Tag Archives: Social Security

Political Rants

Going Dutch.

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Aside from being the day of the Super Bowl, last Sunday was the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, apparently the patron saint of NPR, which ran seemingly countless stories about the “Gipper” all that week. (I hope they don’t think that will help convince the G.O.P. House to keep their already meager CPB funds in the budget. That won’t save you!) Missing from the many remembrances of RR were those who might not remember him so fondly- the Guatemalans, the Salvadorans, the Angolans, the Timorese, the Argentineans… the list goes on. I’ve long felt that Reagan had a profound impact on the American presidency and, consequently, U.S. society, though not in a positive way. Thanks to his presidency, for instance, we can never consider raising federal taxes on anyone under any circumstances. He heralded the arrival of the new jingoism that ultimately put us into Grenada, then Panama, then Kuwait, then Somalia, then the former Yugoslavia… and of course Afghanistan and Iraq.

Granted, they were not all his ideas. He was, like many presidents, something of an empty vessel into which various policy mavens and ideologues were able to pour their nasty ideas. Reagan’s son Ron has written of how his father showed the beginning signs of Alzheimer’s while still in office. I have known two people who had occasion to observe him for fairly long periods of time during his term, both of whom told of a man so cloudy minded he needed to be briefed on the basics every fifteen minutes by an extremely protective Secret Service. In that respect, his administration was run by the people around him, just as George W. Bush’s foreign policy was shaped by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and others. (If we get a president Palin, that job will be taken up by the likes of Randy Scheunemann. War with Russia, here we come!)

These people represent, in large part, the lasting legacy of any administration. I just heard Elliot Abrams – one of Reagan’s creatures – on NPR the other day. There’s a guy who should be languishing in a Nicaraguan jail right rather than commenting on the uprising in Egypt. They never go away. And likewise, the policies seem etched in stone. Taxes can never be raised on upper income people, even though they’ve been making out like bandits since Reagan time, while the rest of us have flat-lined. We will cut essential benefits for the poor, the elderly, and the ill before asking them to part with some of their ill-gotten gains. Does that irritate you? Thank Reagan.

Money hole. Hey, Hosni Mubarak has amassed something like a $45 to 70 billion fortune since Reagan’s first year in office. That’s about equal to the amount we’ve sent Egypt in aid. Not hard to see what our money has been buying. But at least the old bastard has been persuaded to retire. Good for you, Egypt. Welcome news in these difficult days.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Talking points.

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This week will really be short swipes at various topics. I’m utterly up to my eyeballs… so the rascals are safe!

State of It. Republicans and Democrats sat together, nice-nice, during the State of the Union address. Such an endearing sight, was it not? In some cases, it seemed like something they may actually have wanted to do; others seemed pressed to do so by a sense of the public mood, perhaps. Either way, it’s a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic or spec’ing new curtains on the top floor of the Towering Inferno. (Name checking Irwin Allen here.) Congress is poised to choke ordinary Americans off from a range of federal benefits and services, just as they are dealing with similar reductions at the state and local levels. They have the votes to do it.

Sad thing is, Obama seems ready to assist them in this. His somewhat schizophrenic SOTU lurched from major investments to multi-year spending freezes. Domestic spending kept level for five years? Sounds like McCain. What would the impact of that be on all of these domestic initiatives he’s mentioning in the same breath? We shall see how that shakes out. Of course, the CBO came out with dire estimates regarding both the federal budget and Social Security practically while Obama was speaking. The primary culprit? The tax cut deal, which is blowing the predictable hole in the Federal budget and starving Social Security of its payroll tax funding. Guess how they’re going to try to fill that hole. Ask Paul Ryan.

World Service. The uprising in Tunisia has sparked some pretty serious protests across the Arab world, most notably Egypt. That oppressive regime for which torture is as fundamental a part of the penal system as iron bars is a bit unnerved, to say the least, and will no doubt rely upon the good graces of its sponsor the United States more heavily than before. It’s hard to imagine Egypt without Mubarak, but it will come one day. What that will look like I can only guess. 

Goodbye and Good Luck. MSNBC’s firing of Keith Olbermann is not good news in my house, particularly around the 8:00 pm hour. I don’t think I need comment on the stupidity of this decision, but I feel compelled to say that coverage of it has been pretty lame. NPR’s Talk of the Nation  is one example, which featured Bill Carter of the New York Times talking about how NBC thought him too “aggressive” and how they were concerned about incitement to violence. No comment on whether that was a reasonable position to take – just bland assurances from the man whose very tempered paper helped get us into Iraq.   

Science! The internets are abuzz with speculation about NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdulati and his mysterious past. Stop guessing, conservative bloggers – I know right where he comes from…. across the street from my childhood home in New Hartford, NY, that’s where! He lived there from about 4 years old until after high school, and a brighter and more decent guy you couldn’t imagine – so stop obsessing, you knee-jerk racists.  

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Year 10.

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Wtf, what a year, eh? At least those of us who made it through… made it through. Just a few closing thoughts before that ludicrously pointless ball of Christmas tree lights falls, signaling the arbitrary beginning to another great year.

