@Lash,
He won't be, no worries there. He'd rather get rich peddling crap the actually DO anything.
Nina Turner
@ninaturner
·
16m
The “stop progressives in primaries and don’t pass transformative legislation” strategy isn’t going to play well in November. There’s still time to change course, though.
Let’s see if Democrats decide if they want to win, or if they want to fundraise off the GOP taking control.
Tip
Nina Turner
@ninaturner
·
12m
There’s still time to strip Joe Manchin of his committee assignments if he upholds the filibuster.
There’s still time for
@POTUS
to cancel ALL student debt.
There’s still time for good things to happen if leadership wills it to happen.
DO. SOMETHING. DEMOCRATS.
Biden Taps Anti-Social Security Ideologue To Oversee Program
BY MATTHEW CUNNINGHAM-COOK – 21 JUN 2022 –
Last month, President Joe Biden nominated a longtime advocate of Social Security privatization and benefit cuts to a key board overseeing the Social Security system. The move comes as Republicans get ready to push cuts to Social Security and Medicare, if they end up winning control of Congress during the November’s midterms, as expected.
The development suggests that there could soon be a coordinated push in Washington to cut the Social Security program, which provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to 66 million Americans.
On May 13, Biden chose to nominate Andrew Biggs, a fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute think tank, for a Republican seat on the bipartisan Social Security Advisory Board, which was created in 1994 to consult the president and Congress about the Social Security system.
For years, Biggs has been a vocal critic of expanded Social Security and workers’ right to a secure, stable retirement free from the vagaries of the stock market. He has dismissed the retirement crisis as a non-issue and as recently as 2020 blamed problems with the Social Security system on “older Americans’ game of chicken.” And two decades ago, Biggs worked on a Bush administration commission that pushed to privatize Social Security.
In response to questions from The Lever, Biggs suggested he no longer favors privatizing Social Security. Instead, he said he now believes that nations’ Social Security-like programs should be “more focused on guaranteeing against poverty in old age while middle and high-income individuals take on greater responsibility for saving for retirement on their own, such as by the government establishing universal retirement savings accounts for every worker.”
Establishing such savings accounts would be a solution in search of a problem. Social Security is incredibly successful at delivering retirement benefits, and raising taxes on the wealthy would be a straightforward way to expand the program. Alternatively, creating retirement accounts invested in the stock market would involve a much more unwieldy and risky expansion of government programs — and would be a huge boon to Wall Street.
While the seat on the bipartisan board is by tradition assigned to a Republican, Biden could have chosen a moderate candidate — or even leaned on precedent to avoid the nomination process altogether. Former President Donald Trump routinely refused to nominate Democrats for seats on boards and commissions. Furthermore, Biden could use the efforts of Senate Republicans to block speedy confirmation of many of his nominees as justification for holding the seat open, said Jeff Hauser, director at the Revolving Door Project.
“If [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell’s caucus continues to slow-march consensus presidential nominees in order to limit the filling of vacant judgeships, independent agency commissioner slots, U.S. Attorney positions, and senior department officials,” said Hauser, “retaliation against an ardent opponent of Social Security would be both well warranted and good politics.”
“Carpal Tunnel Syndrome From Your Mouse Or Something”
For Biggs, attempting to milk government programs for private-sector profits is nothing new.
In 2001, Biggs was a staff analyst on George W. Bush’s commission on Social Security that advocated privatizing the government program by shifting the programs’ trust fund investments from U.S. Treasury bills to high-fee, high-risk “personal accounts” that seniors could use to invest Social Security assets in the stock and bond markets, like employees do with their 401(k) plans.
After that, Biggs spent four years working as an associate commissioner of the Social Security Administration, which administers the Social Security program, while Bush unsuccessfully pushed the unprecedented privatization efforts recommended by the 2001 commission.
A sample of Biggs’ writings on Social Security over the years shows that he:
Hand-waved away retirement insecurity for millions of Americans, saying that “only” 23 percent of seniors will have retirement incomes equal to or less than 75 percent of their average pre-retirement earnings.
Was concerned by Social Security taxes being raised on “upper-middle class Americans making as little as $140,000,” even though such a tax hike would massively increase long-term Social Security funding.
Endorsed cuts to Social Security, saying: “Most middle and upper-income retirees could survive just fine with slightly lower initial Social Security benefits and lower Cost of Living Adjustments after retirement.”
