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MORNING MESSAGE: Fix the Debt’s New Ploy Is Too Obscene For Laughter

OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "Fix the Debt, a front group for corporations, billionaires, and defense contractors, wants people to call their representatives and demand that they avoid the “fiscal cliff.”    The group’s latest email is so badly written that it cries out for laughter. But its potentially tragic consequences call out for tears."

Boehner Slips And Falls Off The Cliff

"[House Speaker John] Boehner nearly cried," reports Politico, after his "Plan B" end-run around fiscal negotiations with the White House fails. "It was supposed to be a moment of strength, a way to drag Obama and the Democrats toward them in the high-stakes fiscal cliff negotiations that have Washington teetering on the brink. Instead, it showed the world that either Boehner couldn’t bring 217 of his own members to his side, or they were unwilling to be led by him in this fight. … Thursday’s drama irreversibly changes the dynamics in the negotiations to solve the legislative morass known as the fiscal cliff."

Right-wing groups claim credit for defeating Boehner, says the Huffington Post. "We were on the phone all day long today, talking to members of Congress," said Mike Needham, executive director of Heritage Action, the political arm of the powerful conservative nonprofit Heritage Foundation. "I think we definitely changed people's minds today, absolutely."

Paul Krugman in The New York Times writes that "the Republican crazies … have saved the day." "Earlier this week progressives suddenly had the sinking feeling that it was 2011 all over again, as the Obama administration made a budget offer that, while far better than the disastrous deal it was willing to make the last time around, still involved giving way on issues where it had promised to hold the line — perpetuating a substantial portion of the high-income Bush tax cuts, effectively cutting Social Security benefits by changing the inflation adjustment. … As in 2011, then, the Republican crazies are doing Mr. Obama a favor, heading off any temptation he may have felt to give away the store in pursuit of bipartisan dreams."

Robert Reich on what this tells us about the modern Republican Party. "That it has become a party of hypocrisy masquerading as principled ideology. The GOP talks endlessly about the importance of reducing the budget deficit. But it isn’t even willing to raise revenues from the richest three-tenths of one percent of Americans to help with the task. We’re talking about 400,000 people, for crying out loud."

Boenher's Plan B would have been "a lump of coal" for poor and working-class people, writes Robert Greenstein at Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: "The bill ends the improvements in tax credits for low-income working families, as well as a credit for low- and middle-income families with college costs, that the President and Congress first enacted in 2009 and that will expire at year-end under current law. Some 25 million Americans would lose an average of about $1,000 a year as a result, and roughly eight million children would fall into — or deeper into — poverty. A mother raising two children on full-time minimum-wage earnings of $14,500, for instance, would see her child tax credit cut from $1,725 to just $165. … Some 1.8 million individuals would lose their SNAP [food stamp] eligibility while 280,000 low-income children would lose access to free school lunches, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). … The changes to health reform’s subsidies that make coverage affordable for people with modest incomes would cause 350,000 to go without coverage, Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation estimates."

The progressive "Plan B" (The Washington Post): "A coalition of progressive groups is now urging the White House to push for corporate tax reform that would raise additional revenue, rather than revenue-neutral reform that would close loopholes and further lower rates (i.e. “rate-lowering, base-broadening” reform). … There’s likely to be a progressive push to exclude Medicaid from part of the entitlement cuts, and there will be camps on both sides who will want to exclude military health care, known as Tricare, from the cuts. … Finally, progressives will adamantly oppose an agreement to make more cuts to discretionary spending, which Obama on Monday offered to cut by $200 million. That covers all kinds of spending, from Head Start to housing vouchers, and that number could creep significantly higher."

'Michiganistan' and Other Bad Places For Workers

Jim Hightower in AlterNet: "Michigan is no longer a state. It is now “Michiganistan,” an autocratic czardom in the hands of Emperor Rick Snyder. … With no warning, no hearings, no public input, no floor debate, and no time for citizens to even know what was happening, the same legislative czarists rammed a union-busting bill into law. Even though he had publicly rejected such a proposal earlier this year as being “very divisive,” Emperor Snyder gleefully signed this measure. Who’s behind this madness? Say hello to two infamous, anti-union, billionaire plutocrats: the Koch brothers."

Millions falling through a tattered safety net. "12.2 million adults of working age, with no children at home … were living below the poverty level in 2011. That's up nearly double from two decades ago. And of those, 5.6 million received no assistance from any of the major five federal programs, a Reuters analysis of Current Population Survey data found. That's the highest number since 1992, the first year for which comparable records are available. Then, there were 4.3 million unaided poor adults. … The population of unassisted poor adults is growing at a time when the United States is grinding through a prolonged stretch of rising poverty and income inequality." (Thumbs down: NBC News' slanderous use of phrase "undeserving poor" in its headline.)

No olive branch for anti-worker Olive Garden: Daily Kos' Laura Clawson: "Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, among others, telegraphed earlier in the month that its earnings had dropped, in part due to public backlash over the company's plan to drop all of its hourly workers below the 30 hours a week that would make them eligible for employer-provided health coverage under Obamacare. Now the company's fiscal second-quarter numbers are out, and it turns out that Darden Restaurants suffered a 37 percent drop in net income."

Taking On the NRA

Davis Callahan at the American Prospect suggests the NRA is a paper tiger in the hours before its first press conference after the Newtown, Conn., shootings, and it's time "to call its bluff." "Daniel Gross of the Brady Campaign has argued that the NRA's bark is far bigger than its bite and that its 2012 war chest produced few gains. … As a lobbying force on Capital Hill, the NRA is very small. … So why does the NRA wield such clout? One answer is that politicians have an exaggerated and dated fear of its electoral power. But another answer, unfortunately, is that public support for gun control tends to be quite soft and, in many places like the South and West, quite scarce."

Grief-striken Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teacher stepping into the gun control debate (In These Times): “Teachers lost their lives protecting their kids, lunging at a gunman with an assault weapon. We should be getting guns out of society,” says Weingarten. “If someone wants to hunt, they can hunt. The Second Amendment allows people to bear arms, and they should be able to, but we need reasonable common sense gun control."

Breakfast Sides

Watchdog groups ask for probe of super PAC donations (USA Today): "Two campaign-finance watchdog groups Thursday asked federal authorities to investigate $12 million donated to a Tea Party-affiliated super PAC from two companies created less than two months before Election Day. The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 said the companies' donations to FreedomWorks for America may have violated a law that prohibits making contributions "in the name of another person" and called on the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate."

Lawsuit seeks to end the filibuster. "Common Cause, the left-leaning advocacy group, filed the case on behalf of eight plaintiffs, among them three children of undocumented immigrants who say they would have been naturalized under President Obama’s proposed Dream Act if a GOP filibuster hadn’t blocked it. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that unlimited debate isn’t a vital Senate tradition that protects the rights of the minority party, but an historical accident that’s led to the equivalent of minority rule."

Congress' failure to pass a farm bill will hurt working families (Time): "The price of milk will skyrocket, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. … Senator Debbie Stabenow, Chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, argues that the Farm Bill should be part of deficit reduction negotiations because it cuts food stamps, crop insurance, conservation and farmer subsidies from the current law."

Outgoing Rep. Barney Frank's letter to the Justice Department calling for criminal prosecution of bankers: "I ask that there be a series of consultations involving law enforcement officials and regulators with the goal of increasing prosecution of culpable individuals as an important step in seeing that the laws that protect the stability and integrity of our financial system are better observed."

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