Fire this catfood now! (image: twolf1)

The activity on the left to fire Alan Simpson from the Catfood Commission is growing. Today, Rep. Alan Grayson joins the effort. From an email to supporters:

Deficit Commission Republican Co-Chair Alan Simpson just called Social Security a “milk cow with 310 million tits.”

Simpson seems to know a lot about farm animals. Which isn’t surprising, because only a swine would use such words to describe a program that we rely on to pay for food, medicine, and rent. Simpson is known for calling Social Security recipients ‘greedy geezers’, even while living on a generous government pension.

Enough of this nonsense. Fire this guy. And stop the Commission’s goal of cutting Social Security.

Grayson has a mini-site on this at StopTheCatfoodCommission.com.

In addition, several progressive groups have demanded that Simpson be fired:

CREDO:

The point of the commission was to have a bipartisan panel that could work through difficult areas and search for solutions to our problems in what President Obama called a “serious and thoughtful way.” So it’s hard to think of a worse co-chair than someone like Alan Simpson, who once again demonstrated that he has neither the temperament nor the objectivity needed to delve into such an important issue.

The National Council for Women’s Organizations:

We call for the resignation of Alan K. Simpson as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. We have given the former Senator several chances at redemption, but his email today to our sister member organization, the Older Women’s League, illustrates his clear disrespect for Social Security, women and the American people, highlighted by his degrading, sexist, ageist and profane language. In the closing few sentences of the e-mail he states, “It’s the same with any system in America. We’ve reached a point now where it’s like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work.”

MoveOn.org:

Simpson has repeatedly, over the course of years, shown contempt for those who rely on Social Security while berating those who disagree with him. As Paul Krugman wrote yesterday, “he has to go.”

The Alliance for Retired Americans:

I am writing to you about a pattern of disturbing, insensitive, biased and offensive comments by former Senator Alan Simpson, the co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. On behalf of the four million members of the Alliance for Retired Americans, I urge you to demand Mr. Simpson’s resignation.

The Campaign for America’s Future:

Social Security has worked for 75 years and does not contribute one penny to the national debt. It has no business being part of the White House debt commission’s deliberations.

Yet debt commission co-chair Alan Simpson has used his position to repeat lie after lie about Social Security, clearly signaling his intention to support unnecessary benefit cuts that would undermine our nation’s retirement security.

Click here to tell the White House: Take Simpson Off The Commission. Take Social Security Off The Table.

This has metastasized. FDL’s petition goes further than most, however, not only asking to sack Simpson, but disband the entire commission.  . . .

She’s just recycling trash now. A couple years ago, Nooners had a column titled “The End of Placeness” in which she asked,

OK, quick, close your eyes. Where is Barack Obama from?

Two years later, apparently, it’s still Obama’s “otherness” that’s tripping him up.

When the American people have looked at the presidents of the past few decades they could always sort of say, “I know that guy.” Bill Clinton: Southern governor. Good ol’ boy, drawlin’, flirtin’, got himself a Fulbright. “I know that guy.” George W. Bush: Texan, little rough around the edges, good family, youthful high jinks, stopped drinking, got serious. “I know that guy.” Ronald Reagan was harder to peg, but you still knew him: small-town Midwesterner, moved on and up, serious about politics, humorous, patriotic. “I know that guy.” Barack Obama? Sleek, cerebral, detached, an academic from Chicago by way of Hawaii and Indonesia. “You know what? I don’t know that guy!”

He doesn’t fit any categories.

Shorter Nooners: Obama’s inability to conform to comfortable stereotypes (why can’t he act more like a Negro?) is driving his poll numbers down.

Why does Earl Blumenauer want to cut Social Security?

People have been wondering why the “progressive” Earl Blumenauer would willingly participate in Matt Bai’s hatchet piece on Social Security in the New York Times. Bai says that Blumenauer “sides with the White House” in the belief that “Democrats need to do something now about the federal debt,” starting with “cherished entitlement programs.”

Blumenauer says that Social Security “can’t exist on make-believe money” and therefore “Democrats should remain open to changes in the benefit structure.”

Dean Baker responded to Blumenauer’s ridiculous claims, noting that “The ‘make-believe’ money is United States government bonds that were purchased with workers’ Social Security taxes. Unless Mr. Blumenauer expects a default on the government’s debt, there is nothing make believe about this asset.”

But thought I’d add some perspective on the man himself. Bottom line: I’ve had pieces of toilet paper dragging from my shoe that were more principled than Earl Blumenauer.

July 2007: Earl Blumenauer signs a letter saying he won’t vote for any more war funding that doesn’t have troop withdrawal provisions.

June 2009: Earl Blumenauer votes for war supplemental without troop withdrawal provisions — when his votes actually counts. 39 Democrats could have stopped it; only 32 voted “nay.”

July 2009: Earl Blumenauer is one of 60 members of Congress who sign a letter pledging to vote against any health care bill without a public option:

September 2009: Online public option supporters raise $433,000 for those members of Congress. Blumenauer received $3200 of that money.

October 31, 2009: Blumenauer steps forward and gratuitously smacks Alan Grayson when he said the GOP health care plan is to “die quickly.” Here he is concern trolling in the New York Times:

“You cringe,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon and an unabashed liberal but also a buttoned-down gentleman. “We’re at risk of having a self-reinforcing corrosive process that drives reasonable people away.” He added: “It breaks my heart.”

January 2010: People who gave money to Blumenauer start calling his office and asking him if he’ll keep his word and vote against a bill without a public option. His office responds by asking them “if Jane Hamsher is taking money from Scott Brown.”

March 2010: People who gave Blumenauer money because of his public option pledge start calling and asking for him to give it back (in a poll, 90% of our readers thought he should do so, or at least donate it to Haitian relief). Blumenauer derides anyone who would even think of keeping the pledge he made, saying “People need to use their ‘inner wonk,’ not outsource analysis to idiot ’shouting heads.’ Facts are clear.” He keeps all the money.

Basically, Earl Blumenauer is Lanny Davis in a bow tie. He’s an unprincipled hack who hides behind schtick, wagging his finger in exhortations to “civility” while shamelessly betraying every promise he makes.

This is not a departure for him.

Write Oregon media and let them know about Earl Blumenauer’s  position on Social Security.

Update: According to Alex Lawson of Social Security Works, Blumenauer has been contacted and “he stands behind his statements in the story about ‘progressive price indexing.’ He believes that Social Security is going to be modified and refuses to take these stealth benefit cuts off the table. He thinks they’re important for negotiating a compromise, even though he acknowledges that conservatives are not negotiating in good faith.”