The Trump/Pence Regime Wants to Take Our Laws Back to the 1930's

Trump advisers want to return the Supreme Court to the 1930's.

Anyone who was ill-served by the nation's laws in the 1930's - e.g., blacks, gays, women, other minorities, etc. - should be terrified at the prospect of where the Trump/Pence regime and its judge whisperer want to take constitutional law in America.  It was an era where white privilege reigned supreme and life was brutal - and much shorter - for a majority of the population and Jim Crow laws were alive and well.  A piece in Slate profiles one of Trump's top advisers on judicial appointments and the future that he envisions.  It is nothing less than terrifying and one has to wonder what type of sick and perverted individuals would want to return to laws that were harmful to so many.  What's frightening, is Leonard Leo, Trump's adviser already has three of his favored jurists on the U.S. Supreme Court: Roberts, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.  Here are article highlights:

Last week, the Washington Post published a profile of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, focusing in part on a speech he gave to the Council for National Policy in which he warmly predicted the Supreme Court would soon return to the pre–New Deal era of “limited, constitutional government.” Leo believes, in other words, that the court’s view of the Constitution was better off 85 years ago than it is today.

“I think we stand at the threshold of an exciting moment in our republic,” Leo told the council at a closed-door meeting in February, audio of which was obtained by the Post. “This is really, I think, at least in recent memory, a newfound embrace of limited constitutional government in our country. I don’t think this has really happened since probably before the New Deal.”

The average American doesn’t know who Leo is, but as the Post piece makes clear, he‘s one of the most influential lawyers in the country. A longtime leader within the Federalist Society, Leo has had Donald Trump’s ear on judicial appointments and has been the main curator of the president’s list of Supreme Court candidates. Two of Leo’s personal picks, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, have been elevated to the highest court in the country since Trump’s election. So when Leonard Leo says he wants to return to a pre–New Deal Constitution, you should listen. And you should be alarmed.

As Leo knows, constitutional law was very different in the 1930s from what it is today. And in a word, it sucked.

In the 1930s, the courts were fully complicit in maintaining the country as a thoroughgoing ethnocracy, governed openly for the benefit of white men. Public schools in 21 states were racially segregated by law. “Separate but equal” schools had been affirmed by the Supreme Court as late as 1927, in a unanimous decision allowing Mississippi to kick a Chinese American girl out of her local “white” school for being a member of the “yellow” race. The outlawing of segregation is settled law in our country, and nobody would dare dream of returning to those antiquated judicial interpretations, you might say? Several of Trump’s judicial nominees have conspicuously, outrageously, refused to say whether they thought Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal school segregation in 1954, was correctly decided.

In the 1930s, through a combination of discriminatory literacy tests, poll taxes, “good character” requirements, and straight-up violence, less than 1 percent of black people in the Deep South—where they represented more than a third of the population—were registered to vote. The Supreme Court had blessed these intimidation practices for decades, ever since a 1903 decision in which the court said it couldn’t do anything about Alabama’s self-described effort “to establish white supremacy in this state” by refusing to register black voters. Discriminatory voting practices of this sort weren’t banned until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most significant provision of which was gutted six years ago in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts (whom Leo also helped elevate to the court).

In the 1930s, women had no constitutional right to equality. They could legally be kept off juries, given different work hours, paid less money, and imprisoned for using birth control. It would be another four decades before the Supreme Court struck down even a single law for discriminating against women. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch—again, both products of Leo’s vetting—recently dissented from the court’s temporary blocking of a Louisiana law that would have left the entire state with just a single doctor able to perform abortions.

In the first half of the 20^th century, the police could beat confessions out of arrestees. Poor defendants had no right to a lawyer. Evidence could be illegally seized and used in prosecutions. In 1944, for example, South Carolina executed a 14-year-old black boy named George Stinney for the murders of two white girls. He was questioned alone, without his parents or a lawyer present, and convicted by an all-white jury after a two-hour trial and 10 minutes of deliberation. He wasn’t allowed to appeal. He had to sit on books to fit into the headpiece of the electric chair. Only in 2014, 70 years too late, did a circuit court judge vacate the 14-year-old Stinney’s murder conviction. The Stinney case tells you all you need to know about criminal justice in the age Leo wants to bring back.

The post–New Deal court decisions Leo wishes to repudiate are the ones that gave the government the power to enact minimum wage laws, to create unemployment insurance and Social Security, to provide health insurance to the aged and destitute, and to give workers collective bargaining rights. In the 1930s, those too old to work and too poor not to could often expect a quick but painful death. This is the human toll of “limited government.”

If we’re looking for Reagan’s shining city upon a hill, we won’t find it in America’s now-distant past. Not most of us, anyway. And if it’s what Leo is promising us, we can only hope it’s not in America’s future.

Be very, very afraid.

Trump Budget: Slash Social Programs After $1.5 Trillion Gift to Wealthy

Trump message to seniors: just die. 

Once again demonstrating that He and the Republican Party want to bring back the Gilded Age when the wealthy lived in obscene extravagance which many Americans barely survived. After giving the very wealthy and large corporations $1.5 trillion in tax breaks - which has caused the federal deficit to balloon just as every sane commentator predicted - Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party seek to slash Medicare spending in Trump's just announced budget. Rest assured that Medicaid and other programs will be similarly targeted.  For those under 65, Medicare is NOT free.  Recipients pay quarterly premiums and, if they are smart, they purchase a supplement that entails monthly premiums as well.  And for those working past 65, you also continue to pay Medicare withholding tax (I now pay more in Medicare withholding that I did for many years in income tax) - which added to withholding over one's working career can total to a large number. Medicare is anything but an "entitlement."  The same holds true for Social Security.  Thus, Trump's proposal can be described as making working Americans - including the cretins who voted for Trump and the GOP - pay into the Medicare and Social Security systems and then reducing their benefits to give lavish tax cuts to the wealthy.  The Washington Post looks at Trump's budget and the gift it may constitute to Democrats.  Here are article excerpts:

A new proposal by President Trump to slash Medicare spending puts Republicans in a political bind ahead of the 2020 election as Democrats are pitching an expansion of the popular health-care program for all Americans.

