You should read his whole post about what is going on in Wisconsin, but in the last paragraph, he asks the important question:
Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President?
(%$# mine)
The answer, of course is that the President is busy, “Winning the Future,” because pursuing a lame ass slogan in order to be reelected in 2008 is more important than defending the rights of the ordinary working man.
Representative Dennis Kucinich is asking this question, and considering the extended isolation, the enforced nudity, etc. He’s right.
What is particularly telling is the fact that he has asked to speak to Manning, and it’s being deliberately slow walked.
That being said, Kucinich is being far to circumspect in his statement. It is clear that this behavior has been authorized at the very highest levels, and Barack Obama needs to be named, and shamed, over this.
So now alleged Wikileaks source Bradley Manning is forced to stand outside of his cell naked for extended periods:
Manning, a 23-year-old Army private suspected of passing thousands of classified documents to the online site WikiLeaks, was placed on suicide watch for two days this week – against the recommendation of the jail’s forensic psychiatrist, attorney David E. Coombs said.
During this time, Manning was forced to stay in his cell around the clock, stripped to his underwear, the lawyer said. His prescription eyeglasses were taken from him, except for the hour of television he is allowed to watch or when he was reading, Coombs added.
The circumstances of Manning’s confinement have drawn public attention. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture has said he submitted to the State Department a formal inquiry about Manning’s treatment.
You know, the other stuff, covering up the war crimes by Bush and His Evil Minions™ is a secondary crime, an accessory after the fact.
This is something different. This is him authorizing torture on his own, because he is at the top of the chain of command, and he knows it is going on, and he is allowing it to happen.
I’m with Mark Kleiman on this, “This is a total disgrace. It shouldn’t be happening in this country. You can’t be unaware of this, Mr. President. Silence gives consent.“
There is a part of me who wants a Republican to win the 2012 election, who then prosecutes Obama for war crimes.
Of course, they won’t, because it would apply to them then, but the fact that there have not been cabinet level prosecutions over this is a travesty.
Brad Delong says not much really, Obamacare is Romneycare, Obama’s financial reform, except perhaps for Elizabeth Warren, would be what Romney had to do, Bernanke would be reappointed, he would have proposed, and lost on, cap and trade.
The big difference would be DADT and Gabby Giffords being shot.
I agree.
So much for the audacity of hope.
Final notes:
10:10 pm: More Allen brothers roofing stories. *rolleyes*
10:08 pm: A shout out for the “end” of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”, and then draws a parallel about how colleges are not nice to the ROTC. Not necessary, but he needed to call out those “East Coast Liberal Elites.”
10:06 pm: “This July, we will begin to bring our troops home.” Good, but I expect it to be a token withdrawal, probably less than 3 battalions.
10:02 pm: Talking defense now, “Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. … In Pakistan, al Qaeda’s leadership is under more pressure than at any point since 2001. Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield. Their safe-havens are shrinking. ” More light at the end of the tunnel crap, though. We are losing.
9:57 pm: A shout out to Muslim Americans, this is good, but how about stopping the FBI from infiltrating mosques with informers on the basis of their religion?
9:56 pm: That whole salmon regulation study story is another Republican meme he is reinforcement.
9:55 pm: That last bit about “Current retirees, the disabled, etc.” is a statement that he wants to means test Social Security to “strengthen” it.
9:53 pm: “To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.” So he won’t call for Social Security tonight, but he’s calling for Social Security cuts tomorrow, because the Republicans want to kill Social Security, and if your goal is bipartisanship, then they will demand poison pills.
9:51 pm: He just capitulating on malpractice suits, again, giving in before negotiations start, even though “tort reform” has been repeatedly shown not to save money.
9:47 pm: He’s talking about the fixing the $600 1099 requirement. Probably a good thing, but will cost money, and he is talking about the deficit. And for Pete’s sake, he’s talking about how in the middle of a recession he wants to freeze domestic spending for the next 5 years.
9:45 pm: More endorsements of the crappy trade deals, and he buys into the myth of all the extraneous regulations that don’t protect us from Salmonella or from the banks. Feh.
9:41 pm: He’s calling for tax reform, with a simplification and reduction of loopholes and lower the max rate. He says “It can be done”, but it won’t. It’s tax cuts for the wealthy all over again. Obama will cave when push comes to shove.
9:39 pm: Atrios will be happy at his shoutout for high speed rail.
