Has the Revolt Against Obama
Reached the Tipping Point?
by Nancy Spannaus
April 15—The political revolt against President Barack Obama, and his "made-in-London" policies is rapidly on the rise, as larger and larger sections of the American population come to the conclusion that his economic and foreign policies are leading toward their own personal destruction. Yet, appropriate action by the U.S. Congress, which has had the evidence in hand to start impeachment proceedings against this President for several years, still lags behind, putting the nation in danger.
The flashpoint for the recent upsurge has been Obama's decision to formally propose the slashing of Social Security benefits through the adoption of a new method for calculating (actually reducing) the cost-of-living escalator for recipients. The so-called CCPI (chained Consumer Price Index) has long been proposed by "mainstream" monetarist economists as a means of cutting back government payments, by ignoring increases in prices, on the bogus assumption that a "substitution" with a cheaper item is possible.
The rage over the CCPI proposal is not unrelated to the fact that, over the past week, there have been six new signers on HR 129, Rep. Marcy Kaptur's Glass-Steagall bill, and the introduction of memorials for Glass-Steagall in two additional states, North Carolina and Minnesota.
But it's not only Obama's economic policy. Simultaneously, a bill calling for the formation of a House Select Committee on the Terrorist Attack in Benghazi (HR 36) has drawn an additional 37 supporters, bringing the number of co-sponsors to 99. The bill, introduced by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), demands that the Administration finally answer questions about what actually happened in the 9/11/2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, including the unexplained lack of timely response from U.S. officials. While not yet broaching the crucial question of Obama's alliance with the British-Saudi-backed terrorists who carried out the murders, and are now being supported in Syria, the pressure on the Administration is increasing.
Will the Democrats Get Serious?
President Obama's full budget proposal, released April 10, not surprisingly, follows the script for genocidal cuts in those sections of government spending on which the very survival of the U.S. population, and the economy, depend. There are hard spending cuts of over $1 trillion outlined for the next decade, ranging from $400 billion in "savings" from medical cuts, to $230 billion in "savings" from the CCPI, to $200 billion from programs such as farm supports and Federal retirement benefits, and $200 billion slashed from "discretionary" spending.
The initial response to the announcement was just what the President apparently anticipated—more happiness among Republicans than Democrats. Obama's poll numbers immediately fell, and Obama is once again exposed as a liar: Note the interchange between Obama and Republican candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) during the 2008 election campaign (posted on Huffington Post), in which, in response to McCain's proposing a cut in the CPI, and raise the retirement age for Social Security benefits, Obama blustered, "Let me be clear: I will not do either."
Leading Democrats, especially members of the House Progressive Caucus, immediately went on a loud, verbal offensive. Following the submission of 2 million petition signatures against the CCPI April 9, that caucus, joined by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), held a press conference on Capitol Hill April 10 to attack the chained CPI policy. "Do not be distracted by the technicalities of chained CPI. We are talking about one thing: slashing Social Security benefits," said Harkin.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was equally blunt, when she noted in a mass e-mail:
"In short, 'chained CPI' is just a fancy way to say cut benefits for seniors, the permanently disabled, and orphans. Two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for most of their income; one-third rely on it for at least 90% of their income. These people aren't stashing their Social Security checks in the Cayman Islands and buying vacation homes in Aruba—they are hanging on by their fingernails to their place in the middle class."
Surprisingly sharp also, was an April 10 statement issued by the National Organization for Women (NOW), which slammed the chained CPI proposal as either a "highly cynical move to bargain with right-wing legislators or a willfully misguided move to undermine our Social Security system." NOW went on to say the cut would hit women particularly hard: "Those who say the chained CPI won't make much of an impact are either hopelessly dense or just plain deceitful."
While these protests against the proposed cuts against the most vulnerable are being lodged primarily by Democrats, a bipartisan grouping has come together to seek to reverse the cuts to Medicare for cancer-fighting drugs, by introducing HR 1416. The Obama Administration, the author of the sequester idea, has sat by and let this mass-murderous cut go through.[1]
Of course, such a process of cuts cannot be stopped by fighting one issue at a time. What is needed is to shift the entire agenda by going back to the Franklin Roosevelt Glass-Steagall system, as the first step to rebuilding a national banking system and the productive economy. That action would be a major blow against Obama. Any other approach is death by 1,000 cuts—where it doesn't really matter which is first.
