mykeystrokes.com

"Do or Do not. There is no try."

GOP Returns To ‘Death Panels’ Narrative In Desperate Effort To Change The Medicare Story

Republican Member of Congress, Phil Gingrey (GA), has decided that the moment has arrived to get back on offense in the debate for the future of Medicare.

At a press conference earlier this week, Gingrey returned to one of the GOP’s favorite ‘boogeymen’ in an effort to make us forget just how much we hate the Republican approach to reforming Medicare. He went after the fifteen-member panel of medical experts established by the Affordable Care Act who go by the name the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

According to Gingrey-

“Democrats like to picture us as pushing grandmother over the cliff or throwing someone under the bus. In either one of those scenarios, at least the senior has a chance to survive.

But under this IPAB we described that the Democrats put in Obamacare, where a bunch of bureaucrats decide whether you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy, I guarantee you when you withdraw that the patient is going to die. It’s rationing.” (Via Politico)

Wow…that does sound scary! In fact, it sounds an awful lot like a …..Death Panel.

Thank goodness that absolutely nothing Gingrey said at his press conference beyond “My name is Phil Gingrey” has even the slightest connection to the truth.

Like it or not, here are the facts –

In order to keep Medicare spending under control, the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare”, established specific target growth rates for the government program that cares for our seniors.

To ensure that these targets are met, the reform law created the IPAB for the purpose of monitoring the growth of Medicare spending and to make recommendations to cut the same in those years where it looks like we are going to blow past the targets – and only in those years.

So, if the growth in Medicare costs is staying within the boundaries set by law, the IPAB has no authority to propose any changes whatsoever.

Why was it necessary to create this panel of experts?

Prior to creation of the IPAB, it was left to Congress to make decisions about who and what should be covered by Medicare.

While Congress has long had their own board of experts to rely on (“Medipac”), the profound influence of special interests combined with a general lack of understanding of the world of medicine – and the economics that rule that world – made it fairly obvious that Congress was not the best place to get the job done.

If you doubt this, simply look at how poorly Congress has managed the growth in Medicare costs to date. And before you blame this on whichever president you would like to put in the crosshairs, you should be very clear that it is, indeed, the job of Congress to make these decisions and manage this policy.

The IPAB was created to solve this problem.

As noted earlier, the board has no statutory impact whatsoever on Medicare payment rates and policy during the years when the spending targets are being met. Their powers only come into play in those years where Medicare actuarial reports suggest we are spending too much money per the restrictions established by Obamacare.

During those years when the board is required to come up with proposals to get spending under control, they will provide these proposals to the DHHS who must then implement them – unless Congress takes it upon itself to come up with their own proposals and pass them into law.

Thus, Congress retains the absolute ability and opportunity to effectuate its own program to bring Medicare costs back in line with the targets any time they wish. Maybe it was me, but I don’t recall Gingrey pointing out this little detail. And there is something else that Representative Gingrey forgot to mention during his tirade. There is an entire list of policy items contained in the ACA that are specifically prohibited to the IPAB.

And what would you imagine is at the top of that list?

The Board is legally barred from proposing anything that will ration health care, restrict benefits or modify the eligibility criteria for beneficiaries.

What’s more, until 2020, the IPAB may not come up with proposals that place the rates being charged by primary hospitals and hospice programs in their sights. This prohibition was the result of the ACA already putting the moves on these organizations when it comes to what the government pays them. Thus, it seemed fair to give them some breathing room for the next eight years or so.

As a result of these inconvenient truths, it is rather difficult to concoct the scenario where Gingrey and friends see this insidious opportunity for the board to ration our health care.

The only argument I can imagine is to suggest that the board could recommend reducing the sums paid to physicians who provide Medicare services to patients. Were this to occur, more physicians might decide to drop out of Medicare, creating a longer waiting period for patients needing to see a doctor.

Of course, even this is not rationing.

Further, the SGR issue is about to become a thing of the past as Congress moves toward reaching a permanent solution to the problem created by an outdated formula that puts physicians in a position of taking major pay cuts from Medicare each year.

Once the physician payment issue is resolved, it becomes hard to see where the IPAB is going to exercise this health rationing Gingrey so fervently fears.