Trump’s 10-year budget unveiled Monday calls for more than $845 billion in reductions for Medicare, aiming to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal program that gives insurance to older Americans. It’s part of a broader proposed belt-tightening effort after deficits soared during the president’s first two years in office in part due to massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

The move immediately tees up a potential messaging battle between Democratic proposals for Medicare-for-all — castigated by Republicans as a socialist boondoggle — and a kind of Medicare-for-less approach. focused on cutting back on spending, from the GOP.

Democrats, including some seeking to challenge Trump in 2020, seized on the proposed Medicare cuts Monday as an example of the GOP seeking to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly and the poor after giving broad tax breaks to the wealthy.

“Make no mistake about it: Trump’s budget is a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic presidential candidate, said in a Monday tweet that highlighted Medicare cuts.

In states with large senior populations, such as Florida, political attacks over Medicare cuts have proved so effective that both parties have used them. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) won his seat after running ads last year accusing Democrat Bill Nelson of voting to cut Medicare.

Trump probably needs to win Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania and other states with large numbers of seniors to secure reelection in 2020. Older Americans consistently vote at higher rates than younger Americans.

Trump’s proposed Medicare savings are more than three times as large as those in his previous budget, and industry lobbying groups said the reductions would hurt hospitals and seniors. “The impact on care for seniors would be devastating,” Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said in a statement. “Hospitals are less and less able to cover the cost of care for Medicare patients, it is no time to gut Medicare.” Democratic strategists and officials argued Monday that Trump’s budget proposal exposed how little credibility Republicans have in debating health care, and showed signs of confidence that it would sharpen the contrast Democrats are seeking to make in the run-up to the 2020 election.

“It totally eviscerates any integrity to their already pretty flimsy attack,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “This assault on Medicare lays bare the real Republican agenda, which is to destroy the health-care safety net. They have no shred of intellectual underpinning or integrity to their attack on Democrats if they make this kind of proposal.”

In last year’s midterm elections, Democrats campaigned aggressively on health care, attacking Republicans over their failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The dynamic marked a shift from the two previous midterm elections, during which the GOP was the party mainly going on offense on health care, slamming Democrats over the creation of the ACA, also known as Obamacare. “This budget says a lot about the President’s priorities: cut $845 billion from Medicare, while spending billions on his vanity project, the wall,” Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) tweeted, referring to Trump’s request for border wall funding. “This would hurt our seniors and is yet another piece of evidence for why we need a new president.” “It’s a political fumble on the Republican part in the sense that this budget is going nowhere,” he said. “The argument prior to this was the Democrats’ plan versus the status quo. And now it’s the Democrats’ plan versus the Republican plan to cut Medicare.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said on Twitter: “One party wants to expand Medicare and Medicaid and the other wants to cut them. That’s the end of my tweet.”

The question will be whether the racism of Trump's base and that base's hatred of others outweigh their own economic/health care best interest.  If these folks continue to support Trump, they truly deserve to suffer every misfortune imaginable and should get no sympathy from others. 

McConnell Blames "Entitlements", Not Massive Trump/GOP Tax Cuts for Rising Deficits

One need not be a math whiz to do the math involved in comparing the amount of the massive Trump/GOP tax cuts to the very wealthy and huge corporations with the amount by which the federal deficit is soaring.  Yet, Mitch McConnell is ignoring this simple arithmetic exercise and is blaming the federal deficit on "entitlements" such as Social Security and Medicare into which American taxpayers have been paying funds their entire working lives.  In my own case, over the years, I have paid a very large sum into Social Security and Medicare, yet McConnell is depicting me and millions like me as greedy, irresponsible freeloaders looking for a free give away.  Meanwhile, McConnell and his wife have parlayed their political positions to become very wealthy and, in McConnell's case, he enjoys a platinum retirement package that relieves him of the financial concerns the rest of us have to deal with.  The man is despicable.  Give massive tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy and then demand cuts to programs for the poor, the middle class, and the elderly.  This from a man and political party that pretends to honor "Christian values."  A piece in Bloomberg looks at this foul batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed rising federal deficits and debt on a bipartisan unwillingness to contain spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and said he sees little chance of a major deficit reduction deal while Republicans control Congress and the White House.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt. “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”

McConnell’s remarks came a day after the Treasury Department said the U.S. budget deficit grew to $779 billion in Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the result of the GOP’s tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases and rising interest payments on the national debt. That’s a 77 percent increase from the $439 billion deficit in fiscal 2015, when McConnell became majority leader.

Shrinking those popular programs -- either by reducing benefits or raising the retirement age -- without a bipartisan deal would risk a political backlash in the next election. Trump promised during his campaign that he wouldn’t cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, even though his budget proposals have included trims to all three programs.

The Office of Management and Budget has projected a deficit in the coming year of $1.085 trillion despite a healthy economy. And the Congressional Budget Office has forecast a return to trillion-dollar deficits by fiscal 2020.

Republicans in December 2017 also passed a tax cut projected to add more than $1 trillion to the debt over a decade after leaders gave up on creating a plan that wouldn’t increase the debt under the Senate’s scoring rules.

At the time, McConnell told reporters, “I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue-neutral.” He added, “In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York responded Tuesday by saying McConnell and other Republicans “blew a $2 trillion hole in the federal deficit to fund a tax cut for the rich. To now suggest cutting earned middle-class programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid as the only fiscally responsible solution to solve the debt problem is nothing short of gaslighting."

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement, “Under the GOP’s twisted agenda, we can afford tax cuts for billionaires, but not the benefits our seniors have earned.”

After Huge Give Away to Wealthy, Republicans Target Medicare and Social Security

Republicans celebrating the $1.5 trillion tax cut.

While it is very difficult to outdo Donald Trump when it comes to lying incessantly, Paul Ryan and other Republicans are trying hard to meet he Trump standard of dishonesty by blaming Social Security and Medicare for the ballooning national debt conveniently forgetting the $1.5 trillion give away  to the obscenely wealthy and huge corporations that they enacted only a few months ago.  How these despicable individuals have the gall to claim that they stand for "Christian values" when their agenda to slash the social safety net is the antithesis of Christ's gospel message.  A piece in the Los Angeles Times looks at the lies, deceit and desire to harm average Americans being pushed by Paul Ryan - who hypocritically claims to be a "devout Catholic" - and similar despicable liars.  If you believe Ryan and "conservative" economists, I have some swamp land to sell to you.  Here are article excerpts:

One would have thought that after saddling the U.S. economy with a tax cut costing $1.5 trillion over 10 years, conservatives and their patrons in corporate America would soft-pedal the usual attacks on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

One would be wrong.

Recently, the drumbeats for cuts in social insurance benefits have been sounding louder. As is traditional, the call for cutbacks is placed in the context of concern about rising federal deficits. Just two weeks ago, five economists and thinkers at the conservative Hoover Institution evoked the "debt crisis" in the pages of the Washington Post.

"To address the debt problem, Congress must reform and restrain the growth of entitlement programs and adopt further pro-growth tax and regulatory policies," wrote the Hooverites, Michael J. Boskin, John H. Cochrane, John F. Cogan, George P. Shultz and John B. Taylor. As for the tax cut bill enacted in December, the sages said not to worry: They called it "a good first step, as it sharply increases the incentive to invest and grow businesses, which will increase incomes." [T]he Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget . . . reckon that the cuts could cost as much as $1.7 trillion over a decade, net of any economic gains it might engender. The Hoover fellows aren't alone in calling for cutting social programs, effectively to pay for tax cuts that go overwhelmingly to corporations and the wealthy. We've documented how Republicans such as House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida started calling for benefit cuts even as the tax bill was making its way through Congress. For the record, the Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will rise from an average share of 4.9% of gross domestic product now to an average of 5.5% over the next 10 years. Medicare and Medicaid together will rise from 5.4% now to an average of 6.3% in the same period. To place these figures in context, the CBO also expects GDP to nearly double in that time period, to $29.8 trillion. The tax cuts, by the way, will help push the federal deficit over $1 trillion next year, according to the CBO, which makes clear that they won't pay for themselves. "The tax cuts passed last year actually added an amount to America's long-run fiscal challenge that is roughly the same size as the preexisting shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare," wrote Martin Neil Baily, Jason Furman, Alan B. Krueger, Laura D'Andrea Tyson and Janet L. Yellen. "It is dishonest to single out entitlements for blame….The primary reason the deficit in coming years will now be higher than had been expected is the reduction in tax revenue from last year's tax cuts, not an increase in spending." As is invariably the case, the brief against "entitlements" is peppered with misconceptions and outright untruths. The biggest scam related to the tax cuts is the assertion that they'll provide an "incentive to invest and grow businesses," as the Hoover fellows wrote. The CBO projects that the tax act will increase real GDP by an average of 0.7% and nonfarm employment by an average of 1.1 million jobs a year through 2028, but says those effects are front-loaded and will fade as the decade wears on. The evidence thus far is that the shareholder class will receive gluttonous wedges of the pie, while working stiffs will get crumbs. According to a study by the progressive group Americans for Tax Fairness, Fortune 500 corporations will pocket a total annual tax cut of more than $57 billion a year. Those companies have announced wage increases and employee bonuses totaling about $5.7 billion, and stock buybacks of nearly $201 billion.
Indications that businesses of any size will use their tax cuts to make capital investments are hard to find.

The politicians unsheathing their paring knives for Social Security and Medicare undoubtedly are hoping that Americans' memories are short — that when they claim that it's social programs like these that are driving the deficit, no one will recall that the single biggest driver of red ink is that tax cut delivered to the very members of society who needed help the least.

House GOP Budget Bill Will Savage Medicare and Social Security

Republicans have already alienated younger voters with their reactionary social policies, including anti-LGBT policies demanded by the Christofascists who make up Der Trumpenführer remaining loyal base.   Now, with the House budget bill they seem about to alienate older Americans so as to benefit large financial institution and a wasteful Defense Department.  On the chopping block are Medicare and Social Security, often seen as the third rail in national politics, but targets of the GOP unrestrained reverse Robin Hood, despite the seeming collapse of the latest Trumpcare bill that lost two more Republican senators late yesterday due to the horrific impact the bill would have on millions of Americans.  And despite promises by  Der Trumpenführer that he would never countenance cuts to Medicare or Social Security.  Of course, we learned quickly that Trump's promises are worthless.   A piece in the Washington Post looks at the draconian House proposal that would accelerate the GOP's push to bring back the worse aspects of the Gilded Age.  Here are excerpts:

House Republicans unveiled a 2018 budget plan Tuesday that would pave the way for ambitious tax reform legislation — but only alongside a package of politically sensitive spending cuts that threaten to derail the tax rewrite before it begins.

The instructions in the draft budget, however, go well beyond tax policy and set the stage for a potential $203 billion rollback of financial industry regulations, federal employee benefits, welfare spending and more. 

Like the spending blueprint released this year by President Trump, the House plan envisions major cuts to federal spending over the coming decade, bringing the budget into balance by relying on accelerated economic growth to boost revenue. Under the House plan, defense spending would steadily increase over 10 years while nondefense discretionary spending would decline to $424 billion — 23 percent below the $554 billion the federal government is spending in that category this year.

Unlike Trump’s budget, the House proposal cuts into Medicare and Social Security — entitlement programs that the president has pledged to preserve. The House plan also makes a less-rosy economic growth assumption of 2.6 percent versus the 3 percent eyed by the Trump administration. Both, however, exceed the 1.9 percent figure eyed by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in its most recent economic estimates.

 House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the panel’s chairman, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), have said they intend to pursue a deficit-neutral reform bill, meaning the savings would have to be found in other programs under the committee’s jurisdiction — such as Medicare, disability aid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and unemployment compensation.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has explored cuts to the federal workforce and to federal employee benefits, would be required to find $32 billion in deficit savings.

Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have been pushing for more aggressive long-term spending cuts in reconciliation. The group’s leader, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), told reporters last week that the numbers in the draft budget could not pass the House, calling the proposed $203 billion in mandatory spending cuts over the coming decade a relative pittance in a federal budget that already approaches $4 trillion in yearly spending.

Moderates, meanwhile, are staging a revolt of their own. Twenty members of the centrist Tuesday Group signed a letter last month objecting to even $200 billion in mandatory spending cuts, arguing they are “not practical” and would “make enacting tax reform even more difficult than it already will be.”

Average Americans need to (i) hope this bill fails, and (ii) wake up to the reality that to the GOP they are little more than disposable trash.  Senior citizens who have been duped by the GOP's calls to racism and religious based bigotry could pay a high price if this bill and any version of Trumpcare pass.  Meanwhile, those with aging parents best grapple with the reality that they may end up housing the sick and frail parents or have to bear the high cost of their care in nursing homes.  The GOP message to the elderly?  Do us a favor and die.  As for federal employees in Northern Virginia, I hope they punish the GOP by voting a straight Democratic ticket in Virginia's November elections. 

Republicans Against Retirement

In addition to the tremendous wealth of families like the Astors and Vanderbilts, the  Gilded Age saw something else:  a society where most of the population had no social safety net and where there was little prospect for retirement.  Eighty years ago, Social Security was launched and that dark prospect was lessened.  Today's GOP, however, would like to see that change as it strives to bring about a new Gilded Age with all of the problems of the old one.  Through plays to religious extremists, nativists and racists, the GOP dupes these idiots into supporting a party that is the economic enemy of the average American.   Sadly, the ignorance embracing GOP base is unable to see that it is being cynically played.  A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP's sinister plans for Social Security.  Here are excerpts: 

Something strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is, besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting to ask why.

The issue in question is the future of Social Security, which turned 80 last week. The retirement program is, of course, both extremely popular and a long-term target of conservatives, who want to kill it precisely because its popularity helps legitimize government action in general. As the right-wing activist Stephen Moore (now chief economist of the Heritage Foundation) once declared, Social Security is “the soft underbelly of the welfare state”; “jab your spear through that” and you can undermine the whole thing.

But that was a decade ago, during former President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize the program — and what Mr. Bush learned was that the underbelly wasn’t that soft after all. . . . . the assault on Social Security quickly crashed and burned. Voters, it turns out, like Social Security as it is, and don’t want it cut.

It’s remarkable, then, that most of the Republicans who would be president seem to be lining up for another round of punishment. In particular, they’ve been declaring that the retirement age — which has already been pushed up from 65 to 66, and is scheduled to rise to 67 — should go up even further.

[T]hese proposals would be really bad public policy — a harsh blow to Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution, who depend on Social Security, often have jobs that involve manual labor, and have not, in fact, seen a big rise in life expectancy. Meanwhile, the decline of private pensions has left working Americans more reliant on Social Security than ever.

What’s puzzling about the renewed Republican assault on Social Security is that it looks like bad politics as well as bad policy. Americans love Social Security, so why aren’t the candidates at least pretending to share that sentiment?

Wealthy individuals have long played a disproportionate role in politics, but we’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now: domination of campaign finance, especially on the Republican side, by a tiny group of immensely wealthy donors. Indeed, more than half the funds raised by Republican candidates through June came from just 130 families.

And while most Americans love Social Security, the wealthy don’t. Two years ago a pioneering study of the policy preferences of the very wealthy found many contrasts with the views of the general public; as you might expect, the rich are politically different from you and me. But nowhere are they as different as they are on the matter of Social Security. By a very wide margin, ordinary Americans want to see Social Security expanded. But by an even wider margin, Americans in the top 1 percent want to see it cut. And guess whose preferences are prevailing among Republican candidates. 

[W]hat the new attack on Social Security tells us is that the rules have changed. Nowadays, at least on the Republican side, the invisible primary has been reduced to a stark competition for the affections and, of course, the money of a few dozen plutocrats.

What this means, in turn, is that the eventual Republican nominee — assuming that it’s not Mr. Trump —will be committed not just to a renewed attack on Social Security but to a broader plutocratic agenda. Whatever the rhetoric, the GOP is on track to nominate someone who has won over the big money by promising government by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent.

The 99% and American Insecurity

As the Republican Party's presidential candidates begin to disingenuously talk about their "concern for working Americans," "American workers," and/or the middle class, they conveniently ignore the reality that their party's policies have exacerbated the dire straits that most Americans face.  Worse yet, they and their wealthy supporters have no clue how most Americans live and just how financially insecure most in the 99% are in fact.  A column in the New York Times looks at this reality and the clueless mindset of the wealthy.  Here are some excerpts:

America remains, despite the damage inflicted by the Great Recession and its aftermath, a very rich country. But many Americans are economically insecure, with little protection from life’s risks. They frequently experience financial hardship; many don’t expect to be able to retire, and if they do retire have little to live on besides Social Security.

Many readers will, I hope, find nothing surprising in what I just said. But all too many affluent Americans — and, in particular, members of our political elite — seem to have no sense of how the other half lives. Which is why a new study on the financial well-being of U.S. households, conducted by the Federal Reserve, should be required reading inside the Beltway.

Before I get to that study, a few words about the callous obliviousness so prevalent in our political life.

I am not, or not only, talking about right-wing contempt for the poor, although the dominance of compassionless conservatism is a sight to behold. According to the Pew Research Center, more than three-quarters of conservatives believe that the poor “have it easy” thanks to government benefits; only 1 in 7 believe that the poor “have hard lives.” And this attitude translates into policy. What we learn from the refusal of Republican-controlled states to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would foot the bill, is that punishing the poor has become a goal in itself, one worth pursuing even if it hurts rather than helps state budgets.

Take, as a prime example, positioning on Social Security. For decades, a declared willingness to cut Social Security benefits, especially by raising the retirement age, has been almost a required position — a badge of seriousness — for politicians and pundits who want to sound wise and responsible. After all, people are living longer, so shouldn’t they work longer, too? 

Meanwhile, the reality is that living longer in our ever-more-unequal society is very much a class thing: life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot among the affluent, but hardly at all in the bottom half of the wage distribution, that is, among those who need Social Security most. . . . A majority of Americans over 65 get more than half their income from Social Security, and more than a quarter are almost completely reliant on those monthly checks.

Washington still has no clue about the realities of life for those not yet elderly. Which is where that Federal Reserve study comes in. . . . . 3 in 10 nonelderly Americans said they had no retirement savings or pension, and that the same fraction reported going without some kind of medical care in the past year because they couldn’t afford it. Almost a quarter reported that they or a family member had experienced financial hardship in the past year.And something that even startled me: 47 percent said that they would not have the resources to meet an unexpected expense of $400 — $400! They would have to sell something or borrow to meet that need, if they could meet it at all.

[W]hile things could be worse, they could also be better. There is no such thing as perfect security, but American families could easily have much more security than they have. All it would take is for politicians and pundits to stop talking blithely about the need to cut “entitlements” and start looking at the way their less-fortunate fellow citizens actually live.

What continually strikes me is that the GOP and much of its base claims to support and value Christian beliefs, yet in fact, they don't give a damn about others, especially the poor and unfortunate.  Indeed, they are modern day Pharisees.  Hence why I am no longer a Republican and why in many ways I don't want to be called a Christian.  Christianity as defined and practiced by the far right is truly something foul and ugly.  

GOP Presidnetial Aspirants Continue the Assault on Social Security and Average Americans

I often post an image above of a redneck who votes Republican in juxtaposition to a fat cat plutocrat who realizes that the GOP uses racism, religious extremism, and plays on down right ignorance to dupe far too many voters into supporting Republican candidates even those those candidates are pushing policies that are directly opposed to the best interests of the misguided voters.  This phenomenon was on display in New Hampshire where among GOP "fixes" were proposals to increase the age of eligibility for Social Security - even though it would save little money and hurt average workers.  A column in the New York Times looks at this effort to yet dupe the uninformed and prejudiced into cutting their own financial throats.  Here are excerpts:

Last week, a zombie went to New Hampshire and staked its claim to the Republican presidential nomination.

Mr. Christie gave a speech in which he tried to position himself as a tough-minded fiscal realist. In fact, however, his supposedly tough-minded policy idea was a classic zombie — an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines its basic premise, but somehow just keeps shambling along.

But let us not be too harsh on Mr. Christie. A deep attachment to long-refuted ideas seems to be required of all prominent Republicans. Whoever finally gets the nomination for 2016 will have multiple zombies as his running mates.

Start with Mr. Christie, who thought he was being smart and brave by proposing that we raise the age of eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare to 69. Doesn’t this make sense now that Americans are living longer?

No, it doesn’t. This whole line of argument should have died in 2007, when the Social Security Administration issued a report showing that almost all the rise in life expectancy has taken place among the affluent. The bottom half of workers, who are precisely the Americans who rely on Social Security most, have seen their life expectancy at age 65 rise only a bit more than a year since the 1970s. Furthermore, while lawyers and politicians may consider working into their late 60s no hardship, things look somewhat different to ordinary workers, many of whom still have to perform manual labor.

And while raising the retirement age would impose a great deal of hardship, it would save remarkably little money. In fact, a 2013 report from the Congressional Budget Office found that raising the Medicare age would save almost no money at all.

But Mr. Christie — like Jeb Bush, who quickly echoed his proposal — evidently knows none of this. The zombie ideas have eaten his brain.

And there are plenty of other zombies out there. Consider, for example, the zombification of the debate over health reform.

[T]he act [Affordable Health Care Act] has produced a dramatic drop in the number of uninsured adults; premiums have grown much more slowly than in the years before reform; the law’s cost is coming in well below projections; and 2014, the first year of full implementation, also had the best job growth since 1999.

So how has this changed the discourse? On the right, not at all. As far as I can tell, every prominent Republican talks about Obamacare as if all the predicted disasters have, in fact, come to pass.

Finally, one of the interesting political developments of this election cycle has been the triumphant return of voodoo economics, the “supply-side” claim that tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy so much that they pay for themselves. In the real world, this doctrine has an unblemished record of failure. . . .  Kansas, whose governor promised a “real live experiment” that would prove supply-side doctrine right, has failed even to match the growth of neighboring states.

In the world of Republican politics, however, voodoo’s grip has never been stronger. Would-be presidential candidates must audition in front of prominent supply-siders to prove their fealty to failed doctrine.

So why has the Republican Party experienced a zombie apocalypse? One reason, surely, is the fact that most Republican politicians represent states or districts that will never, ever vote for a Democrat, so the only thing they fear is a challenge from the far right. Another is the need to tell Big Money what it wants to hear: a candidate saying anything realistic about Obamacare or tax cuts won’t survive the Sheldon Adelson/Koch brothers primary.

Whatever the reasons, the result is clear. Pundits will try to pretend that we’re having a serious policy debate, but, as far as issues go, 2016 is already set up to be the election of the living dead.

