By Jay Hansen

Obama passed his first piece of legislation of 2013 a little over a week ago; he finally got his long-desired tax reform through! So, what kind of reform did he bring us? Expiration of the Bush tax cuts? Refurbishment of the payroll tax cut perhaps? Increasing capital gains? If you’ve been reading my site, especially in the past month or so, you know this article isn’t leading to a happy place.

I’m far from proud to introduce to you all, the newly created Bush Obama Tax Cuts (source):

• Income tax rates for 99% of Americans (not even 98%, 99%) were cut by 4.6% permanently, setting them at 35%. This is now the new, permanent rate, unlike the Bush tax cuts that were only temporary.
• Taxes on the top 1% are projected to bring in approximately $62 billion per year in additional revenue
• Tax subsidies, breaks, and other “extenders” for various businesses and industries included in the plan cost $68 billion per year.
• Carried interest, the primary income generated by private equity and much of those in the financial sector, gets an exemption from this tax rate as it is not classified as “income,” and thus is not subject to the income tax rates mentioned above. Instead, the income of those in the financial sector making at or over $450,000 a year will be taxed 19.6% less than the actual income tax rate for this tax bracket (20%)
• The estate tax was cut by 15% and given a $5 million exemption for individuals and $10 million for couples (meaning only those that make over $5/$10 million are even taxed by the estate tax at all)
• The capital gains tax, a tax that hits the wealthy more than the middle class and poor, remained at 20%
• Dividends, taxes that hit the wealthy much more than the middle class and don’t affect the poor at all, were cut by a whopping 19.6% AND set to that rate permanently
• Total, this bill cost $4 trillion, all of which will be added to the deficit
• Finally, while not part of this plan, the payroll tax, a tax that affects the poor and middle class much more than the wealthy, was increased by 2% at the beginning of the year.

…

… There are no words.

There are no words to describe the emotion I’m feeling right now, and the mixed, tumultuous feelings I’ve had all week as I learned more and more about the details of this plan. The best I can hope for is to break this down with as much cold logic as I can.

First and foremost, my hat is really off to Republicans on this one. I mean, they’ve always been masters of framing the issue, manipulating the facts, and generally pushing the propaganda, but holy shit dude. In the past, Republicans would often talk about “raising revenues” without raising taxes. Saying as much would allow them to do something about the budget (albeit little) without angering their wealthy donors as much. Hell, Mitt Romney’s entire tax plan predicated on this idea. Yet now with this conservatively-framed plan, Republicans and Democrats have found a way to raise taxes without raising revenue, given that all revenue “raised” from this plan was also used by this plan for more tax extenders.

If you don’t believe that the right-wing in this country controlled the national conversation on this issue in the media and public forums, consider the fact that 67% of Democrats are saying they like this bill, despite the fact that it is just the Bush Tax cuts renewed again and made permanent for all but 1% of Americans, meaning the plan is more right-wing than George Bush’s, and the Democrat-created payroll tax cut was allowed to expire, meaning taxes on middle class earners will go up. If you think this bill is in any way progressive, you either don’t know anything about politics, you need to have your head examined, or you’re a lying, rat bastard. Progressives already had their victory when the Bush tax cuts expired; they were gone for good, but Obama took specific action to make sure they came back and, as I will be focusing on a lot, became permanent. Even framing it as optimistically as possible by saying that taxes went up on the top 1% of wage earners doesn’t provide me any consolidation. If you work in private equity (Wall Street), arguably the most profitable industry in the country and where a large number of our country’s wealthy work, then your taxes didn’t go up because of the cuts to dividends and policy on carried interest.

This has two extremely damning consequences. One, Republicans can now blame Obama for adding $4 trillion to the deficit already in 2013, and rightfully so because he did, even though he did it to appease the very people now blaming him for doing it! Secondly, and much more importantly, Republicans can now turn around and say “see? We told you raising taxes wouldn’t solve anything.” It’s already started. Republicans will lie and pretend that this bill actually raised revenue and use that as an excuse to never bring up raising taxes again, or at least for the next ten to twenty years. Just like he did with health care reform, he managed to squeak this bill through disguised as tiny, tiny change, so now he’s going to raise the “mission accomplished” banner and pretend the issue of taxation is completely resolved. Do I need to long-windedly explain this, or should I just point to the fact that he made 99% of the Bush Tax Cuts permanent.

