William Rivers Pitt Explains It All For You

Pitt is a mensch from way back. He used to have a tremendous presence in the Left-o-sphere when it was much smaller than it is today, and his books and essays still ring as true as they did when first he offered them up.

Over at Truthout, he's got a sad little essay called Next Stop: Train Wreck about the Debt Crisis Crisis Gang of 12 charged with coming up with the Other Cuts that will defeat the Debt Demon, and it's worth a read.

An excerpt:

And so here we are, at the next stage of this comic opera/disaster movie/smash-and-grab robbery known as the "debt-limit crisis." Leadership in both the House and Senate have tapped the twelve members who will make up the so-called "Super-Committee," which will be responsible for coming up with a plan to cobble together $1.2 trillion in spending cuts by Thanksgiving.

It is a motley crew, to be sure.

The Republican side of the equation is comprised of Senators Rob Portman (Ohio), John Kyl, (Arizona), and Patrick Toomey (Pennsylvania), along with Representatives Fred Upton (Michigan), Jeb Hensarling (Texas) and Dave Camp (Pennsylvania). To a man - and note well that Republican leadership selected a racially and sexually homogenized crew for this - they are hard-liners who will likely not budge when it comes to tax revenues. Kyl is a boon companion of GOP Senator Mitch McConnell, Toomey was once president of the far-right group Club for Growth, and Portman used to be budget director for none other than George W. Bush. Each and every one of these men has taken Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge, which bodes very ill for any revenue enhancements making it into the deal.

The Democratic side of things is comprised of Senators John Kerry (Massachusetts), Patty Murray (Washington), and Max Baucus (Montana), along with Representatives Xavier Becerra (California), Chris Van Hollen (Maryland), and James Clyburn (South Carolina). Progressives will probably be able to live with the chosen House members, but the Senators picked by Harry Reid have given rise to a great degree of consternation on the left. Baucus, in particular, caused a chorus of groans from progressive circles, but ironically enough, it may very well be Murray and Kerry that progressives have the most to worry about.

Well, that's cheery. The only thing I'd quibble with is the title. Methinks that train, Will, is already wrecked.

Meanwhile, the heading picture is taken from a little DVD work by Penny Little called Electile Dysfunction that covers the severe electoral fraud issues of 2004 (anybody remember that?) Those issues have only gotten worse in the intervening years. But now it is the New Normal. People are used to it.

Managed Republic. Directed Democracy. ♫That's America to meeeee!♫

More to the Point: We Are Ruled by Idiots

Le Roi du Déluge, Louis XVI

The calls for Revolt and Revolution are growing more and more strident and shrill every day. As the upshot of the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal settles in -- and there is much more of this Satan Sandwich to come -- people are OUTRAGED!!!™, and not simply in the Left-o-sphere, oh no.

The OUTRAGE!!!™ is spreading this time well beyond the comfortable confines of Blogtopia® (h/t Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) and into the masses, and it is not being "injected" by the handful of constitutional malcontents who see it as their job to stir up discontent.

No, this time the Anger and the Bile in the Gorge is spreading nationally, among all kinds of people, most of whom have no interest in or contact with the Blog-o-sphere, Left or Right (or Decline to State), due to the fact that the People's Screwage is, like that in Wisconsin earlier this year, right out in the open -- with much more to come -- was deliberated for months, and it is a deeply, profoundly disturbing vision Our Rulers have set for the rest of us.

The Deal essentially institutionalizes the Status Quo -- which is miserable for millions upon millions of Americans, more every day. "More misery for more people!" is its obvious motto. There is not only nothing whatever in the Deal to alleviate any of this misery, there is nothing on the horizon to do so. Quite literally, just as in most of the West, the People's well being is being sacrificed, right out in the open, on the altar of finance and greed.

"Hope" is changed to "Fury."

The Fury has yet to be channeled into into a Revolt that can actually overcome the Power that is being consolidated and reinforced every second of every day. One after another, the stream of revolts at home and abroad this year has failed to actually reverse -- or even to substantively modify -- the March of Oppression and Greed which is overwhelming simple common sense.

