‘Seniors Suffer under Obama. Where’s the Outcry?’
“Thank goodness we have a Democrat in the White House. Otherwise, America’s seniors would be facing a serious crisis,” Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today:
The Federal Reserve’s low interest rates are a boon to overextended banks and to the borrowers who owe them money. (As well as the world’s greatest debtor, the U.S. Treasury). But these benefits come at the expense of savers — both those who hope to see their savings grow enough that they can retire someday, and those who have already retired expecting to live on interest at rates far higher than those that prevail today. The low rates are, basically, a tax on savers for the benefit of borrowers and those who made bad loans.
There’s little hope the policy will change because the Federal Reserve says to expect this to last.
That’s not all. For senior citizens, it’s a double squeeze. While incomes for retirees are going down, costs are going up. Gasoline is now roughly double what it was when President Obama took office and, in many places, it’s back up in the neighborhood of $4 a gallon.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ground beef recently hit a national average of more than $3 a pound, the first time in history it’s reached that level. (When Obama was inaugurated, it was $2.35). Anyone who has spent time in a grocery store knows that this sort of thing is happening on every aisle — coupled with “shrinkage,” as manufacturers reduce the amount of product in a box while keeping the price the same, a way of hiding price increases from (they hope) inattentive consumers. And it’s going to get worse, according to the Department of Agriculture, when this summer’s drought hits food prices in a few months.
In fact, with this double squeeze, we have the makings of a major national crisis. There’s only one thing missing: the kind of news media attention you’d usually get with this many senior citizens suffering in an election year.
Actually, the MSM has most of those bases covered. High gas prices? Good news says NBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Politico. High meat prices? Helps fight global warming, says “Scientific” American. Heck, the whole flatlined economy helps the environment, according to Democrats John Kerry and Claire McCaskill.
Think of retirement as a permanent case of what the L.A. Times called “funemployment” in 2009, and the joys of what Virginia Postrel dubbed the MSM’s serious case of “Depression Lust,” at the end of 2008. Because undoubtedly, that’s how the MSM justifies America’s moribund economy.
That is, if they think about its impact on the elderly at all.
Where’s the outcry? The same place the outcry over troop losses in Afghanistan (higher under Obama than Bush).
During the 2004 election, the local Democrat Party rented mall space (purportedly for voter registration) and kitted it out with extensive photo galleries of fallen servicemen during the 2004 election festooning to “honor their service.” Oddly enough, troops killed under Obama’s leadership don’t seem to deserve being “honored.” Or something. (Nor does the MSM mark any of the 1000 killed “milestones” they did under Bush.)
Down the memory hole, along with seniors, black unemployment, and a near 300% gas price increase during Obama’s term in office.
Medicare cuts were bad, as was hidden inflation’s effects on fixed-income seniors, as long as those things were occurring under a Republican Administration. The current situation isn’t so much a complete 180 as it is a retreat from reality by the big media outlets.
You may get something akin to the L.A. Times ‘funemployment’ story, but for the most part the attitude the Obama backers in the press have is if we don’t report on the Medicare cuts, or the price inflation and low interest rates pinching seniors’ living standards, then the public will never know they’re happening. It’s the kind of mindset where you know the most shamelessly partisan in the media aren’t wondering to each other why Team Obama just doesn’t make the Labor Department report a 7.5 percent unemployment rate before Nov. 6, so the press can simply go out and report the success of Obama’s economic plans to the masses.
We don’t hear stories about seniors suffering under Obama because the stories about everyone else suffering under Obama get in the way.
I haven’t checked, but are there any stories about how “shrinkage” and high food prices are going to help fight America’s obesity epidemic?
Which leads me back to the question of why, oh why is the MSM so completely invested in the left? I can only come up with three things. One is that the leadership is completely afraid of the future of new media and the Internet, so circles the wagons around the status quo, but this attitude goes so much further back in time than that. Second is that leadership cultivates an environment of subversion and resistance to the status quo, kind of an immaturity thing. Has anyone told them that the status quo for the last twenty years or so is exactly the people they now defend? Finally, perhaps the most convincing to me, unfortunately, is that the MSM is completely incorporated into the crony capitalist model, and has been for years. Crony capitalists know which side, at the end of the day, plays by the rules, and which employs what has come to be known as “the Chicago way”. So they feel they must take a “side”, and then run with it. They take the side of professional survival, because a conservative stand against the people in charge now would not be personally or professionally healthy, in their world. Like so many things in our society and economy, time will take care of this by itself, and there is no longer a historical rabbit hole. One by one I find myself canceling or ignoring news sources because of this tendency, and I make a point to never, never click on any NYT story ever, as clicks are oxygen to those guys.
I suspect that most other seniors, like myself, are not raising hell because we know it would do no good with this administration. And so, we work to change the system, and will come November.
The MSM makes it difficult because many, if not most, Obama supporters believe that the Auto Bilout, which currently is a 20Billion loss to taxpayers, is touted as being a total success. Similarly, Green Energy (wind and Solar) are “huge successes”, even though they provide less than 2% of the total power needs of the country, have caused a large leap in electricity costs due to power suppliers mandated purchase at around 4 times the cost of coal or hydro generated power. But my guess is the majority of Obama supporters live in apartments or subsidized housing, where utility costs are hidden or insignificant.
It could go on for pages, Solyndra, A123, and all the others where our tax $ were sent into fundraisers pockets. But the answer is: send him home!
The MSM will do their best trying to get The Lightbringer re-elected.
If they succeed, they will high-five each other for a couple months, but then start to worry. The Dems, and they, will undeniably own the economy for the next 4 miserable years. Obama will become even less popular, and they will get weary of defending him.
If they fail, I think they will actually be relieved. “We can finally stop with these puff pieces, and complain about the country non-stop! YES!!”
The granny-muggers are out in force.
The good news is that retirees tend to show up on election day, and they tend to vote their wallets. Their wallets have been hurting for the last three years or so…. which is not good for the incumbent.
The one certain, and good thing that will come out of this election cycle is that the MSM will NEVER recover whatever credibility it had left. And it wasn’t much.
They are dead…hopefully never to rise again. Nobody watches, nobody cares what they say, and nobody will morn their passing. Even the once mighty NEW YORK TIMES has dimished itself to a point of no return.
They are done…stick a fork in them.
The MSM will hold off until after the election to report on this. Then it becomes Mitt’s fault.
In the past, when we had a period when prices of basic commidities people needed to live, like fuel, food, medical care, and basic minerals, were rising, and jobs and wages were not, like was occuring under Carter, we would call it stagflation. I dont hear that word from the media much today, and we should hear it because that is what is happening.