So far, the bankers and political bosses have exerted more political weight than the American people, in getting Congress, and especially the Senate, not to act on Glass-Steagall. That is what must quickly change.
Will They Tolerate Treason?
It has now been more than six months since the murder of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi—and the Obama Administration is still stonewalling. Answers to critical questions about the response to that atrocity have not been forthcoming. More importantly, despite stunning new revelations (many, but not all, from this news service) of the Obama Administration's alliance with the British-Saudi terrorist network which carried out those Benghazi murders, that alliance is still in effect, notably in Syria, putting not only the Southwest Asian theater, but the entire world, in danger of a confrontation that could lead to thermonuclear war.
There have been two noteworthy initiatives taken in Congress to expose and stop this process. The first came from Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who, on the very first day of the new Congress, renewed his resolution which would reassert Congress's unique Constitutional power to declare war, and state that any Executive action toward war without Congressional approval would trigger the process of impeachment. Jones also issued a letter to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in March, in which he demanded the release of the classified 28 pages of the 9/11 Congressional Commission Report, which reportedly contain damning evidence of the Saudi involvement in Sept. 11, 2001—involvement that the Obama Administration is covering up to this day.
The second initiative came from Rep. Frank Wolf, who has sponsored HR 36, a call for establishing a Select Committee to Investigate Benghazi. Wolf's resolution would set up a committee with subpoena power to pursue unanswered questions about the attack. It had 99 Reppublican co-sponsors as of April 12; unfortunately, no Democrat has yet signed on.
Wolf's resolution has received broad support from outside the Congress as well. On April 10, a group of more than 700 Special Forces veterans issued an open letter to all Members of Congress, demanding that they support HR 36. A press conference held on Capitol Hill to announce the support was notable for featuring a call by conservative columnist Frank Gaffney for an investigation of the policy which led to the Benghazi attack, not just the details of what happened.
An Open Letter
The day after the press conference, the Wolf initiative received the strong support of Patricia Smith, the mother of one of the four Benghazi murder victims. Her letter to the Congressman was just published by USN&R Washington Whispers.
"Hon. Frank R. Wolf
"This letter is to endorse resolution H. Res. 36 to create a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks.
"I am the mother of Sean Smith, one of the four people murdered in Benghazi by terrorists along with ambassador Chris Stevens and ex-Seals Ty Woods and Glen Daugherty. When I was in Wash. DC at the reception of the caskets, I asked for and received promises from Pres. Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, VP Biden and several other dignitaries in attendance. They all looked me directly in the eyes and promised they would find out and let me know. I got only one call from a clerk about a month later quoting from the time line, which I already had.
"I agree completely with items 1 thru 16 of this resolution. I especially want to know WHY the four were abandoned the way they were. My son told me that he saw someone taking pictures just before this happened and reported it. He told me they asked repeatedly for better security.
"Please, please help me find out who is responsible and fix it so no more of our sons & daughters are abandoned by the country they love. It is very difficult to find out. Leon Panetta advised Pres. Obama that the attack was occurring and Pres. Obama went to bed without sending help. It is too late for my son but not too late for those that follow.
"I have been following John McCain and Lindsey Graham hoping they had the ability to get some answers but no luck. Hillary finally testified but didn't answer the questions (i.e. If they were watching this happen in real time, why wasn't help sent).
"Patricia A. Smith
"Mother of Sean Smith"
The Real Question
As EIR and Lyndon LaRouche PAC have insisted, the real questions behind the Benghazi attack can only be answered by looking at the ugly political reality that President Obama is a de facto puppet of the British Empire, carrying out its policies, despite the destructive impact they have on the United States and the world.
The same is the case for Obama's economic policy, which has consistently served Wall Street, the American branch of the British imperial financial system, and let the American population be increasingly destroyed.
There is only one solution to such a betrayal of the interests of the nation, and that is to remove the current President from power, by Constitutional means—thus breaking the dynamic of genocidal austerity and world war which he is carrying out. That move, however, requires that Congress act in defense of its Constitutional oath. Can it be forced to do so, in time?
[1] See Marcia Merry Baker, "Obama's Sequester Cuts Medicare Chemo; Cancer Clinics Appeal to Congress," EIR, April 12, 2013.
