Month: December 2010

Triangulating In The New Millenium

by digby

Greg Sargent says that the White House isn’t triangulating in the Clinton mode because he’s trying to navigate the shoals of DC politics to get the best deal he can, whereas Clinton really was an ideological centrist and his triangulation was done with the express purpose of advancing a centrist solution.

It’s an interesting theory, but I’m not sure I believe it. After all, Obama is the guy who wrote this, in his book The Audacity of Hope:

“It was Bill Clinton that recognized the categories of conservative and liberal played to Republican advantage and were inadequate to address our problems. Clinton’s third way… tapped into the pragmatic, nonideological attitude of Americans.”

Even if his heart is in the right place, I’m not sure why I should care. The issue before us is whether or not he is being strategically and tactically astute by using his left as foils, which he has been doing to some extent since the beginning and shows every indication that he will do it going forward. (Most presidents look for ways to position themselves in “the center” in the second half of their first term, so he’s not unusual in that.) I see very little difference in what he’s doing and what Clinton did. The difference is in the political environment, particularly among his activist supporters, many of whom didn’t realize that they were electing someone who had announced quite openly that he believed the “categories of conservative and liberal were inadequate to address our problems.”

The base was in a very different place in 1992. Clinton ran as a New Democrat promising to end the “braindead politics of the past,” much like Obama. The idea at the time was rather technical however, at least in part — that you can use modern market based processes to achieve liberal goals. Now certainly there was a political desire to neutralize social issues, particularly about being soft on crime and changing the “incentives” in social welfare, which sort of defined DLCism of the 90s. But essentially Clinton was saying to liberals, “I’m with you on the goals, but we need to shed the old labels and try a different way of getting there.” At least that’s what I think liberals heard, whether or not it was true. Regardless, throughout the Clinton years, for the most part, there was a belief in his good intentions — and he was actually pretty clever (more clever than Obama) in sending the liberal dogwhistle and telling the folks that he was on their side. (Taylor Branch’s Clinton biography says that Clinton really was a liberal who was backed into the compromises and changing his priorities, just like Obama. But who really knows?)

Liberals were a defeated force in that decade and were willing to try this new thing to see if it might work. (We were all pragmatists then.) I know that I was open to seeing how the experiment would come out, and at the time, when the economy picked up and happy days were here again, we thought it might have worked. It’s very hard to argue with prosperity. (And then there was the modern conservative movement hitting congress like a gale force, which was like nothing we’d ever seen before …)

When Bush came in and blew a hole in the hard won balanced budget by giving tax cuts to millionaires, it was finally irrefutable to even the die-hards that it had all been a fools game and that the DLC experiment was a failure. It was clear that the Republicans had become ideologically bankrupt political terrorists and the Democrats had basically done their dirty work for them.

Barack Obama, however, has never agreed with that. Indeed, Sargent is right that he primarily sells himself as a conciliator and a bipartisan deal maker who is doing the best he can in a hostile situation. But then Clinton did too. In fact, all Democrats have thought that since the 1980s. The problem for Obama is that unlike Clinton, the experiment in “pragmatic, non-ideological” politics in the age of GOP nihilism has already been tried. And it failed. (They may have had a nice party for a while, but the hangover is one for the books.) He’s living in the past and liberals are trying to drag him into the present.

I should add that I also don’t buy that Obama isn’t drawn to centrist “New Democrat” solutions on the merits. His health care plan was very much a New Dem proposal, particularly since he put no muscle behind the one non-New Dem element in the program and helped the conservatives (serving as proxy for the GOP) in his own party use it to triangulate against the base in the final legislation. His stimulus program was half tax cuts. His economic advisors are mostly centrists and he has seemed to place a huge amount of faith in business to take the lead in fixing the economy. He may think he’s “a pragmatic, non-ideological” politician but what he is in practice is a centrist. And the center is not where it used to be.