Even George W. Bush had the (balks) forethought and…

Good God my fingers don’t want to type it…

gggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-intelligence

to make them temporary, as he knew it would be fiscally irresponsible and damaging to the budget to make such large cuts permanent. Now, Obama is making them permanent in a time when the budget is already in tatters. At least Bush did them when the budget was in great shape.

But I’m STILL not to the worst part of this.

Therein lies the truth; why? Why, Obama? Why’d you do it?

This wasn’t a compromise for anything. Normally when Obama pulls some dumbass stunt like this it’s because he’s “trying to compromise” with Republicans, which usually ends in Republicans getting 98% of what they want and, if they’re really lucky, 1% or 2% of what progressives want. That’s Obama’s idea of a fair compromise. In this situation though, he wasn’t compromising; he wasn’t negotiating. He just passed this law… just because. It wasn’t a compromise; this is what he actually believes, supports, and fought for tooth-and-nail. This is Obama’s ideology.

In reality, what’s really happened here is that on January first, the Bush Tax Cuts finally expired, and it was fantastic. The largest contributor to the deficit over the past twelve years was finally done and gone as of a week ago, yet Obama went back and retroactively compromised after progressives already won. Had they just expired, we would have returned to the Clinton era tax rates and policies that helped create the last golden age of America with record number of jobs and an economic surplus for the first time in generations. Obama took specific, deliberate action to make sure progressives didn’t get a victory. By retroactively implementing this law, Obama has gone back in time to subvert a major progressive victory.

Obama got a big straw; one that can reach all the way back to the very end of last year, and did this to progressives:

Progressives just got their milkshake drank… bad… and most don’t seem to even realize it.

The Bush Tax cuts had already expired. Progressives had already won. Yet Obama claims he did this plan as a “compromise” with Republicans. You don’t compromise with expired food in your fridge, Obama; you throw it out! If something has noticeably gone past its expiration date, you don’t wonder if you should eat it or not. And yet, here we find Obama, eating on the moldy-ass remains of a can of Bush’s Baked Beans from twelve years ago. Also like with food, Obama’s going to regret it later when he’s sitting on the toilet with intestinal problems, because you know Republicans are going to blame him for passing a bill that cost trillions of dollars, did not cut spending, and raised taxes despite the fact that these tax policies are of Republican ideology.

Near as I can tell though, Obama seems to enjoy that after-effect. Like I said earlier, this has to be Obama’s real ideology, because progressives had already won. There was no need for this bill from the progressive perspective. The only answer is that Obama is not just center-right as I’ve often written, but at least on taxation he’s a full-blow conservative. Had he not passed this bill we’d be at the Clinton era tax rates, and Clinton is often regarded by history as some great centrist in terms of his final product in negotiations and compromises. So based on that alone, he’s at least further right that Clinton, no questions asked, and I find it impossible to argue otherwise now. Worse than that, though, is Obama’s record compared to Bush’s. In the past I’ve seen countless parallels drawn between Obama and Reagan because they were so similar on policy despite the fact that Reagan is worshipped by the GOP, often when accompanied by the point that Reagan couldn’t get nominated in the Republican Party of today. Now though, I’m seriously starting to wonder if Obama is even more right-wing than Bush. It’s a long, complex question I’ve been pondering for days and hope to explore in a separate article, but I’ll just remind you of one for now; Bush passed these massive tax cuts with an expiration on them. Sure, Republicans were probably just going to keep renewing them forever and ever given the option, but at least he faked concern over the budget. Obama has made these exact same tax cuts permanent. Even John Boehner, Speaker of the House, agrees and points out that with a Republican controlled House, Senate, and Presidency they couldn’t even get these tax cuts made permanent. Not even they could get a tax policy bill through this right-wing, and he is overjoyed that Obama has done it for them. Think about that; we elected Obama to end the Bush tax cuts in 2008. In 2010, he renewed them for two more years. Then in 2012, he didn’t just renew them, he made them permanent, set-in-stone, black-and-white, clear as day.

