How the White House Is Putting our Largest and Most Loved Social Program at Risk « Social Security Media Watch Project

The FICA tax "holiday" is a shot to the heart of Social Security. Read Heidi Hartmann's discussion about why and what to do about it:

How the White House Is Putting our Largest and Most Loved Social Program at Risk « Social Security Media Watch Project

Where Did This Guy Go to College?

At his press conference on Tuesday, Obama said: "This country was founded on compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door at this country’s founding. And if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a union."... Is he saying that Emancipation and Civil Rights were the fruits of COMPROMISE?  Is he attributing Emancipation and Civil Rights to back room deal-making and soul-selling, just like his tax cut deal?  This is self-serving historical inaccuracy. And, in the context of his complaint about progressives feeling "sanctimonious about how pure [their] intentions are and how tough [they] are," Obama's comment must be read as another put-down of the social movements (and soldiers) who fought for transformational change.

Obama Wrongly Describes the Origins of Welfare as the Origins of Social Security -- AGAIN

At his Tuesday press conference President Obama repeated the claim he
first made in his interview with Jon Stewart six weeks ago: that
Social Security began as a program for widows and orphans. (See my 10/31/10 posting for a clip from the Stewart interview).

At the most elemental level, this is a false claim as Social Security
actually left out widows and orphans when it was enacted in 1935. It
was only in 1939 that Social Security provided for widows and orphans
-- and then only if they were heirs/survivors of husbands/fathers who
were covered by the Social Security system.

Social Security was exactly the opposite of the program Obama
apparently thinks it was created to be. It was pegged to the white,
male worker who was employed in jobs that were available mainly to
white men. It was tied to white, male lifetime labor patterns of
uninterrupted employment. It was (and is) based on contributions from
wages.

Social Security was and is a contributory social insurance program.
The program that initially "only affected widows and orphans" (quoting
from the President's press conference) was welfare -- mothers's
pensions, as it was called in the Progressive Era, then Aid to
Dependent Children, as it became in the New Deal.

Does Obama think that Social Security is welfare? ....ahhh... That
explains everything! No wonder he is so quick to sacrifice Social
Security to the cause of deficit reduction. He must think ending
Social Security is the next phase of welfare reform (which he loved).
Dont be surprised if he tries to extend marriage promotion (along with
fatherhood, his alternative to welfare for single mothers) -- to
seniors.

For more on this see  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/while-whacking-left-obama_n_794061.html

Obama's 2 Trillion Dollar Sell-Out to the For-Profit Health Care Industry

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/industry-health-care-deals-haunt-white-house_n_793041.html

Obama's "Tax Holiday" Is A Poison Pill For Social Security | OurFuture.org

Obama's "Tax Holiday": A Poison Pill For Social Security | OurFuture.org

Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Progressive Change Campaign Committee

Sign the petition to fight the Obama tax cuts for the rich!

The End of Social Security | MyFDL

The End of Social Security | MyFDL

President Obama's so-called payroll tax holiday is a shot in the gut of Social Security. Does he want to end economic security for the elderly? As Nancy Altman explains, the payroll tax holiday will ratchet up the pressure to cut and delay Social Security benefits because it means an expanded shortfall from the Social Security trust fund. Obama didn't get the 14 votes on the Deficit Commission needed to kneecap Social Security -- but I guess he found another way.

The Worst Off Get Screwed Over Again

Obama's soul-chilling, mind-numbing, spirit-sapping capitulation on the Bush tax cuts supposedly in a "deal" for extended Unemployment Insurance -- leaves out the more than 2 million workers who have exhausted their 99 weeks of UI.  By next year at this time, there will be an estimated 6 million 99ers -- so not only does Obama's tax deal spread injustice by fattening the rich, it will also spread misery and poverty.

Obama Exposes His Ignorance about Social Security

http://www.thedailyshow.com/ watch/wed-october-27-2010/ barack-obama-pt--2

While we were yucking up Obama's "heckuva job, Larry" moment, we missed something far more ominous and important. At approximately the 8 min 40 sec mark in this clip, Obama says that "Social Security was originally a small program set up for widows and orphans." !!@#$! ....No wonder social security is on the brink of destruction by Obama's deficit commission, and no wonder so-called health care reform was built on warped principles. He doesn't have a basic understanding of social policy! To say that Obama's thumbnail description of Social Security's history is inaccurate barely scratches the surface of how appalling is the ignorance exposed in that statement.

Poverty Rises

Poverty Jump and "Shredding the Safety Net" -- Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA):

The rise in poverty in 2009 -- the largest number of people in poverty in the 51 years poverty has been measured -- should be a wake-up call to politicians in both parties who have spent the past 30 years shredding the safety net. The spread of poverty in the past year is only partially explained by the economic collapse of 2008 and the prolonged, acute problem of unemployment that followed and continues. Since 1980, income supports for low-income people have been withdrawn, eroded, and withheld. Notwithstanding the current recession -- deep and intractable as it is -- economic support for poor Americans has remained meager, stingy, and inaccessible.

Between December 2007 and April 2010, TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] caseloads increased only 12 percent -- even though a 48 percent rise in Food Stamp caseloads attests to the exponential growth in need during that period. The minimal rise in TANF enrollments is not due to an improvement in the economic circumstances of low-income families, especially single mother families. In fact, single mothers are disproportionately unemployed, disproportionately shunted into part-time employment, and disproportionately paid very low wages. The low comparative rise in TANF enrollments is due to the active discouragement of welfare participation by eligible families, the rigid conditions for welfare participation, and the rise of ineligibility due to draconian time limits under so-called 'welfare reform.' The grim new poverty numbers expose a state of economic emergency for low income Americans. It is time to end the 30-year war on the poor and re-dedicate ourselves first to alleviating current misery and then to eliminating poverty.

For more information on the just-released poverty data, see:

http://www.legalmomentum.org/assets/pdfs/reading-between-the-lines.pdf
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb10-144.html
http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350.pdf