Nobody Likes Getting Peed On... Unless You're A Teabagger

You know we love Rachel Maddow here at DWT, right? The clip above, from Monday night's show, just went to further reinforce that. It's so worth watching, even if you saw it live. This week Congress, a body mostly comprised of millionaires, will decide whether or not to address the most pressing problem facing most people in this country: the economy. Most people who have been observing that body don't feel they're even capable of moving forward and making the commonsense decisions to do what they get paid so handsomely to do by the taxpayers. Instead, they will, once again, choose the interests of the wealthiest 1 or 2 percent over the dire needs of the rest of us.

And early yesterday DFA sent out a letter right in line with Rachel's basic message-- a letter aimed as much towards Obama and other conservative Democrats as towards GOP reactionaries:

Let's just call this so-called "Deficit Commission" what it really is-- an attack on the middle class.

From the very start, right-wing Republicans have been using the commission as a platform to destroy Social Security. They want to cut benefits and raise the retirement age, knowing full well that it will throw millions of seniors into poverty.

It's wrong. That's why we supported candidates who stood strong for Social Security and that's why we're working today to hold them accountable to the promises they made.

Call your Senators right now (at 1-866-529-7630) and tell them Hands Off Social Security.

When we asked DFA members where they stood on Social Security, the answer was clear -- you said to stand strong for Social Security -- No cuts, no raising the retirement age -- and that is exactly what we're doing.

We'll deliver our Hands Off Social Security petition, with almost 100,000 signatures from across the country, directly to members of the House of Representatives this week. But today's target is the U.S. Senate. Whether your Senator is a supportive Democrat or a right-wing Republican bent on destroying Social Security, your call still has an impact. Strong supporters use these calls to back them up on the Senator floor and some Republicans will think twice about sticking their neck out against seniors if their offices are flooded with calls too.

So don't throw your hands up and think this call isn't worth it, especially because DFA members aren't alone when it comes to protecting Social Security. On Election Day, we polled voters nationwide to ask them where they stood and 85 percent said they don't want to see ANY cuts to Social Security.

That's right, even people who voted for Republicans to take back Congress said they don't want any cuts to Social Security.

Even though he ran for the Senate, quixotically, twice, something tells me Jonathan Tasini doesn't have much hope that that rather hopeless body is going to do anything to benefit ordinary working families any time soon. His new ebook, It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On, makes the point that there is no debt crisis or deficit crisis and that Obama's Catfood Commission "is a total fraud."

“These are the same people who told us that housing process would never go down, that our Social Security funds would be safe in the stock market, and that Bernie Madoff was an investment genius,” said Tasini, who blogs on how the U.S. economy affects everyday Americans at WorkingLife.org.
 
“The Simpson-Bowles agenda is about politics, not economics,” said Tasini. They’re whipping up false hysteria about deficits to justify continuing the failed and immoral policy of the past thirty years: picking the pockets of ordinary Americans to help the rich get richer.”
 
As Tasini argues in the pages of “It’s Not Raining:”
 
We have the greatest divide between rich and poor in 100 years. And, yet, the richest one percent in America is too busy complaining about having to pay a bit more in taxes. We should be talking about who should pony up to make sure we have plenty of money to do the things we should be doing, but that money apparently is not going to come out of the pockets of bankers, CEOs or the richest one percent.
 
No. It’s the average person. The people who are going to be asked-- by a Democratic president, no less-- to shoulder the burden of the robbery are the people who pack their lunch every day and get paid a wage to work an eight-hour day in a coal mine, factory, office building, firehouse, public service job or school.
 
The pay freeze for federal workers announced yesterday by President Obama, says Tasini, “is totally unnecessary from an economic point of view, and an attack on his most loyal political supporters that is unthinkable.”
 
“The rich back Bush and they get tax cuts,” says Tasini. “Workers in public sector unions back Obama-- and they get a pay freeze. How does that make any sense?”
 
Tasini also criticized liberal groups for buying into the “crisis” rhetoric. “We should be rejecting the whole notion that there is a government deficit or debt ‘crisis’, not crawling on our hands and knees with fancy blueprints and documents to satisfy funders and political pundits,” he said. “Liberal groups are reinforcing, not undoing, the ‘crisis’ rhetoric.”
 
Instead of raising the retirement age, cutting Social Security benefits for seniors, and freezing wages for middle class federal workers, Tasini proposes a four-step plan that will make better use of our resources-- steps that should be taken even without a crisis:
 
·     Raise taxes on the wealthy far above what even Democrats are proposing

·     Extend Medicare to cover all Americans

·     Impose a financial transactions tax on Wall Street

·     Cut defense spending with a focus on real security, instead of costly wars that protect elites at home and abroad.

“This is not an economics problem,” he said. “This is a political problem. It’s not a deficit of money. It’s a deficit of moral leadership and a lack of guts to take on a dysfunctional, decaying ideology called the “free market” and the powerful players behind a bad system.”

Over the course of the next week or two we'll be watching closely to see exactly which Democrats-- aside from Pryor and Ben Nelson-- are demanding primaries for the next cycle.