The Poor You Will Always Have With You, So Let Them Suck It Up Until I Come

A Dominican nun, Erica Jordan, asked Paul Ryan at a CNN Town Hall meeting how he reconciles his economic policies with his Catholic faith.  His predictable answer was that social welfare programs have failed the poor, but his "small-government" budget-cutting programs will succeed, so "For me — for the poor that’s key to the Catholic faith. That means mobility, economic growth, equality of opportunity."  According to ThinkProgress, he told the audience:

We have to fix that, by making sure we can customize these before the to help a person get to where she is to where she wants and needs to be…The model I’m talking about is the Catholic Charities model.  Cristo Rey parish has cafeterias that do an amazing job, in spite of government, doing wrap around visits for the poor to making sure they get to where they need to be. If government will help do that I think we can go a long way in fighting poverty.

ThinkProgress said this was an "awkward" response, though they went on to point out that it was also dishonest:

Moreover, Catholic Charities doesn’t do its work “in spite of” government. It relies on it: Catholic Charities USA gets nearly half of its operating budget from the federal funds, as do scores of other faith-based charities. When Ryan championed president Donald Trump’s budget proposal—which slashed welfare programs—earlier this year, an anti-hunger faith group released a study estimating that every religious congregation in America would need to raise $714,000 a year for 10 years to shoulder the burden of caring for the poor.

Ronald Reagan could be similarly "awkward":

One day in the 1980 campaign, Reagan visited the Santa Marta Hospital in a Chicano area of Los Angeles.  He told the institution's staff that he had asked a nun there whether the hospital got "compensation from Medicaid or anything like that."  According to the candidate, she answered "no."  "I appreciate your pride in that," he told the group.

A "puzzled senior administrator" later informed supporters that 95% of the patients at Santa Marta Hospital were subsidized by either Medicaid or Medicare.  (Time, 10/20/80)*

I have mixed feelings about this.  There's an American tradition of demanding that Roman Catholic politicians remain independent of the Great Satan in Rome, instead of letting its dogmas guide their decisions.  If a Catholic religious were to confront a straying Catholic (or even non-Catholic) politician for failing to conform to Catholic doctrine on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, or gender, I would certainly not cheer them on.  That I might agree with Sister Erica's opinions in this case doesn't mean that I think the Church has any authority in matters of morality or public policy.

What amused me were some of the reactions to the story on Twitter.  Quite a few said they wanted to commit violence (that one has a Ph.D.!) against Ryan.  That's how you know they're real Christians.  They're not the reason I'm an atheist, but they certainly do reaffirm and enhance my faith.  I've been known to indulge in such rhetoric myself at times, but I'm not a Christian and I don't claim to be guided by a Higher Love.

I myself was reminded of Barack Obama's answer, at one of his town halls in 2010, to an African-American supporter who told him she was "exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now."  Predictably, she was attacked for undermining her President, for being a spoiled privileged brat, for letting herself be used by the Lying Media "to create a meme and narrative pertaining to African American dissatisfaction with President Obama."

Speaking of Obama, there were several references to Ryan's "smirk" in those angry tweets.  I can relate to their anger about that issue too.  Obama also has an infuriating smirk when he's condescending to the victims of American power (some of whom are American nuns, killed with US government collusion), dismissing their concerns as mere "suspicions."

I doubt, however, that Obama would agree with either Sister Erica Jordan or the angry folks who attacked Ryan in social media.  After all, Obama appointed Ryan, along with a bipartisan array of deficit hawks, to a commission on reducing the national deficit, aka the Catfood Commission.  It was actually somewhat surprising that this handpicked group was unable to agree on recommendations; maybe, as with some Republicans' refusal to vote for Trump's repeal of the Affordable Care Act,  they thought the plans weren't cruel enough.  But not to worry: the chairmen of the commission submitted their personal wish list as a memo to the President, which he and the media accepted as if it were an official report of the commission itself.  In the 2012 debates, Obama declared that he and the Romney-Ryan ticket had a "somewhat similar position" on Social Security.  As late as 2016, the Washington Post was touting the substantial agreement between Obama and Ryan ("For two men of goodwill, this is a bridgeable divide") on addressing poverty.  All this had gone down the memory hole long before Donald Trump became President.

If Jordan had asked Barack Obama the same question she asked Ryan, would his answer have been very different?  I doubt it.  Most likely she'd be attacked for undermining POTUS by the same people who cheer for her now.