Argued that Social Security privatization would make Americans “not only richer, but also happier, healthier, more familial, smarter, and more active citizens.”
In 2013, Biggs justified the idea of raising the retirement age for Social Security benefits by saying that Americans’ “biggest on the job risk is, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome from your mouse or something like that.”.
For years, Biggs has led the American Enterprise Institute’s attacks on defined-benefit pensions in the public sector, pushing states and municipalities to lower the expected rate of return on their pension funds, which would make the funds look less promising and bolster the case for benefit cuts.
In 2016, President Barack Obama and Republican lawmakers appointed Biggs to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, the unelected body that effectively controls financial matters on the island, which has pushed for deep cuts in public employees’ pensions, while bailing out the island’s Wall Street bondholders.
Biggs’ background and past statements make him a questionable choice to fill the Social Security Advisory Board vacancy — if Biden had to fill the vacancy at all.
As Hauser at the Revolving Door Project pointed out, Trump would routinely refuse to nominate Democrats for the seats they were owed on other bipartisan boards and commissions, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Progressives called on Democratic lawmakers to speak up and demand that Trump make the appointments — but the calls were ignored.
“Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump quietly pocket vetoed potential appointees recommended by Chuck Schumer during the Trump presidency, and sadly, the Democratic leadership ignored our call for action and never raised a fuss about it publicly,” Hauser told The Lever.
“However, that passivity doesn’t change the fact that a precedent was set,” he added — suggesting Biden should use that precedent to avoid nominating extremists like Biggs.
Biden seems intent on turning the government over to the Republicans. My last post on Social Security and medicare, this by Robert Reich. Not canceling student debt. Meals for kids programs expired. Etc etc etc
Friends,
Larry Summers, briefly Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and then Obama’s chief economic advisor, told Bloomberg that "We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation -- in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment."
Rubbish. Using high unemployment to attack inflation is like reducing someone's fever by putting them in a freezer. It may work, but at a horrendous cost.
American workers are not responsible for today's inflation. Their wage gains have trailed inflation. It's neither fair nor practical to draft them into the fight against it. Worse yet, those drafted are likely to be among our most vulnerable, who are first to lose their jobs when the economy tumbles and the last to regain them.
There are far less draconian ways to reduce inflation -- such as using antitrust laws to pursue companies that are raising their prices while enjoying near record profits, subjecting them to a windfall profits tax, requiring all government contractors to keep a lid on prices, or, if all else fails, using price controls.
@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:
Biden seems intent on turning the government over to the Republicans. My last post on Social Security and medicare, this by Robert Reich. Not canceling student debt. Meals for kids programs expired. Etc etc etc
Friends,
Larry Summers, briefly Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and then Obama’s chief economic advisor, told Bloomberg that "We need five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation -- in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment."
Rubbish. Using high unemployment to attack inflation is like reducing someone's fever by putting them in a freezer. It may work, but at a horrendous cost.
American workers are not responsible for today's inflation. Their wage gains have trailed inflation. It's neither fair nor practical to draft them into the fight against it. Worse yet, those drafted are likely to be among our most vulnerable, who are first to lose their jobs when the economy tumbles and the last to regain them.
There are far less draconian ways to reduce inflation -- such as using antitrust laws to pursue companies that are raising their prices while enjoying near record profits, subjecting them to a windfall profits tax, requiring all government contractors to keep a lid on prices, or, if all else fails, using price controls.
You, Edgar, and Lash seem to be the ones "intent on turning the government over to the Republicans."
You both should be ashamed of yourselves for doing so, but I suspect you two are too full of yourselves to actually be ashamed.