How long will it be before the metaphorical calls for Tumbrils and Guillotines are replaced by the real thing?

Whatever the course of events:

We are ruled by idiots.

Ahkenaten

I've used the Ahkenaten image above to represent Obama pretty much since he ascended the Throne. (BTW, I use the imagery of an Imperial Palace, Throne, Emperor, etc. all the time to describe The President and Our Government and their many Courtiers for the simple reason that that is what Our Government on the whole has become, especially since the advent of Bush II -- and I say that as someone who was on the Inside during part of the Clinton administration, through the entire Bush Reign, and into the first year of the Obama Reign.) I use it because I think there is a startling physical resemblance (Oh, my! Reincarnation?) and because Ahkenaten was a "Transformational/Transcendent" Pharaoh, unique in many ways, revolutionary in others, and -- at least according to History -- a tragic failure. Which is what I sensed Mr. Obama might well become.

Yes. Well.

The Presidency may be the post-modern analogy to the Emperor and his Court when time was, but in the fulness of time, the Presidency has not adopted the titles and styles, powers, or the divinity of the Pharaohs. Consequently, whoever occupies the Throne cannot simply declare a revolutionary revision of the Government and see it implemented by command from the Throne (though, truth to tell, Bush/Cheney came very close to doing just that, and got away with almost all of it, too, by both browbeating and irrelevating Congress and the Courts into submission.)

Pharaoh Obama has sought to restore Congress to something of its Constitutional and historical role, with mixed results to say the least. I get the impression that Congress really prefers to be ordered around, and instead of doing that, Pharaoh Obama has told them to come up with plans and legislation on their own and get as far as they can toward enacting it before he will step in to "mediate" disputes on the way to eventual passage.

Pharaoh as Mediator is an interesting -- and highly unusual -- tactic, one that doesn't sit well with much of anyone, especially not in Congress, where most of the training and belief of those in office has been that the President/Emperor is supposed to lead the Congressional Flock, much as a minister might lead his congregation, not follow-on to sort out difficulties between disputing factions.

Uh. They don't know what to do under the circumstances, so they go hog-wild, as they have done over the Debt Limit Crisis Crisis, one that the Throne actually decided to instigate and continue in order to achieve a transcendent goal, not simply a transactional goal of getting a piece of needed legislation passed.

No, the Throne decided that This Is The Time to overhaul the entire debt-related budget process, top to bottom, and set in place a budgetary formula that would reduce government expenditures as a share of the economy over time, in a structured and enduring framework.

A framework that would, first of all, be appealing to the Government's Owners and Sponsors -- ie: the Financial Sector. Which meant, from the outset, cutting social program expenditures, and refusing, under any circumstances, to consider appropriate tax levels on the richest among us.

There could be no consideration of appropriate tax levels on the Highest and the Mightiest since Our Nobles and Our Betters have been on a tax strike for years, and they refuse to pay a dime more into the Treasury, but continue to insist on withdrawing cash from it instead, both to line their own ample pockets, and to reduce even further the proportional amount of money the Government has to work with.

It's diabolical, but there you are.

Taxation, to them, is punishment, and only the unworthy and the parasites should be forced to pay.

So, with that starting point on Negotiations over the Debt Limit, the tragic drama got under way -- in the midst of the most severe economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.

Oh crap. This could not end well.

Simply put, the points of argument and dispute that the Pharaoh was intent on mediating had nothing to do with responding to the economic difficulties of the masses, yet would, if implemented, result in further calamity piled on the many, for the express benefit of the few.

Not a good outcome at all.

But that's where we are.

Pharaoh has fucked up.

For all intents and purposes, his reign is done. His attempt at brilliant transcendence has resulted in a couple of truly grotesque monstrosities: the Health Insurance Racket Protection Program, and the still being cobbled together Budget Fix for Debt Limit Increase and Killing the Economy Measure.

I don't think he's going to get a third chance.

Grumble.

Capitulator!!! Destroyer!!!! LIAR!!!!!

