America Speaks: Pushback in Palo Alto, CA

It was truly amazing how America Speaks worked to force us into giving us the answers they wanted: cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  They presented us with a 25-page doomsday 2025 budget scenario, where Obama’s defense budget and Bush’s tax cuts to the rich had been continued indefinitely. Even after our policy wizards ended mass unemployment and  the Iraq-Afghanistan war,  they said,  rapidly-growing health costs and senior population would drag the nation down to a second-rate power status unless we came up with $1.2 trillion in cuts or revenue increases.   Then they whooped us up, to get us dancing in front of the cameras waving over-sized dollar bills,  while the giant screen flashed to other Town Halls in city after city, where people were also dancing with dollar bills, all of us in a simultaneous paroxysm of debt-smashing enthusiasm.  Then they smothered us in smarmy togetherness, and inclusiveness, and earnestness, about making “our” nation a better place for our children and grandchildren.  It was like all of us were extras in Jim Carrey’s “The Truman Show.”

Given all this, I was amazed at how much pushback there was. Our group started out talking about how loaded the war budget and tax break assumptions were that led to the $1.2 trillion figure. Most people felt and said it was kind of outrageous to have a eight minute perfunctory conversations about 30 million unemployed or under-employed with no solution being proposed, and then have us dust off our hands and imagine in 2025 we’d gained full employment and put the wars behind us. The person next to me said this was about class war.

When the discussion of health care cuts came up, people were so disgusted with having to choose 5%, 10% or 15% cuts without being able to specify how the cuts would be made, that they refused to make any cuts at all. Even the table moderator had to admit it was a stupid way to do it. At least half the people said they’d be glad to cut health expenses if we had single payer or negotiated drug prices.

When the subject of military spending came up, there a big discussion about whether the military and the wars were making us safer, whose interest the wars were being fought in, and whether the cuts would hurt ordinary soldiers. We ended up agreeing on the highest possible cut (15%) with some wanting much higher.

In the revenue portion, everyone was emphatic that rich people should be hit heavily, and the arguments that this might discourage saving, or investment, or it might slow the growth of jobs got no traction. Everybody agreed on raising the cap on payroll taxes to the original 90% of earned income, and some said the cap should be eliminated, though this was not an option, of course. There was some debate over whether to raise the rate of payroll tax.

What amazed me was that much of the same feelings seemed to be expressed nationally. They had to admit on the national simulcast that there was a huge sentiment for single payer, and that people didn’t like the options of cutting categories of services like healthcare without saying how it was done. It made a complete mockery of their blather about our “empowerment,” and “taking control.” I felt like when they brought out Commission member Alice Rivlin, she didn’t know how to respond to the pushback, and just blathered herself.

About 2/3 of the way through, we had reached about $800 billion, and it was getting difficult because people didn’t want to make additional cuts, but the table moderator kept saying we needed to make our target of $1.2 trillion. By this time, we had all gotten comfortable with each other and beginning to feel bonded, so I ventured to say that we were like a jury faced with a judge’s instruction we didn’t feel was fair because it was based on continued war spending and tax cuts to the rich. But juries do disobey judges, and we had the option of disobeying our instructions, too. This made some impression on people, but there was a strong impulse to meet our goal, and more cuts were made up to $1 trillion.

When we were asked what we would commit to do to continue working on these issues, I said I was in the  California Alliance for Retired Americans and the SF Gray Panthers and we had already had a town hall to defend Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Another person said she was from Democracy for America and would continue to work to stop the war. Another said he was from the Coffee Party, and I think he said he said he wanted to work against economic inequality.

Our table did vote to raise the Social Security retirement age, which I was really disappointed about. I talked about my 35 year old son who’s done landscape work and shines shoes, and whose shoulders and back are already beginning to fall apart. He’s got a kid, and he’ll never earn enough to go to school for a career change, and he’s unlikely to get a job with a pension, and I don’t see how he’ll last to 65, let alone 69. It didn’t make a difference; they still voted for the age increase. I think off all the issues in the afternoon, this was the question that demanded the most identification with workers.

I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to talk afterward very much, but in the little talking I did with other California Alliance for Retired Americans and Move-On people, it seemed like they had the same kind of experience at their tables, and as I said, the pushback seemed to be reflected even in the simulcast. Of course, the America Speaks organizers are going to massage their message to the Obama Commission next Wednesday; they actually started doing it during the Town Hall, forming phrases like “legislators, do your duty,” “make the hard decisions,” “remember the people are powerful,” all of which which encourage the Commission to carry out the Peterson agenda. Still, I think our resistance to being stampeded was a well-deserved slap in the face to Peterson (and Obama.)  Now begins the work of talking to as many people as possible about the threats of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and to plan actions for when the Obama Commission submits its recommendations to Congress in early December.

Here’s a link to a Huffington Post article, “In Deficit “Town Meetings,” People Reject America Speaks Stacked Deck”

Or Suburban Guerrilla’s “America Speaks, Will the Politicians Listen?”

