Can left & right unite – against cat food diet?

If our dysfunctional politicians can collaborate to do the bidding of the 1 percent, why can’t members of the 99 percent find ways to work with those we disagree with to protect all of our interests?

Specifically, can progressive Democrats who oppose President Obama’s proposed cuts to Social Security work with members of the Tea Party who also oppose the cuts – along with everything else the president does?

The gulf between these two groups is obviously deep and wide.

Rank and file Democrats tend to want to put government to work in their interests, and believe that it can. Meanwhile, the Tea Party sees the government as the perpetual problem, and the only good thing it could do is ... disappear altogether.

But on the single issue of Social Security, the two groups appear to enjoy a rare agreement – along with most of the rest of the country.

According to this 2011 Marist poll, voters identified with the Tea Party oppose cuts to Social Security nearly as strongly as voters from across the political spectrum: nearly 8 in 10 Tea Partiers are against the cuts. Of all voters, slightly more than 8 in 10 dislike such cuts.

As for the president, he would rather not be seen as cutting Social Security benefits at all. What he’s suggesting is a change to the way cost of living adjustments are calculated, called chained CPI, in exchange for more tax hikes. Supporters say chained CPI is more accurate because it reflects how people actually react to price increases.

According to this theory, if the price of hamburger goes up, people will switch to beans. So why should the government give you more money to buy hamburger, if you’re just going to go out and eat beans? Under chained CPI, Social Security benefits would be limited to increases in the cost of beans. As economist Michael Hudson says of chained CPI, “It’s not really a cost of living index. It’s a cost of lower living standards index.”

Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith has labeled it, “the cat food index.”

For many rank and file Democrats, it’s a bitter betrayal of President Obama’s 2012 campaign pledge to strengthen the middle class. It’s also a reversal of one of Obama’s unequivocal campaign promises as a candidate back in 2008. Drawing a contrast to his opponent, John McCain, Obama said McCain favored raising the retirement age and reducing Social Security cost of living adjustments. “Let me be clear,” candidate Obama said. “I will not do either.”

Stopping the president’s scheme will take more than just the efforts of his disgruntled base. President Obama seems to welcome their opposition, wearing it as a badge of honor. He would like people to think he’s making a principled, political sacrifice for the greater good of the country against the wishes of his own base.

Getting the 99 percenters in the Democratic base to work with their opposite numbers in the Tea Party might not be as outlandish as it first appears.

One of the founders of the Tea Party has already been reaching out to Democratic Party activists to discuss specific issues. Earlier this year, Mark Meckler met with MoveOn.org’s Joan Blades.about crony capitalism and with activist Jose Antonio Vargas  about immigration. These talks haven’t yielded action – yet. Here’s Meckler talking about it.

The Tea Party has its own links to the 1 percent that undermine its credibility as a grassroots activist movement – and its ability to fight for the interests of ordinary Americans.

The Tea Party has been closely linked to the Club for Growth and Freedomworks, big-money conservative Republican operations that in the past have pushed for privatization of Social Security, most recently pushed by President George W. Bush. Privatization would be a financial bonanza for Wall Street… and would have been a catastrophe for the rest of us if George Bush’s 2005 plan had gone into effect. Most Americans would have lost all their benefits in the great crash of 2008.

Earlier this month, when one conservative Oregon Republican member of Congress criticized the president’s Social Security scheme as “a shocking attack on seniors,” the Club for Growth threatened to find an even more conservative Republican to run against him. The Club for Growth apparently thinks chained CPI is a good downpayment on further, deeper Social Security cuts down the road.

Members of the Tea Party will have to decide whether they want to work for the interests of the elites in Club for Growth and Freedomworks or join with other ordinary citizens to fight for their own interests. (Meckler quit his leadership role with the Tea Party, saying it was becoming too top down)

The Democratic base will face its own challenges. Is it prepared to fight the president and Democratic leadership that,not so long ago it worked so hard to elect, and has defended so vociferously, despite growing income inequality and continuing high unemployment?

If the two groups found a way to move beyond their disagreements, that would really be something fresh in American politics, showing leadership to replace stale rhetoric with robust action in support of the majority of Americans. Not only could that coalition mobilize a successful campaign against Social Security cuts, it could throw a genuine scare into a complacent political class and the 1 percent it serves.

