Via Avedon Carol, this little item from Caltics:
Now it looks like they're moving to up the Hooverite ante, and two of California's powerful federal politicians are at the center of the debate. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is joining 6 other Senators to demand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi approve a commission to recommend cuts to Medicare and Social Security - or else they'll refuse to vote to increase the US government's debt ceiling: ...
... But before Tuesday's hearing was over, Sens. Conrad, Gregg, Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) publicly vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling if a budget reform commission bill doesn't come along with it.
Note, if this were really about controlling the deficit everyone of these worthies would be demanding a single payer health care system which would save us $350 Billion every year.
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Or cutting the military budget...
...wait...too much truth? When did social security/medicare cuts not become the third rail in politics?
Neoliberalization has led to the financialization of everything. (Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Chapter 1).
nov 4, 2008
although credible arguments could be made for feb 5 or march 4 [or jan 15, or jan 29, or may 31, or somewhere back in the mists of time].
October 29, 2007
October 29, 2007.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
a cogent argument indeed
and i considered that one.
having thought about it some more, i think maybe inauguration day 2009 is probably the date, since at that point it was pretty clear the republicans weren't going to pull another bush v gore.
It's sort of like trying to put a push-pin in a mudslide
That Atrios post was the one that got me looking at Obama critically, and -- now lost somewhere over in Kos -- I remember vividly a YouTube at around that time from IA where Obama first said that Social Security shouldn't be politicized, and in less than thirty seconds was accusing Hillary of not having a plan to deal with the crisis. To be fair, IIRC he didn't use the word "crisis" but he definitely put it in play -- and after all the work we'd done to take it out of play!!!! After that, I was very, very skeptical.
Well, I pushed that as hard as I knew how, and it got no traction at all. If SS was the third rail in the 2008 primaries, the power wasn't on...
That said, you could say that the mudslide stopped on inauguration day, and that's when we entered the phase of having Pete Petersen at White House entitlement reform conferences.
UPDATE I wrote "privatized" where I meant "politicized." Privatization was where Obama said that "everything was on the table" but denied he was a privatizer. Look at the advisors, of course, which is what Hipparchia did below.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
push-pin in a mudslide
dang. i like that one.
at first, somewhere between here and here, i discovered that jeffrey liebman was an obama advisor. ack!
liebman
goolsbee
cutler
up to that point, while i hated obama's framing, that social security was a problem, i did like that he was [mostly] talking about lifting the wage cap. more taxes = good, even though i would have preferred to hear him talk about progressive income taxes instead.
Clinton stood up to Gingrich when Gingrich
shut the government down. I wonder what kind of backbone Obama will have in this situation.
None of these jokers want to take responsibility for their political inclinations. They want a bipartisan commission to protect them from the fall out. What a bunch of weasels.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays