally pushed DADT reform through only after Choi and other gay servicemembers — repeatedly — supplied that optic for the press.
Obama also arranged for them to be arrested, when that kind of protest was usually handled with a ticket.
Unfortunately, I’m on the wrong coast, and you’ll get arrested, but hey, you might save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Can Obama unilaterally cancel these (NOT) Entitlements..Social Security Benefits, Medicare and Medicaid ? Were these voted in by Congress in the first place ?Surely. Does he really have these dictatorial powers at all ? Is it possible to have some form of Restraining Order ? Cant some progressive Congresspersons dare him to ? Of course we know what the Supreme Court would decide should it get that far.
Also, I want to hear progressive politicians and everyone else use the complete phrase “raising taxes ON THE WEALTHY AND CORPORATIONS” dont leave out just ‘who’ is getting their taxes raised.
The vision of 6 or so very senior seniors of note chained to the White House fence is quite amazing. Noam Chomsky to begin with.
Good for Jake! He is one eloquent dude. We need a million Jakes, all telling these fools what we think of their savage policies.
Well said.
Sadly, what else can we expect from a wholly bought-out DC?
There is a part of me hoping against all reality that due to some horrible calculations on their part, they will not follow their scripts, and cancel each other out so SS, Medicare, and Medicaid are not touched. Could it be they F up their kabuki so bad that basically nothing happens?
The stock market is not worried. So the debt ceiling has already been decided.
I’m just hoping right now.
In reality, we all know it’s coming. It will be hard and brutal. The poor and elderly WILL be gutted. Nice and slowly. Eased in to it. Like slow-boiling frogs.
Chained CPI? Oh yeah. Use terms no one understands and fool them. SS, self funded. Good for decades. Does NOT add to the deficit. And will still get gutted. Already started with that SS pay roll holiday. Nothing like weakening a strong self-reliant program, that benefits the people, from the inside. Remember, evil, not stupid.
So now we all wait. We watch the kabuki unfold. The actors are on stage. Reading their scripts.
How bad will this be? Based on recent history, I lack optimism on the conclusion.
Thanks for posting this. I will send links to my representatives as well as to Nancy Pelosi. They’re sick of hearing from me, I’m sure, but I think maybe repetition helps. I let them know daily (including Obama & Pelosi), that I won’t support or vote for any politician who cuts social security, medicare, or medicaid in any way, shape or form, and that furthermore I will actively campaign against them.
I don’t disagree that a demonstration such as you describe would be powerful, but your suggestion that no one would read the letter is curious.
You did.
Thanks ffein! Being a pain in the ass is critical. Whether by mail or in person (technically legislators’ desks are public property; maybe we all need to go stand on one…), it is the duty of each of us who care.
Thanks for copying Levin and Stabenow.
If you have Republican Senators, do the same thing and copy them.
Get the fuck out of here isla, and take your spam shit ads with you.
Great letter! I’m as mad as he is!
However, I think he means the CBO in the following.
“The GAO states that it will be fiscally solvent until 2036. This is the peoples’ program not your bargaining chip, or plaything.”
Great letter Anthony, thanks for passing it on.
Do I hear the rumblings of a groundswell inching toward critical mass?
who will you vote for ? the republicans, they will cut out ss medicaid, and medicare completely That’s their goal! Then where will we be? Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face!
IIRC, Obama’s hero, Reagan raised the FICA Tax Rate to increase funding Social Security and Medicare.
Obama has CUT the funding rate from 7.65 to 5.65 percent on the employee side. This weakens the program. The cap remains unchanged and there is Zero consideration for raising it. Obama said that the only parts he doesn’t like from Simpson/Boles is the reduction in MIC spending.
I don’t recall voting for a Republican. I voted for Change, yadda Yadda.
Obama wants to deep six Social Security for Grover Norquist.
Again: When I click on the thread for the Elites, I am sent to the FDL information page….Yikes….
I knew and worked with an RN who was an activist here in Sacto in the early 90′s.
Mike Terpstra . . . . hmmm.
Judy yer spot fucking on.
Thanks.
This is where ya lose mt totally THD.
Stabenow is the most foully corrupted beholding erected offal to the oligarchs. She’s bought, sold, and paid for.
Her record has been established here at FDL long ago.
She’s a shill.
We don need that shit no mo hoss . . . gimme a break.
I think she means no one at the White House will read it.
The “Restraining Order” that you’re rightly looking for, nanb, is the “separation of powers,” or the “checks and balances” system that our Constitution designed into our three branches of government.
