All Things Considered, NPR Class Warfare Edition 5DEZ13 & VIDEO Huey Lewis and the News - Workin' for a livin' 1982

HERE is a great piece on the battle now being waged for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party and the over the economic direction our nation will take. Will we continue our downward slide to becoming a Third World plutocracy or will the Democrats return to the Bold Progressive agenda that made us a great economic and political power in the past and can lift us from the unending recession we are wallowing in now? Sen Elizabeth Warren D MA, not the President, has taken the lead in this fight (see Elizabeth Warren takes sides in Democratic feud (and challenges third way) 4DEZ13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/elizabeth-warren-takes-sides-in_5.html ) , joined by Sens Sherrod Brown D OH, Tammy Baldwin D WI and Jeff Merkley D OR for the American people. As noted in a recent Daily Kos call to action "Wall Street Democrats (are) spooked by the party's embrace of politicians like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin and Jeff Merkley.

They should be spooked. The future of the Democratic Party is a populist one, and all that's left is to whittle out the dead weight." That dead weight includes Pres Obama. He campaigned on a Bold Progressive platform and once elected took the road too often traveled since the Clinton era by Democrats, he took the third way. His 5 years in office has been trickle down economics disguised as Democratic policy. A great speech on income inequality is not enough. He needs to take his chained cpi proposal off the table and refuse to sign any budget deal that cuts SNAP, raises the retirement age, fails to expand Social Security, fails to lift the tax cap on Social Security wages, cuts Medicare and Medicaid and doesn't include an extension of emergency unemployment compensation. He must refuse a grand bargain that will be a grand betrayal of the progressive politics he was elected on. If he can't do that then he should at least support the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party. No more jellyfish Democratic politics. No more corporate Democratic eunuchs. No more third way. From Daily Kos....
xaxnar

   Despite the snarky title, NPR done good today on All Things Considered 12-5-13. Looking at Fast Food workers on strike and Social Security fixes that actually might fix things, NPR actually dared go there with some reporting about things that are finally becoming too outrageous to ignore. When NPR airs stories like this, it's a sign that "the game is afoot" and a long overdue shift in the political landscape regarding economics is changing the view through the Overton Window. Elizabeth Warren is making a difference every time she speaks. It doesn't hurt that both the Pope and the President have started to hammer on that message either.
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.

       It's just possible that America is finally starting to see through the snake oil of supply side Reaganomics and blind faith in market forces. Too many decades of failed promises, too many decades of declining life quality for the majority of people in this country, too many decades of the rich getting unspeakably richer (and becoming ever more arrogant about it) - is it possible the 'common wisdom' is starting to shift? (As espoused by the lamestream media and pundits, that is?)
Starving on Fast Food
      The NPR story on striking fast food workers

And the image problem for the fast-food industry is exemplified by this online petition urging McDonald's chief executive officer, Donald Thompson, to cancel his order for another corporate jet until he pays all his employees a decent wage. According to the petition, McDonald's just bought a $35 million luxury Bombardier jet for its corporate executives. Yet many of the company's employees make so little that they rely on public assistance to get by.
"It's not right to impoverish your employees while sailing above them at a rate of $2,500 an hour," reads the petition started by the Campaign For America's Future. "It's immoral to do it with a taxpayer subsidy."
In a recent study, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 52 percent of fast-food workers rely on taxpayer-funded public assistance programs, such as food stamps or Medicaid.
"Taxpayers are subsidizing the low-wage model of these employers, who are making record profits in some cases," says Dorian Warren, an associate professor at Columbia University who studies income inequality.

emphasis added Food Stamps: they're not just for shiftless drug-abusing high school drop outs and/or "those people" any more. (Though that has yet to penetrate the skulls of the race-baiting, stereotyping demagogues of the Right Wing, or their followers.) We're talking about ordinary people, people who got educations with degrees like they were supposed to, people working full time jobs if they can find them - people holding several part time jobs because they can't get a full time job... People who ARE working, people who WANT to work - and it's not enough to live on.
The Other Side of the Coin
Let's look at the other side of working for a living: retirement. The NPR story on Social Security dares to look past the conventional story line that a tidal wave of retiring baby boomers will swamp Social Security unless we cut benefits! Elizabeth Warren's challenge to Third Way types has helped set the stage for an honest discussion on Social Security. As NPR notes, lifting the cap on wages taxed for Social Security would make a big difference:

Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin sponsored legislation that would gradually remove the cap that currently makes only the first $113,700 in wages subject to Social Security taxes. He says it's the only fair thing to do. "If I make $50,000 a year, I pay Social Security taxes on every dime I make. If I make $500,000 a year, I only pay taxes on about the first 20 cents. After that, I don't pay any more Social Security taxes. That's regressive," Harkin says. "You want to make it more progressive, raise the cap so everybody pays their share on every dollar they make."
And as President Obama noted this week, an ever greater share of dollars are being earned precisely by those at the top.
"Since 1979, our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of that growth has flowed to a fortunate few," Obama says. "The top ten percent no longer takes in one-third of our income, it now takes half."
That concentration of wealth has taken place beyond the earnings subject to Social Security taxes. Melissa Favreault, a Social Security expert at the non-partisan Urban Institute, says that has meant an ever greater share of the national income is contributing nothing to Social Security.
"We do have this declining share of overall earnings that are taxed, reflecting the fact that the top half of one percent or so has been garnering a really large proportion of total earnings," Favreault says.
Favreault says three decades ago, 90 percent of the nation's wage earnings were taxed for Social Security; that proportion has now shrunk to 83 percent. And that's made an already regressive tax even more so.

emphasis added The Big Scam
People who are retired, or would like to someday be able to retire are starting to notice that they can't count on anything, and just who the economy really seems to be wired for. Charles P. Pierce looks at fast food workers in Detroit - and the rest of the story.

Not for nothing but, right at this very moment, and only a couple of days after a judge gave legal permission for the city to renege on its obligations to its retired workers -- the business elite is overjoyed that aging and crippled sanitation workers can't "jump ahead" of the bondholders in Malibu who want to pick the carcass --  Mike Illitch, the billionnaire-with-a-B owner of the Detroit Red Wings, has his tin cup out for the devastated city to kick in for a new arena for his hockey team. Mike Illitch made his fortune by being the founder of the Little Caesar's chain of pizza restaurants, wherein he paid his workers the kind of wages that has brought them out in the streets today. Yes, this [is] about a lot more than fast food and the people who prepare it. We are all one more economic temblor away from being a fast food nation. It is about a lot more than pizza and burgers.

emphasis added Paul Krugman has long been a voice in the wilderness decrying the wrong-headed thinking about the economy, and the obsession with deficits instead of employment. Crooks & Liars has a video clip of Krugman talking with Ed Schulz over just how dumb it is. As Heather at C&L observes:

What we should be talking about first and foremost is getting Americans back to work. It was also good to hear some push back against the constant chatter we're hearing from the Villagers in the media who are continually pushing for Chained CPI, and pretending as though cutting Social Security benefits in exchange for "tax reform" -- a.k.a. lowering taxes on rich people and corporations -- is something anyone should think is acceptable, or "balanced" or that would do a thing to help lower the deficit. It would have been nice to hear either of them say out loud that Social Security does not add to the deficit during this interview, but it was only implied and not clarified for the audience.

Krugman has repeatedly noted that deficit 'hawks' don't really care about the deficit (which is shrinking). All they really care about is cutting taxes on the rich and cutting the social safety net; deficits are just the excuse du jour. Charles P. Pierce has a pithier summary:

I will be submitting a paper entitled, The Blog's First Law Of Economics: Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.

