Trump's First Hundred Years

This morning-- Day 99 of the Trump Regime-- the Commerce Department released a sour look at what's happened to the economy since Mr. "I thought it would be easier" was installed in the Oval Office. According to the NY Times, "the economy barely grew, expanding at an annual rate of only 0.7 percent. The growth was a sharp decline from the 2.1 percent annual rate recorded in the final quarter of last year. It was the weakest quarterly showing in three years. Consumption, the component reflecting individual spending, rose by only 0.3 percent, well below the 3.5 percent rate in the previous quarter. The first-quarter performance upset expectations for a Trump bump at the start of 2017.

Trump says he thought it would be easier. What a shock! Some 70 year old who inherited a fortune and lied and cheated his way through a corrupt business world watched Fox News and thought being president was just... well, being like Fox News.

He misses driving, feels as if he is in a cocoon, and is surprised how hard his new job is.

President Donald Trump on Thursday reflected on his first 100 days in office with a wistful look at his life before the White House.

"I loved my previous life. I had so many things going," Trump told Reuters in an interview. "This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier."

As we mentioned the other day, while it looks like everything Trump tries to do fails, from his ban of Muslim immigrants and his Great Wall of Trumpiness to his promise to repeal healthcare for millions of American families, he's succeeding to do a lot of damage on many levels. This morning Matthew Yglesias pointed out how Trump has been winning, winning, winning in the on area that means the most to him: self enrichment.

Donald Trump attracted a reputation over the years as a ruthless and unscrupulous businessman. He said on the campaign trail that having been “greedy all my life,” he now wanted to be greedy on behalf of the American people-- but nobody [nobody?] seriously believed him. Marco Rubio warned that Trump was a “con artist,” and Ted Cruz labeled him “completely amoral.” Liberals, needless to say, were not kinder in their judgments.

From the day Trump announced his candidacy until the day he took the Oval Office, the smart take on him was that he was running on a lark, as a publicity stunt, or to lay the groundwork for some business endeavor.

Yet since his ascension to the White House, conventional wisdom has developed an odd tendency to describe his inability to make major legislative changes as an indication that his presidency is failing. It's certainly true that Paul Ryan’s speakership of the House is failing, arguable that Mitch McConnell’s tenure as majority leader of the Senate is failing, and indisputably true that the Koch brothers’ drive to infuse hardcore libertarian ideological zeal into the GOP is failing.

But Trump isn’t failing. He and his family appear to be making money hand over fist. It's a spectacle the likes of which we've never seen in the United States, and while it may end in disaster for the Trumps someday, for now it shows no real sign of failure.

...Trump... funnels money directly into his own pockets. Like many previous presidents, he golfs. And like all presidents who golf, when he hits the green, he is accompanied by Secret Service agents. The agents use golf carts to get around the courses. And to get their hands on the golf carts, they need to rent them from the golf courses at which the president plays. All of this is fundamentally normal-- except for the fact that Trump golfs at courses he owns. So when the Secret Service spends $35,000 on Mar-a-Lago golf cart rentals, it’s not just a normal security expense-- Trump is personally profiting from his own protection.

The Secret Service has, similarly, paid $64,000 for “elevator services” in Trump Tower. This is a fairly normal kind of expense for the agency, paying a building money to defray the inconvenience of taking elevators offline so they can be inspected for security purposes. But, again, there is nothing normal about the president personally profiting from the security procedure.

When Trump’s sons fly around the world doing business deals, they too are protected by Secret Service agents whose bills the federal government covers-- even if they are staying at Trump properties.

There is something grating about this, especially from a president who is making a big show of donating his salary to charity. Trump is directly pocketing what could easily amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in direct payments from the Treasury, while simultaneously claiming to be serving for free. What’s more troubling, however, is indirect financial entanglements into which we have little real visibility.

Ivanka Trump, for example, was granted five trademarks by the Chinese government on the very same day she had dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Also on that day, Ivanka’s father decided to break his campaign pledge to officially designate China as a currency manipulator. That decision, by all accounts, reflected the growing clout inside the White House of National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and his key ally Jared Kushner, who happens to be Ivanka’s husband and in a position to directly gain or lose from China’s decisions regarding his wife’s trademark applications.

There’s of course no way to demonstrate a quid pro quo there, but the basic dynamics are clear.

Kushner emerged as a “shadow diplomat” smoothing over US-Mexico relations, according to a February 10 Washington Post article, and by April 10, the same journalists were reporting that he has “the freedom to act as a shadow secretary of state, setting up his own channels of communication with world leaders.”

Back in February, Bloomberg reported that “[a]s countries around the world figure out how to influence the new U.S. administration, China is going straight to the top: Trump’s immediate family.” Kushner and Ivanka Trump were guests of honor at a Chinese New Year celebration organized by the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and the trademark applications are just part of the overall package. China is on good terms with Trump’s family, and Trump’s family has helped keep China on good terms with the United States.

Similarly, Ivanka was closing business deals in Japan while simultaneously joining her father in meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

This same trend can easily point in darker directions. The Trump family has business interests in the Persian Gulf, and Trump’s foreign policy is moving the United States into much closer alignment with the Gulf monarchies, including deeper involvement in a disastrous war in Yemen and abandonment of any pretense of caring about human rights in Egypt.

Further from the center of media attention, an eye-opening report by Allan Nairn for the Intercept says that “[a]ssociates of Donald Trump in Indonesia have joined army officers and a vigilante street movement linked to ISIS in a campaign that ultimately aims to oust the country’s president.” The movement includes current and former army officers looking to evade accountability for past crimes during Indonesia’s period as a military dictatorship, but also “Hary Tanoe, Trump’s primary Indonesian business partner, who is building two Trump resorts, one in Bali and one outside Jakarta.”

In a normal administration, it would go without saying that American attitudes toward civil strife in Indonesia-- no matter how misguided-- were driven primarily by policy considerations and not by the president’s personal financial interests. With Trump, we have no such assurance.

And his executive orders-- even with lots of terrible ones-- are mostly theater. Funny how for the last 8 years every Republican from the Atlantic to the Pacific was moaning and wailing and rending his or her clothes about the brutal tyranny of Obama signing executive orders. Now Trump is bragging that he's signed more executive orders than any president in history-- and not a peep from the choir.



So tomorrow is the 100th Day of Trump's reign. Is it any surprise that farmers-- many of whom voted for Trump-- can't find workers to harvest their crops this year? Watch Van Jones try to understand why by talking with farmers in California's Central Valley in the video above.

Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) was the first member of Congress to start the boycott of the Trumpanzee Inauguration. This morning he issued a statement with his thoughts on the first 100 days:

Trump has flip-flopped on NATO and he has backed down from labeling China a currency manipulator because he is now best friends with China’s President, but there is one thing he has been 100% consistent on from day 1 of his campaign to day 100 of his Presidency: demonizing and attacking Latinos.

Almost the first words out of his mouth when he descended the golden escalator to announce his candidacy were to call Mexicans rapists and murderers. Now he is tweeting about Puerto Rico and that health care for the Puerto Rican people is not important with regard to budget negotiations. Last week Trump sent out Jeff Sessions to call Latino immigrants “filth” and “cartel henchmen.” Trump returns to bashing Latinos every time he has a setback on some other issue.

We knew that a team of misogynist, climate-change denying, anti-immigration, billionaire civil rights opponents would be bad, but I fear that we have not seen the worst yet.

One of the most important observations on Trump’s 100 Days is that on immigration, on women, on LGBTQ issues, on Muslims, on the environment, on Black Lives Matter and on corporate greed, the American people are more united in their opposition to Trump and the Republican Party than ever. This is a deeply unpopular President. When he attacks something or someone, their support grows, and when he embraces something or someone, their support plummets. He has the reverse Midas touch in politics as in his business career. Unlike Obama, Reagan, Carter or any President I can remember, he has been the biggest liability to his own success and he has done more to make his priorities toxic to the American people in the first 100 days than anyone I can remember.

Does Bernie Really Think She's Unqualified? More Important, Do You?

I'm not saying I was ever any good at it but when I returned to America after nearly 7 years of living abroad, working as a journalist seemed like a good way to make a living-- at least until I could find a "real job." (I actually started as a photo-journalist but I saw that my editors valued the "captions" more than the photos.) You need some kind of a "license" to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher but you don't need anything to be a journalist... other than a pen. Pretty soon I was surrounded with journalists. I had moved to San Francisco and immersed myself in journalism world.

Overall, my colleagues seemed pretty insecure-- people who left their futures were shaky and their credentials were always open to challenge. Even the rebels-- obviously I gravitated to "the rebels"-- often seemed to crave recognition and approval from an Establishment they knew they would never be part of and they knew would always oppress them on some level. I found it an unattractive occupation and was grateful I was eventually able to avail myself of other opportunities.

Wednesday night, I was watching Maddow when I first heard Bernie had declared Hillary unqualified. She pimped it, nearly breathlessly, as "breaking news." Then, after a commercial break, she showed the video of Bernie not really saying anything very different from what he's been saying all along. That's it just below. Would Maddow walk back her sensationalistic intro after the video? Nope; she doubled down on it. And the rest of the corporate media was doing the same thing. This after a full day of Clinton Machine fulminations about "disqualifying" Bernie and a ruthless frontal attack of him ever since it became clear he would swamp her in Wisconsin by all her carefully scripted, unsavory surrogates.



As Sam Stein, a guy who doesn't give in to the insecurities so inherent in American journalism-- I never discovered the traits in British or Dutch journalists-- pointed out Thursday morning, Hillary's own 2008 statement about Obama was far more of what the journalists are trying to attribute to Bernie than anything in Bernie's statement. "I think that I have a lifetime of experience," she said, "that I will bring to the White House." (That's precisely what many Americans, aware of just what that lifetime of experience actually is, fear.) I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." That's Hillary. That's her sly, scripted dishonesty and her default position on qualifications. She was dismissing Obama's experiences as a community activist, as a state legislator, as a failed congressional candidate up against the political bosses she's so comfortable with, and as a U.S. Senator. At the time, her own experience had been primarily being a Republican, a Walmart board member, a corporate lawyer and then a first lady... and a very mediocre-- to be extremely kind-- U.S. Senator. Democratic voters eventually judged Obama's experience to be far more worthwhile than hers-- or, later, her buddy, McCain's.

When Hillary talks about "being a Democrat" (following her years of being a Republican-- of which she still claims she is so proud of and insists shaped where she stands on policy today), she's actually talking about using the Democratic Party apparatus and organization as a vehicle for her career aspirations. When Bernie talks about being a Democrat, he's talking about helping to perfect a set of values and principles that have served to make America great and to make the lives of working families more bearable. She defines what it means to be a DINO. He's the embodiment of what Democrats still were when she was still a Republican running around screaming that Nixon beat JFK and that the Democrats stole the election and then running for and winning the presidency of the Wellesley College Young Republicans.

A conversation Wednesday between Amy Goodman and Van Jones shed some more light on the two wings of the Democratic Party, the one based on careerism and the one based on values.

VAN: New York City is the war to settle the score inside the Democratic Party. The Clinton forces understand there is a rebellion in this party. Under ordinary circumstances, it would already be over, because the big donors would have taken the checks back. There are no big checks. This is a people’s movement. They are going to have to bury this movement in New York City, and they know it. You’re going to see a vetting of Bernie Sanders like you’ve never seen. You’re going to see the mainstream media go after him. Now there’s blood in the water on specifics. They’re going to go after him on specifics, you know, way beyond anything any candidate has had to address. And people are going to have to-- I mean, he’s going to have to step up his game, because you can’t, you know, write excuses for people. He’s got to be able to answer those tough questions.

But also, if you want for this Democratic Party to take progressive causes seriously, now is the time to speak out and get engaged. And for African Americans in particular, I want to say something. We are the only part of the so-called Obama coalition that has to give not 50 percent of our vote, not 60, not 70, not 80, not 90, but 92 percent of our vote in every presidential election, in order for Democrats to win. So, we are beyond a base vote. We are the decisive vote. If we give 85 percent of our vote to the Democrats, Republicans win. And so, we deserve to have a full hearing on all the issues that affect us, and hear from both candidates. And all of the history needs to be on the table to be vetted, for both candidates.

Even a robot knows what the real news was yesterday, which somehow didn't quite seem as sensational nor as worthy to Maddow as her-- and all her lemming-like, insecure colleagues'-- "breaking" non-story:

Heil Trumpf!

Tuesday morning as voters were headed to the polls before work-- across 14 states-- Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell felt they had to address the issue of the Ku Klux Klan because of the flirtation with the violent hate group by their party's front-runner. And Ben Sasse, the junior senator from Nebraska, a thoughtful guy and a bit of a maverick who won election as a Tea Party candidate, appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe. He had already stated that even if Herr Trumpf wins the nomination, he won't vote for him, which is why he was invited onto the show. But he went even further, telling the panel that "If the Republican Party becomes the party of David Duke and Donald Trump, I'm out." Oh dear! (In his victory statement/press conference thingie last night, Herr Trumpf threatened to make Ryan "pay" if he doesn't buckle under to his will when he's in the White House.)