Good God. The hysteric reporting is almost overwhelming.

Yes. Well. Apparently the Debt Crisis Crisis Deal is just about done, and assuming it gets through the House and the Senate in some form, it is likely the President will sign it, and the screwage of the People will recommence in earnest this time, as if the monumental spikes in poverty, hunger and homelessness aren't already payment enough from the People for the titanic economic catastrophe engineered by Their Betters.

Not tying what's already happened into what is to come has become one of the blogospheric conventions during the Crisis Crisis Negotiations, and it has been infuriating. It's not just insisting that "there could be cuts" -- without the least recognition that there already have been cuts, in some cases massive cuts -- to social programs, it is also the failure to tie the Crisis Crisis Negotiations to the post-modern style of Governing Contrary -- in almost all things -- to the People's Will and the Public Interest.

Instead, the Crisis Crisis Negotiations are, by convention, seen as independent of anything else, seemingly sui generis of Congress and the President, and by convention, these Negotiations have been deliberately whipped to a frenzy out of Nothing At All, and Everything Was Going Just Fine before the Crisis was made manifest Out of Nothing.

Horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.

Those who are able to make connections typically see the Debt Crisis Crisis Negotiations as an application of the Shock Doctrine to our peaceful and bountiful land, which is true enough, but by convention, it is widely thought that only NOW is the Shock Doctrine is being applied, whereas alert observers have seen a continuation of the Shock Doctrine through the entire economic catastrophe, with previous periodic applications of the Shock devices beginning well before the Collapse.

Enron, anyone?

And of course by convention, all responsibility for the Debt Crisis Crisis is put on the Shoulders of the Throne, occupied by the Capitulator in Chief, who simply gives away the store to those mean old nasty hostage takers, booooo! When he could have done something else.

Yes, he could have, but he didn't. And he said he wasn't going to do anything different. He said quite clearly what he wanted to do, and he laid out the parameters of an agreement on the Debt Crisis Crisis, and it was clear from the Get Go that the Deal, once it came, would be essentially what is being finalized now: the few High and the Mighty will not be assessed any more income taxes than they already pay; soon enough, those tax rates will be reduced. Government services, social programs, and income support provisions for the many will be cut, in some cases substantially, in order to reduce the Federal Budget's share of the economy to an arbitrary percentage set by... well, now, that's the question, isn't it?

Who is actually running this pop stand, anyway?

Focus.

Isn't it actually the same handful of International Financiers who have been cheerfully ordering the looting and trashing economies all over the Western World to satisfy the pecuniary interests of an even tinier handful of grossly bloated Global Oligarchs and Plutocrats?

This is not to absolve the Debt Crisis Crisis Negotiators of their own culpability. They have plenty of it. After all, they are supposed to represent the People, and they do not do so, they seem utterly incapable of doing so. But that has been their institutional failure for many a long year; it did not "suddenly" appear in consequence of the current backstage Deal Making. Not at all.

The post-modern ethos of Governing Contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest goes back a long way in this country; it's just been sharpened to a fine point in the last ten or fifteen years or so. Which all by itself is quite a while.

So the fact that the negotiators of this Debt Crisis Crisis Deal have pretty much ignored the Public in their high minded contest of wills (ha) is simply par for the course. It is what they do. It is what they have done for a long, long wearying time.

Hello?

Another of the conventions of our post-modern age is to see everything in isolation. Each and every thing is just "starting" in other words, and any connection with anything else is tenuous at best and subject to endless nitpicking and dispute. The notion of "continuation" is all but absent. The connections, such as they are, become the focus of endless and typically circular Argument. What's actually going on is seen through a foggy lens indeed, and it is often ignored in pursuit of whatever is new and shiny -- and of course, the Argument.

So.

We're going to get screwed by Our Betters some more than we already have been, and this time it will be relatively mild at first, getting harsher and harsher as time wears on, until by the end of what looks like a ten year process, fading into a longer thirty year process, which in turn is faded into a 75 year process (these people think long term, don't they?) we won't recognize either our nation or the kind of productive economy we once knew. It's not coming back. Ever.

Our Betters have decided what they want done, entirely at our expense, and that is what will be. Period.

The Imperial Wars of Aggression will continue without surcease, possibly automated for convenience and requiring far fewer personnel than currently. The insolvent financial sector will continue to be propped up indefinitely. Unemployment will continue inordinately high, and quite likely is going to go considerably higher. Social Security will continue to be drained of resources, at a faster and faster clip, while benefits already earned will be expropriated for other purposes -- such as Imperial Wars of Aggression and propping up the insolvent financial sector. "Health Care Reform" will become a bad joke, as will "Democracy." Ha ha. Foreclosures and impoverishment will accelerate.

All of this and more was "written" well before the current Negotiations got under way. There has been no lack of telegraphing of Our Betters intentions here.

What has been odd, really odd, is that there has been general acquiescence by the proles and the near-proles throughout. Yes, there have been objections raised, but even in Wisconsin, scene of the most protracted demonstrations against the New Austerity Overlords this year, there was prior agreement by the workers' representatives to almost all the demands of their governmental employer for reduced pay and benefits. In other words, the workers had already acquiesced to the major economic demands and the struggle was over "rights." Further, that struggle was lost, utterly, and there is little sign that the current effort to recall a number of state senators will result in any fundamental restoration of the status quo ante or in the institution of any better public policies.

It's simply not in the cards. Our Betters are winning every battle in a rout, while Russ Feingold and his ilk consider their next move -- or whether to "move" at all.

The hysterical accusations being thrown around against Obama and all the other Negotiators of The People's Plunder remind me a lot of the hysteria and wild accusations being thrown around about President Clinton and his dalliances with various women. It was all just insane of course, but I came to the conclusion that the hysteria and the insanity was the point of the exercise. It served as a wonderful distraction while other -- far more important -- matters were dealt with, such as financial dereg and various new forms of warring on undisciplined nations and peoples and so forth.

Ah well, it isn't completely resolved. We must await events. Sometime today, perhaps? Or will there have to be one more round of the contest to play out?

About That All-Important Deficit Crisis

[click image to embiggen]

I wanted to post this handy graph from the New York Times so that it wouldn't get lost in all the yammering about Debt and Crisis that will continue indefinitely. It shows you where the bulk of the deficit has come from (the Bushevik Wars and tax cuts combined with recessionary forces and massive unemployment) and who actually holds the debt Our Rulers are trying to default on (the People of the United States of America, either directly as bondholders, in their pension plans, or indirectly in the Social Security Agency.)

It's pretty clear.

And it's pretty clear who will be hurt if there is a default or downgrade (which, btw, there will be with regard to Social Security almost certainly).

That's what it is.

The Hyperbole Level

I confess. I do it myself. Engage in hyperbole and polemics, that is. But mixed in there will be a grain of dispassionate truth, at least I hope so. From time to time, anyway.

But as the Debt/Deficit Issue becomes overloaded and quite overripe, the level of hysteria and hyperbole has reached a dissonant crescendo.

We are not about to go over the edge of the cliff, People.

We already went over that edge a long time ago. We hit bottom. Now the survivors, such as they are, are trying to sort out the mess.

As is almost always the case, the High and the Mighty are the ones to sort things out first, and not surprisingly, they are doing so to their own benefit while the rest of us are checking with one another to see who is all right and who needs help, we're fighting with one another for whatever scraps of the past we can salvage from the wreckage, and we're trying to figure out where do we go from here.

Part of the massive level of hyperbole of the moment is the claim that "They're trying to dismantle Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Social Safety Net@!!!!" Hit the phones, people. Sign this petition!!!

Uhh. What? No, they're not trying to "dismantle" the social safety net. It doesn't really do all that much as it is, but they're trying to get you to think they're taking away what little is left, so that you'll fight among yourselves over the remainder. Hello?

Why would they want you to "fight among yourselves?" Simple, the Proles are much easier to control when they're fighting one another for the little bit they're allowed to hold on to, and furthermore, it's much easier to steal what isn't battened down (and a good deal that is) when the Proles are fighting among themselves. Hello?