 

Austerity / Bipartisanship / Martin Column / President Barack Obama / Social Security / Tea Party - 04/22/2013

For lobbyists and their bosses, budget crisis is big winner

Turns out not everybody was distressed that Congress has been tied up in knots for months obsessed with the self-imposed fiscal cliff crisis.

The lobbying industry, which had previously been in the dumps because of the do-nothing Congress, came roaring back to life in 2012, due in large part to the prolonged budget crisis.

According to the Center For Public Integrity, about half of the country’s top 100 lobbying firms spend more in the fourth quarter last year than they did in the third quarter, and about half showed an overall increase for 2012 over the previous year.

The top spender was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which laid out a whopping $125 million in 2012, an 88 percent increase over the previous year. That doesn’t include the $36 million they paid to influence the outcome of the election. Another big spender was J.P. Morgan, which served up $8.8 million in lobbying and another $784,923 to influence the election.

This increased lobbying activity unfortunately goes on outside public view. Only later can we tally up the damage from this legalized corruption of our democracy – and our pocketbooks.

And when lobbyists win, so do the corporations that pay them big bucks.

I wrote earlier this month about the corporate goodies hidden away in the fiscal cliff deal that represented just a part of the lobbyists’ handiwork – a down payment from members of Congress on their debt to the corporations who foot the bill for their campaigns and other political adventures.

Because there was no grand bargain, Congress couldn’t go all the way on their corporate overlords’ agenda, such as implementing the Social Security and Medicare cuts the CEOs have been hammering away at.

One of the most recent glaring examples of how our government does corporate bidding in secret, contrary to the public good, is the recent favor Congress did for biotech and pharmaceutical giant Amgen, hidden in the fiscal cliff deal.

As revealed by investigative reporters for the New York Times, Amgen received a very profitable gift in that deal – an exemption from Medicare price controls for one its kidney dialysis drugs. It’s the second such exemption Amgen obtained for the drug, Sensipar, which accounted for $950 million in sales last year, an 18 percent increase over the previous year.

So the $7.6 million the company paid for lobbying, and another $1.7 million in political contributions the company showered on both parties, was a small price to pay the government to keep its mitts off the company’s hot property.

At the center of the fiscal cliff deal were two senators, one Democrat, Max Baucus, and one Republican, Mitch McConnell, who are prime recipients of Amgen’s generosity. Since 2007, Amgen has given Baucus $67,500 and McConnell $73,000.

Amgen has also donated $141,000 to President Obama, who signed off on the fiscal cliff deal.

Congress’ secret favor for Amgem is expected to cost Medicare $500 million.

In December, before the fiscal cliff deal was set, President Obama was stressing the importance of reducing Medicare costs.

“I’m willing to reduce our government’s Medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the cost of healthcare in this country," Obama said. "That's something that we all should agree on. We want to make sure that Medicare is there for future generations. But the current trajectory of health care costs is going up so high we've got to find ways to make sure that it’s sustainable."

The Amgen exemption also highlights the revolving door nature of business in Washington; current lobbyists for Amgen include former chiefs of staff for Baucus and McConnell.

A Vermont congressman has introduced legislation to undo Amgen’s sweet deal. Rep. Peter Welch, a Democrat, told the Los Angeles Times:  “Amgen managed to get a $500-million paragraph in the fiscal-cliff bill and virtually no one in Congress was aware of it. It’s a taxpayer ripoff and comes at a really bad time when we’re trying to control healthcare costs. Amgen should not be allowed to turn Medicare into a profit center.”

Call your representative and senator and let them know how you feel about major corporations like Amgen getting secret favors behind closed doors.

Action / Bipartisanship / Fiscal cliff / Martin Column / President Barack Obama - 01/28/2013

Guide to congressional cosmetics

President Obama praised the STOCK Act when he signed it into law in April as a good first step to rid Congress of financial conflicts that undermine public confidence.

