Has President Obama created a Social Security "death panel"?

[Better Believe It]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot moderator dmocratic Underground)



Has Obama created a Social Security 'death panel'?
If the press doesn't ask tough questions and stand up for the little guy, the powerful interests stacking President Obama’s deficit commission will use it to cut the social programs that most help the middle class and the vulnerable.
By Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson
May 21, 2010

Nancy Altman, author of The Battle for Social Security is co-director of Social Security Works. She served on the Obama Campaign's Retirement Security Advisory Committee and later on the Advisory Committee to the Social Security Administration Transition Team.


Eric Kingson is Professor of Social Work at Syracuse University and co-director of Social Security Works. He served on the Obama Campaign's Retirement Security Advisory Committee and later on the Advisory Committee to the Social Security Administration Transition Team.



President Obama and the leadership in Congress have delegated enormous, unaccountable authority to 18 unrepresentative, inordinately wealthy individuals. The 18 individuals are meeting regularly, in secret, behind closed doors, until safely beyond this year’s mid-term election. If they reach agreement, their proposal will be voted on in December by a lame duck Congress, without the benefit of open hearings and deliberations in the pertinent committees and without the opportunity for open debate and amendment on the floors of the House and Senate. Despite the speed and lack of accountability, the legislation will affect, in substantial ways, every man, woman, and child in this nation.

Who are these powerful people and what are their views?

Please read the full article at:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00456


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Revolt of the Wonks: Former Obama Advisors Want To Know What’s Happening on His Deficit Commission
By: Jane Hamsher
May 21, 2010

There’s a very important an article in the Neiman Watchdog this morning (Harvard’s Kennedy School journalism review, Deputy Editor Dan Froomkin). It’s written by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, entitled “Has Obama created a Social Security ‘death panel’?

Headlines like that are normally the reserve of DFH bloggers, so it’s notable that the academic world is talking about Obama’s Deficit Commission in that way. Even more notable are the article’s authors: Altman and Kingson both served on the Obama Campaign’s Retirement Security Advisory Committee, and then on the Advisory Committee to the Social Security Administration Transition Team.

So Altman and Kingson raise important questions, but to my mind, none more important than these:

Q. Why is the Commission apparently working so closely with billionaire Peter G. Peterson, who served in the Nixon administration and who has a clear ideological agenda?

Q. Mr. Peterson has been on a decades-long crusade against Social Security. The day after the first meeting of the commission, which focused heavily on the need to cut Social Security, the co-chairs and two other members of the commission participated in a Peterson event that reinforced the same message. A Peterson-funded foundation is supplying commission staff. And Peterson’s foundation is funding America Speaks to develop a series of high-profile town halls across the country to host “a national discussion to find common ground on tough choices about our federal budget.” (For more background about Mr. Peterson, see William Greider in the Nation on Looting Social Security — Part 2.)

Note the buried lede (lead): Pete Peterson is supplying commission staff.

http://firedoglake.com/