And it's even better when we're panicked about this or that OUTRAGE!!!!™ being perpetrated (or at least threatened) against us.

We, being herd animals at base, are so easy to panic, after all.

No, they're not "dismantling" the social safety net. What they're doing is a classic case of "squeeze." They're making it harder and harder to access what few protections there are for suffering Humanity, and they're doing their best to take what money there is in Programs (those that haven't already been privatized, don'tchaknow) for themselves.

The Social Safety Net will still be there, it just won't work very well.

But the hype is otherwise; it's all in, all or nothing, this is the End, People! FIGHT!

But fight whom, for what exactly?

Set aside the hype and ponder that question, and maybe an Answer will be forthcoming.

At the moment, the hysteria and hyperbole are preventing any useful Answer from being revealed...

Well...

It isn't over till it's over, but clearly the Fat Lady is tuning up.

The Debt Limit/Deficit issue is near some kind of Grand Bargain resolution, no matter the posturing of the players to suggest otherwise.

And the Simpson-Bowles report will be the framework for the resolution.

A New Commission will be formed to detail the alterations to the Entitlements that Simpson-Bowles left to be filled in later, but we can be sure that most of the rest of their report will be adopted pretty much as is.

This will mean, for example, that the tax base will be "broadened," by limiting deductions and tax "expenditures" (can anybody say "EITC?") and making "everyone" eligible to pay income taxes instead of just the 47% who do so now. Simultaneously, tax rates on the rich will go down, significantly. The poor, who never had to pay income taxes -- and were never meant to -- will now be "eligible" to put their skin in the game, lucky duckies, so as to make up for the tax losses at the top. Genius.

Entitlements (odd that that word has come to have a pejorative connotation among so many these days; it was never a curse word before) will be "adjusted" so as to reflect the "New Normal Times" we're living in. Back when the Soviet Union collapsed, pensioners took it in the shorts, and many of the survivors are still in dire straits. What we're being prepared for here doesn't look like it will be quite that bad, but it won't be good.

Social Security increases will be slowed, and the retirement age will be raised, but probably not substantially or quickly. It took thirty years to get it from 65 to 67, and it quite possibly will take 30 years to get it up to 70. Semi-Privatizing the program for younger workers is still a possibility, but probably not as much of one as was once the case; the Government needs SS funds for current operations, wars, and benefits for the rich, and at this point, it is hard to see a way for the Government to sacrifice any revenue source, but you never know.

It will become more and more difficult for oldsters to get by on their meager pensions, though. This will cause some distress -- but not nearly enough to do anything about it.

Medicare/Medicaid is going to be where the really nasty entitlement cuts are made, we can be almost certain of it.

Of course Medicaid has already been cut to the bone in state after bankrupt state. From a recipient's point of view, further cuts are almost inconceivable. But they're coming just the same. If you think Granny is being warehoused now, you ain't seen nothing yet. As for access to health care for the poor: Ha. In your dreams.

What will be happening with Medicaid recipients will be a preview of what is going to happen with just about everyone under the ACA, including Medicare recipients.

The signs are that the Ryan Plan will -- with some adjustments -- be implemented for seniors. It will be essentially the same as the ACA for everyone else. Apart from the confusion of the transition, there won't necessarily be any startling changes immediately, but ultimately, it will mean that everyone is paying more for less and less access to health care. That's the key to saving money in Medicaid -- make it difficult or impossible to access the health care system -- and that's what's going to happen with the rest of the health care industry. It will still be there; it may not necessarily even cost you any more than you already pay. You just won't have such "easy" access to care. Genius!

All this and much more is part of the neo-liberal Grand Bargain Obama is intent on. Whether or not he has a second term in the White House could not matter less to him, so all the fancy threats never to vote for him -- or any Democrat -- again!!!!® are pretty meaningless. So? Something about nose and spite comes to mind.

This is what it looks like from here.

Still developing, of course.

And from a political -- not a policy -- standpoint, Obama has played it masterfully.