A few hours earlier, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann of With All Due Respect (clip below), talked with Republican former New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman, who told them Herr Trumpf can't beat Hillary Clinton. She thinks eventually people will see through him-- the con man thing-- and that "his temperament, his bullying, his demeaning of people is not going to sit well with the majority of the American people... The kind of rhetoric with which he is engaged, the divisiveness he's encouraging, the belittling of people just by reason of their ethnicity is creating a divide in this country that I think is very dangerous for the future. And while I certainly don't want four more years of another Clinton administration... I would take that over the kind of damage that I think Donald Trump could do to this country, to its reputation, to the people of this country. You can't bring people together, you can't get policy and make it happen if you're so divisive." She then said she would either vote for Hillary Clinton or do a write-in.



The ad below is what Establishment Republicans are running against Herr Trumpf in some combination of the March primary and caucus states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Arizona and Utah. So far nothing-- not even this chilling portrayal of Herr Trumpf as a predatory scammer, huckster and con-man-- seems to be dampening the enthusiasm of the Republican base for Herr or their desire to just give up on democracy altogether and hand it all over to an authoritarian daddy-figure.



And these ads, showing statements from "Trump University" victims are running simultaneously, paid for by a separate pack of anti-Trumpf establishmentarians, the American Future Fund:







Republican consultant took enough time off from his flame war with Ann Coulter to attack other Trumpf supporters at the DailyBeast yesterday, bemoaning how Trump is "inevitably wrecking the GOP on his way to having his weirdly-coiffed head handed to him by Hillary Clinton’s campaign death machine, but in the shorter term Trump has the capacity to destroy a lot of Republican officeholders on the way."

[I]n the coming days it’s likely we will see Vichy Republicans of various stripes break to Trump. A fraction of them, like Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who endorsed Trump last weekend, are driven to his anti-immigration message, which they believe is the singular and driving motivation for Republican base voters. Most will break like frightened herd animals, reading this year’s polling as a sign of permanent political realignment. A few will do so out of malice against the hated Establishment. Some will seek to curry favor, or appointment in the Thousand Year Trump Administration.

All of them are making three enormous political mistakes. Here’s my advice to elected leaders and candidates considering selling their political souls to the Orange One:

Trump doesn’t need you. Trump doesn’t need anyone’s endorsement, because he always has the most vital backing he or any candidate could hope for; universal name-ID, wall-to-wall media coverage and an instant on-air presence the moment he desires it.  He doesn’t need your political machine (most of you, to be honest, barely have one). He doesn’t need your aura of power and influence in your state.  If you stand next to Trump, it’s because he wants to tweak a rival, not because you’re the special political snowflake of your state or district.

After last weekend’s debate, when Marco Rubio beat Donald Trump like a rented mule, Trump swung into action in a desperate attempt to recapture Rubio’s one bad night in the last few months by bringing the Jersey Judas Chris Christie on stage with him as a surrogate against the Florida Senator.  Christie stood behind Trump until summoned to bellow praise of “Mr. Trump” and condemnation of Marco. As an aside, the toadying usage of “Mr. Trump” by his sycophants is just one tug of the forelock away from people averting their eyes and bowing low to Prince Donald of Orange.

Christie appeared at Trump’s side for roughly 18 hours, heaving and yelling. His trained-seal act of hitting Rubio was  a shoddy imitation of Trump’s opera-buffa style until one of the most brutal, ugly political moments I’ve ever seen caught on tape managed to crystallize how Trump takes anything given to him, consumes it, drains it, and casts it aside like a 45-year old trophy wife. At a raucous airport-hanger rally in Arkansas, Trump wiped Christie off his shoe in a single, icy moment. You could almost see Christie’s soul leaving his body as Trump irritably said, “Get on the plane and go home. It’s over there,” while pointing away from the roaring crowd to a waiting jet on the tarmac.

It was a perfect illustration of Trump’s non-transactional politics; Christie thought they’d formed an alliance. For Trump, Christie was like Uber, but for one day of headlines against Rubio.  From speculation Christie would be Vice President or Attorney General to “go fetch your shinebox” in less than a day must have been a revelation for Christie, one I hope he savors as the former Governor of New Jersey and future  manager of the Whippany Best Buy.

Trump didn’t need Jeff Sessions to endorse him; he needed him to gut the wheezing carcass of the Ted Cruz campaign. Trump already owns the “build the wall to keep the brown people out” demographic; Sessions was icing on the cake. His endorsement was devastating to Ted Cruz’s head. When Trump was done, though, Sessions was on his own.  Of course, 12 hours after the Sessions endorsement, the Senator from Alabama was having to bat cleanup on Trump’s tip-o’the-hood to David Duke and the KKK.

You’re not Trump. You can’t rub up against Trump and absorb the magic aura of his fuck-you swagger.  You haven’t been a reality TV game show host for decades in a culture that cares vastly more about the Kardashians or the Real Housewives of Wherever than it does about any political figure. You haven’t run a branding company dedicated to branding, well… you.

There are no Trump Republicans; there is only Trump. When the 2010 election swept Republicans into office in a massive tidal wave, they were part of a philosophical and ideological change. They were bound by a set of limited-government principles. To be sure, sometimes loosely and imperfectly so, but the Tea Party wave was driven by ideas, not a singular, authoritarian personality.  On the plus side, you aren’t a narcissistic sociopath, so you have that going for you.

...There’s a reason Trump’s favorability rating is 2:1 negative, why almost no scenario leads him to victory in November. There’s a reason why women and Hispanics loathe Trump. There’s a reason why conservatives know Trump isn’t one of them. And there’s a reason why smart down-ballot candidates and elected officials who can see beyond the current frenzy are heading for the exits from the Trump circus; beyond the core of his supporters, Donald Trump is a hideous cancer on American political life. He’s an objectively terrible person, and that eventually matters in politics.

If you want to endorse that, you’re on your own.  You’ll own it even after the Trump bubble bursts, Hillary Clinton is sworn in, and the Chinese-made red hat he shoved on your head at the endorsement rally is nothing but an uncomfortable reminder of your terrible political judgment.

click to read the results

Van Jones went after clownish Trumpf surrogate Jeffrey Lord-- who insists the KKK is a left-wing organization fighting for a "progressive agenda"-- on CNN last night. This could well be exactly what the general election looks like.




