It took me a long time to figure out what “rope-a-dope” means. It was hard for my brain to give up the image of a wonderfully scented bar of soap that hung on a rope from the shower head and was used especially by males when they wanted to smell really good — or had run out of antiperspirant. Soap on a rope was a favorite Christmas gift ten or twenty years ago.

Somewhere along the line, I concluded that that association made no sense. It had to be something else. Then I read someone who connected that phrase to boxing and the connection clicked. It referred to the practice by some boxers who would crouch near the ropes of the ring and allow their opponent beat them mercilessly until the opponent was exhausted. Then the seeming victim, who had actually been resting near the ropes would rise up and charge his exhausted opponent and start beating him mercilessly. More often than not, the seeming victim would win the match. The first punisher turned out to be “the dope who had been roped-in by the victim on the ropes;” he had been “rope-a-doped.”

I have been, and continue to be, an ardent (although recently somewhat lesser), supporter of the president. I believed and still believe that he is brilliant, but recently I’ve had a hard time swallowing some of his concessions to the Right. I thought that maybe he was just not enough of a fighter to deal with the underhandedness of Republicans. I thought that, until I remembered “Rope-A-Dope.”

The boxer who lets himself be pummeled minute after minute, and round after round appears to be getting beaten, and he does stand a chance of losing the match on points, (the number of blows landed) and he has to be confident that he can reverse that with a knock out, a technical knock-out, or a subsequent win on blows and rounds. He needs to be a very smart boxer.

The way President Obama defeated Hillary Clinton, a pretty tough contender herself, was masterful. His wooing and winning of Ted Kennedy despite that political giant’s presumed allegiance to the Clintons, was masterful . Obama’s understanding of what buttons to push and when, and his doing just that, showed an understanding of how the game of politics was played, far beyond his youth and experience.

So why has he been so disappointing to so many who rallied to his corner instead of to the side of the more experienced Mrs. Clinton? Paul Krugman recently recalled an old movie title in wonderment: “The President’s Plane is Missing”, advancing the question, “Is this the same man we voted for?”

It may be only wishful thinking on my part, but aside from an impostor taking over the president’s body, the only explanation I can think of is that the president is playing
“Rope-a-Dope.” He’s letting the opposition think that he’s not a socialist or a left wing extremist at all. He’s allowing them to believe that they have nothing to fear from him. He’s just a “good ol’ ‘boy’”, a kind of “step ‘n fetch it” who in the end strives to please his “massas” on the Right any way he can. After all that’s how the righties think of “coloreds.” But when, as president, elected for a second term, he can let his true self out — the self he showed during the campaign leading up to his election in 2008, fighting for people like the ones he championed on the south side of Chicago as community organizer. Those on the Right may discover they’ve been suckered out with Obama doing a “Rope-A-Dope.”

I may be wrong, but at least I won’t get too discouraged between now and 2012. Besides, I just may be right!

Everywhere you look, from the federal government to the states to your hometown, budget crises abound. Services are being slashed. Politicians and pundits from both parties tell us that the good times are over, that we’ve got to start living within our means.

Members and supporters of Welfare Rights Committee stand in front of banner after a “tax the rich” last year in Minnesota. (Fight Back! News/Kim DeFranco)

It’s a lie.

Two case studies have made news lately: California, where new/old governor Jerry Brown is trying to close a $25 billion shortfall with a combination of draconian cuts in public services and a series of regressive tax increases, and Wisconsin, where right-winger Scott Walker says getting rid of unions would eliminate the state’s $137 million deficit.

Never mind the economists, most of whom say an economic death spiral is exactly the worst possible time for government to cut spending. Pro-austerity propaganda has won the day with the American public. A new Rasmussen poll funds that 58 percent of likely voters would approve of a shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what spending to cut.

The budget “crisis” is a phony construction, the result of right-wing “starve the beast” ideology. There is plenty of money out there—but the pols don’t want it.

There is no need to lay off a single teacher, close a single library for an extra hour, or raise a single fee by one red cent.

Every government can not only balance its budget, but wind up with a surplus.

The solution is simple: tax the rich.

Over the last 50 years tax rates for the bottom 80 percent of wage earners have remained almost static. Meanwhile the rich have received tax cut after tax cut after tax cut. For example, the rate paid by the top 0.01 percent—people who currently get more than $6.5 million a year—fell by half (from 70 to 35 percent).