9:36 pm: He’s giving a shout out to the DREAM act and immigration reform. I don’t see it happening. The Teabagger infused Republican Party has written off Hispanics for the next election cycle.
9:33 pm: Yep, it’s bad teachers. Not pervasive poverty, and a society that sucks brains out of useful pursuits and puts them into finance. But our country needs teachers, so while Obama is attacking the teacher’s unions, wages, benefits, and job security, he wants people to become teachers.
9:32 pm: He’s now touting his open mouth kiss to the for-profit education profiteers, AKA the “Race to the top.”
9:30 pm: He’s saying that success is a function of hard work. Not this generation. American social mobility and entrepreneurship has fallen behind the rest of the industrialized world. It’s now who your parents are, and addressing inequalities to fix this.
9:28 pm: His invocation of “innovations” is a buy into corporatism. He’s also invoking education, as well as telling people to turn off the TV. I’m really tempted to turn him off.
9:27 pm: He’s talking about killing the tax breaks and subsidies for big oil. It would be nice. It’s a no brainer, which means that the Republicans won’t let it come to a vote in the House, and filibuster it in the Senate.
9:26 pm: The Allen brothers going from shingles to photovoltaics is his “Joe the Plumber” this speech.
9:22 pm: Wants to make America the “Best place in the world to do business”. We’ve been sucking corporate dick for 35 years, and it’s f%$#ed the average American. I don’t care how many iPhones we get.
9:19 pm: OMFG! He’s saying that the lost jobs are just productivity improvement, but the Internet economy will fix everything!
9:16 pm: Some breast beating about the stock market, where and he’d touting the tax cuts, big surprise.
9:12 pm: He leads with a reference to Giffords. How could he not?
9:11 pm: He’s started. BTW, what the hell is up with Boehner’s pink/purple tie?
9:10 pm: The pundits are going on, and on about seating, etc. BTW, Chief Justice John Roberts felt compelled to show up, even though he did not want to, because the rest of the right wing justices refused to, and if only the 4 honest justices showed, it would look bad.
9:08 pm: Oh for f%$#’s sake, he is touting “clean coal” in the speech, as well as nuclear. The first is a fraud, the 2nd has been a disaster, because they cannot get financing, because of the record of delays and cost overruns. I’ll stop reading now.
9:06 pm: He is in and shaking hands. Still reading speech.
9:04 pm: I really hope that it plays better than it reads. But it is demoralizing to anyone who is the least bit liberal. He touts caving on tax cuts for the rich. Lame invocation of Sputnik.
9:02 pm: Huh. The speech was leaked on the net a couple of hours ago to the National Journal. Reading now.
9:01 pm: Show up already. I hate listening to the pundits.
8:59 pm: The pundits, who have advance copies of the speech, say that Barack Obama will call for lower tax rates. F%$#ing typical. Sucking up to the rich at the expense of the tax payer, because Obama needs his billion dollars for the 2012 campaign.
8:58 pm: Turning on MSNBC. I miss Keith.
It looks like the poll numbers and the heat from activists and members of Congress have done their job, because the Obama administration has said no proposed Social Security cuts in his State of the Union address:
President Obama has decided not to endorse his deficit commission’s recommendation to raise the retirement age, and otherwise reduce Social Security benefits, in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, cheering liberals and drawing a stark line between the White House and key Republicans in Congress.
(emphasis mine)
Note the specificity of the language. He won’t endorse cutting Social Security Tomorrow. I am also pretty sure that he won’t do it on Wednesday, and it’s pretty clear he won’t do it in 2012, because he wants to be reelected, but if he is reelected, it’s pretty clear he’s going to try for another bite at the apple.
I wish that we still had Republicans like Ike Eisenhower, who said about those who will cut Social Security, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.“
Barack “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever” Obama and Eric “Place” Holder have drawn up new guidelines on Miranda warnings when terrorism is involved, and they are declaring them secret:
The Obama administration has issued new guidance on use of the Miranda warning in interrogations of terrorism suspects, potentially chipping away at the rule that bars the government from using information in court if it was gathered before a suspect was informed of his right to remain silent and to an attorney.
But the Department of Justice is refusing to publicly release the guidance, with a spokesman describing it in an interview as an “internal document.” So we don’t know the administration’s exact interpretation of Miranda, even though it may have significantly reshaped the way terrorism interrogations are conducted.
You have the right to remain silent, only, we won’t tell you if and when that applies.
The Bush/Cheney constitutional Alice in Wonderland games are now made legitimate, bipartisan and routine by the Obama administration.