UPDATE: The Morning After

On CNN this morning, Establishment Republican-- and fellow reality TV thing-- Rep Sean Duffy (R-WI), told Chris Cuomo that Herr Trumpf "talks big and he seems strong but when you ask him questions about, 'how do we make America safe again? How do I grow our economy? How do I bring jobs back home? How do I fix healthcare?' he doesn’t have any ideas... He just makes the statements but hasn’t spent the time to think about the policies that are necessary to fix the country."

Friday, one of the spokesmen for the Military Industrial Complex, ex-CIA/NSA chief Michael Hayden, went on Real Time and threatened a coup if Herr Trumpf starts giving the unlawful orders he's campaigning on. Who cares what a doddering old spook says on a comedy show? Some of the ex-military guys in Congress seem to care. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), an Air Force Reserve pilot said he would ignore illegal orders from Herr Trumpf. "When you say you might have to go after family members of terrorists, when you say torture would be OK even if it doesn’t work-- this is the rant of a dictator, not the rant of a guy running for president of the greatest country in the world. We have to follow lawful orders, not unlawful orders. If Trump gives an order like he spouts on the campaign trail, just to try to look like Mr. Tough Guy, we just won’t follow them."

Chris Christie's approval rating back in New Jersey was already in the toilet before he endorsed Herr Trumpf-- just 33% of his state's voters approved of his job performance. That fell a further 6 points-- to a stunning 27%-- after the endorsement of a figure that is widely viewed in New Jersey as a buffoon and a fascist (a bad combination). Six of New Jersey's newspapers ran an editorial calling on Christie to resign as governor in response to the endorsement!

What an embarrassment. What an utter disgrace.

We’re fed up with Gov. Chris Christie’s arrogance.

We’re fed up with his opportunism.

We’re fed up with his hypocrisy.

We’re fed up with his sarcasm.

We’re fed up with his long neglect of the state to pursue his own selfish agenda.

We’re disgusted with his endorsement of Donald Trump after he spent months on the campaign trail trashing him, calling him unqualified by temperament and experience to be president.

And we’re fed up with his continuing travel out of state on New Jersey’s dime, stumping for Trump, after finally abandoning his own presidential campaign.

For the good of the state, it’s time for Christie to do his long-neglected constituents a favor and resign as governor. If he refuses, citizens should initiate a recall effort.

Another Trumpf endorser, Sarah Palin, is being blamed for his loss of Alaska to Ted Cruz. Trumpf even lost Palin's home turf, Wasilla.

An Uneducated Society Can't Succeed-- Or Even Survive

In less than a month, if Republicans keep obstructing any progress, certain student loan rates will double, making a college education even more out of reach for the children of working class parents. This isn't the problem itself; it's a symptom of a much greater problem. The wealthy, greedy and far too entitled plutocrats who have been increasingly calling the shots in American politics-- owning one party outright and pretty much controlling the other one-- have decided free, high-quality, universal education isn't worth paying for. So while Obama was in North Carolina yesterday announcing that he would like to see "the nation’s classrooms transformed into digital learning centers and he is ready to ask federal regulators to use billions of dollars to pay for the broadband and high-speed Internet connections that will be needed to make it happen," the American plutocracy that financed his career, McCain's career and Romney's career already had a long-standing policy of easing out and discarding the whole concept of public education in America firmly in place.

Elizabeth Warren noted to her supporters that the Senate had a big test yesterday-- and flunked it. She pointed out that Senate Republicans filibustered a vote on the Reed-Harkin Student Loan Affordability Act-- legislation that would freeze federal Stafford student loan interest rates at 3.4% before the big July 1st deadline. A majority of senators voted to shut down Miss McConnell's deranged anti-student filibuster, but every Republican plus multimillionaires Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Angus King (I-ME), killed the amendment by defeating cloture. "Let me just make it clear," wrote Warren. "This wasn’t my own bill to help students more by lowering interest rates to 0.75%, the same rate the banks pay. This was a bill that would simply extend the current 3.4% rate for two more years... Are we really a country that wants to push our kids tens of thousands of dollars into debt to go to school? Or are we a country that believes investing in our kids-- from Head Start to college-- to put the conditions in place so that everyone has the chance to succeed?"

She probably knows the answer to that question. The deck is stacked against us-- which reminds me of a George Carlin video I haven't watched in a while, The American Dream:



Van Jones has a different way of expressing some of the same ideas-- and he did so for CNN this week. His point is societal, not just something that impacts students. "The approximately $1.1 trillion in student debt out there already," he warns, "constitutes a crisis for every one of us." Like anyone with a lick of sense, he understands why Elizabeth Warren's proposal to cut student loan rates to 0.75% is something that wouldn't just be great for students but for the whole society.

It is the only form of household debt that has continued to rise during the Great Recession. It is also the only form of debt that cannot be discharged under bankruptcy or even death, as parents who have lost children have discovered to their horror. It is preventing young people from buying homes and starting businesses.

In short, student debt is a $1.1 trillion anvil dragging down the entire U.S. economy.

Unfortunately, the conversation in Washington is not about big fixes, but simply how to avoid making matters worse by letting interest rates rise.

...A few weeks ago, Warren, D-Massachusetts, proposed groundbreaking legislation that would give students the same deal that big Wall Street banks get. This bill is good policy, and even better politics.

After all, why are we loaning money to mega-profitable international financial institutions at 0.75%, but demanding up to nine times more from our own young people?

By comparison, the otherwise ideal Harkin-Reid proposal for a two-year extension of the current 3.4% rate is simply not as ambitious.

Unfortunately, the proposals with the most energy behind them are worse than both these options. House Republicans, the Obama administration, and a number of senators are all pushing to permanently tie the rate for student loans to the government's borrowing costs.

It may seem commonsense, but the devil is in the details.

For instance, the Republican plan passed recently is just plain bad for students. Interest rates on July 1 would actually be higher than 6.8% for some borrowers, and vary wildly and unpredictably over the lifetime of the loan. The government would mark up the costs 2.5% to 4.5%, based on the type of loan. The profit would pay down a deficit young people did not create, instead of funding education.

The Obama plan, by contrast, has better terms for borrowers and would offer fixed-rate loans that will not suddenly spike in cost. But it lacks any cap on how high interest rates can go, and continues the worrying practice of the government profiting off student loans.

As for borrowers who already have loans? Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, has proposed allowing students to simply refinance their old loans at today's historically low rates. It is almost shocking that you cannot do this already. California Democratic Rep. Karen Bass' Student Loan Fairness Act would make repayment fairer and easier.

Young people should be rallying behind the Warren, Bass, and Gillibrand bills. But they can and should demand a whole lot more.

The problem is not just that the cost of borrowing could go up. The real problem is the skyrocketing cost of tuition that is forcing students to take on unmanageable levels of debt in the first place. It is in our leaders' own best interests to do something about that.