Economy. At the end of a tumultuous year, we are still at nearly 10% unemployment as it is currently calculated, meaning that it’s probably closer to 16% in real terms, maybe higher. I can tell you that, of the family members and close friends who have lost a job in the past year to 18 months, 2 out of 3 are still looking for work. This is probably a familiar story across the country. And yet, some seem to be doing quite well. American businesses – and I mean BIG businesses – have amassed huge piles of cash over the past year. The stock market – and therefore, investors – are doing better. And on Wall Street, the bonuses were fatter than a Christmas goose once again. (They’ve got a tax cut on the way, too.) Even with all that, they managed to take a swipe at Obama, who has done little more than wag a finger at them. There’s gratitude for you.  

War. Our glorious victory in Afghanistan was about nine years ago, one of the darkest winters I can recall, and the start of a long, bloody chapter in the history of American empire. Anything like the bloodiest ever? Likely not. It is just as well that we remember how many lives were lost in Korea in the early 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and ’70s, in Central America and southern Africa in the 1980s, and elsewhere. Even individually, they make Iraq and Afghanistan seem like relatively minor catastrophes, though either of our most recent wars would put  us into Milosevic territory (and probably beyond). Still, Afghanistan has the distinction of being our longest war, as well as one we should have known better than to ignite (happy as we were to help strand the Soviets there during the 1980s).

Social Programs. Despite (and partially because of) the new health insurance reform bill, this has not been a good year for the social safety net. Political players are positioning themselves to implement massive cuts in Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid over the coming two years. They’ve ginned up fear of the deficit, sapped the federal budget with Obama’s tax compromise, and set up the hurdles in advance, the first being the continuing budget resolution that will run out in March. Watch – that’s when they will bring out the long knives. We’d best be ready for them.  Read Dean Baker’s excellent blog as well as Ezra Klein’s interview with James Galbraith, and start talking to your friends about this … yesterday.

Here’s to a better year next time around.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Payback time.

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The election is barely past us and corporate America is already knocking on our door for the rent.

Speaking of timing, former Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the president’s commission on deficit reduction, have agreed we should gut Social Security, Medicare. Well, there’s a surprise – both have an execrable history of animosity towards these quite successful social programs. (Simpson’s contempt for elderly people is palpable and disgusting, and he never misses an opportunity to toss a rhetorical brick at them.) Of course, their proposal also calls for tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. Again, no surprises there.

This is just the latest chapter in the attack against the poor, working class, elderly, and infirm that has been underway for decades in this country. Time and time again they have sought to undermine Social Security, to loot its trust fund, and to convert it into something it was never intended to be – an instrument for the creation of private wealth. Social Security is a supplemental guaranteed retirement program and, as such, an extremely successful one. It has kept elderly people (at least the ones who did not retire on a mountain of money, like Simpson) out of poverty for seven decades. Likewise, Medicare has not only made the elderly more financially secure, but it has also improved their quality of life in demonstrable ways. Not for nothing that these are the most popular social programs in America.

It may mean little to Simpson, Bowles, and many who share their views that people they don’t know will have to work until 68 or 70 and do without adequate cost of living adjustments in their old age. It sure as hell matters to me, and I imagine to many others as well. Social Security is not on the brink of bankruptcy – far from it. They just want to use its revenues to cover our government’s bad decisions with regard to financial regulation and foreign policy – decisions that have cost trillions of dollars over the last decade alone. Now we are being asked to pay for those criminal actions. There can be only one answer to that.

Don’t know, but we may have to take a page out of France’s book. If it takes standing in the street to protect the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people, it’s goddamned worth it.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Contact with America.

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First item: the Democrats are among the most exasperating political parties on Earth. They seem to have an innate sense of how to alienate their core voters, casting over the side any item of legislative action – the public option, Medicare expansion, don’t ask don’t tell, the fight over middle class vs. top 3% marginal tax rate reductions, etc. – that is remotely popular.

That said, let’s look at their opponents. Probably a good idea, since there’s an election coming up. And these folks look pretty grisly. Oddly, they picked what looked like a Home Depot lumber department to announce their “Pledge To America”, a lobbyist-written document full of stuff that would make, well, lobbyists very happy. (Perhaps the choice of venue is their way of telegraphing the kinds of jobs they plan to create. How do you look in an orange vest?) Rather than talking about what’s in the document, let’s look at what they didn’t put in there… but which they advocate none the less:

Privatization of Social Security. It’s no secret that most if not all G.O.P. legislators are in favor of converting Social Security into a glorified 401(k) plan with private accounts. This has long been their goal, given their hostility to the very notion of the social contract that is at the heart of that very successful program. They will, like W. Bush and others (including, amazingly, more than a few Democrats), appeal to individual greed in hopes of building support for ending this guaranteed supplemental income that has lifted elderly people from poverty for the past seventy years.

Gutting Medicare. They hate this one, too, no matter what they tell you. The Republicans want to move to something more like a voucher system, so that old and sick folks can go out and buy coverage on the open market – so easy to do when you’re old and sick. Is Medicare losing money? I would expect so, since it only covers (wait for it) old and sick people. If they want it to be solvent, why not expand it to include everybody… including those who don’t need a lot of care? I’m just saying.

Dismantling the Veteran’s Administration medical system. Same deal – vouchers instead of reliable care. This has been shamefully advanced by John McCain, whose beer-heiress wife will pay his medical bills if needed, no doubt.

Nothing particularly new in this list. And there are those amongst the Democrats who would jump right on board with most or all of it. But if the Republicans fail to gain a majority, they would never have the opportunity to do so… so let’s save them (and us) from themselves.

luv u,

jp