So, yes, “some progressive Congresspersons” could indeed “restrain” President Obama… Clearly, however, our incumbent Representatives and Senators have a seriously-misguided case of divided loyalties here – where their voluntary loyalty to political Party (its money, if not its platform) trumps their sworn loyalty to the Constitutional design of our government.
Our major, overwhelming problem, on multiple fronts, is that neither “some progressive Congresspersons” nor any “Democratic” Members of Congress will oppose Barack Obama’s dictates (as privately issued through Party leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, except perhaps where Israel – with its generous campaign funding – is concerned). And, destructively leading or following this trend, the national media likewise has a lucrative financial incentive to look the other way in the face of that dereliction of duty by our federal representatives.
A few “Republican” Senators have at least skillfully articulated in public of late – while their Democratic colleagues remain mum on the sidelines, awaiting their corrupt Party’s orders – what loyalty to democratic, open, Constitutional self-government, in place of groveling loyalty to Party campaign funding, would, could and should actually look like in a federal legislator:
To repeat an excellent point made by one_outer in the earlier thread today, which reinforces yours:
For good reason, one_outer. How right you are.
A question that should be publicly posed to every Democratic Member of Congress:
A question that should be publicly posed to every Republican Member of Congress:
This seems unnecessary to say here, but will say it for anyone who hasn’t already found a defense for this meme – a meme, mind you, that heartless and traitorous Dems actually depend upon the propagation for their continuing betrayals.
Break yourself from two dimensional thinking. I’m not talking third party either, that would as easily be hollowed out from within after the first compromise prepared it for the next.
It took Nixon to go to China. It takes a Dem President to destroy the New Deal. Want to know what McCain couldn’t have done? – That’s right, what Obama is doing now.
Identify their glass houses and break some figurative windows.
Agreed and I would like to add, screw this President and any of his lackeys reading it. It’s more powerful a message to spread far and wide. The audience is anyone ready to hear it.
Obama isn’t ready to hear it. Maybe if it was written with weasel words or from a Wall Street perspective he might have a chance of understanding it.
Obama and the left can’t communicate because we don’t speak the same language – share a similar worldview.
Cosign.
Here is a copy of the note I sent Mr. Boehner last month does that make me one of Jake’s millions? ;-)
Dr. Mr Boehner,
Your conduct in the House and neglect in performing your constitutionally mandated responsibilities in favor of polticial agenda pursuits is a disgrace. Do the nation a favor and resign. You are a traitor to America. I speak from the persepctive of 23 years in the armed forces and fully understand the terms duty, sacrifice, service to nation, and upholding the Constitution. Those concepts are clearly foreign to you. Shame on you. Shame.
yeah vote for a Dem who will only cut off your balls.
I guess this guy must be another one of those f*ing retards.
Something Obamaphiles must give serious thought to.
An honest answer will reveal whether they are party loyalists and will support the party candidate regardless of policy; or whether they are loyal to the traditions of a once great party and its New Deal values.
Social Security and Medicare are indeed entitlements. The benefits that these programs provide are not gifts to us. We paid for them. We are entitled to them. Just as we are entitled to take our bag of groceries out of the store after we buy them.
The right wing has made a slur out of the term “entitlement,” just as they did to “liberal.” We must not buy into these illegitimate seizures of the English language. We have to take these words back.
This government has gone total rogue. Obama played the people like super fools. We should demand an impeachment for starters. He is over stepping every boundary and he totally chumped his “f**king retarded” base.
Great letter!
Same with protectionism. Protection of our wages, work conditions, benefits, and environmental regs is a good thing. But somehow ‘protectionism’ is officially, in the corporate-controlled media, a bad thing.
What are we gonna do besides post diaries and write letters? They get f-ing $$$ MILLIONS from Wall Street and big business, they don’t care about no stinking letters!
When will Obama face a serious primary threat from the left? As long as there is no serious, real candidate (not another vanity candidate like Kucinich, please) to oppose him, he’ll run like crazy to the right and just keep running.
Michael Hudson for President? Read or watch this:
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/22/pushing_crisis_gop_cries_wolf_on
Jake doesn’t get it. To Obama, these programs are “sacred cows” of the “left.” That means they are mere bargaining chips in promoting his re-election theme: I’m the only adult around here because I’m willing to trash even my own party’s “sacred cows.” Of course, calling it “my own party” nowadays seems as misleading as his campaign was.
Excellent comment, but you should talk about a 3rd party too. We have a failed two party system. We really need one.