Alan Grayson for President in 2012.
*George Orwell.
If you don’t believe it now, just wait until Obama tries to sell gutting Social Security and Medicare in his State of the Union speech.
I could be wrong, and if I am, I will issue a correction, but I think that it is clear that embracing right wing talking points is more important to Barack Obama than is good policy, and driving the “first stake through the heart of Social Security” is clearly seen as a big plum by Obama and most of his administration.
We will know one way or the other in 5½ days.
Sorry for the mental image, but Dick Cheney is now saying that he likes Obama’s policies on war, illegal wiretaps, and torture:
In the early months of Obama’s presidency, the American Right did to him what they do to every Democratic politician: they accused him of being soft on defense (specifically “soft on Terror”) and leaving the nation weak and vulnerable to attack. But that tactic quickly became untenable as everyone (other than his hardest-core followers) was forced to acknowledge that Obama was embracing and even expanding — rather than reversing — the core Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism. As a result, leading right-wing figures began lavishing Obama with praise — and claiming vindication — based on Obama’s switch from harsh critic of those policies (as a candidate) to their leading advocate (once in power).
So the overbearing security state, in which the President or his designees, can detain you forever without trial and torture you, while tapping all of our phones, is now the new normal, and Cheney and his ilk are ecstatic, because they now know that there will be no prosecutions.
Thanks a lot, Barry. You must have been the worst constitutional law professor ever.
He just penned an OP/ED in the Wall Street Journal, saying that the big problem in our economy is too much regulation:
From child labor laws to the Clean Air Act to our most recent strictures against hidden fees and penalties by credit card companies, we have, from time to time, embraced common sense rules of the road that strengthen our country without unduly interfering with the pursuit of progress and the growth of our economy.
Sometimes, those rules have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business—burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs. At other times, we have failed to meet our basic responsibility to protect the public interest, leading to disastrous consequences. Such was the case in the run-up to the financial crisis from which we are still recovering. There, a lack of proper oversight and transparency nearly led to the collapse of the financial markets and a full-scale Depression.
Well, at least he is not talking about repealing the Clean Air Act or child labor laws, Yet,, but when juxtaposed with his executive order calling for our regulations to become even more friendly to companies that rob us and pollute our environment. (full text after break)
I guess we had better be the change that we are looking for, because Barack H. Obama is way too interested in sucking up to the people who wrecked this country, like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.
I am not looking forward to his State of the Union Address, because you can be sure that he will have some sort of initiative that further betray the people who voted for him.
The White HouseOffice of the Press SecretaryFor Immediate Release January 18, 2011Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review – Executive OrderBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to improve regulation and regulatory review, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. General Principles of Regulation. (a) Our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation. It must be based on the best available science. It must allow for public participation and an open exchange of ideas. It must promote predictability and reduce uncertainty. It must identify and use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends. It must take into account benefits and costs, both quantitative and qualitative. It must ensure that regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain language, and easy to understand. It must measure, and seek to improve, the actual results of regulatory requirements.
(b) This order is supplemental to and reaffirms the principles, structures, and definitions governing contemporary regulatory review that were established in Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993. As stated in that Executive Order and to the extent permitted by law, each agency must, among other things: (1) propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits justify its costs (recognizing that some benefits and costs are difficult to quantify); (2) tailor its regulations to impose the least burden on society, consistent with obtaining regulatory objectives, taking into account, among other things, and to the extent practicable, the costs of cumulative regulations; (3) select, in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity); (4) to the extent feasible, specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt; and (5) identify and assess available alternatives to direct regulation, including providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior, such as user fees or marketable permits, or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public.
(c) In applying these principles, each agency is directed to use the best available techniques to quantify anticipated
present and future benefits and costs as accurately as possible. Where appropriate and permitted by law, each agency may consider (and discuss qualitatively) values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts.
Sec. 2. Public Participation. (a) Regulations shall be adopted through a process that involves public participation. To that end, regulations shall be based, to the extent feasible and consistent with law, on the open exchange of information and perspectives among State, local, and tribal officials, experts in relevant disciplines, affected stakeholders in the private sector, and the public as a whole.