What should disturb each and every American is not only that Gingrey is willing to flat out lie in order to feather his political nest, he is using that lie to pull our attention away from the true health care rationers in our system – the private insurance companies.

Think this is a liberal red herring designed to distract you from the evil government plan to kill grandma?

Ask your physician about the hoops he or she must jump through to gain insurance company approval to do the job you hire them to do. Ask them how much of their time and money is wasted arguing with health insurance company representatives whose sole job is to turn down a requested procedure so that they will not have to pay for the same. Take a look at some of your statements from your insurer and see where they’ve denied payment on any number of technicalities resulting from a contract you signed that you could not possibly understand.

This is the true rationing problem in the United States today.

Still, polls continue to show that many Americans are deeply displeased with Obamacare.

I continue to believe that this is the direct result of so many of us not understanding what the legislation does – and does not – do.

But there is one thing we should all be able to understand.

If the opponents of health care reform and the current approach to Medicare are continuously left to base their arguments solely on lies, should it not occur to us all that maybe the law is better than what we’ve been led believe?

If not, why the lies instead of criticism based on the truth?

By: Rick Ungar, The Policy Page, Forbes, June 24,  2011

June 25, 2011 Posted by | Affordable Care Act, Congress, Conservatives, Death Panels, Democrats, GOP, Government, Health Care, Health Care Costs, Health Reform, Ideologues, Lawmakers, Medicare, Politics, Republicans, Right Wing | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Corporate Tax Cuts Don’t Stimulate Job Growth

Prevailing conservative  wisdom dictates that businesses need tax cuts—and investors need capital  gains tax cuts—to get the economy moving. But two very well-executed articles  on wages and taxes published recently suggest that targeting tax cuts at  business executives may do little to improve the dismal unemployment picture.

The Washington Post offers a startling  analysis of income disparity, noting that the gap between the very rich and the rest of us has  grown dramatically in the past few decades, reaching current levels that have  not been seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the Post reports, the top one-tenth of one percent of earners took in  more than a tenth of the personal income in the United States. But the moneyed  class is not dominated by professional athletes or big-name artistic performers  or even hedge fund managers, the Post found.  Instead, it is due to a big increase in executive compensation, even as real  wages for some of their workers have dropped:

The top 0.1 percent of earners make about $1.7 million or  more, including capital gains. Of those, 41 percent were executives, managers  and supervisors at non-financial companies, according to the analysis, with  nearly half of them deriving most of their income from their ownership in  privately-held firms. An additional 18 percent were managers at financial firms  or financial professionals at any sort of firm. In all, nearly 60 percent fell  into one of those two categories.

The New York Times has a fascinating story that serves as an unwitting companion piece to the Post story. Corporate executives, the  paper reports, are clamoring for a tax holiday to encourage them to bring their  offshore profits back to the United States. And the money in question is big,  the Times notes: Apple has $12 billion  in offshore cash, while Google has $17 billion, and Microsoft, $29 billion. The  companies with money sitting offshore argue that if the federal government were  to offer them a huge tax break—say, a one-year drop from 35 percent to 5.25  percent—the businesses would bring the money home and operate as a  private-sector economic stimulus.

However, the Times notes:

(T)hat’s not how it worked  last time. Congress and the Bush administration offered companies a similar tax  incentive, in 2005, in hopes of spurring domestic hiring and investment, and  800 took advantage. Though the tax break lured them into bringing $312 billion  back to the United States, 92 percent of that money was returned to  shareholders in the form of dividends and stock buybacks, according to a study by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

Who needs a tax cut, then? The U.S. economy is  very much consumer-driven; companies aren’t hiring, many business owners say,  because people aren’t buying. The past behavior of corporations that have  received huge tax cuts has not necessarily been to use the money to hire more  people; the Bush-era tax cuts have been in place for a decade, and the  unemployment rate is still 9.1 percent. And executive compensation has grown.  Executives may feel entitled to earn more and more if their companies are doing  well and expanding. But without customers, those companies will go bust.

By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, JUne 20, 2011

June 23, 2011 Posted by | Businesses, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Consumers, Corporations, Economic Recovery, Economy, GOP, Government, Ideology, Income Gap, Jobs, Labor, Middle Class, Politics, Republicans, Taxes, Unemployment, Wealthy | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How The GOP’s War On Workers’ Rights Undermines The Economy

The battle has resumed in Wisconsin. The state supreme court has allowed Governor Scott Walker to strip bargaining rights from state workers.