But it’s really no more than a fast makeup job to cover up the continuing blemishes on our democracy and give the president and members of Congress some talking points for the campaign trail.
The STOCK Act is supposed to prohibit legislators from profiting from the nonpublic information they get on the job. The STOCK Act also prohibits members of Congress from participating in initial public offerings unavailable to the public, and provides some additional public disclosure of congressional stock trading.
But we already know that members of Congress do better than civilians when they invest in the stock market. According to a 2011 study, investment portfolios of members of the House beat the market by about 6 percent annually, mimicking the performance of the stock portfolios of their Senate colleagues.
As an example, the Washington Post reported, four congressmen sitting on a committee investigating deceptive billing practices by video game makers sold their stock in the country’s biggest video game maker, GameStop, one of the companies under investigation.
One of the most egregious examples is Sen. Tom Coburn, the Republican Oklahoma senator who has made a name for himself preaching government austerity and self-righteously criticizing both parties for not having the courage to make the cuts needed to reduce the debt.
But austerity and sacrifice were apparently not on Sen. Coburn’s mind when he bought $25,000 in bonds in a genetic technology company at the same time he released a hold on legislation that the company supported. A hold is an informal Senate practice by which a senator can stall a piece of legislation. Coburn, meanwhile, cast one of the few votes against the STOCK Act, dismissing it as nothing more than a stunt.
One clue to just how innocuous the STOCK Act is: it was opposed by only two votes in the House and three in the Senate. This confirms my theory that whenever you see much ballyhooed-bipartisanship at work, you can be sure that members of Congress are either doing the bidding of the 1 percent, or covering their own butts.
The bottom line is that while members of Congress pass laws that prohibit other government officials from presiding over companies and industries in which they have a financial interest, Congress effectively exempts itself from such broad restrictions.
Writing on Yahoo Finance, Ron DeLegge outlines the STOCK Act’s major flaws and omissions: it still allows the sleazy, little-known practice of members selling “political intelligence” to lobbyists as well as continuing to allow members of Congress to own stock in industries over which they can exert influence.
The STOCK Act reminds us, when it comes to Congress, we shouldn’t be distracted by lame cover-ups or blather about bipartisanship, we should follow the money.
And we shouldn’t forget: it’s not their money.
It’s our money.

Bipartisanship / Congress / Martin Column / President Barack Obama - 07/06/2012

Bipartisans, bankers and baloney

Along with protecting their profits, big banks also care deeply about getting revenge against those politicians who cross them.

That’s the message from the primary defeat of Sen. Richard Lugar, the veteran Indiana Republican who has been highly touted as one of the last of a vanishing breed of respectable bipartisan statesman-politicians.

Lugar, 80, was defeated by a tough-talking Tea Partier, Indiana state treasurer Richard Mourdock, who said his idea of compromise was bashing Democrats until they gave in.

While much of the media has blamed Lugar’s defeat on his willingness to work with Democrats, if you follow the money against Lugar, you’ll find other, familiar forces at work.

This was hardly a grassroots victory against the Washington status quo, unless by grassroots you mean the Financial Roundtable and the American Bankers Association.

As Politico and the Republic Report detailed, the attack on Lugar was funded by the Financial Services Roundtable and the American Bankers Association, along with Wall Street-backed anti-tax, anti-regulatory groups including Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth.

Even though Lugar opposed financial reform, Wall Street is still mad at him because he took the side of giant retailers like Target and Wal-Mart in another epic battle, over debit swipe fees.

The banks suffered a rare defeat in the Senate last year when it rejected a delay in implementing a rule that limited the amount banks could charge you to swipe your debit card, costing the banks about $16 billion. Lugar was one of the few Republicans who sided with the retailers to stand for election this year.

His defeat will no doubt serve as a useful example for legislators considering opposing Wall Street.

On key votes on bread and butter issues, Lugar the bipartisan voted against economic stimulus, and he favored extending unemployment benefits only if the Bush era tax cuts were extended.

I wouldn’t waste any tears for Lugar.

It’s only a matter of time until he lines up a lobbying deal, if he wants one. He can join his former Senate colleague from Indiana, Evan Bayh, a Democrat who was also celebrated as a great bipartisan.  After leaving the Senate gnashing his teeth over the increased partisan rancor, Bayh landed a sweet gig lobbying his former colleagues on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce.

If by bipartisan one means always ready to fight for corporate interests, big banks or the titans of retail, then both Lugar and Bayh fit the definition. But Lugar’s defeat is just the latest example of how the media and the Washington insiders persist in wringing their hands over the phony loss of bipartisanship while ignoring the much more compelling reality of corporations that wield way too much power in Washington at our expense.

 

 

 

 

Bipartisanship / Lobbying / Martin Column - 05/21/2012