And that’s why liberals and progressives are so frustrated. It’s not just that they object to centrism on an ideological basis, which they do. It’s that in this age of GOP political terrorism, centrists are effectively allies of the right wing. They foolishly thought that in a time of major economic crisis, discredited centrist and conservative ideology, a large congressional majority and a Democrat in the White House you might see just a little bit more of a push for real liberal policies. And unlike the “pragmatic” activist base of the 1990s which was sort of watching from the sidelines to see if this New Democrat thing might work and give us liberal solutions without the “baggage” of government, today’s activist base has no such illusions.

Update: Read this article by James Galbraith

.

Let Me Put It This Way, Mr. Thiessen…

by tristero

…I’m not “with” you, pal. Never have been, never will be.

So you think I’m “with” Wikileaks, Mr. Thiessen? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! What an incompetent thinker you are!

Jeebus! I haven’t come across such a stupidly contrived false dichotomy since, “So, if you’re against the invasion, would you rather Saddam remain in power?”

By the way, sir, when did you first start your preparations to murder your wife?

Love,

t

Note to readers: As you probably noticed, I didn’t answer the question. So where does this blogger stand on Wikileaks? Am I with them or with us? Let me be absolutely, perfectly clear:

It’s a thoroughly false dichotomy cynically posed by a brain-dead bottom-feeder feasting in the bloody troughs of the AEI.

Mark A. Thiessen, a Bush speechwriter and an apologist for American government torture of people who don’t look like him, is in no position whatsoever, either morally or intellectually, to set any kind of agenda for discussion. While you, dear readers, are decent and intellectually honest people, Thiessen is not: he is a paid rightwing propagandist who is advancing the cause of his masters. Since I strongly believe you cannot have a productive discussion when the agenda has been set by rightwing flacks and hacks, I will be happy to give you my (thoroughly unimportant) opinion of WikiLeaks only within the context of a discussion begun by responsible people – liberal or not – who eschew phony dichotomies.

Such a blatantly loaded question as “with us or with WikiLeaks” isn’t an opportunity for a serious discussion of WikiLeaks, even at the low level of stickin’-it-to-the-Man contrarianism. IMO, if you say, “WikiLeaks or us? Me For WikiLeaks!” you’ve already given the false dichotomy far more intellectual status than its worth (and handed the right an open opportunity to be incredibly tedious about how much they love this country and you don’t ). Instead, I think that when a rightwing loon writes such nonsense, we – meaning liberals -have been handed a prime opportunity to indulge in wild mockery. And indulge we should.

Not only in mockery but sneering contempt, directed right at the malicious, cold-blooded, and obscenely clueless scoundrels who still claim the moral high ground in American public discourse after cheerleading for the Bush/Iraq war, a spectacular catastrophe that has led to unbelievable levels of pointless human misery directly caused by US behavior.

One final thing. Did you notice how the first sentence of Mr. Thiessen’s op-ed begins?:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got one thing right last week…”

Wow! Think about it. The WikiLeaks disclosure forced a former Bush speechwriter to concede – ok, grudgingly, but still – that the murderouslesbianwitch Hillary Clinton actually got “one thing right” in her life. Once.

That is amazing. That, my friends, is a paradigm shift! Can’t you see it now, at least a little? No? Can’t you see that…I’m overcome!… that behind the hideous facade of the idiot-for-hire who wrote that op-ed, that the benign countenance of Bipartisanship is timidly peeking out? Be still my heart! This is one small step for a loon, one giant leap for Civilized Discourse ™.

That WikiLeaks created a public discourse in which an AEI-approved bozo would feel compelled to admit that the Very Bride of Satan was actually right… I have only two words: Dee Licious.

I hope that answers all questions.

Riding Happily Into The Sunsets

by digby

In an otherwise fairly incoherent article, Michael Barone is right about one thing:

Reality strikes. President Obama spurned the advice of columnists Paul Krugman and Katrina vanden Heuvel and agreed with Republicans to extend the current income tax rates — the so-called Bush tax cuts — for another two years.

He got a few things in return, primarily extended unemployment benefits for another 13 months, and agreed as well to a 2 percent cut in the Social Security payroll tax.

