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It’s almost like negotiating with terrorists
Addressing the tax deal negotiated in secret between President Obama and the Rethugs, Senators Schumer, Sanders, and Boxer, along with Rep. Van Hollen adopted the President’s own metaphor of the Rethugs holding the middle class hostage until they get more tax cuts for themselves and the super rich who’ve bought them.
Senator Menendez went a step further:
“It’s almost like negotiating with terrorists.”
Almost?
In trying to sell this lipsticked pig to the American people, Obama had said:
‘It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers unless the hostage get harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy.”
Jon Stewart deconstructs the absurdity of the President’s logic, asking him whether he’s familiar with the hostage captor dynamic– threatening harm to their hostages is pretty much the only arrow in the hostage taker quiver. Stewart then points out the logical consequences this deal with the devil. By giving into their demands, he’s laying the precedent for future episodes of hostage taking.
“Doesn’t this send a subtle message that if the Republicans want to get their way they need to take the American people hostage?”
As for instance, in raising the debt ceiling come April. Obama answered a reporter’s question about that by saying that with John Boehner responsible for running the House, of course he’ll be reasonable, he won’t shut the government down (like Newt Gingrich did during the Clinton Presidency). The Boner can’t just be a bomb thrower from the sidelines. But Stewart laughs that off with a Seinfeld allusion:
“Why throw bombs– this hostage thing is gold, Jerry!”
A gold mine with deep, rich veins. Given Obama’s track record health care, financial reform, and now taxes, the rich will get all the gold and we’ll get the shaft.
Sylvester McConnell hugging Tweety Obama in the fond embrace of bipartianship
Hi nonnie:
The amount is so miniscule that people didn’t even know they got a tax cut from Obama; and the Rethugs convinced them during the election that he had actually raised their taxes.
The people won’t even have to wait for govt services cutbacks to kiss that $ goodbye, though. The oil companies are always first out of the blocks to suck up whatever additional dollars are added to the economy by raising energy prices, something they can accomplish in a matter of days.
Obama has been trying to sell these tax cuts as a backdoor stimulus, which makes quantitative sense from an economist’s point of view. We just won’t be able to see or enjoy it.
And given that this whole arrangement has got Larry Summers’ fingerprints all over it, I’m not exactly filled with optimism that it will succeed. He was, after all, the guy who convinced Obama that the first stimulus was enough to drop unemployment below 8% during what was supposed to be the pre-election “summer of recovery.”
No wonder he got the boot.
i wonder what the actual numbers are. how much will the middle class actually be saving if this goes through? a couple of hundred a year? how much will they have to spend if certain government services are discontinued, because we can no longer afford them, because the rich had to get their tax cuts?