Meanwhile, governors and legislators in New Hampshire and Missouri are attacking private unions, seeking to make the states so-called “open shop” where workers can get all the benefits of being union members without paying union dues. Needless to say this ploy undermines the capacity of unions to do much of anything. Other Republican governors and legislatures are following suit.

Republicans in Congress are taking aim at the National Labor Relations Board, which issued a relatively minor proposed rule change allowing workers to vote on whether to unionize soon after a union has been proposed, rather than allowing employers to delay the vote for years. Many employers have used the delaying tactics to retaliate against workers who try to organize, and intimidate others into rejecting a union.

This war on workers’ rights is an assault on the middle class, and it is undermining the American economy.

The American economy can’t get out of neutral until American workers have more money in their pockets to buy what they produce. And unions are the best way to give them the bargaining power to get better pay.

For three decades after World War II – I call it the “Great Prosperity” – wages rose in tandem with productivity. Americans shared the gains of growth, and had enough money to buy what they produced.

That’s largely due to the role of labor unions. In 1955, over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent are.

With the decline of unions came the stagnation of American wages. More and more of the total income and wealth of America has gone to the very top. Middle-class purchasing power depended on mothers going into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, finally, the middle class going deep into debt, using their homes as collateral.

But now all these coping mechanisms are exhausted — and we’re living with the consequence.

Some say the Great Prosperity was an anomaly. America’s major competitors lay in ruins. We had the world to ourselves. According to this view, there’s no going back.

But this view is wrong. If you want to see the same basic bargain we had then, take a look at Germany now.

Germany is growing much faster than the United States. Its unemployment rate is now only 6.1 percent (we’re now at 9.1 percent).

What’s Germany’s secret? In sharp contrast to the decades of stagnant wages in America, real average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent there since 1985. Germany has been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

How did German workers do it? A big part of the story is German labor unions are still powerful enough to insist that German workers get their fair share of the economy’s gains.

That’s why pay at the top in Germany hasn’t risen any faster than pay in the middle. As David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times recently, the top 1 percent of German households earns about 11 percent of all income – a percent that hasn’t changed in four decades.

Contrast this with the United States, where the top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.

The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.

Part of the answer is, as in Germany, stronger labor unions — unions strong enough to demand a fair share of the gains from productivity growth.

The current Republican assault on workers’ rights continues a thirty-year war on American workers’ wages. That long-term war has finally taken its toll on the American economy.

It’s time to fight back.

 

By: Robert Reich, RobertReich Blog, June 15, 2011

June 16, 2011 Posted by | Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, Economy, Equal Rights, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Governors, Ideologues, Ideology, Jobs, Labor, Lawmakers, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wealthy, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The GOP Health Care Assault On Planned Parenthood Exposes The Hypocrisy Of The Pro-Life Movement

I tend not to get involved in discussions on abortion because I have never been able to resolve the conflict which comes from understanding both sides of this difficult issue. I understand those who believe in the pro-choice approach. Certainly, a woman wants, needs and deserves to be in control of her own body and make the decisions that she believes are best.

But I also get the pro-life movement. If an individual believes that a life is ‘in being’ at the moment of conception, I can well appreciate the distress such a person would feel over such a life being terminated.

What I cannot understand is how the very people who are so profoundly committed to the pro-life movement seem to lose all care, concern and compassion for that life once the child is born into the world.

Nowhere is this hypocrisy more prominently on display than in the current war being waged by the GOP on Planned Parenthood – the organization that spends 97% of their efforts and money providing millions of impoverished American women with critical front-line health care, essential medical testing to discover disease before it is too late to successfully treat a patient, and the very family planning and sex education services that might help women avoid an unwanted pregnancy and thus moot the question of abortion.

Yes, the remaining 3% of the Planned Parenthood budget is dedicated to providing abortion services but, contrary to what the anti-abortion forces would have you believe, not one cent of taxpayer money – federal or state – pays for so much as an IV needle used in an abortion procedure. The legal prohibition against taxpayer money being spent on abortions is as clearly enforced as the Roe v. Wade decision that confirms a woman’s right to choose in the United States.

