Take that, Paul Ryan! Elizabeth Warren beats back Social Security plot

[DonViejo]

The years-long campaign to slash Social Security benefits has finally met its match

MICHAEL LIND

The Overton Window has shifted! At least in the case of Social Security.

The Overton Window — named for the late Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — is the frame through which acceptable options for public policy are viewed at any given time. Options that are outside of the frame (or “outside the box,” to use another metaphor) are deemed unworthy of consideration or mention by the bipartisan establishment, no matter how compelling those options may actually be. The Overton Window tends to be positioned by the owners and bureaucrats of the major media, who tend to share an elite consensus with politicians and the donors who fund them.

Until recently, in discussions of the future of Social Security the Overton Window was positioned to exclude any discussion of raising, rather than cutting, Social Security benefits. For the last generation, the range of permissible opinion with respect to the program — which most Americans depend on for nearly all of their income in old age — ranged from conservatives who wanted to abolish Social Security altogether, to press-anointed “progressives” and token Democrats who merely wanted to cut Social Security benefits. The option of maintaining scheduled Social Security benefits, and paying for them with higher taxes, was considered unworthy of discussion by the guardians of Overton Orthodoxy, both in the press and in the two major parties. As for expanding Social Security benefits — why, that’s crazy talk!

It’s safe to say that, within the bipartisan oligarchy, the alleged need to cut Social Security remains the consensus. But the Overton Window has shifted just a little to the left, and the idea of expanding Social Security, hitherto invisible through the frame, is now in the public field of vision.

The movement of the idea of expanding Social Security — from lunatic fringe idea to respectable subject of discussion — has been remarkably swift. For decades there have been a few lonely voices calling for benefits to be expanded, but they were consistently ignored. In recent years, the idea of expanding Social Security benefits has been promoted by the blogger Duncan Black (“Atrios”), the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Social Security Works and others. And in 2012 Sen. Tom Harkin introduced a bill to use a different inflation measure to raise Social Security — rather than using different measurements of inflation to cut benefits for the elderly, as President Obama and some other centrist Democrats and conservative Republicans had proposed.

:::snip:::

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/15/take_that_paul_ryan_elizabeth_warren_beats_back_conservative_social_security_plot/

[MannyGoldstein]

1. She's NOT running!!!

I really, really need you to know that and to give up all hope!

So please take this post down.

Regards,

Third-Way Manny

[djean111]

3. Bwah! Thank you for the preemptive strike.

Because some will read this and all they will get out of it is WARREN PRESIDENT Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Plus there is that thing where some Dem politicians have proposed cutting Social Security, and dissension within the ranks is not tolerated, Missy Warren. Another preemptive thing - yes, I know cutting Social Security COLA in the future is not the same as cutting Social Security immediately. Much more subtle, eh? Like eleventy-three dimensional chess.

Nice to see the Overton Window pushed a bit to the Left. Lots of kicking and such from both D's and R's, but hey! I believe no unicorns were injured.

[DonViejo]

4. No. eom

[Impedimentus]

11. Thank you Sen. Warren

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a breath of fresh air in a stagnant political system that is becoming more and more a polluted and rotten plutocracy.

She is possibly a leader for our time. Watch the frequency and intensity of the attacks on her increase as she becomes more and more a threat to the entrenched and corrupt power structure.

[brucefan]

2. Please take this post down,

Before this Manny feller has a heart attack.

[Wilms]

5. "This is a direct affront to Hillary Clinton, who in October opened the door to Social Security cuts

http://americarising.tumblr.com/post/69708675350/left-targets-hillarys-position-on-social-security

[djean111]

6. Ah! Being able to buy just a little less food won't be “really disadvantaging”.........

"This is a direct affront to Hillary Clinton, who in October opened the door to Social Security cuts, saying only that such cuts shouldn’t be “really disadvantaging” to beneficiaries"

[libdem4life]

7. Warren is a political force with a well-earned bully pulpit. Her real power lies in the fact that

she is NOT running. Her presence on the Banking Committee is powerful, especially for a first-termer. She gets positive publicity for progressive viewpoints, unlike any other.

[dionysus]

8. good job Warren.

[polichick]

9. She's in dangerous waters, considering "centrist Dems" are...

as determined as Republicans to dismantle "entitlements."

I admire her courage.

[november3rd]

10. Public Takeover

A juggernaut of enlightened coexistence is coming, thanks to the Occupy Movement and Eco-protesters.

It's not a few people who can change the consciousness of the nation--but a few Words ... of Truth.

The Enlightened Awareness of cooperation is settling onto the global human consciousness and will supplant, erase the feudal lies of racism, gender bias, might makes right, throw-away natural resources, and greed is good.

Social Security will expand, as will all the greatly positive cooperative national improvements: like Medicare.

[johnnyrocket]

12. Agreed, 2016 will be a groundswell. The people have had enough.

The right-wing won't know what hit them, and will be decimated.