A video clip form Bucks County PA

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SF Gray Panthers support MUNI drivers voting for no concessions

SF Gray Panthers support MUNI drivers voting for no concessions

On Friday, June 11, San Francisco MUNI drivers rejected the City’s demands for concessions for the second time. (See below.)  SF Gray Panthers made the following statement of support:

The SF Gray Panthers salutes the MUNI drivers who resisted the pressures of downtown business, the Mayor’s office, the Chronicle and Examiner, and some Supervisors, in rejecting the concessions the City is trying to force down their throats. MUNI’s service cuts, fare increases, and financial problems are not caused by drivers’ greed or the riders’ fare evasion; they are caused by downtown business refusing to pay for the service MUNI provides in bringing them their customers and workers.

We recognize that the same forces that attack MUNI drivers and riders are also attacking the City services we need to survive; health, human services, housing, and nutrition. Thoughtful City workers in other unions should support the drivers, because the drivers’ refusal to make concessions and their crucial position in the City’s economy could make the City think twice demanding even more concessions from other unions. This could save both jobs and services.

We demand: No service cuts or fare increases for SF’s poor, seniors, minorities, and immigrants. Make downtown business pay for the services they receive. Drivers and riders should unite to demand more public transit, not less.

(See this letter in June 15 SF Chronicle.)

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San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2010

S.F. Muni operators reject proposed givebacks

(06-11) 21:02 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — Muni operators rejected a proposed package of labor concessions Friday that city officials said was needed to help San Francisco’s financially pinched transit agency partially roll back the deep service cuts imposed last month.

Members of Transport Workers Local 250-A, which represents about 2,000 Muni operators, voted 747 against and 538 in favor of the proposed pact, according to union official Walter Scott.

The reductions, which went into effect five weeks ago, amounted to 300,000 service hours a year, or about 10 percent. They have led to more crowded buses and streetcars, fewer transit options late at night and longer waits between runs.

Mayor Gavin Newsom called the rejection “a slap in the face to everyone who rides Muni and to every other public employee union member,” who already agreed to givebacks. “Once again, I call upon the membership of the TWU to reconsider and revote.”

The leadership of Transport Workers Union Local 250-A forged a tentative agreement with Muni management two weeks ago that city officials say would cut costs by about $19 million over two years.

Union membership has been split bitterly over the proposal.

Bucking union officials, the rank and file resoundingly rejected a different set of proposed givebacks in February.

The new proposal called for lifting the de facto prohibition on the use of part-time operators, tightening overtime rules and changing dependent health care coverage.

It also would have extended the operators’ contract for another year, through June 30, 2012. That would have given operators an extra year to benefit from a guarantee enshrined in the city charter that they are paid at least the second-highest wage among U.S. transit operators.

That operator-friendly provision could be in jeopardy. Two separate charter amendments proposed for the November election seek to undo the automatic pay guarantee, though neither has qualified for the ballot.

The proposed ballot measures seek to set operator salaries through collective bargaining with the aim of giving management more flexibility in getting rid of inefficient work rules.

Municipal Transportation Agency chief Nathaniel Ford said that a favorable ratification vote would have benefited riders by restoring half the service cuts by early September.

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Reduce Debt? Cut Oil Wars, not Social Security!

Social Security Works, June 1, 2010

Save Social Security

President Obama May Cut Social Security Benefits, Report Says

Helen Thomas, Hearst White House columnist

WASHINGTON — Say it isn’t so, Mr. President. You surely are not going to make a deal with Republicans to cut Social Security benefits, are you?

Here’s word from The Nation Magazine: “The President intends to offer Social Security as a sacrificial lamb to entice conservative deficit hawks into a grand bipartisan compromise in which Democrats agree to cut Social Security benefits while Republicans accede to significant tax increases to reduce government red ink.”

The grand compromise would form the crux of the recommendations by the new 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility that was set up to find ways to reduce the federal budget deficit. Commission co-chairs are former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., and Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House.

The panel’s recommendations are scheduled to be announced in December, safely after the November elections. A recommendation requires a minimum of 14 votes among the commissioners. If Obama agrees to ask Congress to cut Social Security benefits, it would amount to a sellout by a president of the same Democratic Party that embraced Franklin D. Roosevelt, the father of Social Security, back in 1935.

Social Security is not a charity. It is a trust fund created by contributions paid by workers and their employers, designed to assure a future livelihood, first for the elderly, then orphans, then the disabled. It’s a retirement savings plan — not a handout.

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, headed a Social Security Commission in 1982 under the Reagan administration that recommended a modest increase in taxes which resolved worries that the New Deal program might go broke.

If Obama is worried about the federal budget deficit, he shouldn’t turn to Social Security. The solution to the deficit is staring him right in the face: Obama should cut our human and money losses by getting out of the impossible — and costly — wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Of course, we do have plans to leave Iraq this summer — if leaving 50,000 occupation troops there is really leaving. Why are we doing that? This was the war of choice — not of necessity — that former President George W. Bush got us into, based on wrong information. Our continuing occupation of Iraq merely compounds our tragic mistake of invading in the first place.

Somehow I doubt that the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission will have the courage to tell the president about a very cool way to cut federal spending: Get American troops out of wars where we have no business.

Get real, Mr. President, cutting Social Security would be a break of trust with the American people. Millions of Americans cannot live without their Social Security stipends. So don’t tamper with those monthly checks.

Social Security is so deeply rooted in our society that the American people protested loudly when Bush came up with a half-baked plan to privatize Social Security. Fortunately, American voters saw to it that his Wall Street boondoggle went nowhere.

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