General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Sitting in a restaurant today I realized how much trouble we are in for [View all]truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Senate building, with Senators fleeing to the House of Reps' locale.
http://my.firedoglake.com/tpau/2012/04/01/emergency-alert-ows-occupies-the-us-congress/
You make a good point, but the isolation of the top two or three percent doesn't mean that things won't flame out on the bottom levels.
Decades ago, when discussion came up under Nixon as to helping the national deficit by cutting back on Food Stamps or AFDC, Nixon's advisers let him know that cutting those programs would cost the nation more, as entire areas of the country would indeed go up in flames. (Don't know if you' re old enough to remember when areas of Watts,LA, and Detroit and other places burned for days.)
Now we have only conservatives running things. Obama is not a socialist - he is totally happy to give the rich their Bush Tax Cut Extensions, and I haven't heard him defend Food Stamp programs. I know he has helped people get Food Stamps, but if the Republicans ask him for cuts to social programs, will he differ from the way he as acted in the past and draw a line in the sand, or will he give them what they want?
Obama was so busy reading the life of Lincoln, that I don't know that he is aware of why Nixon left the social netting in place.
I think those in the suburbs, who are living on their stock dividends, their inheritances, and what not,a re wlell isolated from all of this. When I lived in Sausalito, Calif outside the SF area, it amazed me that many neighbors were never home. They were in Bali, Fiji, France, skiing the Swiss Alps, but never home.