* Mark Green and Gail MacColl, Reagan's Reign of Error: The Instant Nostalgia Edition (Pantheon, 1987), p. 86.

Already It Was Impossible to Say Which Was Which

The Intercept reports that Donald Trump appears to be changing his stance on entitlements.  Up till now Trump has insisted that he would protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid against attempts to cut benefits, promising to "focus on economic growth so that we’d get 'so rich you don’t have to do that.'"

But now he's backing down, or at least reconsidering.

Trump policy adviser and co-chairman Sam Clovis said last week that the real estate mogul would look at changes to all federal programs, “including entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare,” as part of a deficit reduction effort.

Clovis made the comments at the 2016 Fiscal Summit of the Pete Peterson Foundation, an organization whose founder has spent almost half a billion dollars to hype the U.S. debt and persuade people that the Medicare and Social Security programs are unsustainable. Trump also met privately last week with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., an outspoken Medicare privatization advocate.

All pretty predictable, no?  My first reaction was that this sounded familiar.  Didn't Barack Obama follow a similar trajectory?  Yes, he did.

When he was campaigning for his first term as President, he told an AARP convention on September 6, 2008 (via), "But his [McCain’s] campaign has gone even further, suggesting that the best answer to the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age. I will not do either."

Of course, he did both.  In 2010 he appointed a commission to make recommendations on cutting the national deficit, packing it with deficit hawks (including Paul Ryan).  Despite the way Obama had rigged it, the Simpson-Bowles commission was unable to agree on conclusions, so Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles wrote up their own recommendations, which President Obama and most of the media treated as if they represented the commission as a whole.  These recommendations included phasing in a raise in the "retirement age" (meaning the age at which a retiree can receive full benefits) to 69 and changing the index for cost-of-living adjustments so as to lessen those adjustments, resulting in a benefits cut of 3 percent according to the economist Dean Baker.  Obama also announced his willingness to use cuts in Social Security and Medicare to bargain with the Republican Congress on the debt ceiling.  The Business Roundtable, a gang of corporate CEOs, would prefer raising "full retirement age" to 70, and of course the usual Republican suspects in Congress were already on board for that.

So there's concern that "A Trump presidency would threaten programs like Social Security."  It would probably would, but so would any other Republican candidate's presidency.  So, most likely, would a Clinton presidency.  But an Obama presidency already has.

Keep Your Government Hands Off My Catfood Commission!

Tom Tomorrow's latest cartoon baffles me.  It depicts Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles appearing in the Oval Office to offer a nonplussed-looking Barack Obama their help against the "arbitrary, self-imposed budget deadline" he faces. 

You'd think, looking at the cartoon, that Obama had nothing to do with the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.  Of course it was his own bipartisan creation, packed with deficit hawks of his own choosing, including Paul Ryan.  ("Bipartisan" is a keyword in the cartoon, but only to mock Simpson and Bowles.  Obama's own bipartisanship-mongering is not mentioned.)

I looked around the web a little to see if I could find out whose idea the Commision was.  It looks like it was Obama's; he certainly made it his own.  One article I found was from last Monday's New York Times.  The title was a giveaway: "Obama's Unacknowledged Debt to Bowles-Simpson Plan."  Aha!  There was no "Bowles-Simpson Plan."  Another article I stumbled on, from a small newspaper, explained it very well:

“Simpson-Bowles” is shorthand for a bipartisan deficit commission co-chaired by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles. While the commission never formally issued a report because it never reached consensus on a plan, Simpson and Bowles informally presented a memorandum of their ideas to the Congress and President Obama.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it?  And it's not exactly obscure.  Yet the notion that the Commission produced a report has gone viral in the corporate media.  (So much so that I bought it for a while myself.)  Even if you like the recommendations in their memo, Bowles and Simpson did not speak for the Commission as a whole.  Which hasn't kept them from touring the country giving speeches pushing their recommendations at $40,000 a pop.

The Times article never mentions this. Instead we get stuff like this:

It came just a few months after the president had opted not to endorse the recommendations of a deficit commission he had created in hopes of brokering a bold, bipartisan deficit deal. That gave rise to a portrayal that has stuck, popularized by Republicans, pundits and some Democrats: that the president, out of political timidity, snubbed his own panel’s plan.

There are also allusions to "the major tenets supported by a majority of the commission’s members", "the commission’s report in December 2010," and so on.