After all, millennials will make up one-third of eligible voters in 2020. It is no accident that the two best Senate bills were introduced by senators-- Warren and Gillibrand-- who have been rumored as future presidential candidates.

But at the end of the day, this is not a student issue. It is not a youth issue. This is a corrosive crisis that touches your life whether you know it or not. If you live in the United States of America, this is your issue.

I don't get out much. I just sit and blog all day. When I worked at Warner Bros. all the employees had been well-vetted and they all did their jobs well and if they started performing badly, there was an institutional policy of trying to help straighten them out-- like with free drug counseling, for example-- and then, if they weren't performing in a way that was conducive to a well-functioning, successful company, they would have to find another job someplace else. That rarely happened. Since leaving, I've realized how good I had it at Warner Bros. Everywhere else all I run into is grotesque incompetence and people who wouldn't last a week at Warner Bros. I've been spending a lot of time at the UCLA Medical Center in the last few months. Don't get sick. (This will make you sick and, I swear, isn't worth it.) Other than the doctors (fingers crossed) no one seems qualified to do their jobs at UCLA. It's as bad as going to a bank. The people who work there are uneducated, incapable of problem-solving, divorced from the joys of doing a good job, and, worst of all, a danger to the well-functioning organization. That, I've come to conclude, is because society doesn't want to invest in good universal education.

Keystone XL Pipeline-- The Coming Catastrophe, Politically Speaking

"If he honestly believes," says Van Jones in the video clip above, "that this pipeline-- which will be a huge part of his legacy-- is a good thing, he should call it the Obama Tar Sands Pipeline." Yes, a huge part of his legacy. The House may have made it easy for him-- whichever decision he makes. Last week they passed H.R. 3, which removes Obama from the decision-making process, despite this being a deal that involves the U.S. border, over which he has constitutional authority. So... he can veto it on that basis alone-- if it passes the Senate (a distinct possibility, since the majority of the whores in that esteemed body have already come out in favor). Of course, if Obama really wants the pipeline to go through and just would rather avoid the stain on his legacy, he could let that go through and say "Congress did it, not me," although only idiots-- so, roughly, half the voters, could possibly buy into that lame excuse.

When the House voted not a single Republican voted NO, although Planet Justin (Amash-R-MI) voted "present." The real horror, though was that 19 Democrats scurried across the aisle to vote with the GOP, not just for the Keystone XL Pipeline, but to remove Obama from the process. And they weren't all just the Blue Dog reactionaries and racists. Here's the whole list:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Cheri Bustos (IL)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog/New Dem-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Bill Enyart (IL)
• Al Green (TX)
• Gene Green (TX)
• Ruben Hinojosa (TX)
• Sean Maloney (New Dem-NY)
• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)
• John Yarmuth (KY)

If any of these 19 are your congressmember... well, let me suggest you go back to the tape up top and listen to it again. As for the Senate, every single Republican plus 17 Democrats... must not see it the way Van does. These Democrats all voted for Keystone XL. Any of 'em yours?

• Max Baucus (MT- $394,915)
• Mark Begich (AK- $229,705)
• Michael Bennet (CO- $149,920)
• Tom Carper (DE- $88,060)
• Bob Casey (PA- $129,100)
• Chris Coons (DE- $19,373)
• Joe Donnelly (IN- $7,800)
• Kay Hagen (NC- $22,350)
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND- $87,450)
• Tim Johnson (SD- $131,506)
• Mary Landrieu (LA- $1,086,084)
• Joe Manchin (WV- $256,150)
• Claire McCaskill (MO- $84,208)
• Bill Nelson (FL- $94,617)
• Mark Pryor (AR- $212,800)
• John Tester (MT- $59,366)
• Mark Warner (VA- $89,800)

As you've probably guessed, the money next to each senator's name is the amount of legalistic bribes they've taken so far from Big Oil and Gas. In recent years, the industry has reserved all their big bucks for Republicans (+ Mary Landrieu and ex-Senator Blanche Lincoln), but they still give some chickenfeed to a few Democratic cheap dates.

Occupy L.A.... Or Not

Joke's on me. When I got home I had an irresistible urge to wash my car... so at least I accomplished that. Oh, and the best thing about my trip downtown to Occupy L.A. today was that KCRW played a great new Tom Waits song as I was driving home.

I went alone. None of my friends would come. "It's too early." "It's too late." "I'm hung over." "Howie who?... this is a bad connection; call back some other time." Screw them, I was energized. After all I went to the first big Tea Party rally in L.A.; and if I couldn't go to Wall Street for the real thing, I would go share a little solidarity with my L.A. brothers and sisters. I even drove through Historic Filipinotown and Angeleno Heights to get that working class camaraderie in full gear. And just as I was leaving the phone rang and it was a kid I know from New York who's in town and wanted to get together. I shouldn't call him a kid anymore. He's a grownup now... and a lawyer who manages rock bands. I was positive he'd want to drive over with me. "OccupyWallStreet," he repeated tentatively. "I think I heard of them. Kind of salsa-punk?" I explained. He passed. But he promised to read the Nick Kristof piece in the NY Times.

After flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.

“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards-- mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches-- but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.

I tweeted that the protest reminded me a bit of Tahrir Square in Cairo, and that raised eyebrows. True, no bullets are whizzing around, and the movement won’t unseat any dictators. But there is the same cohort of alienated young people, and the same savvy use of Twitter and other social media to recruit more participants. Most of all, there’s a similar tide of youthful frustration with a political and economic system that protesters regard as broken, corrupt, unresponsive and unaccountable.

“This was absolutely inspired by Tahrir Square, by the Arab Spring movement,” said Tyler Combelic, 27, a Web designer from Brooklyn who is a spokesman for the occupiers. “Enough is enough!”

The protesters are dazzling in their Internet skills, and impressive in their organization. The square is divided into a reception area, a media zone, a medical clinic, a library and a cafeteria. The protesters’ Web site includes links allowing supporters anywhere in the world to go online and order pizzas (vegan preferred) from a local pizzeria that delivers them to the square.

In a tribute to the ingenuity of capitalism, the pizzeria quickly added a new item to its menu: the “OccuPie special.”

Where the movement falters is in its demands: It doesn’t really have any. The participants pursue causes that are sometimes quixotic-- like the protester who calls for removing Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill because of his brutality to American Indians. So let me try to help.

I don’t share the antimarket sentiments of many of the protesters. Banks are invaluable institutions that, when functioning properly, move capital to its best use and raise living standards. But it’s also true that soaring leverage not only nurtured soaring bank profits in good years, but also soaring risks for the public in bad years.