But he recognized the reality that in order to prevent a tax increase on those with incomes under $250,000 he had to prevent a tax increase on those over that line as well.

This has infuriated liberal Democrats like outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but they share some of the blame themselves. They probably could have passed their version of the tax bill earlier this year, before the economic recovery stalled in the spring…

Obama had to abandon his goal of raising taxes on high earners not because Republicans opposed it but because not enough Democrats supported it. Pelosi couldn’t summon up a majority on the issue back in September, and Harry Reid could get only 53 of the needed 60 votes this month.

In fact, the Democrats and Obama could have extended the middle class tax cuts during the worst of the recession as part of the stimulus back in 09, which was probably the only time they could have done it with any good chance of passage. (I’ll leave it up to others to figure out their motivations for waiting until this fall to deal with it.)

I wrote the other day that this was baked into the cake years ago, and Rick Perlstein wrote in with this reminder:

From Hacker and Pierson’s “Off Center” (2006):

“Until 2001, sunsets…were a relatively minor feature of the tax code, and their usually routine extension posed a quite minor cost. After 2001 that changed…..this policy design reduced the estimated cost of the tax cuts. Yet, just as important, it means that future politicians will face a fundamental political quandary: Should they allow enacted provisions of the tax code to expire…? Or should they extend these provisions, incurring the $4 trillion in lost revenue and additional debt service that the sunset provisions of the tax cuts
represent? The sunsets, in short, create an unprecedented new political environment–one that is highly favorable to tax-cutters’ core goals.

“None of this is accidental. Republicans reasonably predict that the pressure to extend the tax cuts will be intense, not least because well-off folks who receive the big tax provisions that take effect just before the sunsets kick in will be unusually well poised to make their voices heard….

“The story is stark. TO respond to their base, Republicans misled most Americans. On an unprecedented scale, phase-ins, sunsets, and time bombs were used to give the tax cuts of 2001 the most attractive public face possible while systematically stacking the deck in favor of Republicans’ long-term aims. From top to bottom, Republicans larded the tax cut with features that made sense only for the purposes of political manipulation….

“The success of this strategy is already [in 2006] apparent. In 2004, despite a deficit of almost half a trillion dollars, provisions of the 2001 bill scheduled to expire were instead extended, by votes of 339-65 in the House and 92-3 in the Senate. It is not coincidental that these provisions–the least skewed toward the rich of the 2001 and 2003 cuts–were set to expire right before the hotly contested
election”–and the package, H & P note elsewhere, was set to expire in another election year, whereupon Democrats voting to end it could be framed as “tax hikers”….

People who do not get that the Republicans planned this — and are thrilled to keep it going for another two years — are failing to understand the political reality.

But more depressing than anything, the Democrats are now actively doing their dirty work for them and are on the verge of doing the same thing with the payroll tax, which pretty much destroys the whole concept of the Social Security trust fund — and further opens the door to cuts in the program. It will not be any easier to restore that tax than the tax cuts for millionaires. Indeed, it will be more difficult.

At some point you either have to question whether they are simply working for the oligarchs too. Not that it matters because whether it’s out of ineptitude or complicity, the end result is the same.

Update: Jonathan Alter just said that Russ Feingold went to the White House and begged them not to bring it up before the election because his constituents didn’t want tax hikes. I have no idea if it’s true. We do know that the Blue Dogs in the House id this, so it’s not hard to believe.

But it didn’t take a genius to see this coming — Hacker and Pierson spelled it out in 2006. The Democrats had a rare— and probably unique — opportunity in 2009 to defuse this landmine and they didn’t take it.

.

They Can’t Kill Human Creativity

by digby

John Lennon died 30 years ago today. And for many people my age it was our first real brush with our own mortality. How could a Beatle die?

There are going to be many tributes today, but none more thought provoking and heartfelt that this one by Michael Gerber:

It’s scary to see adults cry, and I saw a lot of that on December 9, 1980. Lennon’s murder felt personal, ominous even. Was this how we lived now, with rock stars getting shot? Was our country so full of madness that anyone who took a public stand — anybody who dared to be real — became a target? How did we get here? How could our country function under these conditions?