Times are tough. Someone has to pay. Why not start with those who can most afford it?

Europe has the world’s best food, its best healthcare system and its best vacation policy. It also has one of the fairest ways to generate revenue for government: a wealth tax. In Norway, for example, you pay one percent of your net worth in addition to income tax.

What if we imposed a Norwegian-style wealth tax on the top one percent of U.S. households? We’re not talking upper middle class here: the poorest among them is worth a mere $8.3 million. This top one percent owns 35 percent of all wealth in the United States.

“Such a wealth tax…would raise $191.1 billion each year (one percent of $19.1 trillion), a significant attack on the deficit,” Leon Friedman writes in The Nation. “If we extended the tax to the top 5 percent, we could raise $338.5 billion a year (one percent of 62 percent of $54.6 trillion).”

But that’s just the beginning. Wealthy individuals are nothing next to America’s money-sucking corporations.

Business shills whine that America’s corporate tax rate—35 percent—is one of the world’s highest. But that’s pure theory. Our real corporate rate—the rate companies actually pay after taking advantages of loopholes and deductions—is among the world’s lowest. According to The New York Times, Boeing paid a total tax rate of 4.5 percent over the last five years. (This includes federal, state, local and foreign taxes.) Yahoo paid seven percent. GE paid 14.3 percent. Southwest Airlines paid 6.3 percent. “GE is so good at avoiding taxes that some people consider its tax department to be the best in the world, even better than any law firm’s,” reports the Times‘ David Leonhardt. “One common strategy is maximizing the amount of profit that is officially earned in countries with low tax rates.”

America’s low effective corporate tax rates have left big business swimming in cash while the country goes bust. As of March 2010 non-financial corporations in the U.S. had $26.2 trillion in assets. Seven percent of that was in cash.

The national debt is $14.1 trillion.

Which is a lot. And, you see, entirely by choice.

Dedicated to the peaceful protestors in Wisconsin, February 19, 2011.

The central issue in our political life is not being discussed. At stake is the moral basis of American democracy.

The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women’s rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting and on and on.

Budget deficits are a ruse, as we’ve seen in Wisconsin, where the Governor turned a surplus into a deficit by providing corporate tax breaks, and then used the deficit as a ploy to break the unions, not just in Wisconsin, but seeking to be the first domino in a nationwide conservative movement.

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Deficits can be addressed by raising revenue, plugging tax loopholes, putting people to work and developing the economy long-term in all the ways the president has discussed. But deficits are not what really matter to conservatives.

Conservatives really want to change the basis of American life, to make America run according to the conservative moral worldview in all areas of life.

In the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama accurately described the basis of American democracy: empathy — citizens caring for each other, both social and personal responsibility — acting on that care, and an ethic of excellence. From these, our freedoms and our way of life follow, as does the role of government: to protect and empower everyone equally. Protection includes safety, health, the environment, pensions. Empowerment starts with education and infrastructure. No one can be free without these, and without a commitment to care and act on that care by one’s fellow citizens.
The conservative worldview rejects all of that.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don’t think government should help its citizens. That is, they don’t think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family (by winning competitions in the marketplace), and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don’t have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

The market itself is seen in this way. The slogan, “Let the market decide” assumes the market itself is The Decider. The market is seen as both natural (since it is assumed that people naturally seek their self-interest) and moral (if everyone seeks their own profit, the profit of all will be maximized by the invisible hand). As the ultimate moral authority, there should be no power higher than the market that might go against market values. Thus the government can spend money to protect the market and promote market values, but should not rule over it either through (1) regulation, (2) taxation, (3) unions and worker rights, (4) environmental protection or food safety laws, and (5) tort cases. Moreover, government should not do public service. The market has service industries for that.

Thus, it would be wrong for the government to provide health care, education, public broadcasting, public parks and so on. The very idea of these things is at odds with the conservative moral system. No one should be paying for anyone else. It is individual responsibility in all arenas. Taxation is thus seen as taking money away from those who have earned it and giving it to people who don’t deserve it. Taxation cannot be seen as providing the necessities of life for a civilized society, and, as necessary, for business to prosper.

In conservative family life, the strict father rules. Fathers and husbands should have control over reproduction; hence, parental and spousal notification laws and opposition to abortion. In conservative religion, God is seen as the strict father, the Lord, who rewards and punishes according to individual responsibility in following his Biblical word.