14 Ways the GOP Has Declared War on the Middle Class

I continually am amazed at how the Republican Party induces the ignorant and bigoted to vote Republican even though it is against these individuals' own best interest.  The usual ploys are appeals to religious bigotry and extremism - i.g., opposition to gay rights - racism, and anti-Hispanic bigotry.  Then there's a good dose of greed and selfishness thrown in for good measure.  Sadly, uninformed morons fall for these pitches over and over again and ultimately sell them selves and their families out.  A piece in Salon looks at how the GOP is waging war on the middle class and why it is urgent that people take off the blinders and get their heads out of their asses before more damage is done to working people.  Here are some highlights:

If you’re among the millions of Americans who feel bypassed by the economic recovery, you should pay attention to what the GOP-controlled Congress says it wants do to the federal government—via the 2016 budget—because if Republicans get even a fraction of what they have proposed, your living standards will start sliding downhill.

This is the takeaway from economists and experts who know how to ignore the right wing’s ridiculous rhetoric about freedom and opportunity, and instead see exactly who will be hurt, and how that will unfold—if the GOP rips the floor out of virtually every federal social safety net, as they propose, and also raises taxes on already struggling lower wage earners, which they also propose.

“The simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer,” wrote Paul Krugman, The New York Times’ columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist. “We’re looking at an enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.”

The GOP-controlled House and Senate budgets not only drastically cut spending on education, retirement, environment, road and bridges, climate change, immigration, job creation, Obamacare, food stamps, and other social welfare programs; but it gives the Pentagon a blank check, and includes tax cuts for the rich and corporations while raising taxes for lower-income Americans.

Republicans are not delivering the kind of federal government that Americans want; they are declaring economic war on average Americans by reshaping government to serve the upper classes and biggest businesses.

1. Bleed domestic programs to death.The budget is broken down into various areas that are reviewed separately, starting with domestic discretionary spending. This includes education, energy, environment, housing, job training and more. The White House wants modest increases in these areas in 2016. Polls show that Americans want more investment in infrastructure, climate change, the economy, immigration, and support higher tax revenues for these priorities. The GOP propose to freeze current spending or cut it back by hundreds of billions of dollars starting next fall, adding up to $5 trillion in cuts over the next decade.

2. Who needs new or better jobs? Two-thirds of Americans say improving job prospects is a key issue facing Washington. Obama wants to spend about half a trillion dollars over the next six years on road and bridge upgrades, research and development, and give tax credits to new manufacturers. The House and Senate budgets propose “no new funding” in these areas, NPP said, with the Senate saying that “reduced spending and regulation will indirectly lead to job creation.”

3. Who needs a good education? The same-size majority that wants to see more and better jobs, also wants to see Congress improve access to education. The White House wants to expand federal subsidies from pre-school through high school, and spend $60 billion to provide two years of community college for free over the next decade. Republicans propose the opposite. The House wants to cap federal Pell grants, which are awarded to low-income people for college and graduate school. That means “financial aid to fewer families,”
4. Who needs healthcare anyway?Obamacare may have its problems because it relies on private insurers to be middlemen, but since its inception 11.7 million people have gained access to healthcare and millions have subsidized premiums.  . . . the House and Senate still obsess with repealing it entirely. 

5. Next on the chopping block: Social Security. Here, too, even cautious pollsters like the Pew Research Center, report that 66 percent of Americans want to strengthen the program—which, contrary to GOP rhetoric, isn’t an “entitlement,” but the government acting as a retirement bank for decades of payroll deductions.. . . . The GOP agenda is not expanding payments to make life easier, but cutting senior benefits while allowing young people to give their payroll deductions to Wall Street. 

6. Privatize Medicare, health care for seniors. Medicare is the federal government health plan for people age 65 and older. It is not free, but costs significantly less than private health insurance. Pew reported that 61 percent of Americans want this system fortified and improved. . . . The Senate GOP simply says it wants to cut about half a trillion dollars from Medicare over the next decade, but doesn’t say how or where those cuts would be. That’s pretending no one would be hurt. 

7. Kick 7 Million Poor People Off Medicaid. Medicaid is the state-run health program for low-income people.  . . . . The House GOP doesn’t just want to repeal Obamacare, kicking millions off this health plan, NPP reports, but it would cut overall Medicaid spending and turn the program—along with SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program)—into one block grant. That scenario all-but ensures that health care for poorer families will shrink.

8. Our century’s version of “Let Them Eat Cake.” Those infamous words were attributed to France’s queen in the late 1700s, when commenting about impoverished countrymen. Today, in America, the food stamp program (SNAP) tries to ensure that nobody goes hungry, and is supported by 70 percent of the public. . . . . The House GOP, in contrast, would make “deep cuts to SNAP” 

9. But give the Pentagon more blank checks. Sixty-three percent of Americans say the Pentagon spends the “right amount or too much on national security,”  . . . . The House Republican budget writers say that’s not enough, however, and seek to use loopholes in war funding laws to add several hundred billion more over the next decade. The Senate GOP essentially rubber stamps that approach, offering no specifics.

10. And use the excuse of endless war to do it.

11. Corporate taxes are still too high, right? That’s not what 66 percent of Americans told the Gallup poll,  . . . . House Republicans, in contrast, have only proposed lower rates for corporations and small businesses, NPP said, and nothing to recapture outsized wealth.

12. And the rich can’t afford to pay, either? In January, 68 percent of Americans polled said wealthy households aren’t paying a fair share in taxes. . . . The House GOP, in contrast, only wants to lower tax rates “for individuals and familes,” NPP said, and eliminate the “Alternative Minimum Tax that sets a minimum tax for the wealthy.”

13. But working class and poor must pay more. In a January poll, 91 percent of Americans said that middle-class households paid enough or too much in taxes, and 79 percent said the same for low-income households. . . . Both House and Senate GOP go in the opposite direction, phasing out two tax credits that now lower taxes for 13 million families, NPP reported. Their budgets allow “the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) to expire in 2017, raising taxes on more than 13 million working families.” In other words, the GOP won’t touch taxes for the rich, but will raise them on the poor.