As we’ve discovered, it can’t.

For the first 48 hours after Lennon’s death, there was a sense of righteous indignation: We were going to do something, goddammit, to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen again. Fathers coming home from work shouldn’t get gunned down by some random fruitcake carrying a cheap pistol. Then, the gun lobby started throwing its weight around, and President-elect Reagan started saying that maybe the solution was everybody carrying cheap pistols, and…that’s the way this country has run ever since. Thirty years of nothing but stupid bloody Tuesdays, with the possible exception of the day we elected Obama. And now even he seems determined to remind us that was a Tuesday, too.

It’s taken me 30 years, but I’ve finally figured out what I want to do about this — to say to Fate or the Devil or Mark David Chapman: yes, of course, you can kill individual human beings, but you can’t kill human creativity. You can’t kill the best of what people are.

.

Fiscal Tremors

by digby

Oh my:

This alert came via James Pethokoukis of Reuters:

Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011. That’s why the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program. BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31. And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans “have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.” In short, the lack of a BAB program would make it harder for states to borrow to cover a $140 billion budgetary shortfall next year, as estimated by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The long-term numbers are even scarier. Estimates of states’ unfunded liabilities to pay for retiree benefits range from $750 billion to more than $3 trillion.

I can’t help but think of this:

It may take a fiscal shock, such as a drop of confidence in state or local bonds that spreads to the Treasury market, to spur action on the commission’s proposals, Orszag said. The commission has “put ideas back on the table that, if we do run into a fiscal tremor, can be picked up,” he said.

Just saying …

Beck on Assange: a twisted, sexist defense

by digby

If you would like to take a very disorienting, hallucinogenic trip down the rabbit hole, treat yourself to this demented Glenn Beck segment in which he acts out the alleged sex crimes of Julian Assange with cartoon voices, childish drawings and his blackboard.

I’m as skeptical of the charges as anyone, simply because of the circumstances that are making him a target. Presuming innocence is always proper and in this case especially so. But after listening to that, I want to first throw up and then throw Beck in jail for being a disgusting, sexist prick.

Once you’ve cleared your head of that surreal experience and are ready to come back to earth, here’s what seems to be the currently authoritative news report on the charges.

.

Unrequited Love

by digby

Colbert weighs in:

The president gets passionate: and the Village swoons

Published by digby on December 7, 2010

Passionate Compromise

by digby

Everyone ins the beltway has been clamoring for the President to get up on his bully pulpit and get mad, really mad. And today he finally did it:

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred. Those who used to have [access to the White House] are not happy. Some of them are desperate. Only desperate men with their backs to the wall would descend so far below the level of decent citizenship as to foster the current . . . campaign against America’s working people.

Ok, that was Roosevelt shaking his fist at the bankers and the Republicans. But Obama said much the same. Of course he was talking about left wing of his own party, but then again, that’s just what the Village ordered.

This notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats have been fighting for for a hundred years. But because there was a provision in there that they didn’t get, that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people, and the potential for lower premiums for maybe 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness, of compromise.

If that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it: We will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are. And in the meantime the American people are still saying to themselves, [I’m] not able to get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out. That can’t be the measure of how we think about public service. That can’t be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people… This country was founded on compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door at this country’s founding. If we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a union.

Someone should check up on David Broder. I’m afraid the orgasm he just had may have given him a heart attack.

The President was very angry, no doubt about it and the sanctimonious purity trolls are on notice to get with the program. (I will, therefore, resist the temptation to point out that the main “compromise” this country was founded on was the 3/5th compromise which wasn’t the greatest idea the founders ever had and ended quite badly.)

Seriously, this is simple triangulation, Obama style, and it’s to be xpected at this point although I certainly got the feeling that he meant every word. But he did mischaracterize his critics just a bit. The public option was the compromise position that was compromised again and used as a negotiating chip with people like Lieberman to turn the health care legislation into Bob Dole’s plan circa 1996. That’s an improvement over the current GOP plan of “Don’t get Sick” but still, it’s not unfair for liberals to feel ill used in all that. (Not to mention that the cock-up of a legislative strategy is hard to take even for people who weren’t invested in a public option. It wasn’t pretty.)