Despite the important work done by Planned Parenthood – and the lives they save – the GOP has made it a cornerstone of their social agenda to put this vital service to the working and non-working poor out of business.

Should you doubt that the organization does, in fact, save lives, take a look at this letter written by Maggie Davis of Saratoga Springs in response to her Congressman’s voting to defund Planned Parenthood.

I am writing this in answer to Congressman Gibson’s vote against the funding for Planned Parenthood. I have no idea why he did this. Regardless of the pro and con of Planned Parenthood, they do save lives. I speak from experience.In the early ’70s I went to Planned Parenthood here for a checkup and they found something that was wrong and advised me to see my doctor right away. I did and within one month I had to have surgery to save my life. I would not be here today writing this letter. If it were not for Planned Parenthood and Dr. Streit of Saratoga, I would be dead. I will always be thankful to Planned Parenthood for discovering something and telling me to go to my doctor.

Mr. Gibson, I think you should take another look at how many lives Planned Parenthood does save. When we voted for you, we expected you to work for the taxpayers who pay you.

Maggie Davis, Saratoga Springs

Via The Saratogian

So, how do the pro-life forces defend their position that Planned Parenthood must go because, on occasion, they perform medical procedures that end what these folks perceive to be lives in being while fully understanding that closing the organization’s doors will result in the loss of lives of women we know are in being?

How did the 240 Members of the House of Representatives (a total which included 10 Democrats) justify their votes when they passed a bill in February to defund Planned Parenthood knowing that while their vote may or may not have resulted in a few less abortions had the Senate agreed (they did not), that same vote would also take the lives of people like Maggie Davis as a result of the legislation?

Had the House had their way, how many additional abortions would result – under conditions one shudders to contemplate – due to the loss of the counseling services designed to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies?

Now, as we watch the GOP assault on Medicaid – the federal and state funded health program relied on by over 40% of women who visit Planned Parenthood – one is left to wonder just how much of this drive to destroy the state-based medical safety net is based on actual budgetary concerns or whether budget difficulties are simply a cover for the effort to win the battle against legal abortion.

And while we are looking at the questions, maybe someone can answer how the eleven states that have either passed or introduced legislation this year designed to ban groups like Planned Parenthood from receiving family-planning funding or prevent them from contracting with the state for payment for services provided by these organizations, justify their own actions?

The simple truth is that there is no rational way to conclude that these alleged pro-life forces are, in fact, pro-life as it is difficult to fathom how one can desire to protect the life of the unborn by sacrificing the life of the already born. If you believe in protecting the unborn, does it not necessarily follow that you are equally as concerned about protecting the lives of those already here in the flesh.

What I can work out is how pro-life politicians are, in reality, ‘pro’ their political careers and are more than willing to sacrifice the lives of the poor who rely on the services of Planned Parenthood to burnish their anti-abortion credentials.

Seriously, does it get any worse than that? Making the matter even more despicable is the reliance upon religion as the basis for the pro-life consciousness. I fully understand and respect that religions teach that taking the lives of the unborn is morally wrong just as I understand and respect that it is up to each individual to hear those teachings or not. This is the way we roll in America.

Yet, I am aware of nothing in any of the competing religious tomes suggesting that while is it essential to protect the unborn so that they may have life, protecting those currently here so that they might continue life is no big deal. I’m also pretty sure that the Bible does not endorse allowing people to get sick and die because ‘we can’t afford it.’

Here’s a thought for those dedicated GOP ‘fighters for life’ – show a little consistency and maybe you’ll have more success in convincing the public that your closely held religious beliefs are something more than just the worst kind of cynical and despicable politics.

Show you are as concerned for the lives and health of those already walking the planet as you profess to be for those who have not yet arrived. Then, and only then, can any one willing to scrutinize your motives view you as the God fearing, compassionate human beings you pretend to be.

Failing the same, even the most religious and zealous among us should not, in good conscious, avoid the fact that our elected officials are picking and choosing between the lives they save and the lives they sacrifice in the name of good politics.

If your beliefs lie with the pro-life side of the abortion issue, I respect that. I encourage you to continue your fight just as I heartily support both your right and need to do so.