To repeat: the "recommendations" did not come from the commission; "his own panel" produced no "plan."  The memorandum the chairmen produced could probably have been written if the commission had never been appointed nor met in solemn convocation -- which would have saved a lot of money right there.  The writer quietly acknowledges reality further down:

On Dec. 1, 2010, Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson unveiled an ambitious package of spending cuts and revenue increases that was supported two days later by 11 of the 18 commissioners — five from each party, including all three conservative Senate Republicans, and an independent business executive. While three votes short of the 14 needed to force a Congressional vote, it raised hopes that the blueprint could lead to compromise between Mr. Obama and Republicans. 

The writer almost admits that the "package" was the work of the two chairmen, not the commission itself, and it didn't get the fourteen-vote supermajority required to force Congressional action.  The commission itself had been packed by Obama with deficit hawks (I mean, Paul Ryan?), without whom I suppose support for the memo would have been even weaker.  But it's an article of faith in the corporate media that Simpson-Bowles could have saved us, even if only by putting forth material for bipartisan compromise that could have ended the gridlock, but President Obama lacked the political will to face down his base.

Read the comments on the Times article if you have the chance and the stomach; they're even more demented, by and large, than the article itself.  Evidently the Times has Hope that President Obama will have the commitment to bring about real Change of the kind wealthy Republicans want: spending cuts of the right kind -- especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid -- while leaving the big moneymakers, high-tech industry and its evil twin the military, untouched.

At their recent lunch, Mr. Obama assured Mr. Bowles he would not give up. Mr. Bowles said the president talked of seeing “a real opportunity” for compromise after the election, when Republicans will be eager to avoid the expiration of Bush tax cuts and automatic cuts in military spending — suggesting another chance for a deal inspired by Bowles-Simpson. 

“To see his commitment,” Mr. Bowles said, “gave me real hope.” 

The Snake and the Stone of Spiritual Abundance

I didn't watch or listen to Obama's State of the Union speech, but I did find this status message on Facebook today from my minister friend:

Praying for President Obama as he prepares the State of the Nation address for tonight. We need to be challenged, asked to sacrifice, in good ways for the future of the republic. Debt is going to swallow us if we don't all take a slice of the pie of sacrifice.

This reminds me of an exchange from Firesign Theatre's Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers! I quote from memory: a woman on a TV game show trades everything she's won so far for a little bag, but after she opens it, she protests, "But -- but -- this is a bag of shit!" The Master of Ceremonies replies, "But it's really great shit, Mrs. Presge!"

Or, as Jesus once said, according to Matthew 7:9, "Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask for bread, will he give him a stone?" And if millions of Americans are out of work and have been so for a long time, and if many more have lost their homes in foreclosures of dubious legality, what man out there will then offer them "the pie of sacrifice"? But it's really great sacrifice, Mr. and Mrs. America, and it will be good for you, all the way down!

My old friend seems to have a thing for this kind of sacrifice. Just about a year ago he quoted a column by the New York Times's Bob Herbert, and complained "few of us [are] willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow." I thought he was full of shit (but really great shit) then, and I think so now. And remember, this guy isn't a fundamentalist -- he's an organization man in a mainline Protestant denomination, who was appalled by Pat Robertson's nasty remarks about Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake but still thought that the US should go easy on the aid until the Haitians got their act together and learned how to do an economy right.

We know already that Obama is ready to dish out big slices of the pie of sacrifice to most Americans, in the form of later retirement and cuts in Social Security benefits; he's already begun his assault. I wondered what Bob Herbert was up to these days, and by an interesting coincidence his latest column was on Social Security, opposing any such assaults on America's elderly while carefully not mentioning Obama's name.

The deficit hawks and the right-wingers can scream all they want, but there is no Social Security crisis. There is a foreseeable problem with the program’s long-term financing, but it can be fixed with changes that do no harm to its elderly beneficiaries. One obvious step would be to raise the cap on payroll taxes so that wealthy earners shoulder a fairer share of the burden.

The alarmist rhetoric should cease. Americans have enough economic problems to worry about without being petrified that their Social Security benefits will be curtailed. A Gallup poll taken recently found that 90 percent of Americans ages 44 to 75 believed that the country was facing a retirement crisis. Nearly two-thirds were more fearful of depleting their assets than they were of dying. The fears about retirement are well placed — most Americans do not have enough to retire on. But there should be no reason to believe that Social Security is in jeopardy.