For god’s sake, not a primary. That’s the wrong strategy for many reasons including 1) Obama is very likely to win and 2) It legitimizes the notion that the Democratic Party is still viable and fixable. It is not viable. It is not fixable.
We need a 3rd party challenge. In the age of social media and small dollar donations, there is no question in my mind that we can push this individual (say, Michael Hudson) into the presidential debates.
When that happens, the Obama presidency is finished. But even better than that – a fresh new party is permanently established in the American political system, maybe even paving the way for 4th and 5th parties.
“We need a 3rd party challenge.”
The last 3rd party challenge resulted in George W Bush being appointed president by the SCOTUS which let loose the torrent of deep shit we find ourselves now in. Perhaps you have forgotten?
Third party movements, as currently initiated, do not and will not succeed because creating a third party doesn’t begin at the top levels of governance, it starts at the bottom.
My $0.02
And the person who’s offered to cut Social Security and Medicare is a member of which party?
If you want to vote for a “democrat,” that’s your business, but only a fool would do so now — how many times do you have to be burned before you learn not to touch the stove? What “democrats” do you see really objecting to his unconstitutional usurpation of power? Granted, there is the Progressive Caucus solemnly swearing to oppose any cuts to those programs, but do we think those 80 will be able to have a serious effect? (we can hope, but “I’m a cynic.”)
I predicted a long time ago that the asshole in the WH would succeed in getting the holy grail of SS for his puppet masters; in fact, that appears to have been the entire raison d’etre of his “election” (recall how he was forced on us in the primaries, with the humorous touch of a “battle” between asshole and hillary at the end, I guess to make it look “realistic”).
He doesn’t care about “reelection,” because with the gutting of SS and Medicare, his mission is accomplished and his cushy future secured. He can hang out in Paraguay on the Bush compound with the rest of the war criminals and robbers of the public treasury for as long as he wants (and hopefully he will need to stay there indefinitely, or be arrested here, once the sheeple wake up).
He needs to be hanged in the public square for treason. A frog walk to a guillotine would also be appropriate.
The letter was sent to a TYRANT, not a president. TOTUS.
Obama might very well be an economic hitman on an assigned mission. Once he’s destroyed the middle class he’ll decline to run for a second term and retire to an estate within a province, somewhere, where he’ll be the overlord. The new royalty.
Chained CPI is like chaining a bus to your neck and throwing it overboard. Yer goin’ DOWN.
I know what she meant. But my point is it’s not just about the White House, and saying “forget the letter” implies that people shouldn’t bother voicing their opinions in writing. Which is ridiculous.
And same with “Progressive.”
THD=Dem Party troll. Just look at the body of work.
Apologies for the length, but here is what I e-mailed to the WH:
My husband and I are not political ideologues. We have been registered as both Republican and Independent before currently aligning ourselves with Democrats. Your 2008 campaign was, quite truthfully, the first time I participated in the political process beyond merely casting my vote. I (naively) believed in your “hope and change” promises.
You allowed both healthcare reform and financial service reform to become a quagmire before you stepped in and “won” your (watered-down) position. Now, you have allowed a false economic CRISIS to erupt and use your bully pulpit only to influence your supporters to accept more and more conservative concessions that have become YOUR position.
It appears you have dismissed your progressive/liberal/Democratic supporters with the mistaken belief that their vote(s) are secure: where else can they go? Who else will they vote for? Please let me answer that for you.
After much consideration, I believe that voting for the lesser of two evils still delivers “evil” and I will no longer accept this untenable position. Come next November, I can promise you that without your return to more progressive stances, I will not vote for you. I will vote for down-ticket candidates that most closely reflect my concerns. I will vote for a 3rd party candidate, write in “none of the above,” or leave the PRESIDENT box blank.
As I talk to others—both Republican and Democratic acquaintances—I find here among the unwashed masses, there are many who feel the same way. As a population, we face the same problems, whatever our political affiliation, and our elected leaders come calling only when they want our vote and the pittance of money we can surrender. Otherwise, the corporate/government complex—the Masters of the Universe—do NOT understand our lives, our concerns, our fears. The bubble that encloses Wall Street and DC allows for the false understanding of the problems facing the ‘average man.’ We’re concerned about jobs, healthcare, social safety nets. We ARE getting smarter and recognize more quickly the false flags raised by our captured media/propaganda machines. The debt ceiling, the deficit, the debt—of concern, yes. But your solution amounts to successfully ‘treating the patient,’ but he died anyway. Without jobs, without an economy, without ‘certainty’ for the people instead of ‘certainty’ for the business community—a balanced budget, etc. are meaningless.