Moreover, there are many people in Obama’s coalition who are arguing from a position of core principle and feel that it’s important to fight for those principles, particularly in a time of great crisis when they truly, sincerely believe that his compromises are going to make things worse. And it’s not like the economic policies that have been tried are all that successful (which may explain the level of anger you see from the president when it’s pointed out.)

I get the triangulation thing. The whole Village is now characterizing him as being “the only grown-up” in the room, which I’m sure is exactly what they were going for. And I honestly wouldn’t care if he railed at liberals all day long if he had used the power of the presidency and as head of his own party more strategically over the past two years. Huge opportunities were squandered and the advice that he relied on, both on policy and politics, has been inadequate to the task. Now the country is faced with a slavering beast of a right wing which has been revitalized while the rank and file of the Democratic party is confused at best.

So, he can triangulate all he wants, but I’m not sure it will help him as much as they might suppose. The problem is that the policies he’s pursuing are likely going to cost him the election because whether he believes in those policies or not doesn’t change the fact that he’s being set up politically by the right. And he doesn’t want to hear about it. No matter how much you like or dislike the man, that’s a problem.

.

Joe Lieberman Freedom Fighter

Published by digby on December 7, 2010

Freedom Fighter

by digby

And by that, I don’t mean he’s fighting for it:

Joe Lieberman, the chair of the Senate homeland security committee, told Fox News: “To me the New York Times has committed at least an act of, at best, bad citizenship, but whether they have committed a crime is a matter of discussion for the justice department.”Lieberman also said that the department of justice should indict Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, under the 1917 Espionage Act and try to extradite him from the UK.Asked why this had not happened, Lieberman admitted there was probably an argument going on over how to charge Assange.”I think this is the most serious violation of the Espionage Act in our history,” Lieberman said, adding: “It sure looks to me that Assange and WikiLeaks have violated the Espionage Act.”At the daily state department briefing in Washington, DC, Philip Crowley, the department’s press spokesman, said: “What WikiLeaks has done is a crime under US law.”

I don’t know why Wikileaks would be guilty of espionage but all other newspapers which have possession of all 260,000 documents aren’t. Not to mention all the “bad citizens” all over the country and the world which have published them and written about them. Wikileaks didn’t “leak” the documents — they published them on the internet in conjunction with these other newspapers, which also published them. The “leakers” are those who leaked the documents to Wikileaks and its partners. It’s no different than the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers (and 15 other papers re-publishing in solidarity.) Ellsberg was the leaker and was tried in a separate case — the paper was the publisher.
And when the government tried to stop them from publishing, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the paper. As Perlstein wrote in Nixonland:

Justice Brennan’s decision argued that press reports that embarrass the government were precisely the reason the First Amendment was invented. Justice Black concurred. “Every moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment… [F]or the first time in the 182 years since the founding of the Republic, the federal courts are asked to hold that the First Amendment does not mean what it says.”

I have my doubts that the NY Times is going to be a brave defender of the First Amendment this time. They seem to only be concerned with it these days when one of their reporters is called to task for being a willing propaganda conduit. (That’s their current definition of freedom of the press — to be free to print government lies without interference.) The fact that they kept one degree of separation from Wikileaks by partnering with the Guardian rather than Wikileaks itself, leads me to believe they may have anticipated this Lieberman move already.

Lieberman and his fellows seem to have the quaint idea that if only they can punish Julian Assange nobody will ever put secrets on the internet again, so they will try to do this differently. But the principles are the same. And the papers are all publishing these cables on the internet too. This is becoming a farce.

Update: Fergawdsake. The stupid surrounding this issue is overwhelming:

ANCHOR: What do you think of the Justice Department’s actions so far to not charge Julian Assange with treason? LIEBERMAN: I don’t understand why that hasn’t happened yet. We can go back to the earlier dump of classified documents mostly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that occured in July, and to me that was a violation of espionage as well.

