Shock Doctrine: While the Nation Mourns, Obama Cuts our Safety Net for the Elderly.

[grahamhgreen]

Please tell me this is not what's happening!

"The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy." - http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine

[HiPointDem]

1. not just for the elderly. chained cpi would affect a number of programs, including i believe

federal pensions.

[annabanana]

5. It affects EVERYONE.. except maybe

those who are stinking rich.. or those who don't need food or shelter.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

2. Merry Christmas, suckers!

[MrSlayer]

3. Hey, it's just a rumor and if not, it's not THAT bad.

After all, we always have to go at least a little to the right to avoid going to the extreme right. It's not like we ever win elections or anything that says things should move back in the direction of FDR or even Richard fucking Nixon. Oh no. Never that.

Eat the shit sandwich, at least there's bread and mustard. The other side won't even give you that. No reason we should go back to bologna and cheese just because it's better for everyone. We shouldn't even ask for it, doing so equates you to a teabagger.

That's what I hear anyway.

[Octafish]

14. Well heard.

I'm always proud to get back in line, the end of the line, but it's the shit sandwich what makes the inmates in the next yard over jealous.

[grahamhgreen]

15. And since the shit sandwich is cheaper than the bologna,

according to a chained CPI, that means your cost of living has gone down, so now we can reduce your payments even further!

In other words the price of bologna went up so you bought the less expensive shit, so it's not really inflation cause you spent the same money!

Or, as the Bureau of Labor statistics says, "If the price of pork increases while the price of beef does not, consumers might shift away from pork to beef. The C-CPI-U is designed to account for this type of consumer substitution between CPI item categories. In this example, the C-CPI-U would rise, but not by as much as an index that was based on fixed purchase patterns." http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpisupqa.htm

Ta Da!

[WiffenPoof]

4. ...same as the boss

But just a smidge to the right.

[cthulu2016]

6. This is not what's happening

The deadline of the 1st was in place long ago.

Obama was going to do some republican-friendly nonsense in mid-late December 2012 with or without a school shooting.

[Fumesucker]

9. ...

[grahamhgreen]

11. Since SS has nothing to do with reducing the deficit,

one must ask why cuts are on the table in deficit talks.....?

[deutsey]

12. Yes, that's what I'd like to know. n/t

[fasttense]

7. The chain-CPI will take the money we Baby Boomers put aside for OUR Social Security

and give it to those making $400,000 to $250,000 a year. I'm so glad that all those elderly people and soon to be elderly are able to support some rich F**ker. Thanks Obama, you're the best RepubliCON President we ever had since Clinton reformed our welfare system.

How does America like their Austerity programs now?

We are cutting out food for your grandmother and poor children so that we can prove to the bankers (that we rescued from collapse 4 years ago) that we are able to pay back they money that we loaned them to loan back to us.

[jtuck004]

10. And then, with a reduced SS check, they can't pay for their Part B Medicare.

Off to the Emergency room...

It won't be long at all b4 this little farce gets expensive.

[delrem]

8. Naomi Klein's brilliant analysis isolated a timeless strategy.

What the Dems do under Obama isn't an instance of shock doctrine in action. The annual "fiscal cliff" orchestration, the artificially forced "crisis", isn't shock doctrine level. It's just you, the US citizen, being gamed. Being shafted.

What the Dems under Obama, under "third way" and "centrist Dem" leadership are doing is long-term normative right-wing triangulation. In this they are complicit with the Reps in playing the identical game. Forget any so-called "progressive base". Such a thing isn't in play in US electoral politics. E.g. a single payer option never made "the table", and you got "Romneycare", and backroom deals with pharmaceutical co's, etc. - which, god help us, you were conditioned to be proud of as if it were an achievement. Dems even *bragged* that "Obamacare" was "Romneycare" in their ads. The right-wing big money base sets the forum and terms of debate, and even sets the adjudicators.

Third way centrist dems let the big-money think-tank outliers set an extreme "unthinkable" objective as a threatening base, then take a position in small ways objecting to that. This is their "triangulation". This squeezes the Reps and, hopefully for the "lesser of two evils crowd", the Dems win. Progressive thought doesn't even enter the picture.

As a result Dem/Rep economic, foreign, military policy is identical. The ideas left in play are social - e.g. Obama finally "evolved" re. don't ask don't tell. Note that Obama's "evolution" was from the "right", not the "left". This is, again, because the dynamic is right-wing triangulation, with the an extremist right-wing setting the "base".

[deutsey]

13. I agree

[grahamhgreen]

16. Well said,

although I do think there may a little bit of the shock doctrine going on as they try to sneak this in while the eyes of the nation are focused on the tragedy.... the timing is suspect, IMHO.

[Wilms]

17. ^

[kenny blankenship]

18. The last best hope may be Republicans

They may refuse to accept Obama's offer, no matter how much of their goals he promises to deliver for them. They did it last time, and it's the only reason cuts haven't happened already. They may do so again - but it's a weak reed to lash your hopes to a second or third time. Eventually the Pugs will accept and the Social Contract negotiated by FDR, and called the New Deal, will never stand up and walk again.

But President Obama, what about the Social Contract?
"I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further."

[grahamhgreen]

19. Sad that we're pinning our hopes on the Repubs rejecting Obama's offer to sell out

social security as part of a deficit deal that has nothing to do with social security...