You can fool some of the people, some of the time (. . . you know the rest.)
baroque, please – spare me. The duopoly counts on the good/bad cop role play (which you have clearly swallowed, hook, line and sinker) to hold and expand the power of their corporate benefactors. Wake up.
Start here: NewProgs.org
(Jake is supporter, by the way.)
Maybe the beginning of a shitstorm, at least, to quote from Jane’s diary :)
Jake does have a son Mike, who is quite activist – could be…
heh!
We need both, people. The Primary to challenge the power and the indie or third party in the General to grow the resistance. But the key element is a Primary challenger who WILL NOT “throw their support” to the incumbent.
We’re working on it, and I hope you’ll join us.
So if we’re not writing to shills, we wind up writing to none of the self-important assholes in Congress.
My reading of Congress right now is that they have totally insulated themselves from hearing any individual constituent (except for “constituent services”). If you write a snail mail letter, the security it has to go through before it gets to them means that it is no longer timely; it might not even make it before the end of the Congressional term.
If you call them, you get an intern and a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has canned issue lines and the intern checks For or Against, is very nice and sympathetic and tries to get on to the next call.
You cannot email them unless you are in the “in” group. If you contact them through their web form, you are forced into selecting from a limited list of topics, an action that triggers a preset position statement letter to be mailed to you using their franking privileges.
The White House works the same way.
So essentially what you are doing is incrementing the number in a for or against column by one pretty much however you do it.
There is no personal relationship with your Congresscritter unless you buy access. Any of them.
There is a structural reason why this bubble happens. The members of Congress with the fewest constituents are the House member and Senators from Wyoming with 400,000 people. How do you have a personal representative relationship with 400,000 people? Even in the internet age?
You’re so cute when you sling ad hominems.
Yes, look at my body of work.
And realize that I am a progressive Democrat in a Southern state and see very clearly why progressives are not winning in “red states”. And why they will never win as a third party.
The fact that progressives won’t hold Republicans’ feet to the fire is a reason that the situation keeps getting worse and worse and worse.
You should hear the ad hominems that friends of mine who are active in the Democratic Party throw at me.
Progressives in the 1960s at least had the guts to go into Mississippi and Alabama and change things. Progressives in the 1930s had the guts to try to organize desegregated unions in the Carolinas.
So the entire value of this diary is the fact that the author of the letter is telling off President Obama. Is that it? I thought it went deeper than that. I thought it was about issues and that the Senators and representative representing the letter writer would need the same telling off. And for folks with Republican representatives, it is the same thing.
I’m beginning to wonder why attacking President Obama to the exclusion of every other politician in Washington feels so good to you.
oh, sorry , your are absolutely correct..Entitlements.
We need both. The best way to publicize a third party is through the Democratic Party’s primaries.
First, score a few victories or at least strong showings in the Dem primaries. That will show people you/we are for real, not the usual 3rd Party ‘protest vote’ that ends up with 1% of the vote. That kind of result again also ‘tells everyone’ that There Is No Alternative.
“The fact that progressives won’t hold Republicans’ feet to the fire is a reason that the situation keeps getting worse and worse and worse.”
Hold average Americans’ feet, those who vote for Dem or Republican, hold their feet to the fire.
Progressives aren’t the saviors, especially when so many cling to their partisan ways.
Who can hold these elected officials’ feet to the fire anyway? Maybe there needs to be an instruction manual for how to do that? Jamie Court’s is a good start.
I agree with you, the message needs to be sent to all elected officials at the very least. Obama’s already written us off but he still needs to see these messages that are meant as much for us in solidarity as they are for elected officials.
So, just what is supposed to happen on Aug.2 when my social security pittance should post to my bank account? When I need my other hip replaced next year ? Surely I am not the only person concerned about these questions.
Are these thieves going to just completely pillage (whatever they havent already helped themselves to) the funds in Social Security in one fell swoop ? (transfer…click)
Living as an expat for the past 12 years in exotic, semi 3rd world countries, I see masses of people taking to the streets, blockading traffic, closing businesses and government offices… and forcing the governments to listen to , and often succumb to, them.
Just from watching the YouTube videos of the people trying to dance in the Jefferson Memorial and the students marching against police brutality in Denver, gives me(and the rest of the world) a good idea of what would happen if the American public took to the streets in any meaningful way.
Even squatting in empty buildings is tolerated in London, why arent people squatting in empty homes there in the U.S. ?
Are there not enough dispossessed and out of work refugees inside the country yet ?