The folks who want to raise the retirement age and hack away at benefits for ordinary working Americans are inevitably those who have not the least worry about their own retirement. The haves so often get a perverse kick out of bullying the have-nots.

You know those "deficit hawks"? One of them is named Barack Obama. In fairness I must stress that I don't know what kind of filling my minister friend has in mind for the pie of sacrifice, since he was (probably deliberately) vague on details, but given his adoption of deficit-hawk rhetoric, I have to suspect that that's part of what he has in mind. It's a perfectly middle-of-the-road position, after all. I wonder what sacrifices he has in mind for himself?

Correction

I may have made a mistake on Monday when I wrote about Obama's political rhetoric and the recommendations of his Catfood Commission:

Certain "choices," like cutting back on his wars and his surveillance state, are not going to be involved.

Overall, I think that's probably still a safe bet, but today Glenn Greenwald linked to a report that

In a draft proposal presented to the 18-member debt commission, the panel’s leaders suggested slashing $100 billion from defense spending by 2015 to get the nation’s finances in order. Some of the cuts would come from a portion of the savings that Gates wants to pour back into modern weapons systems and toward U.S. troops at war.

Not that $100 billion over a four-year-period amounts to much of a cut for aggression spending. I figure that Obama is learning to bargain, and those suggested cuts will be among the first he abandons in order to save higher gasoline taxes, higher deductibles for Medicare, lower corporate taxes, and other vital choices. I just wanted to mention that the Commission did recommend cuts in military spending, contrary to my expectations.

Think of the Starving Children in Africa Who'd Love to Have That Catfood!

If I still needed a reason to consider Barack Obama a congenital cheap pig*, I'd have it in the now well-circulated remarks he made last week about negative reactions to the draft report of his Catfood Commission:

"Before anybody starts shooting down proposals, I think we need to listen, we need to gather up all the facts," Obama told reporters.

He added: "If people are, in fact, concerned about spending, debt, deficits and the future of our country, then they're going to need to be armed with the information about the kinds of choices that are going to be involved, and we can't just engage in political rhetoric."

Now, "political rhetoric" is exactly what Obama was engaging in there. (I think he wanted to say something like "partisan bickering", but the criticism he was addressing came from his own party.) Notice that even though he hadn't seen the draft report when he started defending it, he still said that its recommendations are "the kinds of choices that are going to be involved" -- not even "may be involved." Certain "choices," like cutting back on his wars and his surveillance state, are not going to be involved. But he doesn't mind going after Social Security and Medicare, or raising the federal gasoline tax by 80 percent or so (which is highly regressive -- that is, it will hurt people in lower income brackets more). To counter discrimination against the vulnerable Corporate-Americans (corporations are people too, you know! they have feelings! they can hurt!), the corporate tax rate will be cut by about 25 percent, from 35 to 26 percent. The hike in the gasoline tax is intended to make up for the loss of revenue that will result from that generous gesture.

Another thing to remember (and there are many) is that while the Catfood Commission was meeting in quasi-secrecy, most of what it turned out to recommend was anything but secret, and was being discussed publicly. Critics of "the kinds of choices that are going to be involved" are already armed with information. Obama isn't interested, of course. You already know his attitude to his Democratic and 'left' critics. All that interests him is whether he's giving enough to his corporate and banking buddies. (Gee, do you think 26 percent is low enough?)

I'm using the pejorative name "Catfood Commission," by the way, because of the confusion in certain media -- well, most of the corporate media, it looks like -- about what its mission is. This writer at Bloomberg, for example, equivocates between the "deficit" and the "debt" -- and the two are not the same thing. And, of course, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit; it's already fully funded by our contributions. Obama's owners just hate the idea of all that money going to the wrong people. They love the idea of privatizing it, and giving it to Wall Street (who are, remember, among Obama's major owners) to play with, so that it can all disappear during the next big crash, just as so many people's 401k accounts did a few years ago -- but not before it is diverted to executive salaries and bonuses, where in these people's minds it really belongs.

*I had the odd difference with Hunter S. Thompson, but I will always love his gift for invective. "A congenital cheap pig" was what he once called the despicable Reagan toady Ed Meese: "a person without any honor, a fat bastard, really a congenital cheap pig in the style of and on the level of Richard Nixon." Change "fat" to "skinny," and the whole line describes Barack Hussein Obama to a T.