But this is kind of representational of what Obama has really been as a President, especially for progressives. He hasn’t done much of anything as far as significant change goes for progressive ideology; he’s just held back the dam of conservative ideology from completely collapsing. All he’s done is extend and pretend; just hold back the flood, don’t do anything to fix or improve the dam. Continue almost all the same policies of the last administration and just do tiny fixes here and there on our side of the dam without actually repairing the dam. Obama stuck his finger in the leaking hole of the dam in 2009, and he’s just been holding it there ever since without any more permanent solutions. Come 2016, we need someone who will fix the dam. And before you say it, Mitt Romney would not have fixed the dam. John McCain would not have fixed the dam, Newt Gingrich would not have fixed it, Rick Santorum would not have fixed it. Hell, Joe Biden wouldn’t have fixed it, Hilary Clinton likely wouldn’t have fixed it, and there are very few candidates out there that would be willing to do so.

Primaries will never be as important as they will be in 2016. Democrats better bring their best candidate to the table or we’re going to be flooded by this continuation of conservative tax policy started by Bush and maintained by Obama.

But what still really burns me after all of this is that what tiny change he did promise progressives he still didn’t even deliver upon. Throughout the campaign he did nothing but talk and talk and talk about raising taxes on those people making above $250,000 (the top 2%) a year, even calling it the central campaign issue. After the election he even promised a veto on any bill that didn’t. So, a bill comes to him that still continues them for 99% of Americans, raising them on only about half of the people he promised, and not only did he not veto it, he signed it and proclaimed it a huge victory. This is one of two veto threats Obama has already broken this year (the other being on the NDAA), and it’s not even half-way through January.

It’s going to be a long, rough four years for progressives.

I’ve had my reservations about saying this for several years, but it’s time to automatically start regarding Obama as the opposition. When we are about to go into political situations or big-ticket issues, we need to be of the assumption that Obama will oppose us (us being progressives), and treat each and every issue as we would with a Republican President, because that’s all Obama has really become; I’m as sure of this as death and taxes. I once heard it put very well when someone said “I don’t mind Obama so much. He’s the best Republican president of my lifetime.” And it’s true, there are a few minor things here and there he’s done very well on such as repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Supreme Court nominations, and general feminist issues. Outside of that though, what great change has he really delivered upon for progressives? His “health care” reform was nothing more than “health insurance” reform and was initially drafted by the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation. His financial reform was a joke and did nothing to prohibit or restrict the risky behavior that led to the economic collapse in the first place. Now he’s essentially fully adopted the Republican position on taxation, which is, in his own words, one of the central issues we elected him to change.

I’m going to post this video again, because if you listen to it about twenty times or so and close your eyes, you can actually start to see Obama saying this to his own progressive base that is responsible for his re-election.

By Jay Hansen

Obama’s been negotiating over the “fiscal cliff” for weeks now, and he’s finally making progress plying Republicans out of their Norquist-holes. Of course, to do that, he’s had to make some compromises. Apparently, Obama is now offering massive cuts to Social Security to balance the… budget? Wait a second, Social Security doesn’t add to the debt, why is it in a debate over the budget and taxation?

Well, let’s just put that aside. I mean, I’m sure Obama’s got to be getting something really good out of this deal if he’s offering up Social Security cuts, making him the first Democratic President in history to do so if he goes through with it. And according to reports he is getting something out of it, alright. In exchange for cutting Social Security, Obama will not let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

… wait, what?

What just happened there?

How did… I mean…

… WHAT?

You didn’t misread that. Right now in negotiations, it’s looking like Obama is willing to agree to a plan that both cuts Social Security and extends the Bush tax cuts for a significant portion of the wealthy, only letting them expire for those that earn above $1 million or possibly $500,000 a year, despite letting them expire for those making above $250,000 and higher annually was one of if not the integral campaign promises he made this election.

I knew Obama was bad at negotiating… like, catastrophically bad. World-endingly bad. Bad beyond all bounds of human reasoning and sanity. But… this? He’s “compromising” by giving the opposition something that they want in exchange for putting something into the agreement… that the opposition wants. That’s not even a compromise any more, that’s a surrender in the literal definitions of the words. The Obama team is calling it a “compromise,” however, because they feel like they really accomplished something in getting a small smattering of Republicans to agree to finally increasing taxes on millionaires (though not even enough to pass the damn thing through the House) if Obama agrees to gut Social Security. Being a sucker, Obama is intrigued by this offer, and is seriously taking it under consideration.

“Really? I can buy this forty year old Chevy with 100,000 miles on it for just $500,000? Tell you what, make it $700,000 and you got yourself a deal!” – Obama, trying to buy a car from a Republican.

That’s enough of me pulling my hair out, though; let’s talk specifics. Social Security currently has cost of living adjustments (COLAs) that allow for payments to recipients to increase with the cost of living and inflation. Without these COLAs, obviously, a retiree on Social Security would soon find themselves unable to pay for basic necessities such as food and medicine because the cost of living perpetually rises. Obama is now in negotiations with Republicans to completely eliminate most COLAs from Social Security, meaning payouts will not continue to rise for retirees with inflation at all. Worse yet, there doesn’t seem to be an exception for current seniors, meaning retirees already receiving payments will also no longer benefit from COLAs. At least when Republicans come to cut Social Security they have the half a mind to pretend they actually care about the elderly and exempt them. Apparently, though rarer, when Democrats come for it they come with a chainsaw.

Now to be fair, we are still in negotiations. Social Security COLAs are simply “on the table” now, even though just a few days ago Social Security was supposedly off the table. On top of that, Vice President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Reid, the number two Democrat in the Senate Senator Durbin, as well as the entirety of the House Progressive Caucasus, have all come out in opposition to any and all cuts to Social Security. Obama even promised during the campaign that he would not cut Social Security. The fact that Obama has waffled on taking Social Security off the table and putting it back, though, really doesn’t bode well.

As for the tax cuts, Obama unequivocally promised to let the Bush tax cuts for those making $250,000 and above expire. Already he’s up to at least $400,000 in negotiations, and considering only letting them expire for millionaires and up. As I’m writing this, though, we had a bit of breaking news; Speaker of the House Boehner had to cancel plans to vote on the Republican tax plan which involved this exact idea of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for millionaires and above because his own caucus still think that’s too much taxation, while Democrats in the House stood strong and said it was too little.

Under normal circumstances I’d say having these things on the table were just negotiation tactics. Hell, if it was nearly any other Democrat I’d even speculate that the repeated putting bargaining chips on the table and taking them off again, not to mention waffling back and forth over the tax level, is just a stall tactic to run out the clock on Republicans and the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Republicans making demands over the “fiscal cliff” is like a hostage making demands to his captors. If we did nothing before the year ends and “went over the fiscal cliff,” you know what happens? All of the Bush tax cuts expire; all of them. As a progressive, and as someone who’d seriously like to see the budget balanced, that wouldn’t be so bad. Even if they still wanted to keep them for the middle class they could, because day one of next year’s Congress they could pass those exact tax cuts for the middle and lower class in a new bill.

The problem is we know Obama; entire case studies could be written on how bad a negotiator he is, and how much he loves giving away the queen in negotiations with Republicans, sometimes even before negotiations begin. The fact that he’s putting these caveats back on the table is extremely troubling. That is why now is the time to pressure the President to do the right thing by sticking to his promises and doing what vast majorities of the American people want in raising taxes on the wealthy and protecting Social Security. It’s sad that asking for that seems to be asking for a lot from the President these days.

By offering cuts to Social Security in exchange for extending most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, I’m once again poised with the question of whether Obama even supports his own side or not. It seems like he’s throwing the game he’s so bad at negotiating. As a matter of fact, if a plan goes through that contains cuts to Social Security and any of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy continue, it’s just not possible that he’s that bad of a negotiator. No adult, let alone educated adult, let alone highly educated adult, let alone politician, let alone President of the United States, could possibly be that incompetent. Obama will win on the fiscal cliff if he does absolutely nothing and does not strike a deal; the very fact he’s still trying to strike a deal makes me suspicious. The only other option, then, is that Obama is actually rooting for the other side, and has been for a long time now. The truth is that Obama is much, much more conservative than anyone gives him credit for, or even believes. Obama himself is greatly disdainful of progressives and continually surrounds himself with even more conservative advisors and officials, sometimes even flat-out Republicans. Obama’s previous press secretary Robert Gibbs once went on an anti-liberal rant during a press conference. His first Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was a Republican before becoming an Independent, but switched none of his views. He retained many Bush appointees, including some extreme right-wingers such as Michele Leonhart, now head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Now Obama’s pick for the new Secretary of Defense is Chuck Hagel, a flat-out Republican. Of course, he’s not enough of a Republican, and besides he was picked by Obama, so of course Republicans are going to oppose him.