All that comes to mind anymore is something like “Dont Vote- Revolt”
Forget you, THD. I’m in the same state, Tarheel Neighbor, and your claim that Progressives don’t win red states is put to the lie by that fact that we – yes, we PROGRESSIVES – won this state for Obama in 2008.
The thanks we get is lesser-of-two-evils Dems like you who insist, as you are on this thread and did on Jane’s yesterday, and have done on countless others here, that if Progs will just be patient and continue to support the Democratic Party and refuse to fight the fire of intractability – which the fascists (and I now include the Dem Establishment in that) have used so successfully to consolidate their power – with the equivalent fire of intractability and insistence on OUR VALUES, we will one day win.
Not so, and we’ve got over fifty years of steady erosion of Progressive gains to prove it. What have you got to prove YOUR case???
The old-line Progs you mention – ones like Jake – succeeded WITHOUT ever winning the presidency. Look to the history of the Populist and then Progressive parties. In a 25-year period, without ever winning the WH, they secured FOUR Constitutional amendments and the eight-hour workday, and the echoes of their movement is what brought about the New Deal – not FDR, who only passed it because PROGRESSIVES Harold Ickes and Frances Perkins INSISTED. FDR was a friend of big business, but in the end took his advisors’ counsel and sided with the American people – because if he hadn’t he’d wind up like Hoover.
THAT is what we’re calling for: Accountability. And you simply will not get that until we demonstrate that there is a large block of people who REFUSE to give Democrats – or Republicans – votes, when they give away our pensions, our social safety nets, and our COUNTRY to a proportionally few elites.
Wake up, Stepford Dem.
Creating a 3rd party from the bottom up is just conventional wisdom that has no evidence.
It’s absurd on it’s face. There is nothing that would be more valuable to 3rd parties locally than the huge boost they’d get from a high profile race for the presidency. That’s what Nader did for the Green Party.
I agree that a 3rd party challenge for the presidency would most likely lead to a republican president. But a republican presidency would hardly be any different than this presidency. In fact, it would probably govern more liberal. Because liberals would have something to oppose.
A 3rd party challenge to the system in 2012 will create a permanently viable 3rd party in this country. And that’s why we need one.
“We need both. The best way to publicize a third party is through the Democratic Party’s primaries.”
That makes no logical sense.
There is no better way to show people “we are for real” than taking down a presidency. And that’s exactly what WILL happen with a strong 3rd party run.
How does that make no logical sense, roxster? Simply saying so does not convince me.
If a primary challenger refuses to throw support to the party’s incumbent and instead throws it to the third party challenger – what? THAT is not effective?
Say no, and I’m afraid I’ll have insist on proof – proof you cannot provide, because this tact has never been tried before.
In 2000, Ralph Nader captured 2.74% of the popular vote. That was before Facebook and Twitter. And since 2000, 20% more adults use the internet.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10425965-93.html
Nader is blamed by many for being a spoiler in that election. That’s questionable. A 3rd party challenge in 2012 will most certainly take down Obama. The only question before us is: do we have the guts to do it.
and that’s what we’re creating:
NewProgs.org
Thank you for doing this, Anthony. I take to heart Jane’s recent explanation that this is a forum for ideas which she feels is more important than any endorsement in fragile electoral circumstances, and I think that goes very well with your theme of ‘all the above’ which I heartily agree with.
I am rather suspicious of anyone who belittles any idea put forward towards changing the regime in offering an alternative. Said alternative may be a very good idea in itself, but why frame it as an alternative? Do it as well!
I love the verse from Saint Paul which talks about all the different gifts. Clearly Mr. Terpstra made active use of his gifts in younger years, and I hope that I at his age will have the ability he demonstrates in this letter to coin a phrase and make an effective point. That’s one of the gifts of the elderly, an ability to cut to the chase and the devil take the hindmost. It’s a wonderful gift which some posters here have certainly pointed out may fall on deaf ears at the White House, but it resounds with us seniors I can tell you, and we are a mighty force. Mr. Terpstra speaks for us, and he does it effectively.
But why denegrate any attempt to resist oppression, even if it turns out to be an ineffective attempt? One person started the Egyptian spring – his suffering it was, so that you might say certainly failed for him. But it did not fail for others, and they were many and became more.
And who can predict the future? Things are always happening that never happened before; just look at the climate. We are on new ground every day. So, I would also discount any post that makes the claim ‘that will never happen.’ Simply assumes a status quo we know no longer obtains.
Gee, I am even able to think in plus 90 weather! The sky’s the limit, people!
You bet it does, tech. Thank you.