14. Why Krugman called all of this a “con game.”In politics, there’s always a publicly given reason why something is proposed and the real motive, which is not stated. . . . . deficit reduction is not what is going on here. The House and Senate Republican budgets actually would cut less money from next year’s deficit—about $350 billion—than Obama, NPP said, and then decrease domestic spending by more than $5 trillion dollars over the next decade to “balance” the budget. What’s going on is the GOP wants to cut back the federal government to roughly where it was before the Progressive era began a century ago, when government helped the rich get richer and there were no safety nets.

The Republican Party Then and Now

As noted at Politifact, a popular meme has been sweeping the Internet and social media that notes positions once supported by the Republican Party in the 1950's which are now anathema to the party faithful.  So what happened and when did the GOP change?  In my view, one of the main catalysts was the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP.  Since the Tea Party has a 85% overlap of "conservative Christians," I view the Tea Party crowd as simply disingenuously disguised Christofascists. The irony is that while these people claim to support "Christian values" they policies they have brought to the GOP are the antithesis of Christian values.  Other than trying to police other people's bedrooms to enforce their neurotic sexual mores and force public religious displays on all citizens, they have no moral agenda.   Of course, with the rise of the Christofascists, sane and decent people fled the GOP.  The combined result is today's ugly political party where greed, racism, and religious extremism are the norm. Here are highlights from Politifact that make it clear that the change in the GOP - for the worse - is real:

Liberals are getting nostalgic about the 1950s Republican agenda -- at least judging by the social media meme several readers recently sent us.

The meme, created by the group Occupy Democrats, summarized a few planks from the 1956 Republican Party platform, followed by the wistful comment, "Share if you miss the good old days!"

Here are the seven planks listed in the meme, which to today’s ear sound more like Democratic talking points:

1. Provide federal assistance to low-income communities;
2. Protect Social Security;
3. Provide asylum for refugees;
4. Extend minimum wage;
5. Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people;
6. Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union;
7. Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.

We wondered whether the meme accurately describes these elements of the 1956 platform, and if so, whether the 1956 document contrasts sharply with the most recent party platform in 2012. So we took a closer look.

We located a copy of the official party platform from 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was running (successfully, as it turned out) for his second term as president.  All told, the meme is generally accurate in portraying these seven elements of the 1956 platform . . .

The bottom line, then, is that on most of these issues, the GOP moved to the right between 1956 and 2012, though the degree of that shift has varied somewhat issue by issue.

We asked scholars whether the contrast between the two platforms is noteworthy, and they generally agreed that it was.

Delton noted that the Republican Party in the 1950s was divided between moderates (including Eisenhower) and conservatives. She said the moderates controlled the process of platform-writing in 1956, but they threw a few bones to conservatives in certain portions of the document. For instance, the platform said the government wouldn’t sign a treaty or enter into an international agreement in violation of individual rights -- an issue that continues to energize conservatives decades later -- and there’s a plank about a balanced budget, which was seen as a conservative position.

The seven items listed in the meme were supported by moderates, Delton said. At the time, she said, "conservatives would have focused, with horror, on the very items the meme highlights."

Eisenhower was facing a Democratic Congress in 1956 and didn’t want to try to reverse the New Deal, Anderson said. "If the point is that Eisenhower was not as extreme as Republicans today, it is accurate."

The meme says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more.

That’s generally correct. . . . The claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.

The 1956 platform describes the GOP I grew up in and that generations of my family supported.  That party is dead and perhaps beyond saving unless and until the Christofascists are driven out and treated as the foul individuals that they are notwithstanding their feigned piety and religiosity. 

Federal Recognition of Gay Marriage Now Matches Public Opinion

Over the weekend the federal government announced that it was recognizing same-sex marriages in six additional states: Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.  For couples in those state, this means access to marriage benefits previously denied to them.  Just as importantly, it continues the process of making same sex marriage "normal" and an everyday occurrence, something slowly but surely undercuts the Christofascists' anti-gay propaganda and will put increased pressure on the Republican Party to jettison these foul members of the GOP base over time.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at this federal recognition and how it increasingly matches public opinion.  Here are highlights:

Now, gay couples in Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming eligible for a variety of federal benefits such as Social Security for widowers or the ability to file a joint income tax return—a move that puts the government more in tune with popular opinion.

"With each new state where same-sex marriages are legally recognized, our nation moves closer to achieving of full equality for all Americans," said Attorney General Eric Holder. "We are acting as quickly as possible with agencies throughout the government to ensure that same-sex married couples in these states receive the fullest array of benefits allowable under federal law."

Last week, Holder issued a similar announcement about seven other states: Colorado, Indiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. With Saturday’s announcement, the federal government recognizes same-sex couples in 32 states and the District of Columbia. The two announcements come after the Supreme Court declined to hear appeals in cases that made gay marriage legal in each of these states.

Coincidentally, with the addition of the six states today, now about 39 percent of Americans (roughly 120 million people) live in states where same-sex marriage is not federally recognized—which is the same as the percentage of Americans who oppose it, according to Pew. In other words, the number of Americans who don't oppose same-sex marriage is roughly the same as the number of Americans who live in states where it's federally recognized.

America Ignores Its Future and Spends on the Past

The saying goes that our children are our future.  If that's true, current American policies are trashing the nation's future as disproportionate amounts are spent on aging seniors while far too little is done for the generations that are out future.  I'm not sure what the answer is but one thing is certain: more of the same and trying to maintain the status quo - and ignore the changing world and climate is not the answer.  One of the biggest obstacles to addressing the future is today's GOP which not only resists modernity tooth and claw, but wants to return the country to the Gilded Age of over a century ago when only the truly wealth had financial security and everyone else was an accident or serious illness away from financial ruin.  Add to that the GOP's refusal to even admit that something ominous is going with climate change and its a recipe for disaster.  One take away is that if younger generations want to protect their own best interests, they need to become a reliable voting block so as to offset the greed of the oldest generations.  A column in the New York Times looks at the damaged nation that is being left for the Millenials.  Here are excerpts:

Among Americans age 40 and older, there’s a pastime more popular than football, Candy Crush or HBO.  It’s bashing millennials.