What's Next? Prognostication is always a gamble. But, FWIW I think I see some trends worth watching. The Republican Party has lost its mind and is incapable of governing; it will be impossible for Democrats to split differences with them to move the country forward. The hardcore Ryan/Cruz tea bagger wing of the party would consider it the ultimate form of treason to actually make government work for the people again. So, expect more budget hysteria and hostage taking.
IF Democrats can't take back the House and hold on to the Senate, it's not going to get better soon. The Supreme Court is as blatantly partisan as its been in years. (God help us if Republicans get the White House too.) Democrats who think they need to play to the 'undecided middle' to win will only be prolonging the agony. It's time to do to the GOP what they've been doing to Democrats for years: marginalize them as extremists out of touch with the real America, elitists who have a record of 30 years of failing to keep their promises to the country while they have cashed in.
It's time to start driving a stake through the heart of Reaganism. It. Just. Does. Not. Work. Republicans have been claiming for years that cutting taxes (mostly on the rich) would make the economy grow. And it has… but not as fast as it could have, and only for those at the very top. The pie HAS grown - but 99% of us have seen OUR slices shrink!
Cutting back on government has not made us more free - it's left us helpless in the face of natural disaster, victimized by a financial sector out of control, and ripped off by corporations who've cut wages and benefits, shipped jobs overseas AND demanded more and more tax breaks. Air, water, food - even the weather is not going in a good direction, wherever Republicans rule.
We supposedly can't afford to make sure everyone has a decent education, decent housing, enough food, a living wage (no matter how many billionaires we have) but God help us if we cut the military. The multi-national corporations make too much profit building weapons systems for it, supplying it, and using it for leverage on the rest of the world. And given how good Republicans are at pissing people off, do we really dare cut it back? (Except for the people in it who are expected to fight our wars - screw them out of their pay and benefits, of course.)
The point is, the Republican party has nothing to offer the country but snake oil - and people outside of the beltway and the lame stream  media are starting to see through it. And if they don't, Democrats have only themselves to blame for not pointing to the humongous pile of evidence that it's so. Triangulating Third Way corporatist Democrats are not the solution - they are just enabling the GOP by other means. Jumping off the cliff in partnership with the GOP in the expectation that they'll be able to stop halfway down is not exactly tenable - but they keep trying to do it. The Elizabeth Warren wing of the party has this advantage: it is prepared to embrace solutions that would actually work. We may be hitting an inflection point, at which time things will rapidly start going in new directions - if we are ready for it.
Obamacare is the joker in this deck at the moment. The Republicans and the media have gone out of their way to portray it as a total train wreck - but it keeps getting better and more people are signing up every day. It is beginning to deliver on its promises despite unwavering Republican opposition every step of the way. IF Democrats are not afraid to run on it, it could become a potential pivot point in the larger discussion about the role of government, and how the economy works. Millions of people who've never realized just what a difference government can make to them personally are finding out it can be literally a matter of life and death who they vote for. They're already becoming restive over an economy that seems to work for only a favored few.
Charles P. Pierce has looked at Obama's recent speech about the economy, and views it as a game changer. When the President of the United States, and the leader of his party is willing to say things like:

"...the result is an economy that's become profoundly unequal, and families that are more insecure.  I'll just give you a few statistics.  Since 1979, when I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent, but the income of the typical family has increased by less than eight percent.  Since 1979, our economy has more than doubled in size, but most of that growth has flowed to a fortunate few. The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income -- it now takes half.  Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today's CEO now makes 273 times more.  And meanwhile, a family in the top 1 percent has a net worth 288 times higher than the typical family, which is a record for this country.
So the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed.  In fact, this trend towards growing inequality is not unique to America's market economy.  Across the developed world, inequality has increased.  Some of you may have seen just last week, the Pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length."How can it be," he wrote, "that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?"

If you haven't read the entire speech by the President, I strongly suggest you do so. The first necessary step in solving a problem is to recognize you have one. The national political dialog is starting to come to grips with that task, however slowly and defiantly. As Pierce comments:

This is where the speech begins to get important, and not just because the president is quoting the barbed criticisms leveled by the pope. It is here where the president begins to insist that there be a new paradigm in how we talk about income inequality and what we do about it. It is here where he begins to insist that income inequality is not the result of the impersonal consequences of economic transition but, rather, the result of choices made and not made, the result of actions taken and not taken, and all of them deliberate and calculated to benefit a specific class of people. The crash of 2008 was not inevitable. It had human causes that were very much avoidable. It is here where he begins to talk about the dangers of oligarchy, and about how oligarchy can turn the promise of self-government into a sucker's game.

