Oligarchs for Austerity and the CNP Have a Big New Scheme: Suing their Way to a New Constitution

Did you hear? Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be run­ning for a third term in office. And he’s not jok­ing. Who knows how seri­ous he is, but as we’re going to see, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of third pres­i­den­tial term may not be as set in stone as many sus­pect. Along with the rest of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion could be just around the cor­ner. Just a law­suit away. And we can thank the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and their fel­low trav­el­ers at the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Com­mit­tee (ALEC) for this loom­ing threat. The same aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has spent years try­ing to roll back Oba­macare, evis­cer­ate Medicare and Med­ic­aid through block-grants, and gen­er­al­ly erode what’s left of the US’s social safe­ty-nets as more and more Amer­i­cans are forced to take any work avail­able just to qual­i­fy for increas­ing­ly mea­ger gov­ern­ment assis­tance. That aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. It’s back with a big sneaky plan: a law­suit pur­port­ing to prove that the 34 state thresh­old for an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion has already been met. David M. Walk­er — the for­mer US Comp­trol­ler for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush — is lead­ing the legal effort, with legal sup­port from NRA lawyer (and CNP mem­ber) Charles “Chuck” Coop­er. If the law­suit suc­ceeds, get ready for a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by and for the oli­garchy.

But this sto­ry isn’t just about this new law­suit. It’s also about how the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has been work­ing with CNP to push these con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion ambi­tions since at least 2013, which is right around the same time it become clear that the last major round of DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing had failed in achiev­ing a “grand bar­gain” of slashed enti­tle­ments. A round of lob­by­ing that began in earnest as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was still play­ing out with David Walk­er — then Pres­i­dent and CEO of the new­ly formed aus­ter­i­ty-cen­tric Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion — tak­ing on a lead role as pub­lic aus­ter­i­ty advo­cate. The Great Reces­sion was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for a “grand bar­gain”. And it almost worked. But did­n’t work, at least not entire­ly, and it was­n’t long after that fail­ure became clear that we saw the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and the CNP begin hatch­ing far more ambi­tious plans. Plans that just might be about come to fruition. Because as we’re also going to see, if a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion does hap­pen, the forces behind this plan are the ones who will be run­ning it. The DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by real­ly is just a law­suit away from win­ning every­thing.

Guess What? Grandma is Moving In. She’s Got Medical Bills. Maybe to Share. It’s Medicaid Brought to You by Kochcare.

Is kick­ing senior cit­i­zens out of nurs­ing homes good pol­i­tics? That’s a ques­tion GOP ask­ing itself these days. One of many ques­tions relat­ed to the pol­i­tics of health care. Although not many are ask­ing it since the pub­lic large­ly has no idea the ques­tion is being asked at all as recent polls show. With the Sen­ate’s ver­sion of ‘Trump­care’ final­ly released to the pub­lic, we’re now learn­ing that, yes, the GOP appears to think kick­ing seniors out their nurs­ing homes is good pol­i­tics. Because trans­fer­ring Med­ic­aid costs to states and indi­vid­u­als has been a key GOP goal of Trump­care’s con­gres­sion­al authors the entire time and nurs­ing homes are paid for by Med­ic­aid for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple. So in addi­tion to the many pro­found moral ques­tions raised by the GOP’s health care ‘reform’ plans, a grow­ing num­ber of pro­found polit­i­cal ques­tions are being raised the more we learn about Trump­care as it takes form. Includ­ing whether or not putting nurs­ing home cov­er­age on a fis­cal death spi­ral makes for good pol­i­tics. Granny would prob­a­bly say ‘no’, but she’s got com­pe­ti­tion.