But don’t effectuate that fight by requiring the taking of the lives and health of others because you have not yet won your battle.

While you may be right that compassion for life must begin with conception, there is no logical or emotional basis that suggests that the same compassion should end with birth.

Tell your elected representatives to back off on Planned Parenthood. Then, and only then can you truly be among those who are pro-life.

By: Rick Ungar, The Policy Page, Forbes, June 13, 2011

June 14, 2011 Posted by | Abortion, Anti-Choice, Class Warfare, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, Equal Rights, GOP, Government, Health Care, Human Rights, Ideology, Lawmakers, Medicaid, Planned Parenthood, Politics, Pro-Choice, Public Health, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Women, Women's Health, Womens Rights | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The GOP’s CIA Playbook: Destabilize Country To Sweep Back Into Power

Modern Republicans have a simple approach to politics when they are not in the White House: Make America as ungovernable as possible by using almost any means available, from challenging the legitimacy of opponents to spreading lies and disinformation to sabotaging the economy.

Over the past four decades or so, the Republicans have simply not played by the old give-and-take rules of politics. Indeed, if one were to step back and assess this Republican approach, what you would see is something akin to how the CIA has destabilized target countries, especially those that seek to organize themselves in defiance of capitalist orthodoxy.

To stop this spread of “socialism,” nearly anything goes. Take, for example, Chile in the early 1970s when socialist President Salvador Allende won an election and took steps aimed at improving the conditions of the country’s poor.

Under the direction of President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the CIA was dispatched to engage in psychological warfare against Allende’s government and to make the Chilean economy “scream.”

U.S. intelligence agencies secretly sponsored Chilean news outlets, like the influential newspaper El Mercurio, and supported “populist” uprisings of truckers and housewives. On the economic front, the CIA coordinated efforts to starve the Chilean government of funds and to drive unemployment higher.

Worsening joblessness could then be spun by the CIA-financed news outlets as proof that Allende’s policies didn’t work and that the only choice for Chile was to scrap its social programs. When Allende compromised with the Right, that had the additional benefit of causing friction between him and some of his supporters who wanted even more radical change.

As Chile became increasingly ungovernable, the stage was set for the violent overthrow of Allende, the installation of a rightist dictatorship, and the imposition of “free-market” economics that directed more wealth and power to Chile’s rich and their American corporate backers.

Though the Allende case in Chile is perhaps the best known example of this intelligence strategy (because it was investigated by a Senate committee in the mid-1970s), the CIA has employed this approach frequently around the world. Sometimes the target government is removed without violence, although other times a bloody coup d’etat has been part of the mix.

Home to Roost

So, it is perhaps fitting that a comparable approach to politics would eventually come home to roost in the United States, even to the point that some of the propaganda funding comes from outside sources (think of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times and Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.)

Obviously, given the wealth of the American elites, the relative proportion of the propaganda funding is derived more domestically in the United States than it would be in a place like Chile (or some other unfortunate Third World country that has gotten on Washington’s bad side).

But the concept remains the same: Control as much as possible what the population gets to see and hear; create chaos for your opponent’s government, economically and politically; blame if for the mess; and establish in the minds of the voters that their only way out is to submit, that the pain will stop once your side is back in power.

Today’s Republicans have fully embraced this concept of political warfare, whereas the Democrats generally have tried to play by the old rules, acquiescing when Republicans are in office with the goal of “making government work,” even if the Republicans are setting the agenda.

Unlike the Democrats and the Left, the Republicans and the Right have prepared themselves for this battle, almost as if they are following a CIA training manual. They have invested tens of billions of dollars in a propaganda infrastructure that operates 24/7, year-round, to spot and exploit missteps by political enemies.

This vertically integrated media machine allows useful information to move quickly from a right-wing blog to talk radio to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal to conservative magazines and book publishing. Right-wing propagandists are well-trained and well-funded so they can be deployed to all manner of public outlets to hammer home the talking points.

When a Democrat somehow does manage to get into the White House, Republicans in Congress (and even in the Courts) are ready to do their part in the destabilization campaign. Rather than grant traditional “honeymoon” periods of cooperation with the president’s early policies, the battle lines are drawn immediately.

