It is impossible to separate the current political wars going on down in Washington from being either class or racial. Therefore anything Obama does will never be able to escape an analysis in regards to either class or race. However, in his unyielding dedication to “COMPROMISE AT ALL COSTS”, Obama allowed himself to be played by the Republicans like some wide eyed yokel from Leftovershoe Maine, in town for the annual hardware store owner’s convention. How could this happen you might ask? Obama was a U.S. Senator. an esteemed member of academia, and one who has had a political past from the streets of Chicago? Simply put Obama does not know how to play the “Beltway Blues”. It’s tough enough to figure Washington politics with both eyes wide open, but when you walk around wearing “rose colored glasses” of UNCONDITIONAL COMPROMISE, you are begging for a political fleecing.
When I voted for Obama, I did not expect him to be a super hero on any level, but I did expect him to be a solid manager who would know how to select the proper staff for the impressive array of tasks facing him as he walked into the White House. This disappointment is the reason why he was blindsided by the Republicans over the recent tax bill. In my opinion Valerie Jarrett would be excellent in any position except her current position. The same for Axelrod. It is these folks in the President’s inner circle who have contributed to this huge mistake.
Let me update you as to why the liberal Congressional Democrats are outraged about this bill and the President’s support of its passage. This bill was designed by the Republicans to be a $900 Billion budget buster, and the Republican Propaganda Machine (which is most of the MSM) soaked the public with the mythical Kool-Aid of “the first step towards bipartisanship in Washington”. Obama pulled out all the PR stops to convince the Democrats that this was truly a bipartisan bill and that they MUST cave in and vote for it. The MSM painted the objections of the Democrats as simply an obsession with Millionaires and Billionaires getting across the board tax cuts, which long term greatly expands the nation’s debt. Meanwhile Obama lamented that “he could not, and he would not let two million unemployed Americans lose their pittance checks at Christmas time!”
The real reason liberal Democrats are mad about the tax bill is the Republican trickery. The Republicans knew that the tax bill that they offered to Obama would add another trillion dollars to the deficit. So what, you say, we all knew that? Well this additional amount of federal debt is the budget buster that the current Republican leadership has been looking for to really energize the Republican majority 112th Congress coming into session next month. First big issue on the Congressional agenda will be raising the government debt ceiling. Under the highly efficient coaching of the current Republican leadership, the new tea party Congress people will go absolutely nuts when the bill to raise the national debt ceiling is placed before them. Geithner will start to panic, telling the President that if the “debt ceiling” bill doesn’t pass, the U.S. government will lose its credit rating. Horror of Horrors!
Mitch McConnell will then quietly meet with the President and suggest that the Republicans would be reluctantly willing to COMPROMISE, only if the President can bring some real assets into government finances in order to offset the legislative act of increasing the debt ceiling, something like … perhaps Social Security? Mitch and his buddies are hoping that Obama will do another swan dive cave-in and agree to modify the status of Social Security such that it comes under the CONTROL OF CONGRESS. (Currently Social Security is an independent agency that is funded via a payroll tax for each working individual the proceeds of which winds up in the Social Security Reserve. The beneficiaries on the other hand are paid out the Social Trust Fund.) This orchestrated encrouchment would be the first step towards the elimination of social security, which has been a long time ambition of the Republican Party going back to FDR. The Republicans believe that they have currently available a kind of weak President that they can manipulate and force to cave in under pressure on this issue regarding the sacrifice of Social Security. (The Republicans would have drawn up a new version of the debt ceiling bill which would these new Social Security re-organizational provisions in place before meeting with the President.) The tea partiers want to kill Medicare and the Republican leadership want to kill Social Security, and after the 112th Congress is seated the only real stop we who live on Social Security and use Medicare have remaining is the Obama veto pen. However, if past behavior is any predictor of future results, it is definitely time to bet on the Obama pen staying in the oval office desk drawer.
One other reason why the Republicans want to knock over Social Security (SS) is that the SS vault contains well over a trillion dollars in I.O.U.’s from the Department of Treasury. Money has been continuously bled off from the SS reserve by President after President to fund a list of secret so-called “black ops” off budget programs for a whole host of White House Administrations over the decades. If the status of SS is changed in any way to put it closed under government control all of the I.O.U.’s will simply become null and void and worthless. There have been efforts in the recent past, long before Bill Clinton, to force the Government to pay up and get rid of these I.O.U.’s but the Congressional argument was that the amount of money owed to the SS Trust Fund was so large that it would bankrupt the nation. If Mitch and friends get their way a stroke of Obama’s compromise pen (not veto pen) will make that trillion dollars owed to SS simply go poof!