In effect, the banks socialized risk and privatized profits. Securitizing mortgages, for example, made many bankers wealthy while ultimately leaving governments indebted and citizens homeless.

We’ve seen that inadequately regulated, too-big-to-fail banks can undermine the public interest rather than serve it-- and in the last few years, banks got away with murder. It’s infuriating to see bankers who were rescued by taxpayers now moan about regulations intended to prevent the next bail-out. And it’s important that protesters spotlight rising inequality: does it feel right to anyone that the top 1 percent of Americans now possess a greater collective net worth than the entire bottom 90 percent?

One of my wiser friends who avoided going downtown with me, simply said, "I think the NY protest is different. L.A. doesn't know from Wall Street." How right she was! I didn't really know exactly where City Hall was. I mean, like, I know the area it's in... near the Disney Center. So I drove there and parked and figured I'd walk around and either see a commotion or ask someone. Lucky for me five happy-go-lucky lesbians around my age where walking up the hill while I was coming to grips with the fact that the parking meter was not only in effect on Saturdays, but that it takes twenty-five cents for every 10 minutes. And they excuse no increased COLAs by telling seniors there's zero inflation! Anyway, the friendliest of the crew told me City Hall was exactly 3 blocks away and on the very street-- First-- I was on and "see that giant tower-- that's it. But be prepared for some abuse." Abuse? "Is this your Prius? Some guy at the mic is yelling about what self-satisfied assholes Prius owners are." She owns one too. I guessed that was why they were headed in the opposite direction.

The first thing I saw when I got down the hill was a dozen or so young Ron Paul activists waving signs about The Fed and about Ron Paul at passing cars. Half of them were Hispanic and very passionate and melodramatic. I'm guessing they haven't read much of Dave Neiwert's stuff about Ron Paul. Oh, well... I wasn't about to let some skunks spoil my picnic. Into the little park I went. And the little park was... filled with Ron Paul activists. And Revolutionary Communist Party, USA activists. It was filled with the people who stand in front of the post office and rant and rave and bother everyone going to mail a package. And they had a small, inadequate sound system-- and an audience. The audience was busy making signs and posters. Apparently this protest is about making signs and posters. And they were cool.

Reading them was the best part. Some managed to get entire political philosophies on them. Others just said stuff like "John Galt Can Go To Hell," "No Banks Period," "The Invisible Hand Bitch-Slapped Us," "Occupy Wall Street, Not Iraq and Afghanistan." One said "Free Hugs For Activists." Oddly I saw a ton of Joy Division shirts.

And there was a lot of ranting and raving about a "resource based economy" by very well-rehearsed quasi-professional street speakers. Either the Paulistas or the Bob Avakian Communists; hard to tell. I read the morning session was better and not run by the lunatics. I missed the beginning because I was hosting the newest Blue America candidate, Mary Jo Kilroy, at Crooks and Liars. Digby asked her what she thinks of the Occupy Wall Street/We Are The 99% movement before I could.

Mary Jo: The protests on Wall Street demonstrate the anger and discontent that remains around the country over the damage to the economy that reckless Wall Street behavior caused, the lack of accountability, the lack of jobs, and the stranglehold that corporate money has on our political process. I share that anger. And the 99% of us need a voice in Washington. I will work for jobs, to protect people's homes, their savings, their Social Security and pensions. I want to make sure young people have a future. I disagree with the protesters who say that they don't believe in voting. It is a power that people in other countries fight to achieve. And the protesters, while for the 99%, do not seem to have a clear demand or political agenda. In 2010, the Tea Party seemed to harness some of the same anger but used it politically to defeat Democrats, and to push the deficit as the country's main problem rather than the loss of jobs.

Digby: Well, the difference is that the Tea Party was organized and promoted by corporations and corporate media that backs the Republican Party and this is a genuine grassroots uprising. I think those always start from this emotional sense of dissent and then grow more organized with time. It's only been a couple of weeks, after all.

It's terrible that there's such a sense of despair about the system that some people don't think voting helps anymore, but I understand where it's coming from. After the high of 2008, there was bound to be a let-down among the young and idealistic in any case-- and the let-down has been much more precipitous than it needed to be. It's beyond political-- their lives are really being impacted.

I hope you are able to articulate the feelings of these protesters in your campaign. People need to see that politicians "get it" and if they do, I think they'll support them. Nobody wants to give up on the government-- they're just not feeling heard there.

I think your voice will be important.

That was more inspiring than what I saw at City Hall, though... what kind of revealed wisdom could I have possibly expected to see? I guess I'm a worked up because I've been reading the second edition of David Korten's fantabulous Agenda For A New Economy, a Declaration of Independence from Wall Street. It would serve all the protesters well-- not to mention the public. "Leadership for transformational change," he reminds us on page 1, "must come, as it always has, from outside the institutions of power." His book is a call for a national conversation, the one-- it appears-- OccupyWallStreet is getting started.

Most calls for action seek only to limit the excesses and deceptions of greedy bankers and financiers. We have yet to engage a much-needed national-conversation that addresses essential, yet unasked, questions. For example:

1- Do Wall Street institutions do anything so vital for the national interest as to justify opening the national purse strings and showering them with trillions of dollars in order to save them from the consequences of their own excess?

2- Is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion that has no substance yet carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?

3- Might there be other ways to provide necessary and beneficial financial services with greater effectiveness and at a lower cost?

I suspect most of us would answer, as Korten does, no, yes, yes. He says that "ultimately it comes down to a question of the values we believe the economy should serve. Should it give priority to money, or to life? To the fortunes of the few, or the well-being of all? ... Our future and that of our children depend on replacing the values and the institutions of the Wall Street economy with the culture and institutions of a New Economy designed to provide an adequate and satisfying livelihood for all people in balanced relationship to Earth's biosphere."

I guess that's what they were all doing and saying-- one way or the other-- downtown today too. Maybe I should call Amato and suggest he get everyone a copy of Korten's book instead of more pizza. Radiohead didn't play and there's still no articulated unified "aims" on Wall Street, but Outernational is promising to play in L.A. and they're way more to the point and, L.A. needs something like that to help get it up to speed with NY quicker anyway.

By the way, you won't find many as eloquent and as prescient as Van Jones in describing what's going on around OccupyWallStreet. This weekend at HuffPo he hit the mail right on the noggin:

Wall Street has long been the home of the biggest threat to American Democracy. Now it has become home to what may be our best hope for rescuing it.

For everyone who loves this country, for everyone whose heart is breaking for the growing ranks of the poor, for everyone who is seething at the unopposed demolition of America's working and middle class: the time has come to get off the fence.