We have a hell of a lot of nerve, considering the havoc we’ve wrought on theirs.

For decades they’ll be saddled with our effluvium: a monstrous debt, an epidemic of obesity, Adam Sandler movies. In their lifetimes the Atlantic will possibly swallow Miami Beach (I foresee a “Golden Girls” sequel with dinghies and life preservers) and the footwear for Anchorage in February may be flip-flops. At least everyone will be saving on heating bills.

The Obama administration did unveil a bold climate-change measure last week. Or, rather, it signaled its intent to act: We’ll have to wait and see whether Congress figures out a way to foil the president or the courts gum things up. The plan as it stands would cut carbon pollution from American power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.   But that may be too little, too late

The country’s slowness to deal with swelling seas and melting glaciers is just one manifestation of our myopia, just one metaphor for our failure to reckon with the future that we’re visiting upon today’s children, who get more lip service than legislation from us.

“If you’re going along with the status quo, it should be a crime to say that you care about our children and grandchildren, because you’re not putting your money where your mouth is,” Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who governed Nebraska for four years and represented that state in the Senate for another 12, told me recently.

This subject haunts him more and more. “If we’re trying to figure out how to advance the next generation’s future, we need to be spending more on the next generation, and we’re spending it on yesterday’s generation,” said Kerrey, 70. “I am not the future. My 12-year-old son is. But if you look at the spending, you’d think I’m the future.”

Kerrey is referring mostly to Social Security and Medicare, which, along with Medicaid, are the so-called entitlements that claim a larger and larger share of the federal budget.

He’s fixated on those sorts of numbers: According to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid totaled 6.7 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 1990. By 2010, they were 10 percent. And by 2038, such spending may represent 14.3 percent. It’s hard to see how that leaves much money for discretionary spending on infrastructure, on education, on research, on a range of investments that safeguard or improve the America that today’s young people will inherit.

The Urban Institute released a report in 2012 that looked at figures from 2008 for the combined local, state and federal spending that directly benefited Americans 65 and older versus spending that went to Americans under 19; the per capita discrepancy was $26,355 versus $11,822.

“I’m glad that my parents are living longer,” she added. “But it’s creating this budgetary math problem that we’re unwilling to look at.”

That unwillingness includes the predictable pushback from many members of Congress, from voters and from various advocacy groups when proposals are made to limit the growth of Social Security by, say, fiddling with cost-of-living adjustments. Older Americans, who would be instantly affected by such a change, turn out more reliably on Election Day than any other age group. Lawmakers are loath to cross them.

Younger voters need to assert themselves. Perhaps they’re poised to do just that. A recent poll by ABC News and The Washington Post showed a significant rise — to 66 percent now from 53 percent two months ago — of voters between the ages of 18 and 39 who said they definitely planned to vote in November.

[Older Americans] conveniently overlook how much more they’ve [Millennials] had to pay for college than we did, the loans they’ve racked up and the fact that nothing explains their employment difficulties better than a generally crummy economy, which certainly isn’t their fault.

 I truly fear for my grand children's future.  Right now their best financial hope is that the husband and I don't live too long so their inheritance can offset the disaster with which angry whites in particular will have left them.

David Frum: Republican Advantage Among Older Voters Won’t Last

Today's Republican Party relies disproportionately on angry, aging white voters to put it over the finish line in many political races.  Meanwhile, GOP policies seemingly go out of their way to alienate other voters, especially minority voters and LGBT voters and the young who support diversity and equality.  David Frum - one of the few relatively sane conservatives not yet fully driven from the GOP - says that the GOP is deluding itself if it believes that its lock on older voters will hold over the longer term .  Here are excerpts from a piece Frum wrote in The Atlantic:

Republicans are expected to score gains in 2014 because of their advantage among older voters, the voters most likely to turn out in midterm elections. That advantage has appeared surprisingly recently—and there is reason to think it won’t last long.

The emergence of the older voters as a massively solid Republican bloc is a post-Obama phenomenon.

The Pew survey explained the trend in a 2011 report. The Silent Generation that voted for Bush in 1988 had retained its conservatism into its retirement years. No news there. The news was among the next cohort, the Baby Boomers: After the year 2000, the Woodstock generation veered abruptly to the right.

These trends explain the present. But they don’t predict the future.  As human life extends, it no longer makes sense to think of 65 as “old age.” We live in the age of the 65-year-old marathon runner, the 65-year-old rock star, and the 65-year-old new father.

Old age comes later now. But when it comes, it changes people in the same way it always did. Women begin radically to outnumber men. (In 2010, the older-than-80 population included 4 million males and 7.2 million females). Personal savings are exhausted. (Average net worth drops by 25 percent between age 65 and age 75.) Dependency rises. Attitudes to government change.

The older you get, the more you appreciate Social Security and Medicare …and the more you mistrust proposals for reform that might affect current recipients.

As one very successful political operative told me, “The No. 1 concern of every voter over 80 is, ‘Will my check arrive on time?'”

Cultural conservatism appeals strongly to the elderly. The bold economic individualism espoused by so many in the Republican Party since 2009? Not so much. A 501(c)4 group closely connected to GOP leaders and donors conducted a series of focus groups in spring 2012 among older independents in Michigan and Florida, two states Mitt Romney hoped to win. These voters strongly endorsed the entitlements status quo and opposed any changes that would affect them personally. They refused to believe that Medicare caused deficits. (They blamed “wars” instead.)

There will soon be a lot more people digging in against benefits changes. The elderly population is poised to grow hugely quickly; the oldest of the old to grow faster still.  

As the old become older, they become more female. As they become more female, they become more supportive of government’s social-welfare role—and thus more strongly Democratic.