Above all, the authority of conservatism itself must be maintained. The country should be ruled by conservative values, and progressive values are seen as evil. Science should have authority over the market, and so the science of global warming and evolution must be denied. Facts that are inconsistent with the authority of conservatism must be ignored or denied or explained away. To protect and extend conservative values themselves, the devil’s own means can be used against conservatism’s immoral enemies, whether lies, intimidation, torture or even death, say, for women’s doctors.

Freedom is defined as being your own strict father – with individual, not social, responsibility, and without any government authority telling you what you can and cannot do. To defend that freedom as an individual, you will, of course, need a gun.

This is the America that conservatives really want. Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life.

What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.

Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific “cuts” is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American – the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle-class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.

Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud, over and over, that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.

Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called “Democratic Communication Disorder.” Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on TV are conservatives. Talk matters, because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.

And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks — talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. “Benefits” are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.

Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like “entitlements” instead of “earnings” and speak of government as providing “services” instead of “necessities.”

Is there hope?

I see it in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands citizens see through the conservative frames and are willing to flood the streets of their capital to stand up for their rights. They understand that democracy is about citizens uniting to take care of each other, about social responsibility as well as individual responsibility, and about work – not just for your own profit, but to help create a civilized society. They appreciate their teachers, nurses, firemen, police and other public servants. They are flooding the streets to demand real democracy – the democracy of caring, of social responsibility and of excellence, where prosperity is to be shared by those who work and those who serve.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Why are some Americans “entitled” to get social security checks from the government every month ? Are they better than the rest of us? How did they get to be “entitled”
anyway? It sounds like some phony carryover from royalty or something!

Indeed, the way the word is spoken by Republican legislators and spokespersons, you’d think that Social security is like that — a special consideration for a privileged few. They make it sound phony, and like it doesn’t belong in our American society of “equals”. “entitlements” are always spoken of by our Republican friends in the context of the need to limit them or to stop them altogether. In their language, entitlements are an undue expense of government and an imposition on honest tax payers. The Right speaks of Social Security as though it’s like defense or foreign aid spending. They want us to believe that we honest taxpayers are supporting some citizens who can’t or won’t pay their own way. The Right wants you to get mad about this “injustice”. They don’t come right out and say that but that is certainly the meaning of their “dissing” of these government payments, The Right wants you to misunderstand the meaning of the word, “entitlement”!

So if Social Security payments aren’t a drain on government that’s being paid for by us taxpayers, who does pay for them?

SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS HAVE ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR BY THE CITIZENS WHO ARE NOW RECEIVING THOSE BENEFITS! That’s right! They were paid for by today’s retirees back when they were working and Social Security taxes were deducted from their pay.

Those on the Right say that most workers did not pay enough into the Social Security program during their working years to pay for the benefits they receive at age sixty-two or sixty-five. They’re right. So where does the money come from to pay those benefits? It comes from those who paid in more than was needed to cover their own benefits. Those on both the Left and the Right who worked for a living, can recall the SS withholding tax that was withheld from your paychecks. You earned that money and are therefore ENTITLED to it. That’s where the word ENTITLEMENT comes from! They didn’t get their full pay when they were working every day. Part of their pay was “withheld” for payment at a later time, namely, when they reached retirement age. That tax was called FICA withholding tax. In other words, they are just getting the rest of their pay now.

Money that was paid into social security was supposed to have been put into a special account and reserved for retired workers. Most of it was, but not all of it. Some was used to pay general government expenses and therefore ought to be repaid into the social security fund. Enough money has been paid into social security however, to ensure its solvency for several decades into the future.

What will happen when the SS fund runs out of money? A number of suggestions have been offered to keep that from happening, but the one that seems most fair is the one that imposes the social security tax on all income above the present cut-off amount of $106,800.

With the gross increase in income of the top 2% of the US population, billions of dollars are paid in salaries that are not taxed by social security and thus are of no benefit to that social network.

When some have suggested that the wealthy not be given their social security retirement benefit, the suggestion was beaten back by both the Right and the Left. The reason given is that the social security is a repayment of withheld wages and is therefore owed to all who have paid into it, the poor, middle income, and wealthy included. An important difference, however, is that poor and middle income workers have all of their income taxed by the social security federal insurance program, the wealthy have only part of their income taxed. For some of the wealthy — the top 1% of income earners who are paid nearly 25% of the US total annual income — the the cut-off amount of $106,800 is a very small part of their income.