Actions and attitudes similar to those with Stockholm syndrome have also been found in victims of sexual abuse, human trafficking, extremism, terrorism, economic oppression, financial repression, political repression and religious persecution. [10] This is because Stockholm syndrome can be argued as "another method of coping with the stress and danger...similar to some forms of coping in that the participants do not directly address the problem but find a way to cope with the situation by identifying with the aggressor. Coping mechanisms such as these can have a large impact on PTSD."[3]
Stockholm bank robbery
Main article: Norrmalmstorg robbery
In 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on parole, took four employees (three women and one man) of Kreditbanken, one of the largest banks in Stockholm, Sweden, hostage during a failed bank robbery. He negotiated the release from prison of his friend Clark Olofsson to assist him. They held the hostages captive for six days (23–28 August) in one of the bank's vaults. When the hostages were released, none of them would testify against either captor in court; instead, they began raising money for their defense.[4]
Possible evolutionary explanations
Evolutionarily speaking, research evidence exists to support the genuine scientific nature of Stockholm syndrome. Responses similar to those in human captives have been detected in some reptiles and mammals, primates in particular. Abuse and subsequent submission and appeasement by the victim have been observed among chimpanzees, leading to the theory that the Stockholm syndrome may have its roots in evolutionary needs.[30]
Life in the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness" (EEA) is thought by researchers such as Israeli military historian Azar Gat to be similar to that of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies. Gat asserts that war and abductions were typical of human pre-history. Being captured by neighbouring tribes was a relatively common event for women. In some of those tribes (the Yanomamo, for instance), practically everyone in the tribe is descended from a captive within the last three generations. As high as one in ten of females were abducted and incorporated into the tribe that captured them. Being captured and having their children killed may have been common; women who resisted capture risked being killed. When selection is intense and persistent, adaptive traits (such as capture-bonding) become universal to the population or species.[31]
Sounds like he read my post...and wants to pretend he didn't.
Stone that the Builder Refused
@LeftofCentrism
·
21h
Remember when they told us Bernie Sanders would be a terrible President because Congress would never go along with him?? Yeah Joe Biden’s got them eating out of his hand…
Nina Turner
@ninaturner
·
25m
Democrats need to start legislating like November is coming. Because it is.
Liberals seem to be the most formidable enemy of a progressive agenda these days. Conservatives huff and puff, but mostly it comes across as a kind of child-rant comedy. The far left does the real damage...and seems intent on doing much more.
If we end up a Nazi-like dictatorship (unfortunately, not an unlikely prospect anymore) it will be because of the damage American liberals did to American progressivism and the causes it espouses, not to any damage conservatives inflicted.
They seem intent on taking the economic woes out of the public's hide. They've always done that, but in this instance there is lttle hide left already.
Do your best, guys.
But make no mistake. You have become part of the traitor class now seeking to destroy our Republic.
According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, only 25% of young voters approve of the job POTUS is currently doing as President.
The party is headed for an absolute disaster in November because instead of listening to progressives, party leaders are siding with billionaires.
The pitch “but the GOP is so much worse” just doesn’t cut it and polling shows that.
- Nina Turner
@edgarblythe,
Quote:According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, only 25% of young voters approve of the job POTUS is currently doing as President.
I really wonder how many of these "young voters" have any idea about the combination of factors that have brought us to this point – sure, the economy is in trouble, but if the GOP takes complete legislative control does anyone really think they have a plan to c0nstruct a real economy that works for the people?
Quote:The pitch “but the GOP is so much worse” just doesn’t cut it and polling shows that.
There's no cure for willful ignorance. If people don't see the difference between the two parties and can't understand the institutional causes of gridlock and inaction, then the progressives have failed to deliver a convincing message. They should be working to
heighten the distinctions, not working to convince everyone that the parties are just the same.
I've never defended the Republicans.
Trying to see where we are better off two years later. An unnecessary war sapping our tax dollars. Trump's Social Security policy still in effect. No change in the minimum wage. Counting on higher interest rates driving down wages and employment to fight inflation. Lunch programs for school age children dropped. College loans not cleared. Manchin not facing any retribution at all for stymying bills. Threat to veto modernizing health care. - Nothing will substantially change.
The far right defends Trump against charges of treason, sedition, and a blatant attempt to steal an election…and essentially inciting a riot that saw our Capitol invaded. It also defends Trump against charges he is the first president not to honor the “peaceful transfer of power” protocol so essential to our special form of government.
They barely ever have a negative comment about him, despite the fact that almost all of the transgressions have been documented…and were done while everyone watched.
The far left DOES NOT EVEN ATTEMPT TO DEFEND Joe Biden…who is attempting to right huge wrongs…and managing an almost unmanageable economic situation. Essentially they are bad-mouthing Joe Biden for not curing cancer; for not making America the only country not heading for a recession; for not making America the only country not experiencing inflation right now; for not making America the only country not experiencing high gas prices.
The far left will not defend Joe Biden even though lots of defense is warranted…but the far right will defend that abomination, Trump, despite it being obvious he should not be defended.
The far left does as much damage to the Left as does the far right; the far left has become as much an enemy of the pursuits and goals of the left as has the far right.
This has to STOP!