(b) To promote that open exchange, each agency, consistent with Executive Order 12866 and other applicable legal requirements, shall endeavor to provide the public with an opportunity to participate in the regulatory process. To the extent feasible and permitted by law, each agency shall afford the public a meaningful opportunity to comment through the Internet on any proposed regulation, with a comment period that should generally be at least 60 days. To the extent feasible and permitted by law, each agency shall also provide, for both proposed and final rules, timely online access to the rulemaking docket on regulations.gov, including relevant scientific and technical findings, in an open format that can be easily searched and downloaded. For proposed rules, such access shall include, to the extent feasible and permitted by law, an opportunity for public comment on all pertinent parts of the rulemaking docket, including relevant scientific and technical findings.
(c) Before issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking, each agency, where feasible and appropriate, shall seek the views of those who are likely to be affected, including those who are likely to benefit from and those who are potentially subject to such rulemaking.
Sec. 3. Integration and Innovation. Some sectors and industries face a significant number of regulatory requirements, some of which may be redundant, inconsistent, or overlapping. Greater coordination across agencies could reduce these requirements, thus reducing costs and simplifying and harmonizing rules. In developing regulatory actions and identifying appropriate approaches, each agency shall attempt to promote such coordination, simplification, and harmonization. Each agency shall also seek to identify, as appropriate, means to achieve regulatory goals that are designed to promote innovation.
Sec. 4. Flexible Approaches. Where relevant, feasible, and consistent with regulatory objectives, and to the extent permitted by law, each agency shall identify and consider regulatory approaches that reduce burdens and maintain flexibility and freedom of choice for the public. These approaches include warnings, appropriate default rules, and disclosure requirements as well as provision of information to the public in a form that is clear and intelligible.
Sec. 5. Science. Consistent with the President’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,
“Scientific Integrity” (March 9, 2009), and its implementing guidance, each agency shall ensure the objectivity of any scientific and technological information and processes used to support the agency’s regulatory actions.
Sec. 6. Retrospective Analyses of Existing Rules. (a) To facilitate the periodic review of existing significant regulations, agencies shall consider how best to promote retrospective analysis of rules that may be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome, and to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them in accordance with what has been learned. Such retrospective analyses, including supporting data, should be released online whenever possible.
(b) Within 120 days of the date of this order, each agency shall develop and submit to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs a preliminary plan, consistent with law and its resources and regulatory priorities, under which the agency will periodically review its existing significant regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed so as to make the agency’s regulatory program more effective or less burdensome in achieving the regulatory objectives.
Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) For purposes of this order, “agency” shall have the meaning set forth in section 3(b) of Executive Order 12866.
(b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) authority granted by law to a department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(c) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 18, 2011.
This weeks internet meme appears to be the Xtranormal movie maker:
Watch the top video first.
Not entirely safe for work.
And BooMan is definitely a fanboi, or he does not understand that SDNWOTN* when he says, “At this point in his presidency I think it is fair to say that Obama is already in the conversation as best president since Abraham Lincoln.“
Considering his prior record, I do not think that it is sarcasm.
<facepalm>
*Sarcasm Does Not Work On The Net.
Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ are drawing up plans for the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantanamo Bay:
The White House is preparing an Executive Order on indefinite detention that will provide periodic reviews of evidence against dozens of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, according to several administration officials.
The draft order, a version of which was first considered nearly 18 months ago, is expected to be signed by President Obama early in the New Year. The order allows for the possibility that detainees from countries like Yemen might be released if circumstances there change.
But the order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.
The law here is clear.
If we are at war, and I understand the argument that the authorization for the use of force might constitute this, then you can detain people without access to the legal process, as prisoners of war, with all the rights pertaining to that status.
This is not about prisoners of war. This is about the king throwing people in jail on nothing but his word, and it is antithetical to American founding principles, which should be obvious to everyone, except perhaps for the worst constitutional law professor ever.
That you will run against him in the primaries unless he drops his idea to cut social security:
The tax deal negotiated by President Barack Obama and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is just the first part of a multistage drama that is likely to further divide and weaken Democrats.
The second part, now being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan — including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.
This is bad policy, it’s bad politics.
You could call it political Seppuku, but I think that is more accurately the deliberate and premeditated murder of the New Deal, and the marginalization of the Democratic Party for at least a generation.
I can no longer attribute this to incompetence or cowardice. This is deliberate malice:
Social Security and Medicaid together do not match Medicare’s costs
Really, he just expressly said that to Steve Inskeep of NPR:
Actually, I think that if you talk to economists, both conservative and liberal, what they’ll say is the problem is not next year. The problem is, how are we dealing with our medium-term debt and deficit, and how are we dealing with our long-term debt and deficit? And most of that has to do with entitlements, particularly Social Security and Medicaid.
