We must have lower taxes on the 1%. How about we cut corporate taxes, keep the tax breaks in place, and raise taxes on the middle class? Or maybe just cut Social Security and Medicare. Or both!

I liked this Mark Thoma piece about the shifting of the Overton Window. I think I alluded to this with my story on a new round of tax cuts being humped by the GOP, and the new bipartisan consensus on the virtue of tax cuts as a stimulus measure. With the focus on tax cuts, both sides play a role in shifting the Overton Window to the right. And the result is a set of policy choices that get artificially narrowed.

Social Security Works spoke to several conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this past Friday, who were none too pleased to hear Mitt Romney he plans to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Ellen Schultz has given us a fascinating account of the ways in which corporate America has been able to game legal and accounting rules to emasculate the private pension system. It was only a few decades ago that a secure pension was a staple of middle class life. Workers in middle class jobs, whether in offices, construction, or manufacturing expected to have a pension in retirement to supplement their Social Security income. In many cases, the pension would provide the larger portion of their income, with the Social Security benefit being the supplement.

Our paranoid culture of rooting out fraud and our fear-mongering media that makes every anecdote a proof the system is corrupt, make it harder for people who need help to get it.

David Brooks chooses to accept Santorum’s family values bona fides uncritically. But working-class supporters of Rick Santorum should know the truth. If Santorum were really such a pro-family candidate, he would be a strident defender of Social Security, which helps keep families strong and encourages hard work. Santorum’s record shows that he is anything but.

A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’ in It’s a Wonderful Life, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. But Mr. Potter scoffs at such “charity.” The GOP does the same with Social Security, Medicare and other programs that pool the nation’s wealth to help the middle class.

There are “three national pastimes” in Washington D.C., Brooks informed us: baseball, apple pie, and Congress raiding the Social Security Trust Fund. And the GOP just didn’t want to let that happen.

I encourage readers to purchase two copies of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism – one for themselves and one as a Christmas present for their right wing uncle. That uncle might well stay with Skocpol and Williamson’s highly readable and well-crafted study to the end without throwing it down in anger – something I can’t say with much confidence about my book with DiMaggio.

Republicans claim to support the concept of extending the payroll tax cut for 2012, but oppose the pay-for in this bill of a 1.9% surtax on millionaires. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon already thought he was paying twice that much, according to remarks from earlier today.