The total income in the US really is finite, no matter how seldom we consider that fact, as is the total wealth of this country. When a few get much more than they need, the many are going to suffer, and the many are indeed suffering now!

To cut social security which is the only income for many aged poor, and is the promised payment to all workers of the rest of the salaries that they had paid into the federal insurance program with the understanding that they would receive it when they retired.

To break faith with these Americans whose labor has made this country great would be a betrayal and an injustice. They are ENTITLED to their money!

If I might be permitted to return to the classic example of willful blindness in the story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. As nearly everyone knows, the story says that an unscrupulous tailor convinced his gullible emperor that he could make a magical suit of clothes for him. The new suit, the tailor said, would have the marvelous benefit of letting the emperor know who his true friends were, and who his disloyal enemies –those who confessed they were unable to see the magical new suit of clothes. Of course the emperor was wearing no clothes at all; he was stark naked. Only one small boy had the simplicity and the courage to exclaim, “The emperor has no clothes”!

What caused the crowd’s blindness? The crowd knew that the emperor believed the tailor’s lies, and wanting to stay on his good side, they ooh-ed and ah-ed about his new clothes. All, but one small boy, were afraid to acknowledge that the emperor was wearing no clothes at all.

Fortunately several economists and writers today are able to see and say that the Republican economic plan of growing the wealth of the rich is not sustainable and is ruinous to this country. The plan has no validity, no clothes. I think of Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and Frank Rich as examples of such clear-sighted and courageous men. Just this past week for example, Mr. Rich has insightfully written that when ideology comes into conflict with facts, the facts lose.

As examples of men lacking in clear sightedness and courage, Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative John Boehner are outstanding only in protecting the wealth of those whose contributions fill their campaign coffers and assure their reelections. In a sixty minutes interview, Mr. Boehner could not control his emotions as he spoke of his “difficult” early years, working in a café where he waited and bussed tables, swept floors, and washed windows, in order to put himself through college. With the election of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Boehner says that he became devoted to achieving the “American Dream”. By achieving the American Dream Boehner seems to mean doing whatever it takes to become a millionaire. It was clear that Mr. Boehner saw himself as a shining example of one who had realized that American Dream.

A prominent feature of his early years, he told sixty minutes, was his daily Mass attendance as a member of a devout Catholic family. Apparently his family was one of those “Cafeteria Catholic” families who selectively ignored Catholic social teaching. Or maybe his family never heard those teachings preached in their Catholic parish by pastors afraid of alienating their well-off members.

The Boehners may never have heard, for instance, about the rights of workers to be paid just wages, to form unions, and to seek first the kingdom of God but then if necessary, to raise hell insisting on justice for themselves and their fellow workers. Or maybe it was only the speaker-to-be who de-selected those teachings while the rest of the family learned and observed them as part of their Catholic Faith. Perhaps John has become one of those contemporary “devout” Catholics who rant against Catholic Candidates and citizens who vote their consciences about birth control, gay marriage and abortion, and who vote instead for the common good issues of economic equality and living wages.

It’s tragic that so many Christians vote the values of their purses rather than the values of Jesus, who told us that we should make sure everyone has enough to live and raise their children in dignity. The values of democracy and equality for all are very much gospel values. The illusory value of unlimited riches for the wealthy few are very much antithetical to gospel values. Like the frightened and deluded citizens of the story’s empire, lots of Christians have pursued the invisible god of wealth on cyberspace and the “security” of closets full of beautiful new clothes.

The story is told that once, the various parts of the body were arguing about which of them was most powerful and able to control the whole body.

 The head began by saying, “I am way out front in this contest, because I direct all the other parts of the body.  I say when and for how long each of you other parts may function and when I get tired, I turn you all off and go to sleep. 

 But the eye objected,  ”Oh no, really I control the body because if I shut myself and refuse to see, the whole body will stumble and fall, maybe even “fall into the scriptural pit”.

 The ear took up the challenge, No way! I am most powerful because if I refuse to hear, no one can tell the body to do anything and it’s hard to tell what the body might do!”

 Then the mouth spoke smilingly and said, “You’re both wrong.  Only I can speak and be heard, and all you other body parts need me because if I close myself up and refuse nourishment, you’ll all wither away and die of starvation. Clearly I’m the most powerful part of the body. 

