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Red-State Democrats Buck Obama On Social Security Cuts

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Ryan Grim, Sabrina Siddiqui - May. 06 (News Report) - The majority of Senate Democrats running for reelection in 2014, including three running in red states, have broken with President Barack Obama and are opposing his effort to cut Social Security benefits, imperiling the austerity project kn

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Washington's Backward Retirement Policy: So Wrong, and Yet So Easy to Fix

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By - James Kwak - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - money is being wasted on tax subsidies for "private" retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs. In 2012, these subsidies added up to $199 billion, or about 1.3 percent of GDP.

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Cutting Social Security on PBS–From Left to Right

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Apr. 20 (Comment) - Even on PBS, the left and right agree that cutting Social Security is brave; I guess that makes the public a bunch of wimps.

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Republicans embrace Obama’s offer to trim Social Security benefits

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Lori Montgomery - Apr. 16 (Comment) - President Obama’s offer to trim Social Security benefits has perplexed and angered Democrats, but GOP leaders are embracing the proposal and rushing to jump-start a debate that will delve even more deeply into the touchy topic of federal spending on the elderly. ...

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Republicans Have Drooled Over the Idea of Slashing Social Security for Years, and They've Found Their Ideal Partner in Obama

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Reich - Apr. 14 (News Analysis) - The Republican leadership is already salivating over the president's proposed Social Security cut. They've been wanting to cut Social Security for years. But they won't agree to close tax loopholes for the rich.

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Elizabeth Warren Responds To Criticism Of Social Security Email

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Paige Lavender - Apr. 13 (News Report) - Warren also emphasized that the email was not just about her brother, but about all Americans who rely on Social Security benefits to get by. "Let's be clear about this. Not everyone has a sister who can help," Warren said. "This is about people who work all their lives and all they've got at the end is their social security." Warren's not the only one to criticize Obama's plan, which involves a measure of inflation known as the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Obama "owns" chained CPI, and Grover Norquist, leader of Americans for Tax Reform, called it "a Taxpayer Protection Pledge violation."

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10 Facts Obama Doesn't Want You to Know About His Social Security Slashing Budget Plan

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Richard Eskow - Apr. 12 (Opinion) - Of course it’s a tax hike. Same goes for the tax impact of the chained CPI. Our tax brackets were designed to make sure that taxes didn’t go up inadvertently because inflation kicked them into a higher tax bracket. That was done to make sure that people who weren’t earning more in real dollars – which includes many (if not most) of the “99 percent” – weren’t hit with an unearned tax hike.

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Obama’s Budget: A Bad Bargain

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

In These Times - By Tim Carpenter, Mike Hersh - Apr. 10 (Opinion) - The White House dismisses COLA cuts as “technical changes,” but the president knows better. In 2008, candidate Obama accused his opponent, John McCain, of planning to “cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age” for Social Security, and vowed that he would do neither. He also said, “When you look at how we should approach Social Security, I believe that cutting the benefits is not the right answer. I meet too many seniors across the country who are struggling with the limited Social Security benefits that they have.” Candidate Obama was right; President Obama is wrong.

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7 Chilling Facts About Retirement in America That Should Make Obama Tremble Before Cutting Social Security and Medicare

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Lynn Stuart Parramore - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - We are headed for a catastrophic retirement train wreck. A Wall Street-driven financial crisis has stripped millions of people of things like jobs, pensions and home equity that were supposed to deliver a dignified retirement after a lifetime of hard work. The crisis has also provided certain interests the opportunity to make false claims about the “unaffordability” of vital social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare that help the 99% make it. These opportunistic “ Raiders of Your Lost Retirement” do not give a hoot if you starve in your golden years – this is about money to them

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America Is Ruled by Billionaires, and They Are Coming After the Last Shreds of Our Democracy

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Michael Brenner - Apr. 06 (Special Report) - The United States today qualifies as a plutocracy – on a number of grounds. Let’s look at some striking bits of evidence. Gross income redistribution upwards in the hierarchy has been a feature of American society for the past decades. The familiar statistics tell us that nearly 80% of the national wealth generated since 1973 has gone to the upper 2%, 65% to the upper 1 per cent. Estimates as to the rise in real income for salaried workers over the past 40 years range from 20% to 28 %. In that period, real GDP has risen by 110% – it has more than doubled.

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Sanders to Obama: Don't Touch Social Security

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Olivier Knox - Apr. 05 (News Report) - "Millions of working people, seniors, disabled veterans, those who have lost a loved one in combat, and women will be extremely disappointed if President Obama caves into the long standing Republican effort to cut Social Security and benefits for disabled veterans and their survivors through a so-called chained CPI,"

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Senate Unanimously Votes Against Cuts to Social Security: Media Don’t Notice

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Dean Baker - Mar. 26 (News Analysis) - There are few areas where the corruption of the national media is more apparent than in its treatment of Social Security. Most of the elite media have made it clear in both their opinion and news pages that they want to see benefits cut. In keeping with this position they highlight the views of political figures who push cuts to the program, treating them as responsible, while those who oppose cuts are ignored or mocked.

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Gutting Social Security: It Isn't Just an Issue for Old Folks

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Scott Klinger - Mar. 19 (News Analysis) - President Obama has offered to break the sequester gridlock by recalculating inflation in a way that would reduce Social Security benefits. The Business Roundtable, a club of hundreds of large company CEOs, likes Obama’s idea but wants to go even more draconian by also increasing the Social Security retirement age from 67 to 70. What does any of this have to do with the youngsters? Both of these moves will keep seniors working longer. That

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Lakoff: Why Extreme Conservatives Like the Sequester

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By George Lakoff - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - Progressives tend to believe that democracy is based on citizens caring for their fellow citizens through what the government provides for all citizens — public infrastructure, public safety, public education, public health, publicly-sponsored research, public forms of recreation and culture, publicly-guaranteed safety nets for those who need them, and so on. In short, progressives believe that the private depends on the public, that without those public provisions Americans cannot be free to live reasonable lives and to thrive in private business. They believe that those who make more from public provisions should pay more to maintain them. Ultra-conservatives don’t believe this.

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The Leeches are Back and are Urging the Wrong Prescription: The Grand Bargain Returns

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Kevin Zeese JD, Margaret Flowers MD - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - Leeches could also be used in bloodletting. The withdrawal of so much blood as to induce syncope (fainting) was considered beneficial, and many sessions would only end when the patient began to swoon. As the economy shows signs of recession, the leeches return. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles have issued a new report calling for even deeper austerity.

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Since Alan Simpson has the President on the Defensive, House Dems Must Hold the Line

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

nationofchange.org - By Richard (RJ) Eskow - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - Alan Simpson, along with Erskine Bowles, represents a well-funded cadre of spokespeople who are only willing to present a narrow band of corporate- and billionaire-friendly economic policies. There’s just one approach in their world, one which Simpson and Bowles reiterated just this week: Medicare and Social Security benefit cuts for seniors and the disabled and the gutting of middle-class tax breaks, paired with further tax reductionsfor corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

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Fiscal trouble ahead for most future retirees

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Michael A. Fletcher - Feb. 17 (Special Report) - For the first time since the New Deal, a majority of Americans are headed toward a retirement in which they will be financially worse off than their parents, jeopardizing a long era of improved living standards for the nation’s elderly, according to a growing consensus of new research. Read full article >>

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Americans Make Hard Choices on Social Security, Prefer to Raise Payroll Taxes and Increase Benefits

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Reuters - Jan. 31 (Press Release) - Large majorities of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, agree on ways to strengthen Social Security - without cutting benefits. Fully 74% of Republicans and 88% of Democrats agree that "it is critical to preserve Social Security even if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by working Americans."

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Latest Pathetic Conservative Attack on Social Security: Disability Fraud Hysteria

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Lynn Stuart Parramore - Jan. 29 (Investigative Report) - According to this meme, the problem with America’s economy and society is vast numbers of lazy, lying, good-for-nothing loafers cheating the American taxpayer through disability fraud. You have to give them credit for chutzpah.

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Has America Become an Authoritarian State?

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Henry A. Giroux - Jan. 26 (Opinion) - What is missing in the current debates dominating Washington politics is the recognition that the real issues at stake are neither the debt ceiling nor the state of the economy, however important, but a powerful and poisonous form of authoritarianism that poses a threat to the very idea of democracy and the institutions, public values, formative cultures and public spheres that nourish it.

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Obama Oratory vs. Obama Reality

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Norman Solomon - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - With President Obama's second term underway and huge decisions looming on Capitol Hill, consider this statement from Howard Zinn: "When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them." With so much at stake, we can't afford to forget our role. For starters, it must include public clarity. Let's face it: despite often nice-sounding rhetoric from the president, this administration has continued with a wide range of policies antithetical to progressive values.

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Transcript And Audio: Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Address

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

All Things Considered - Jan. 21 (Speech) - "That is our generation's task — to make these words, these rights, these values — of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — real for every American," President Barack Obama said during his speech.

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U.S. CEOs push plan to raise full retirement age to 70

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

CBS News - Jan. 16 (News Report) - An influential group of business CEOs is pushing a plan to gradually increase the full retirement age to 70 for both Social Security and Medicare and to partially privatize the health insurance program for older Americans.

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Will Obama Cave on Social Security?

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Joel Eidelson - Jan. 13 (News Analysis) - “The White House has signaled many times they’re very open to this concept, which puts us in a very precarious situation,” said Eric Kingson, a co-chair of Strengthen Social Security. That coalition, whose 300-some member groups include the AFL-CIO and some of its largest unions, supports increasing Social Security benefits and opposes chained CPI, which Kingson called “a disguised benefit cut.”

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No on Lew

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

readersupportednews.org - By Bernie Sanders - Jan. 11 (Opinion) - As a supporter of the president, I remain extremely concerned that virtually all of his key economic advisers have come from Wall Street. In my view, we need a treasury secretary who is prepared to stand up to corporate America and their powerful lobbyists and fight for policies that protect the working families in our country. I do not believe Mr. Lew is that person.

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