Trumplandian Feudalism: Employ the Unemployed While Still Starving Them

Did Trump sud­den­ly drop his oft-repeat­ed crit­i­cism of tra­di­tion unem­ploy­ment report­ing and asser­tions that in real­i­ty its 42 per­cent and 94 mil­lion Amer­i­can adults are out of work? Well, as we’re going to see, prob­a­bly not because his admin­is­tra­tion is still plan­ning on redefin­ing the “offi­cial” unem­ploy­ment rate to be much “loos­er” and his claims that 42 per­cent if Amer­i­can adults are out of work are nec­es­sary to achieve a long-held GOP goal cham­pi­oned by House Speak­er Paul Ryan: con­vert­ing the US safe­ty-net — includ­ing Medicare, Med­ic­aid, and Social Secu­ri­ty — into a “work for a pit­tance to get a pit­tance of gov­ern­ment support”-net that traps the poor in sys­tem where if you have to find full time work to get any help at all. Maybe even for the elder­ly. And the help you get in return for that work-require­ment will keep shrink­ing year after year. It’s a plan that can’t hap­pen unless almost all non-work­ing adults are defined as “unem­ployed”. So, no, Trump did­n’t change his mind. He just still thinks we’re all stu­pid (maybe).

Killing Granny: The GOP’s “One Size Fits All” Death Panel for Health Care

Change is com­ing to Wash­ing­ton DC. Most­ly hor­ri­ble changes. But as we’ll see in this post, there is one very sig­nif­i­cant and pos­i­tive change com­ing as a con­se­quence of the uni­fied GOP con­trol of the White House and Con­gress: GOP is actu­al­ly going to start get­ting the blame it deserves for all the dam­age its pro-oli­garch/an­ti-every­one-else agen­da rou­tine­ly inflicts upon the Amer­i­can peo­ple. Pol­i­tics can be frus­trat­ing for a myr­i­ad of rea­sons, but one of the biggest sources of frus­tra­tion is the cloud of per­pet­u­al obfus­ca­tion and con­fu­sion that tends to per­me­ate the polit­i­cal dis­course and col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of what’s actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing, why it’s hap­pen­ing, and who should be reward­ed or blamed for it. But for the next cou­ple of years, at a min­i­mum, it’s going to be very clear who to blame for the dam­age DC is about to unleash, and it’s not just going to be Don­ald Trump. And when it comes to health care “reform” (pri­va­ti­za­tion) that the GOP is about to impose upon the pop­u­lace, that blame is about to get dan­ger­ous­ly dif­fu­sive for state leg­is­la­tures and gov­er­nor­ships because the Health Care Aus­ter­i­ty Hot Pota­to is about to get tossed in their laps over and over. Indef­i­nite­ly. And since the GOP con­trols almost all state leg­is­la­tures and gov­er­nor­ships at the moment they won’t be able to pre­vent them­selves from slash­ing these pro­grams. So with the com­ing block grant­i­ng of first Med­ic­aid and then Medicare (or maybe both togeth­er), the pol­i­tics of health care is about to get weird. And trag­ic because the GOP won’t be able to help itself with all the aus­ter­i­ty

The GOP Pulled Off the Medicaid Bandaid. Next Up? Medicare Amputations.

When “God’s Sen­a­tor”, Sam Brown­back, became “God’s Gov­er­nor” of Kansas back in 2010 it was clear some pret­ty big changes were on the way for Kansas. After all, when a GOP mem­ber of Opus Dei is your new gov­er­nor, some form of aus­ter­i­ty for the mass­es is prob­a­bly in the cards. And fol­low­ing the 2012 intra-GOP “mod­er­ate” purge, aus­ter­i­ty for Kansas has arrived in full force. As once might expect, this includes the aus­ter­i­ty that comes with refus­ing to accept the Oba­macare Med­ic­aid expan­sion. Utter­ly point­less, yet still painful, self-fla­gel­la­tion. And that’s just the begin­ning...

The GOP Pulls Off the Medicaid Band-Aid. Ouch.

A con­se­quence of last years Supreme Court rul­ing that upheld Oba­macare — but allowed states to opt out of the Med­ic­aid expan­sion — is that we would see GOP state gov­er­nors placed in a real dilem­ma: They could either accept the Med­ic­aid expan­sion and receive bil­lions of dol­lars for their state health care sys­tems from the Fed­er­al gov­ern­ment at the risk of enrag­ing their far-right base of sup­port­ers. OR the gov­er­nors could reject the Med­ic­aid expan­sion, leav­ing mil­lions with­out cov­er­age but still being able to say they stood up to that evil social­ist plot to destroy Amer­i­ca. Deci­sions, deci­sions...