(emphasis mine)
It’s not helpful that he leads with a lie.
Anyone who has the vaguest idea of how to count knows that the elephant in the room (pun not intended), is not Medicaid, but Medicare, but Obama realizes that that the political consequences of going after that are simply too dire for him to mess with the seniors.
The alternative, of course, is something private, which means higher costs, since we know that both Medicare and Medicaid deliver healthcare for a lower cost than the private sector, and the expense ratio (the cost of managing the money) for Social Security is on the order of 1⁄10 that of most private plans out there.
We now understand why Barack Obama has been so deferential to the insurance and finance industries: It’s because they own him, and he wants to sell the rest of us to them.
H/t Gaius Publius.
Courtesy of Jane Hamsher:
It’s hard to “fight” when the head of your party runs his political operation with the emotional maturity of an overheated teenage boy in the latest installment of Twilight.
Positively brutal, but true.
Ms. Hamsher has come to the same conclusion as me, that Barack Obama wants to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone, because ……… I don’t know why, but my guess is because in his heart of hearts he makes Bill Clinton look like “Red” Ken Livingston.
So, the Senate failed to end a filibuster and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal is dead, probably for at least the next 4 years.
Obama started calling people about this yesterday, so much for fierce advocacy, and the witch hunts and separations continue.
With financial reform, he was pushing back to keep it as small as possible.
With healthcare reform, he cut a deal that made us all slave labor for the insurance companies.
And not a peep from the administration about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
And then there is the tax deal, which lowers the inheritance tax, and gives the Republicans a wedge to defund Social Security.
As I have noted before, he appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, both supporters of “privatizing” Social Security to chair his debt commission.
I am beginning to think that he’s not a bad negotiator, but that he is getting everything that he wants, and what he wants are largely Republican policies.
I’m beginning to think that he bay actually getting he wants.
Talk about eleventy dimensional chess.
* It’s an old joke.
Not sure which genius came up with this, but it is floating around the innerwebs.
First, it appears that the Republicans have structured the deal to force states into bankruptcy in order to destroy the public employee unions:
Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011.That’s why the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program. BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31. And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans “have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.”
This is juxtaposed with proposals mooted among the Conservative Nomenklatura, most notably in The Weekly Standard, that Congress enact laws allowing states to declare bankruptcy, which in turn would allow them to unilaterally break union contracts.
Additionally, you have the withholding tax holiday, which legitimizes schemes to defund Social Security as a prelude to gutting it, as Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, so ably notes:
Given that unwillingness to raise taxes by less than a nickel on every dollar earned over $1 million, I find it unfathomable that a more conservative Congress, in two years, in an election year, will increase the payroll tax by 2 percent on the very first dollar, and every other dollar up to the cap, earned by virtually every single worker in the country. Consequently, I think we have to assume that the payroll tax holiday will be extended beyond the two years the president is proposing and quite likely could become permanent.
That means that the federal government will have to continue to transfer $120 billion to the Social Security trust funds each and every year even as it has to transfer more and more interest payments as the trust funds continue to grow and as interest rates return to more normal levels. Unless Congress acts to restore Social Security to solvency, the Treasury bonds held in trust will have to be redeemed, again on top of that new $120 billion transfer from the general fund, starting fifteen years from now, assuming Congress even continues to make the $120 billion every year before that point. These dollars will be competing with dollars for defense, environmental protection, education, school lunches, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Pell grants for low income college students, and every other good and service financed by the federal government.
A permanent two percent cut in Social Security contributions doubles the 75 year projected shortfall. Scrapping the cap (eliminating the $106,800 maximum on earnings), tonally eliminates the shortfall today. If FICA is cut by 2 percent, scrapping the cap gets Social Security only halfway there.
I’m a cynic, and I believe that this is a feature, and not a bug.
On labor, the Obama administration has pointedly sat on its hands with regard to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and the Obama Department of Education is more virulently anti-union than Bush’s Education Department ever was, as mind boggling as it sounds.
As to Social Security, anyone who appoints Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to a “deficit reduction” (catfood) commission, clearly wants to gut that gem in the crown of the New Deal.
These flaws in the “compromise” are features, not bugs.
After seeing this happen repeatedly, I think that actual intent is a more coherent explanation than simple incompetence.
Obama wants these things to happen.
H/t Yves Smith for the first link.