A new generation has gone to the scene of the crimes committed against our future. The time has come for all people of good will to give our full-throated backing to the young people of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The young heroes on Wall Street today baffle the world because they have issued no demands. The villains of Wall Street had their demands-- insisting upon a massive bailout for themselves in 2008, while they pocketed million dollar bonuses. The Wall Street protesters are not seeking a bailout for themselves; they are working to bail out democracy.

The American experiment in self-governance is at a moment of crisis. The political system thus far has proven itself incapable of responding to a once in a lifetime economic calamity. With income inequality and unemployment at the highest rates since the Great Depression, it's no wonder that almost 80 percent of the country thinks we're on the wrong track.

...The hundreds of young people from all five boroughs that camp out every night, in the heart of the financial district, in the rain and the cold, at risk of arrest, are providing the inspiration to draw more and more out of the shadows and into the bright light of the public square. The occupation grows larger and more diverse every day. Young people, the majority of whom are under 25 and have never before engaged in activism, are managing the arduous task of a consensus rules meeting with no sound system. The nightly general assemblies are attracting crowds in the thousands to stand amongst a group of their peers and debate our path forward as a people.

The occupation is a revival of a proud tradition of authentic, people-powered movements that have been dormant-- and that we need now more than ever. It is building into the kind of massive public demonstrations-- like those in Egypt, Madison, and Santiago-- that can shake the foundation of a system of power that has lost sight of the public good.

Now is our time to choose. Will we keep rewarding those whose financial manipulations have brought us to ruin? Or will we stand with those whose democratic innovations are breathing life into our finest ideals? Both groups are within blocks of each other in downtown Manhattan.

For the past 30 years, the country has stood behind the titans on Wall Street and their values. We listened when they said that their banks were too big too fail. Today, there is only one thing that's too big to fail: the dreams of this new generation, finding its voice in Liberty Park. All of America should now stand with them.

Does Raising Taxes On The Rich And On Corporations Hurt the Economy?

Always a big mistake to let fascists set the rules of the field. When will President Obama ever learn that? As Chris Cillizza pointed out in the Washington Post earlier, Obama's "grand bargain" with GOP fascists means defeat for the American people and defeat for his own political party.

The news that President Obama is privately urging congressional Democrats to consider major changes to Social Security and Medicare as part of a so-called "grand bargain" on the federal debt has considerable political implications.

For months Democratic strategists have pointed to the House vote in favor of a budget proposal put forward by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan that would transform Medicare into a voucher program as their silver bullet heading into the 2012 congressional election.

"Our three most important issues: Medicare, Medicare and Medicare," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said recently when asked how her party could reclaim the majority in 2012.

So, might Obama's decision to put Medicare on the table rob his party of a prized political issue heading into the next election? There's an active debate within the party on that very question.

Democratic strategists are cautiously optimistic that such a scenario won't come to pass, insisting that making changes to strengthen Medicare-- if that comes to pass-- is a very different thing from what they describe as a drastic overhaul of the program being proposed by Ryan.

...The thinking among [progressives-- as opposed to Democratic Party careerists and hacks] is that voters won’t delve deeply enough into the specifics of the Medicare proposals to differentiate between what the Obama White House wants and what Ryan pushed.

"A grand bargain on Medicare will let Republicans who support the deal off the hook on their Ryan budget vote," said one senior Democratic operative granted anonymity to speak candidly about strategy. "If attacked on the Ryan budget they can easily counter they voted for the same thing Obama supported. Poof."

No matter where you come down on this particular debate, it does highlight an important political reality: what's good for the president is not always what's good for his party in the House and Senate.

That's why Obama is thick as thieves with the likes of Wall Street slime like Tiny Tim Geithner and Rahm Emanuel-- and why he doesn't give a hoot what people like Paul Krugman or Van Jones (see the video above) have to say. Today we've heard some of the initial reactions to Obama's "grand bargain" strategy. Corporate whores like Third Way, of course, are tickled pink. Bernie Sanders, Raúl Grijalva, Keith Ellison, AARP and the members of MoveOn are fuming. Even Nancy Pelosi says Democrats will not support Obama on this crazy jag right. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse adds, "It's time for a shared sacrifice. We need to unequivocally declare that benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare are off the table. We cannot solve the deficit crisis on the back of our seniors. We need all Americans to pay their fair share."

And two dozen House progressives-- Raúl Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Mike Capuano, Judy Chu, Hansen Clarke, John Conyers, Danny Davis, Sam Farr, Bob Filner, Marcia Fudge, Luis Gutierrez, Mike Honda, Sheila Jackson Lee, Hank Johnson, John Lewis, Jim McGovern, Jerry Nadler, Grace Napolitano, Chellie Pingree, Ed Pastor, Pete Stark, Bennie Thompson, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey-- sent Obama a letter laying out their demands that any final budget deal generate significant revenue and avoid cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

First, any cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be taken off the table. The individuals depending on these three programs deserve well-conceived improvements, not deep, ideologically driven cuts with harmful consequences... Second, revenue increases must be a meaningful part of any agreement. Tax breaks benefiting the very richest Americans should be eliminated as part of this deal... These points are essential for any deal on the debt ceiling, but more work to rebuild the economy will remain after these negotiations have concluded... We stand ready to work with the Administration responsibly to increase the debt ceiling. The middle class has experienced enough pain during the last three years. Republicans are willing to inflict even more. We will not join them.

Needless to say, California Blue Dog Mike Thompson would never sign on to a letter like this. And it now looks like redistricting will put him down into Lynn Woolsey's old district (Marin and Sonoma), where he'll be facing progressive champion Norman Solomon. We asked Norman, who has been endorsed by Blue America, where he stands on this debate between progressives and conservatives. Like all the Blue America candidates, he would certainly have signed on to the letter to Obama, plans to join the Progressive Caucus and told us:

Contrary to myth, Social Security is solvent-- and many of the proposals to fix what isn't broken would actually 'save' Social Security by doing irreversible damage. For instance, the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security is already too low, yet now we're seeing a big push to cut COLA-- which would have devastating effects, especially harming women and low-income families. Let's keep in mind that about one-third of Social Security recipients depend on it for more than 90 percent of their income. The Obama administration should be protecting seniors and the most vulnerable among us, not using them as pawns in budget negotiations. The Republicans in Congress are out to destroy Social Security and Medicare-- while many Democrats in Washington, including the president, are putting those essential programs on the chopping block. This is outrageous. I will fight to protect Social Security and Medicare to my last breath.

Nick Ruiz, the Blue America-backed candidate in central Florida sees this much the way Norman does and thinks Democratic candidates need to speak out and speak out loudly.