I’m sure he doesn’t understand why that hasn’t happened because from his perspective the United States is an empire and all other countries are its colonies. Therefore, the fact that Julian Assange isn’t an American is irrelevant as to whether or not he committed treason. Anyone who does something he perceives to be against the interests of the US, whether American or not, has committed treason. We’re kind of “exceptional” that way.

* If they’d like to arrest Dana Milbank and friends I wouldn’t complain …

.

One more nail in the social security coffin

Published by digby on December 7, 2010

One More Nail In The Social Security Coffin

by digby

Social Security expert Nancy Altman has written a piece today spelling out the dangers of the presidents tax cut compromise to Social security:

President Obama and the Republicans will say that the payroll tax holiday is all about stimulating the economy. But don’t be fooled. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities,extending the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, is a much better, more targeted stimulus. See “Payroll Tax Holiday a Poor Stimulus Idea,” available at this link. And the Making Work Pay Tax Credit poses no threat to Social Security. The innocent-sounding payroll tax holiday, on the other hand, will lead inexorably to killing Social Security. Let me explain: Sixty members of the Senate are unwilling to raise taxes by 3 percent on the $250,000 and first dollar (and all those dollars earned above $250.001) of those making over $250,000 and by 1.6 percent more (for a total of 4.6 percent) on the $384,860 and first dollar {and all those dollars earned above $384,861) of those making over $384,860. They are even unwilling to spare everyone making less that one million dollars any increased taxes and simply raise taxes by 4.6 percent on the $1 million and first dollar (and all those dollars earned above $1,000,001 of the nation’s multimillionaires and billionaires. (I say multimillionaires because anyone with a net worth of a few million dollars is not making an annual income of over one million dollars.) Given that unwillingness to raise taxes by less than a nickel on every dollar earned over $1 million, I find it unfathomable that a more conservative Congress, in two years, in an election year, will increase the payroll tax by 2 percent on the very first dollar, and every other dollar up to the cap, earned by virtually every single worker in the country. Consequently, I think we have to assume that the payroll tax holiday will be extended beyond the two years the president is proposing and quite likely could become permanent. That means that the federal government will have to continue to transfer $120 billion to the Social Security trust funds each and every year even as it has to transfer more and more interest payments as the trust funds continue to grow and as interest rates return to more normal levels. Unless Congress acts to restore Social Security to solvency, the Treasury bonds held in trust will have to be redeemed, again on top of that new $120 billion transfer from the general fund, starting fifteen years from now, assuming Congress even continues to make the $120 billion every year before that point. These dollars will be competing with dollars for defense, environmental protection, education, school lunches, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Pell grants for low income college students, and every other good and service financed by the federal government.

It’s a landmine. The Republicans are going to run on the president’s stated desire to raise taxes in 2012 — on everyone, not just millionaires. They are going to run on the fact that he’s going to “raise” the payroll tax as well. And subsequently it won’t be raised.

Meanwhile, they will argue that Social Security is now showing a much larger shortfall and they will use it to demand cuts in the program. (I realize that the president said that they will use general revenue to make up the shortfall, but I think we can comfortably predict that he will not be very effective at using what they will call an “accounting gimmick” to do that. Judd Gregg on just said on MSNBC right out that it’s coming from the Trust Fund, full stop. That will be their line whether it’s true or not.)

I have always been skeptical of the payroll tax holiday, not because it doesn’t make sense on a policy level, but because restoring a tax is always an extremely heavy lift (impossible at the moment apparently, even for vastly wealthy people) and trying to restore Social Security revenue in the middle of this social security jihad is far too risky. The politics are all wrong for even touching Social Security right now.

The 2012 election is looking like its going to be about taxes and deficits (as a proxy for fixing the economy, since everything else is off the table.) And from what I can see, the president is going to be competing with the Republicans on who will lower both of them the most. Social Security is in maximum danger in that environment.

.

Scroll to the top

The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c