 Then the arms and legs, and heart and stomach and all the other parts of the body spoke in turn, until at last, a deep voice came from somewhere below, somewhat muffled, but still audible.

 This voice said, “Sorry guys, none of you even comes close to having the power I have. I can make the head ache, the eyes water, the mouth gag and refuse food, the ear to be driven to intolerant violence at any noise, the arms and legs do my bidding, and the stomach hurt really bad. I have the power to shut down the whole body and make the person who owns the body almost wish he’d never been born or at least hope that it will all be over soon. 

 The mouth spoke for all when he said, “Who are you and why do you think you have so much power?” The voice came back more clearly now but still in its “basso profundo” tone.  “I, dear friends, do have a name in medical circles and in polite society, but am known among the hoi polloi by several aliases, most of which start with the letter ‘A’.” 

 My counterparts in the body of Congress perform the same function in that august body as I do in the human body. But they’re really powerful! They can, and sometimes do, stop the whole country from functioning.

From 1934 till 1977 there was a comic strip in many newspapers called “L’il Abner”.  The character L’il Abner himself had a favorite comic strip called “Fearless Fosdick who was a detective of the hapless Inspector Clouseau type of the 1970s Pink Panther movies.

Once, in L’il Abner’s funnies, Abner’s favorite Detective Fosdick was on the trail of a fiendish mass murderer who had put poison in cans of beans across the country.  Fosdick was oredered to keep people from buying the poisoned beans, so he would go from grocery store to grocery store, shooting customers (usually little old ladies) in the head who seemed about to buy a can of beans.

He ended each day counting the number of persons he’d saved from poisoned beans by blowing a hole in their heads.  Each day was another satisfying day spent in fighting crime and in service to the country.

Like Detective Fosdick, Democratic Senator Kent Conrad rushes to rescue an “America. . . in danger! “And we can either look the other way, hope somebody else does something, or we can act,” Conrad said. “I’m going to support this plan and support it strongly; because I don’t see another alternative. I just don’t.”

Fosdick-like, Sen. Kent Conrad vowed that he would support the commission’s plan to put 200,000 more Americans employed by the federal government out of work, thereby reducing the number of Americans able to buy homes and cars and reducing the dollars spent daily in the small businesses of grocery stores, drug stores, and other small businesses most likely to employ out-of-work Americans.

Also like Fosdick who might have prevented deaths of innocent shoppers by asking grocers not to put poisoned beans on their shelves, Conrad sees no alternative “I really can’t”, he says. The senator fails to see the possibility of raising the top income taxing limit of $106,800 for citizens whose incomes far exceed that level by nearly one-half, or even one million dollars.  They pay the same social security tax as middle class taxpayers who earn only $106,800.

The good senator and his Republican friends (and an alarming number of other Democrats including, it seems, the president) prefer imposing the regressive tax of a fifteen cents a gallon on gasoline, and other taxes like eliminating mortgage and insurance deductions that help middle and lower income families, in favor of lowering taxes on the wealthy.  The top 2% of the wealthy in this country already receive more than 50% of the country’s total wealth, leaving the remaining 98% of U.S. citizens to divide the bottom 50% of wealth  among themselves as best they can — Let’s see, what is  that definition of plutocracy?

As is customary in this home of the brave, the deficit commission allowed   another selling out to moneyed interests with an income tax reduction for corporations from the paltry 35% (down from Clinton’s 39.5%) that they have been paying, to 29%.  I thought Republicans were for deficit Reduction.  How is reducing government income helpful in reducing government debt?  It’s more of the Republican voodoo economics that have plagued the country since H.W. Bush first applied the term to Ronald Reagan’s economic plan.

Of course the chief application of that plan in the current context is the proposed extension of W. Bush’s tax cuts to the top 2% of American wealth beyond their 10-year limit, with its expected 700 billion price tag. How does that reduce the deficit? Oh yeh, right. Voodoo economics!

Employing Fearless Fosdick’s method of shooting children of the unemployed to keep them from starving just might work.  More “Scrooge-like” solutions have been proposed, I suppose.  But letting them starve is probably less noticeable.

 If anything has become clear in the rapid ascendance of conservatism in the 2010 elections, it’s the fact that money has replaced persons as the chief value of American society.