"America's liberalism should never be one of fear and denial. Ours should be a liberalism of lions. There is an old wisdom that to lead one must often follow. But Barack Obama is following the wrong people. The citizen-voters that put him in office, did so because they believed he symbolized a change in the status quo, an opportunity to expand upon the great American event that is the New Deal.

It cannot be the case that the progressive citizens of America must be made to pass through the filter of the President. It must be the other way around. We embody what the majority of Americans desire for their country - and literally every survey confirms it.

Democracy requires not the mechanical reproduction of the status quo. It requires that truth challenges falsity. It requires that we challenge any leader that betrays our principles. Obama has not yet earned the Democratic nomination for 2012. Until he does he should be challenged. Who will rise to the occasion on behalf of the majority of Americans?"

I also heard from another Blue America-backed House candidate, Ed Potosnak (D-NJ), a very loyal Democrat who was astounded by Obama's connivance with the Republicans on the entirely manufactured debt ceiling "crisis." He told me this morning, sadly I think, that "our duly elected officials are turning their backs on one of our most vulnerable groups, our seniors, when what seniors really need is someone to fight for them. I am extremely disappointed the President has chosen to target struggling seniors in an attempt to reduce the deficit. Trillions of dollars and countless lives have been lost in recent unfunded wars. When I am in Congress I will fight against cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid and will work to significantly reduce military spending (currently 63% of our nation's discretionary spending)."

You can support Norman's, Ed's and Nick's campaigns here, on a page dedicated to candidates who put American families first, not narrow partisan interests, let alone the demands from Wall Street and Big Business which drive most national politics. John Laesch, a union carpenter who hastened the political demise of then-Speaker Denny Hastert, hasn't declared his candidacy yet-- but he's likely to. When he does, Blue America will endorse him... the same day. I always turn to him for advise on matters of importance to working families. This morning he voiced profound disappointment in President Obama:

It is reprehensible that Republicans and President Obama want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits on those who have played by the rules and paid into the system their whole lives. “Cutting” or even “saving” Social Security does nothing for senior citizens who are facing escalating costs for food, prescriptions and rent. If we want to get serious about protecting the most successful safety net program in American history, one thing we absolutely need to do is lift the cap on high income earners who make more than $106,800 per year.

The decision by Republicans and President Obama to shrink benefits from senior citizens who are already struggling on fixed incomes signals that a page has been turned in the painful saga known as the war on the middle class. During this recession-turning-depression, working people are taking it on the chin again, and again, and again while those who created the economic crisis are making out like bandits. It is wrong. It is un-American. It needs to be stopped.

That brings us to two final items: Bernie Sander's inspiring speech yesterday on the Senate floor (below) and Paul Krugman's late-in-the-day column for the Times. He thinks Democrats need to be very worried about Obama's sell-out to the Republicans and their-- and, let's be honest, his-- Big Business financiers.

On Thursday, President Obama met with Republicans to discuss a debt deal. We don’t know exactly what was proposed, but news reports before the meeting suggested that Mr. Obama is offering huge spending cuts, possibly including cuts to Social Security and an end to Medicare’s status as a program available in full to all Americans, regardless of income.

...It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.’s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it’s the simple truth.

One striking example of this rightward shift came in last weekend’s presidential address, in which Mr. Obama had this to say about the economics of the budget: “Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.”

That’s three of the right’s favorite economic fallacies in just two sentences. No, the government shouldn’t budget the way families do; on the contrary, trying to balance the budget in times of economic distress is a recipe for deepening the slump. Spending cuts right now wouldn’t “put the economy on sounder footing.” They would reduce growth and raise unemployment. And last but not least, businesses aren’t holding back because they lack confidence in government policies; they’re holding back because they don’t have enough customers-- a problem that would be made worse, not better, by short-term spending cuts.

In his brief remarks after Thursday’s meeting, by the way, Mr. Obama seemed to reiterate the Herbert Hooveresque view that deficit reduction is what we need to “grow the economy.”

People have asked me why the president’s economic advisers aren’t telling him not to believe in the confidence fairy-- that is, not to believe the assertion, popular on the right but overwhelmingly refuted by the evidence, that slashing spending in the face of a depressed economy will magically create jobs. My answer is, what economic advisers? Almost all the high-profile economists who joined the Obama administration early on have either left or are leaving.

Nor have they been replaced. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, there are a “stunning” number of vacancies in important economic posts. So who’s defining the administration’s economic views?

Some of what we’re hearing is presumably coming from the political team, whose members seem to believe that a move toward Republican positions, reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” in the 1990s, is the key to Mr. Obama’s re-election. And Mr. Clinton did, indeed, rebound from a big defeat in the 1994 midterms to win big two years later. But some of us think that the rebound had less to do with his rhetorical move to the center than with the five million jobs the economy added over those two years-- an achievement not likely to be repeated this time, especially not in the face of harsh spending cuts.

Anyway, I don’t believe that it’s all political calculation. Watching Mr. Obama and listening to his recent statements, it’s hard not to get the impression that he is now turning for advice to people who really believe that the deficit, not unemployment, is the top issue facing America right now, and who also believe that the great bulk of deficit reduction should come from spending cuts. It’s worth noting that even Republicans weren’t suggesting cuts to Social Security; this is something Mr. Obama and those he listens to apparently want for its own sake.

Which raises the big question: If a debt deal does emerge, and it overwhelmingly reflects conservative priorities and ideology, should Democrats in Congress vote for it?

Mr. Obama’s people will no doubt argue that their fellow party members should trust him, that whatever deal emerges was the best he could get. But it’s hard to see why a president who has gone out of his way to echo Republican rhetoric and endorse false conservative views deserves that kind of trust.

Some claim that this whole dust-up is just more Obaman 18 dimensional chess and that he knows the Republicans will never sign off on their end of the "grand design" (tax increases on millionaires)... but, on a brighter note, let's take our fate into our own hands, leave Obama to his own, and help elect actual progressives who will fight for us not for Wall Street. More like this guy:

Why We Must Set The Bar High For Barack Obama

The speech below was given the same week as the inaugural. It's far more memorable-- and far more important for progressives and activists. Obama the candidate was a potent symbol of equality-- as was Hillary Clinton-- but anyone who ever bought into the Republican line that he was the "most progressive" Democrat in the Senate was kidding themselves. Obama's voting record was always down at the bottom of the heap with Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, Landrieu, Pryor, Baucus... As we mentioned dozens of times during the primary, he was never as progressive as the more moderate, less conservative junior senator from New York. "Hope" and "Change" were goals we had to work actively for; they still are.