US shutdown a smokescreen for assault on Social Security, Medicare
■ The partial or total shutdown of most departments other than the uniformed military and police/intelligence agencies such as the CIA, the FBI and Homeland Security is hitting broad layers of the population. Besides the closure of national parks and monuments, some 8.9 million low-income mothers and children are being denied food aid due to the shutdown of the WIC program; pension and veterans’ benefit checks are being delayed; preschool Head Start programs are closing; sick people, including cancer patients, are being turned away from National Institutes of Health clinical trials; and foster care payments, nutrition aid and financial assistance for hundreds of thousands of Native Americans are being halted.
■ The priorities of the Obama administration are indicated by the president’s closed-door meeting Wednesday with top Wall Street bankers who head the Financial Services Forum. Those present included JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, currently in talks with Attorney General Eric Holder to avoid criminal prosecution for mortgage fraud, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, accused by a Senate subcommittee of perjuring himself at a hearing on his bank’s mortgage machinations, and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, whose bank received hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout cash and loan guarantees from the administration.