emphasis added When even NPR starts to pick up on this vibe, it's an indication the earth is shifting under us.  What can Obama and the Democratic Party do at this point? As long as Republicans hold the House (and the Supreme Court), not a lot from the legislative end. But getting the message out, finding a voice that reflects the will of the vast majority of Americans who are not happy with the direction of the country, using Obamacare as a wedge to start shifting the Overton Window, challenging the lame stream media narrative that has served us so badly for so long, AND holding Republicans responsible for decades of failure… it's a starting point. 2014 and 2016 are not that far away.
Pierce notes that one way Obama can take concrete steps to embrace this changing world view is to act on something coming down the pipeline.

But, as we often say around here, faith without works, Mr. President. For example, the egregious Trans-Pacific Partnership is coming down the fast track. You can't find a better example of something aimed at enriching the people, and empowering the forces, that deliberately have engineered income inequality, or a better example of who engineered it and on whose behalf. Your move, Mr. President.

For my own part, I consider killing the Keystone XL Pipeline would also be a step in the right direction, for similar reasons. There ARE things that can be done. It's past time to start doing them. For a closer, here's a classic video from 1982. Reagan was just settling into the White House, and who knew just how hard "Workin' For A Living" was going to get?

http://youtu.be/9N2CANatVYQ
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/05/1260464/-All-Things-Considered-NPR-Class-Warfare-Edition

Huh, so it IS a coordinated Wall Street Democrat campaign

Wall Street's worst day.

Hmmm, so far today we've seen that Third Way op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and Sen. Chuck Schumer's comparing us to the teabaggers. Then there is DLC dinosaur Al From with a new book and rhetorical embrace of Hillary Clinton, unreconstructed racist Richard Cohen's blasting of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Fox News "Democrats" Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell in Politico are back for another stab at that whole "radical center" nonsense.
One or two of these would be random noise. All of this, all at once? It's a coordinated counterattack by Wall Street Democrats spooked by the party's embrace of politicians like Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin and Jeff Merkley. The future of the Democratic Party is a populist one, all that's left is for time to whittle out the dead weight.
But this counterattack ... it's kinda pathetic. Warren will DOOM Democrats! Except that she is on the right side of American public opinion on issues of Wall Street dominance. That's the whole definition of being "populist" after all. But Warren can only win in a place like Massachusetts! Only if you ignore what Sherrod Brown did in Ohio with virtually identical politics. Or the way Democrats like Jon Tester and Heidi Heitkamp won their solidly red states. Hint: they didn't run Bob Kerrey's playbook of campaigning on Social Security cuts and austerity.
Wall Street can't possibly see a future in the Republican Party. It is increasingly a home for right-wing populists, the teabaggers, pushing for economy-destroying austerity, reactionary social policy, government shutdowns and national defaults. That's not good for business! And neither is blocking immigration reform. So the Democratic Party—the party that has saved capitalism by smoothing its rougher edges (it's no coincidence the stock market does better under Democratic administrations)—is the only choice. Except corporatists want less of that "smoothing the rougher edges" stuff. A lot less.
For now, Wall Street and its allies are simply trying to claim that cutting Social Security and other social programs are a path to electoral relevance—a notion laughable on its face.
But if Wall Street was really smart, they'd start getting the less crazy Republicans, like Mark Kirk and Susan Collins, to switch parties, reinforcing the ranks of Wall Street Dems in Congress and giving the corporatists a functional governing majority. And if that happened, it would be our turn for a good ol' civil war, just like the one the GOP is currently waging.
We're not there yet, but today's coordinate assault, inept as it might be, could be the first skirmish.
11:00 AM PT:

@markos Add @HFord2 to the coordinated attack; he just told @alexwagner  et al the way to salvation is cutting SS & Medicare
— @laguna_bob

Even Harold Ford is coming out of the woodwork. It's a corporatist Reunion Day!

Originally posted to kos on Tue Dec 03, 2013 at 10:30 AM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos, Pushing back at the Grand Bargain, and Social Security Defenders. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/03/1259852/-Huh-so-it-IS-a-coordinated-Wall-Street-Democrat-campaign