Shazama's loosely named "jobs" bill was rejected Tuesday by the GOPhux in the Senate, where the Dims could barely garner 50 (of the 60) votes needed for cloture on the measure. Of course, it was ALWAYS a corpse in the GOPhux/T-bagger controlled House. The only thing you can get 60 votes in the Senate for are more intrusive national security measures and bank bail-outs.
Ben Nelson (DINO-NEB), and John Tester of Montana broke ranks, though it didn't matter; once Reid and Schumer (the whip) realized they weren't gonna have 60 votes anyway, it was strictly a pseudo-event, conducted because somebody was watching..
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To ANYONE with more cognitive competence than an earthworm the proposal was NEVER--any better than Dead On Arrival. Whatever plusses there were with it, there was ALWAYS a significant negative embedded in the bill: the "tax holidays" and the provisions to increase workers' take-home by reducing workers' payroll taxes.
The payroll tax cut –-an enlargement of one already passed last year in a previous move to appease the GOPhux in the PREVIOUS economic Obama cave-in--is what economics writer R.J. Eskow at the time called a "poison pill." Increasing the damage of the previous 'tax cuts,' the new measure would have taken a 240 BILLION-dollar bite out of Social Security revenues in 2012. And would do the same in several SUBSEQUENT years. It's a 'death of a thousand cuts.'
The Obamanauts SAID they planned to replenish the lost FICA (Federal Insurance Contribution Act) taxes with money from the overall federal budget-- keeping Social Security 'whole, for the time being, but forcing the government to borrow more and further swelling the federal debt to pay for it.
Which would retroactively validated the lies the GOPhux have been telling about the costs of Social Security to the budget now.
This would have the effect of turning Social Security and the Trust into a ploitical football, by removing Social Security from its secure position and predictable funding from the Trust, and throw it into competition for scarce Federal dollars with the REST of the 'discretionary' postulants. This is part of the plan to turn Social Security from a universal insurance program into a discretionary "welfare" program with all the attendant rhetorical baggage that would ential. In other words, a death sentence.
Which, if I may say so, seemed to me to be the plan all along. The Owners and their political lackeys couldn't stand the political gaffe of killing it out-right, so they're killing it a little--$240 Billion--at a time. Brilliant, doncha think?
In my always humble opinion, this would comport with exactly what St. Barry was tasked to do, by his oligarchic financial boosters, in the starting gate: Finally putting paid to the last remaining (though always minimal, inadequate, eroding-- but, to the owners, nevertheless odious and threatening--) provisions of the New Deal social safety net.
And he's getting the fuck away with it, too.
It is PATHETIC that folks believed just because he is a "person of color," St. Barry would be "different" from the 44 White dudes who preceded him. Shazama's "jobs" bill was DOA, from the first instant it was proposed.
But I shore was hoping it would pass.
That's cuz I could then have released the pressure building up in my innards from housing the host of pastel-colored, paisley-printed, pan-pipe-playing piglets that are just WAITING for the legislative excuse to fly out my flapping butt-cheeks and circle the globe playing Bach cantadas in 3-part harmonies.
See whatcha been missing, Hippies?
Swing on by the Store and get a handful of bumperstickers. Those dichoric ampules would make nifty stocking stuffers, if you don't happen to have any legs to put in 'em, too...or a WWH "wife-beater"/tank top to wear so I'll recognize ya when I see you at the beach...
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