Dear Obama; Instead of cutting Medicare

Which you clearly want to do, and which both your Catfood Commission and the debt supercommission want to do even more of ...

Revisit Obamacare. Cut out a variety of corporate tax deductions in the medical world. Raise the maximum income subject to FICA tax. Do something to prove you're even close to actually being liberal.

And, this news from California shows that Obamacare, as well as the health care system it purports to fix, is broken.

And that's the bottom line. When a car has a blown engine, you don't pour new oil in that engine and crank it up again. You replace the engine.


Unless you're a neoliberal currying favor with Valvoline, to extend the analogy. And, that's exactly what Obama did with Obamacare. He bought a bunch of Valvoline from Big Pharma and poured it into a broken engine.

If necessary, you do so to forestall more radical action, like people saying the entire car needs to be replaced instead of just the engine. FDR knew that. He was able to double-deal in California in 1934 to undercut Sinclair Lewis, but knew that Huey Long and Charles Coughlin (pre-Nazi shark jumping) were a different matter. (I'm setting aside conspiracy theories about who "really" killed Huey Long.)

FDR knew that, for all the reservations he had about it (and he had a LOT, including forcing it to have a separate tax rather than coming out of general income taxes; take him off the pedestal here), that he needed to approve some form of Social Security or a Huey Long would indeed "primary" him in 9136.

Meanwhile, readers here: Get off the fence. Stop even thinking of voting for Dear Leader.