Do we all recognize that the major parties in this country have shifted DRASTICALLY to the right

President Obama released his budget blueprint on Wednesday, a proposal that cuts more than $1 trillion in spending on government programs and adds nearly $800 billion in new taxes. With the release comes greater attention to a very technical term: "chained CPI."

Chained CPI is shorthand for "Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers." In short, it's a way to index spending and taxes -- including Social Security benefits -- to the rate of inflation, or the rise in prices over time. But it's not the only way.

What's important in the context of the debate over Obama's budget is that chained CPI would mean Social Security benefits would increase at a slower rate than they do using the current index.

What difference does it make?

As our friends over at Wonkblog pointed out last year, Social Security benefits are currently calculated using CPI-W, or the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers. (Yes, that's a mouthful.) Over time, benefit levels tick up based on CPI-W, to keep up with the fact that a dollar twenty years ago is not worth what it is today.

Here's the bottom line: Using chained CPI instead of CPI-W means the rate at which those benefits tick up would be slower, because the former reflects substitutions consumers would make in response to rising prices of certain items.Therein lies the "chained" part of the name. The metric utilizes a basket of goods and services that are measured changes from month to month; much like a daisy chain. If the cost of a certain form of transportation goes up, for example, people might switch to another kind. This kind of "substitution" is part of what is factored into chained CPI.

Overall, the change would save the federal government about $130 billion over the next decade.

(The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a good FAQ here, if you're looking for even more detail about the different mechanisms for taking inflation into account.)

Who likes chained CPI?

Republicans do.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/04/10/the-ins-and-outs-of-chained-cpi-explained/

New Democrats were never really about popular support; they were about bringing together big business and the Democrats.

......enormous snip.....didn't want to....

......More importantly, Clinton adopted the DLC strategy in the way she governed. She tried to portray herself as a crusader for family values when she introduced legislation to ban violent video games and flag burning in 2005. She also adopted the DLC's hawkish military stance. The DLC was feverishly in favor of Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. Will Marshall, one of the group's founders, was a signatory of many of the now infamous documents from the Project for the New American Century, which urged the United States to radically increase its use of force in Iraq and beyond.

The DLC led efforts to take down Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq as an example of his weakness. Two years later, the organization played a similar role against Ned Lamont's antiwar challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman, which the DLC decried as "The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism."

However, the DLC's influence eventually waned. A formal affiliation with the organization became something of a deal breaker for some progressive voters. When Barack Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, he had no affiliation with the DLC. So, when they wrongly included him in their directory of New Democrats, he asked the DLC to remove his name. In explaining this, he also publicly shunned the organization in an interview with Black Commentator. "You are undoubtedly correct that these positions make me an unlikely candidate for membership in the DLC," he wrote when pressed by the magazine. "That is why I am not currently, nor have I ever been, a member of the DLC."

The DLC's decline continued: A growing sense of discontent among progressives, Clinton's loss in 2008 and the economic crisis that followed turned the DLC into something of a political liability. And in 2011, the Democratic Leadership Council shuttered its doors.

When the DLC closed, it records were acquired by the Clinton Foundation, which DLC founder Al From called an "appropriate and fitting repository." To this day, the Clinton Foundation continues to promote the work of the DLC's founding members. In September 2015, the foundation hosted an event to promote From's book The New Democrats and the Return to Power. Amazingly, O'Malley provided a favorable blurb for the book, praising it as a "reminder of the core principles that still drive Democratic success today."

The 2016 Election and New Democrats

The DLC's demise was seen as a victory by many progressives, and the populist tone of the 2016 primary is being celebrated as a sign of rising progressivism as well. But it is probably too soon to declare that the "battle for the soul of the Democratic Party is coming to an end," as Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, recently told the Guardian.

Consider the way Marshall spun the closing of the DLC. "With President Obama consciously reconstructing a winning coalition by reconnecting with the progressive center, the pragmatic ideas of PPI and other organizations are more vital than ever," he said in an interview with Politico.

His reference to "PPI and other organizations" refers to the still-existing Progressive Policy Institute and Third Way. These institutions have the same Wall Street support and continue to push the same agenda that their predecessor did.

Many of these "centrist" ideas lack popular support these days. But New Democrats were never really about popular support; they were about bringing together big business and the Democrats. The group's board of trustees is almost entirely made up of Wall Street executives. Further, in the aftermath of the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, these same moneyed interests have more influence over the political process than ever before.

"These organizations now are basically just corporate lobbyists today," Schmitt said.


So while the DLC may be a dirty word among many progressives, this didn't stop Obama from appointing New Democrats to key posts in his White House.

The same Bill Daley who works for a hedge fund and is on the board of trustees for Third Way was also President Obama's White House chief of staff. And, as was noted above, he is now actively trying to influence the Democratic Party's direction in the 2016 election.


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PLEASE read in full. We as a Party need to WAKE UP~
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33869-hillary-clinton-s-ghosts-a-legacy-of-pushing-the-democratic-party-to-the-right