Well they can’t ignore income inequality anymore.
Thank you Occupy Wall Street.
But despite the faux populist tone and understanding emanating from the White House, I’m not convinced President Obama or the rest of our politicians are getting the message.
If they were getting it, they wouldn’t be continuing to pursue policies that place the costs of our continuing economic crisis squarely on the backs of the 99 percent, while the 1 percent uses their political clout to avoid any inconvenience.
For example, the Obama administration has allowed California to cut hundreds of millions of dollars to Medi-Cal, which provides health care to the state’s poorest residents.
If the president’s party was getting it, the Democrats on the so-called Super Committee wouldn’t be pursuing a host of draconian cuts including $3 trillion in cuts to federal health care programs as part of a so-called “grand bargain,” along with some modest tax increases for the country’s wealthiest, you know “job creators,” who are just chomping at the bit to stop outsourcing jobs as soon as they cut yet another tax cut.
As for the Republicans, they’re maintaining the position that their corporate and Wall Street benefactors should have to pay fewer taxes, while the rest of us should get along with less.
I don’t know who these politicians think this bargaining is so grand for, certainly not the 99 percent.
They talk gamely about having “skin in the game” as though they’d be doing the suffering as a result of their proposed cuts. Meanwhile, the House members of the supercommittee did exceptionally well in their service during the third quarter, raking in nearly $372,000 in fundraising from the nation’s financial sector.
This disreputable bunch have turned what is supposed to be a serious democratic process into a demonstration of what our legislature has become – an auction where the government is for sale to the highest bidder, behind closed doors.
As the weather gets frostier in the nation’s capital, the Occupy movement might want to consider the supercommittee’s digs as someplace to get in out from out of the cold.