In late 1992, for instance, Bill Clinton complained that his “honeymoon” didn’t even last through the transition, the two-plus months before a new president takes office. He found himself facing especially harsh hazing from the Washington press corps, as the mainstream media – seeking to shed its “liberal” label and goaded by the right-wing media – tried to demonstrate that it would be tougher on a Democrat than any Republican.

The mainstream press hyped minor “scandals” about Clinton’s Whitewater real estate investment and Travel-gate, a flap about some routine firings at the White House travel office. Meanwhile, the Right’s rapidly growing media was spreading false stories implicating Clinton in the death of White House aide Vince Foster and other “mysterious deaths.”

Republicans in Congress did all they could to feed the press hysteria, holding hearings and demanding that special prosecutors be appointed. When the Clinton administration relented, the choice of prosecutors was handed over to right-wing Republican Appeals Court Judge David Sentelle, who consciously picked political enemies of Clinton to oversee zealous investigations.

Finally Winning

The use of scandal-mongering to destabilize the Clinton administration finally peaked in late 1998 and early 1999 when the Republican-controlled House voted impeachment and Clinton had to endure (but survive) a humiliating trial in the Senate.

The Republican strategy, however, continued into Campaign 2000 with Vice President Al Gore facing attacks on his character and integrity. Gore was falsely painted as a delusional braggart, as both right-wing and mainstream media outlets freely misquoted him and subjected him to ridicule (while simultaneously bowing and scraping before Republican candidate George W. Bush).

When Gore managed to win the national popular vote anyway – and would have carried the key state of Florida if all legally cast ballots were counted – the Republicans and the Right rose up in fury demanding that the Florida count be stopped before Bush’s tiny lead completely disappeared. Starting a minor riot in Miami, the Republicans showed how far they would go to claim the White House again.

Five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court – wanting to ensure that the new president would keep their side in control of the courts and recognizing that their party was prepared to spread disorder if Gore prevailed – stopped the counting of votes and made Bush the “winner.” [For details, see the book, Neck Deep.]

Despite this partisan ruling, Gore and the Democrats stepped back from the political confrontation. The right-wing press cheered and gloated, while the mainstream news media urged the people to accept Bush as “legitimate” for the good of the country.

For most of Bush’s disastrous presidency, this dynamic remained the same. Though barely able to complete a coherent sentence, Bush was treated with great deference, even when he failed to protect the country from the 9/11 attacks and led the nation into an unprovoked war with Iraq. There were no combative investigations of Bush like those that surrounded Clinton.

Even at the end of Bush’s presidency – when his policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the rich and massive budget deficits combined to create the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression – the prevailing message from the Establishment was that it was unfair to lay too much blame on Bush.

Shortly after Barack Obama took office in 2009, a Republican/right-wing talking point was to complain when anyone took note of the mess that Bush had left behind: “There you go again, blaming Bush.”

Getting Obama

Immediately, too, the Republicans and the Right set to work demonizing and destroying Obama’s presidency. Instead of allowing the Democrats to enact legislation aimed at addressing the financial and economic crisis, the Senate Republicans launched filibuster after filibuster.

When Obama and the Democrats did push through emergency legislation, such as the $787 billion stimulus package, they had to water it down to reach the 60-vote super-majority. The Republicans and the Right then quickly laid the blame for high unemployment on the “failed” stimulus.

There also were waves of propaganda pounding Obama’s legitimacy. The Right’s news media pressed bogus accusations that Obama had been born in Kenya and thus was not constitutionally eligible to be president. He was denounced as a socialist, a Muslim, a fascist, an enemy of Israel, and pretty much any other charge that might hit some American hot button.

When Obama welcomed American students back to school in 2009, the Right organized against his simple message – urging young people to work hard – as if it were some form of totalitarian mind control. His attempt to address the growing crisis in American health care was denounced as taking away freedoms and imposing “death panels.”

Soon, billionaires like oil man David Koch and media mogul Murdoch were promoting a “grassroots” rebellion against Obama called the Tea Party. Activists were showing up at presidential speeches with guns and brandishing weapons at rallies near Washington.

The high-decibel disruptions and the “screaming” economy created the impression of political chaos. Largely ignoring the role of the Republicans, the press faulted Obama for failing to live up to his campaign promise to bring greater bipartisanship to Washington.