Now, on top of all that, he’s looking at a possible plan that will not raise taxes on the wealthy and will cut Social Security.

And Obama was just named TIME magazine’s person of the year, again, for being a “symbol” and “architect” of the new America. They named the weakest politician in the country that’s trashing progressive ideology and name the “symbol” of the new America.

Malala Yousafzai got robbed, man.

I know why they picked him, and I think he should have made the list. I mean, he did just win a presidential election this year, but I’d have put him much lower on the list. He’s done little to nothing to stop global warming, he’s violated our civil liberties in more ways than any President in over a generation, he hasn’t increased taxes on the wealthy a penny, his financial reform was a joke that did nothing to stop the big bank’s risky bets, he’s done nothing to stop corruption in Washington and the democratic process, and he’s not only done nothing about gun control, but he’s relaxed regulations on guns.

Obama may talk a big game after Newtown, promising to re-institute the assault weapons ban, but we’re not going to get one. I’d love it if we did, but Obama is no where near that strong. We may get a high-capacity magazine ban if we’re lucky, but to ask me to trust Obama can do what we’ve tried repeatedly to do since 2004 and been unable is just not happening. I’m just trying to be realistic.

Part of the problem are the people Obama surrounds himself with, as I mentioned above. If you notice, I didn’t bring up Rahm Emanuel, despite his infamous “liberals are fucking retarded” quote. Well, that’s because I saved a whole paragraph for him. It turns out that as Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel specifically fought the Obama administration and the Justice Department’s attempts to better regulate guns or ban assault weapons back in 2009 when the Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. When speaking to Attorney General Eric Holder, Emanuel told him to “shut the fuck up about guns” because of the political risk involved. It’s entirely possible that Rahm Emanuel is responsible for why the Obama administration did nothing about gun control, and why the President even made it easier to carry firearms on federal land.

So based on what we know about Obama so far, why should we believe him that he’s going to get gun control done now?

Worse than that, the President may be moved by 20 American children being killed in Newtown, Connecticut, but he seems to have no problem with the 21 children that were killed in Al-Majala, Yemen by a United States tomahawk missile strike. When was the last time you heard about that on the news?

A journalist in Yemen tried to get word out that the United States had done this bombing. He found the proof that the bombs were American and catalogued all the deaths of at least 27 civilians. For that, he was thrown in jail by the Yemeni government. When they were prepared to release him, President Obama specifically called the President of Yemen and told him to keep him in jail, and so he did. To this day, he’s still in jail at the specific request of our President.

But it doesn’t end there; the United States government is now specifically targeting children as young as eight for drone strikes. These aren’t mistakes like the one that was mentioned at the end of the above video; Lt. Colonel Marion Carrington said drone strikes are specifically targeted for any “military-age” males and any children “with potential hostile intent.”

And this is the guy I have to trust to do the right thing about gun control simply because 20 children died? I’m supposed to trust him that now he’ll do the right thing after signing off on the deaths of who knows how many children in the Middle East and Asia and being politically pressured into doing nothing about gun control when he had the power to do so by the conservative advisors and company he keeps, to which he has now only added more conservatives?

This is the newest incarnation of my fundamental problem with Obama. At first it was just that he was weak and a bad negotiator, but now it’s become something new altogether. I just don’t trust him.

The sad part is though, he’s still better than Romney. At least Obama has to pretend like he’s a progressive from time to time and consequently win them a microscopic victory here and there. Someone may want to tell Obama that the election is over though; he’s got no more straw man (plastic man?) to compare himself. More than that though, he won because of all the progressives that came out and voted for him, yet he now legislates and negotiates as if he’s some debt to pay to conservatives by giving them more and more in negotiations. He’s not going to be strong enough to pass an assault weapon ban, and honestly he probably isn’t going to end all the tax cuts for the wealthy at this point in the name of some faux-compromise, but if we really pressure him we just may be able to prevent him from cutting Social Security.

But hey, that’s just me. I’m an apocaloptimist.