 On Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I went to a friend’s house to celebrate the day with good conversation and a delicious meal.  I had been conversing pleasantly with another guest, who with his wife, had been a performer on Broadway.  I’d been impressed with his knowledge of just about any subject under discussion  and don’t remember how the topic of our Indiana governor came up.  My dining partner said that our state was in a much better financial condition than surrounding states.  I pointed out that the governor had made Indiana better off financially by discontinuing programs for the poor and, starting his first day in office, firing union state employees.  It was clear that this was not going to be a pleasant conversation.  We were both reacting to one another’s words with fear and both of us adopted the principle that the best defense is a good offense.

 The sudden change in the tone of our conversation confirmed what I have long believed about the opposition of conservatives and liberals.  It really is not about greed on the part of conservatives, and compassion for the poor on the part of liberals, it’s the values each has spent his life adopting and confirming.

When one’s values are questioned or denied, it’s as though the person who holds them is devalued. It was the issue of values that caused my dinner guest-friend and I to change the tone of our earlier conversation from one of a pleasant pastime to a virtual declaration of war with one another. There’s no denying that liberals can be as guilty of hypersensitivity and readiness to fight as their opponents, but when push comes to shove, liberals do value liberty and justice for everybody including the poor. But it still comes down to the value of the life each has lived – the values they have spent their lives espousing.  To me, liberal values seem better by far.

Here are some of the proposals that may dampen the enthusiasm of  ordinary folks  over lower tax rates.

A gradual 15-cents-a-gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax, limiting or eliminating popular tax breaks in return for lower rates, benefit cuts and an increased retirement age for Social Security.

HOW’S THAT FOR A REGRESSIVE TAX?!  MR. SIMPSON AND MR. BOWLES SHOW SUCH CONCERN FOR THE IMPOVERISHED MILLIONS! YOU KNOW. THE ONES IMPOVERISHED BY CONSERVATIVE TRADE POLICIES.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats must show in the wake of the midterm election that they are serious about their pledges to address long-term deficits,

HOW ABOUT A LOUD “HELL NO! WE WON‘T SHOW ANYTHING OF THE KIND!!”

The proposal lays out options for overhauling the tax code that include limiting or eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. It envisions cutting Pentagon weapons programs and paring back almost all domestic programs.

THEY DON’T CARE THAT MIDDLE AND LOW INCOME PEOPLE ARE STARVING EVEN WITH ALL THOSE DEDUCTIONS!  THEY’RE NOT STARVING FAST ENOUGH!!  (SHADES OF ALAN GRAYSON!!)

The plan would reduce cost-of-living increases for all federal programs, including Social Security. It would reduce projected Social Security benefits to most retirees in later decades, . The retirement age for full benefits would be slowly raised to 69 from 67 by 2075.

GOD FORBID THAT THE HAVES SHOULD  PAY INTO SOCIAL SECURITY ABOVE THE $106,800 THAT MIDDLE CLASS EARNERS PAY.  BILLIONAIRES  WORKED HARD FOR THAT $999,893,200 MORE THAN WHAT THEY PAY SOCIAL SECURITY  TAXES ON, AND IT WOULD BE UN-AMERICAN TO TAX ANY OF THAT!

Extending all the Bush tax cuts through 2020 would add more than $4 trillion to the debt — coincidentally, about the same amount that the chairmen’s painful options are designed to cut in the same time frame.

NOW, I WONDER HOW THAT HAPPENED?  THE RICH CONTINUE TO SOAK UP THE  TINY WEALTH OF THE POOR. IT MAKES THEIR MONOMPOLY GAME WITH REAL MONEY MORE EXCITING!

Their proposed simplification of the tax code would repeal or modify a number of popular tax breaks — including the deductibility of mortgage interest payments — so that income tax rates could be reduced across the board. Under one option, individual income tax rates would decline to as low as 8 percent for the lowest income bracket (it is now 10 percent) and to 23 percent for the highest bracket (now 35 percent). The corporate tax rate, now 35 percent, would be reduced to as low as 26 percent.

IMAGINE THAT!  AW, THEY’RE REALLY SOFTIES AFTER ALL. SEE THERE, THEY’RE REDUCING OUR TAXES.  THEY DON’T SAY HOW MUCH THEY’RE REDUCING THEM, MUST HAVE BEEN AN OVERSIGHT.  BUT IT’S HARD TO MISS THAT WE COMMON FOLK GET JUST A 2% REDUCTION IN TAX RATES WHILE CORPORATIONS GET A 9% REDUCTION.  COULD IT BE A MISPRINT? !