Hearing the discord framed that way, many average Americans also blamed Obama; many of the President’s supporters grew demoralized; and, as happened with Allende in Chile, some on the Left turned against Obama for not doing more, faster.

By November 2010, the stage was set for a big Republican comeback. The party swept to victory in the House and fell just short in the Senate. But Congress was not the Republicans’ true goal. What they really want is the White House with all its executive powers.

However, following Obama’s success in killing Osama bin Laden on May 2 and with what is widely regarded as a weak Republican presidential field, the Right’s best hope for regaining complete control of the U.S. government in 2012 is to sink the U.S. economy.

Already, the Republican success in limiting the scope of the stimulus package and then labeling it a failure – combined with deep cuts in local, state and federal government spending – have helped push the economy back to the brink where a double-dip recession is now a serious concern.

Despite these worries – and a warning from Moody’s about a possible downgrade on U.S. debt if Congress delays action on raising the debt limit – the Republicans are vowing more brinksmanship over the debt-limit vote. Before acting, they are demanding major reductions in government spending (while refusing to raise taxes on the rich).

A Conundrum

So, Obama and the Democrats face another conundrum. If they slash spending too much, they will further stall the recovery. However, if they refuse to submit to this latest round of Republican blackmail, they risk a debt crisis that could have devastating consequences for the U.S. economy for years – even decades – to come.

Either way, the right-wing media and much of the mainstream press will put the blame on Obama and the Democrats. They will be held accountable for failing to govern.

The Republican propaganda machine will tell the American people that they must throw Obama and the Democrats out of office for stability to return. There will be assurances about how the “magic of the market” will bring back the bright days of prosperity.

Of course, the reality of a new Republican administration, especially with a GOP Congress, would be the return of the old right-wing nostrums: more tax cuts for the rich, less regulation of corporations, more military spending, and more privatization of social programs.

Any budget balancing will come at the expense of labor rights for union employees and shifting the costs for health care onto the backs of the elderly. Yet, all this will be surrounded by intense propaganda explaining the public pain as a hangover from misguided government “social engineering.”

There is, of course, the possibility that the American people will see through today’s Republican CIA-style strategy of “making the economy scream.” Americans might come to recognize the role of the pseudo-populist propagandists on Fox News and talk radio.

Or Republicans might have second thoughts about playing chicken on the debt limit and running the risk of a global depression. Such a gamble could redound against them. And, it’s hard to believe that even their most ardent billionaire-backers would find destruction of their stock portfolios that appealing.

But there can be a momentum to madness. We have seen throughout history that events can get out of hand, that thoroughly propagandized true believers can truly believe. Sometimes, they don’t understand they are simply being manipulated for a lesser goal. Once the chaos starts, it is hard to restore order.

That has been another bloody lesson from the CIA’s operations in countries around the world. These covert actions can have excessive or unintended consequences.

Ousting Allende turned Chile into a fascist dictatorship that sent assassins far and wide, including Washington, D.C. Ousting Mossadegh in Iran led to the tyranny of the Shah and ultimately to an extreme Islamist backlash. Ousting Arbenz in Guatemala led to the butchery of some 200,000 people and the rise of a narco-state. Such examples can go on and on.

However, these CIA-type techniques can be very seductive, both to U.S. presidents looking for a quick fix to some international problem and to a political party trying to gain a decisive edge for winning. These methods can be especially dangerous when the other side doesn’t organize effectively to counter them.

The hard reality in the United States today is that the Republicans and the Right are now fully organized, armed with a potent propaganda machine and possessing an extraordinary political will. They are well-positioned to roll the U.S. economy off the cliff and blame the catastrophe on Obama.

Indeed, that may be their best hope for winning Election 2012.

By: Robert Parry, Consortium News, AlterNet, June 9, 2011

June 13, 2011 Posted by | Birthers, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, Economy, Elections, Financial Institutions, Foreign Policy, GOP, Government, Government Shut Down, Health Reform, Ideologues, Ideology, Journalists, Koch Brothers, Labor, Lawmakers, Media, Politics, President Obama, Press, Republicans, Right Wing, Seniors, Supreme Court, Voters, Wall Street | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment