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I don’t know why Obama wants to cut Social Security benefits. I do know that Obama has been honest about it from the start.
Jane goes on to hazard a conjecture as to “why”:
It’s clear the oligarch class has decided that this is what must happen, and that in order to be considered a “serious” person, this is what a President must do. Perhaps Obama simply wants to be considered a “serious person” by those in the ruling class.
I have a different theory, one that’s based on Bill Moyers’ interview of the moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, which focused on the theories in Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind. The following is Haidt’s comment on the infamous let-him-die exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Ron Paul:
JONATHAN HAIDT: This is a perfect example of what the culture war has turned into. It’s a battle over ideas about fairness versus compassion. So the reason that that video went viral is because of the applause at the end.
So I got sent this video by a lot of people because, oh, my God, these Republicans are so heartless. They’re so evil and cruel and terrible. But it’s exactly Aesop’s ant and the grasshopper. The grasshopper fiddles away all the summer while the ants are working and working and working, preparing for the winter. The grasshopper says, “Oh, you’re being silly, working so hard.” And then winter comes. The grasshopper comes, knocks on the ants’ door and he’s starving to death, he’s freezing. He says, “Take me in. Feed me.” And as some liberals see it, the point of the ant and the grasshopper and that the ants are supposed to feed the grasshopper. But that’s not what Aesop meant.
And that’s not what most Americans think it means. So what they’re applauding for there and what they’re saying, “Yeah, let him die,” the reason they’re saying that is because they want a world in which karma functions. This guy made a choice. He made a choice to be a free rider. He made a choice to not buy health insurance. And if karma works as it should, no one will pay for it and he will die. Now, if you care, if you value the care foundation, that is extremely cold. But if you value fairness as proportionality, that’s what has to happen.
The bottom line is that conservatives believe that it’s granny’s karma to have to eat catfood. And, Obama is a conservative, a self-proclaimed “Blue Dog” (Bob Woodward, Matt Bai). His true values are nowhere near the center of the electorate; at best, they’re close to the center of the money. And, Obama, like his fellow conservatives, believes that granny deserves to eat catfood.
Please understand that this so-called Grand Bargain has nothing to do with debts and deficits; that’s just a smoke screen. Social Security is running a surplus and has $2.7 trillion in its Trust Fund. It has contributed absolutely nothing to the deficits (and by law cannot). The only thing is has contributed to the debt is money to finance it, just like the Chinese have.
This Grand Bargaining is about karma. Two conservatives, Obama and Boehner, are trying to make sure that the lesser people get the karma they deserve for not having been more productive during their working lives. And they’re trying to spread the credit (with their sponsors) and the blame (with the voters) so that neither party gets an advantage. The best we can hope for is that they will again deadlock and take us over the fiscal cliff.
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Yes, and those who benefited from the SS surplus (aka: Tax Cuts), DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO RETURN THE MONEY. In higher taxes.
Justified Karma my ass. Greed, pure & simple.
Thank you, Wigwam, for this excellent diary. I have been saying for at least the last 2 years that Obama is a conservative Republican – his hero appears to be Reagan. He has done things that Bush and Cheney could only have dreamed of. What I can’t figure out is why the Democrats in Congress have followed him since his policies are destroying the Party’s base and ideals.
The Blue Dogs got decimated in the last two elections. So, why are the Dems in Congress following Barack “last of the Blue Dogs” Obama to doom and destruction, unless they’re Blue Dogs at heart too?
Compare what Barack “Blue Dog” Obama has to say about Social Security to this from the right winger Ronald Reagan.
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Obama self-identified as a “New Democrat” when he met with the New Democrat Coalition on or about March 9, 2009. It’s search-able.
Centrist implies a philosophical commitment to some ideology called centrism–like Third Way or DLC. That is totally different from positioning politically at the political center.
What Obama has done is position his policies so as to grab as much of a shifting center of the political culture as possible. The election results show that 47% of the voters are to the right of the rightmost extreme of Obama voters and less than 2% are left of the leftmost extreme of Obama voters. And that center is to the right of where the center of Obama supporters are.
That’s where the political culture of the country is right now in part because of a misinformed electorate, in part because conservatives have a huge (and expensive) infrastructure for taking their message to every precinct on a 24-7-365 basis and progressives don’t.