But how low the rates are set would depend on how many tax breaks are reduced or eliminated. Some of them, including the mortgage interest deduction and the exemption from taxes for employees’ health benefits, are political sacred cows.

OH, THERE IT IS, BUT THEY’RE REALLY SORRY THEY HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE HOW MANY TAX BREAKS (for the poor) ARE REDUCED OR ELIMINATED.  AND SPEAKING OF SACRED COWS,  HOW ABOUT THAT $999,893,200 THE RICH AREN’T PAYING SOCIAL SECURITY TAX ON?

Farm subsidies would be reduced. To further reduce growth in the fast-growing entitlement programs, the plan would expand on the hard-won Medicare cost savings in Mr. Obama’s health care law. And it would limit malpractice awards, long a Republican goal.

WELL, NOW.  ISN’T THAT SPECIAL ! IT’S SO GOOD TO KNOW THAT THIS WAS A BI-PARTISAN COMMISSION.

The recent defeat in the Democratic House of Representatives  seems to be an example of  “Shock Doctrine”, so clearly described by Naomi Klein in her book of that title.  According to Ms. Klein, a shock,  either a natural or contrived that is used as a distraction to implement policies that the populace would not otherwise  accept. Ms Klein added to the instances of shock doctrine contained in her book, the Indonesian tsunami of 2009 that became the occasion for construction of high rise condominiums, built by American investors, to replace the common people’s fishing huts on scenic beaches.  The Near-Depression state of the U. S. economy provides a similar condition for an application the shock doctrine.

The 2010 ouster of the democratically controlled House is less violent and more legal, but may prove to have similar consequences, to the military coup   in 1973 by General Augusto Pinochet of Chilean president, Salvador Allende.

Ms. Klein reports in her book, Shock Doctrine, that General Pinochet asked for help from Professor Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago to reverse the policies of President Allende, an acknowledged socialist president.

She says that a group of  “Chicago Boys” from the Chicago University School of Economics went to Chile to advise Pinochet. Later the general killed many thousands, interred some 80,000 political enemies, and caused thousands to become “disappeared”.  He was fanatically convinced of the rightness of his free market cause and the evil of the ousted socialists.

An article in Wikipedia says that Pinochet’s economic reforms and   privatization of state welfare institutions dramatically increased economic inequality in Chile, and was possibly responsible for the 1982 monetary crisis in that country’s economy.

There seems little doubt that Mitch O’Connell, John Boehner, and Jim DeMint are devout adherents of the policies of economist  “Uncle Miltie” Friedman of Chicago University — his privatization of everything in sight, the shrinking of government and its protection of the middle class — and most of all, of the absolute validity of free market economics.

Mr. Obama’s desire to cooperate with Republicans in the Congress has been admirable.  I also understand the advice about “if at first you don’t succeed” and all that, but the word “cooperate” not only implies but with the prefix “co”, says, there are more players than one.  The president appears to be the only one who has co-operation in mind.

Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell has said that his primary goal in the remainder of this term is to make sure that the president is a one-term president.  Republican congressman Jim DeMint, vowed early in Mr. Obama’s administration, to make the Democratic Health Care Bill, Mr. Obama’s “Waterloo”.  The “Near-Depression” state of the U. S. economy is providing the “shock” into which the free marketers can insert the change that the populace would never accept were they not “all shook up” and the Right is very busy inserting it.  The populace is accepting the continuing enrichment of the already wealthy and the continuing impoverishment of the already poor, namely themselves.

Mr. President, these people, the Republicans are not your friends; they are not even people who share common purpose with you of working for a better America.  They are interested in one thing and one thing only: destroying everything your administration has already passed and all that it proposes for the future.

These legislators, or perhaps more correctly, these hopeful “un-legislators”, want what is good for their party and ideology rather than what is good for their country.  They persist in the hope that Americans will continue to be frightened by accusations of “Marxist” and “Socialist” thrown at any attempt of the Obama administration to do for U.S, citizens what more than forty other capitalist countries have already done for their citizens.

Toward the end of the 2010 campaign, President Obama said the Republicans were treating him like a dog.  In his interview with Steve Kroft on Sixty Minutes, Sunday, November 7, he indeed had a “hangdog” appearance — or was he suffering “shock”?