Go back and check the conservative howls about Reagan’s accommodation with the Democratic Congress in the 1980s.
What they really mean is that the lesser people did not lie, cheat, steal and do what ever needed to get ahead. You need to be a sociopath to get ahead in today’s America.
I’ve said this since summer 2009. That said, the people decided they want more of this so that’s where we are.
Earlier than that: End of Nov 2008 – he is interviewed by “Sixty Minutes” and lets “Sixty Minutes” know that he approves of Paulson. Funny thing for a guy woh used Kucinich’s talking points back in October 2008 to announce.(Youtube’s are still up – google “Obama” + Wisconsin + October 2008 and you can hear the talking points he borrowed)
We have not had a President who was not an actual part of the CIA since Reagan. (And of course, Reagan was approved by the CIA, although I suspect George the Elder may have had a lot to do with the Hinkley shooting.)
How do we know Obama is CIA? Look at the sheer elegance of First Lady Michell Obama planting her organic garden at the same point in time when Obama is announcing his Monsanto-clone appointments! If she really cared about the food we eat, Obama would have immediately been sleeping in the dog house, until Mike Taylor and Valseck were removed from the posts that Obama gave them. But neither of these two care about the middle class person. We are being played as saps.
Follow the money? Why did Bill Clinton sign off on the Bank Modernization Act that removed Glass Steagall? At that point in time, Clinton had little money – he and Hillary owed more money to law firms than they had as assets.
But within six months of leaving the Oval Office, Mr Clinton is receiving some $ 150,000 per speech, arranged by his buddies on Wall Street. Too bad for the American people that our economy collapsed within eight years of Clinton signing that legislation – but do either Bill, Hillary or Chelsea care?
In any event, Michelle and Barack will be wealthy mudderfah’s for the rest of their days. If instead, they did right by middle class Americans, they would probably be given a ticket to Ford Theater. (Or Dallas.)
Haidt is wrong — it’s not “exactly Aesop’s ant and the grasshopper.” The difference is that it’s 100% certain that winter is coming, whereas it’s vastly less certain that an accident will befall you. In any case, a neoliberal or a blue dog is not a centrist.
one thing i do know he is a very evil man…they print money for banks FOREIGN and domestic,politicians salaries,congresscritters 15,000.00 every month,their PENSIONS golfcourses,medical care..private limos etc.
eat shite bho,you are contemptible,squeezing pennies,and quarters from grannies,and papas….and DONT CRY YOUR CROCKADILE TEARS on the teevee…i dont buy it…your as cold as ice
I disagree.
When it comes to elections results, you have to remember that while there are liberals and conservatives, there are also a bunch of uninformed people in the middle who will vote based on whether or not the candidate seems like somebody they’d “like to have a beer with.”
When it comes to most of those who are swinging between Ds and Rs, I actually think that Ann Coulter is correct about them (and that is just about the only time she is correct about anything). Anyway, she says the following about swing voters:
Again, I don’t agree with Ann Coulter most of the time, but I think she is dead on the money in this case (at least in terms of most swing voters).
I’d argue that there are many people who voted R for other reasons than being too conservative for Obama. For some of them it really isn’t about “Left vs Right,” and they don’t vote based on philosophical principles (instead they vote because of personal like/dislike of a candidate, or because of how the economy is doing).
In other words, the democrats could have run somebody to the Left of Karl Marx, and the results still would have been about the same. Most of the active Obama supporters would still vote for the D candidate (if out of fear of the (R) candidate, if nothing else), and most of the swing voters don’t vote based on philosophical principles, so it wouldn’t matter to them either (as long as the liberal-candidate seemed like somebody they could have a beer with, they’d be fine).
Of course, the real difference would be in corporate money, somebody to the Left of Karl Marx couldn’t get the sort of corporate money that Obama gets, and that is the actual issue.
And the same effect apples to the republican candidates. They can run candidates who are extremely right-wing and it doesn’t matter. Democrats wouldn’t vote for R candidates anyway, and many of the swing voters don’t vote based on philosophical principles, so it doesn’t matter to them how far to the Right the republican is either.