Matt Yglesias makes an important point about the social security fight. He says that we must debate this within the frame that “there is no crisis” because:
Most of the young people I know — including myself until very recently — have been taken in by a decades-long effort on behalf of privatizers into believing that Social Security is in “crisis,” and that if we do nothing the system will “go bankrupt” before we retire, meaning that the system will somehow collapse and we won’t get any benefits.
If you approach the issue from inside that frame, then no amount of cavailing about benefit cuts or “risky” stock market transactions is going to get you anywhere. A smaller benefits package and a stock portfolio that may or may not pay off looks like a really good deal compared to a bankrupt pension plan that gives you nothing. Once you understand that even if we do nothing whatsoever to fix Social Security and the Trustees’ overly pessimistic predictions come true, the system will still have enough money to pay my generation more in real terms then current retirees get, everything looks different.
I think that even people my age think that social security is going to be pretty much worthless when we get to retirement (which is closer than we think — I’m 48.) Matt makes a very good point.
Therefore, it’s probably a mistake for the Democrats to even pretend to be willing to work with the other side, as Reid and Pelosi did yesterday. In fact, the more I think about it, I realize that “there is no crisis” probably should be the central argument. The only reason that people are willing to entertain the idea of privatization is because they have been told they won’t get much out of the system by the time they retire. Once you debunk that, you have opened the door to ask why they want to privatize in the first place. And that takes you right up to their ideology — “social security is a ‘socialist’ program that must be destroyed” — and their greed — “Well, as long as we’re destroying it, there’s no reason not to make a few bucks while we’re at it.”
There is no crisis.
If we do nothing at all it is likely that in forty years when the 20 somethings retire under the current system they will actually get more than current seniors. Republican privatization is a wall street scam that young people will regret buying into.
Sandwich Meat
If you are a “sandwich boomer” between the ages of 40 and 55 you are about to get screwed, big time. Are you currently helping your parents in their old age and putting your kids through college right now? Get ready. Even under the most optimistic scenario you don’t have time for private accounts to make up any difference, but you’ll be right in the bulls eye on the inevitable benefits cuts. If you aren’t a millionaire, it might be a good idea to develop a taste for catfood.
Crying wolf.
They are trying to scare people. Republicans have been crying wolf about social security forever because they want to destroy it. They always have. If you listened to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan back in the 1960’s they said that the system would be broke by now and there wouldn’t be anything for young people. Those people are now comfortably retired. They have always wanted to destroy social security. Always.
Doing The Right Thing.
Hey seniors. Do you feel good about working your whole lives, feeling at least somewhat secure in your retirement and then voting for people who want the Enron folks to experiment with your kids’ and grandkids’ social security? Would you vote for it if it affected you?
Maybe Harry and Louise need to gather the whole family for Sunday dinner and have a little talk.
Even more important than inflated notions of the fundamentalists’ power may be their entertainment value. As Ms. Kissling points out, the 50 million Americans who belong to progressive religious organizations are rarely represented on television because ‘progressive religious leaders are so tolerant that they don’t make good TV.’ The Rev. Bob Chase of the United Church of Christ agrees: ‘We’re not exciting guests.’ His church’s recent ad trumpeting its inclusion of gay couples was rejected by the same networks that routinely give a forum to the far more dramatic anti-gay views of Mr. Falwell. Ms. Kissling laments that contemporary progressive Christians lack an intellectual star to rival Reinhold Niebuhr or William Sloane Coffin, but adds that today ‘Jesus Christ would have a tough time getting covered by TV if he didn’t get arrested.’
This paradigm is everywhere in our news culture. When Jon Stewart went on CNN’s ‘Crossfire’ to demand that its hosts stop ‘hurting America’ by turning news and political debate into a form of pro wrestling, it may have sounded a bit hyperbolic. ‘Crossfire’ is an aging show that few watch. But his broader point holds up: it’s all crossfire now. In the electronic news sphere where most Americans live much of the time, anyone who refuses to engage in combat is quickly sent packing as a bore.
Rich understands the media dynamic better than anyone else out there. This piece is about the media and religion (and I urge you to read the whole thing) but he hits here on something that is even more fundamental. What drives the news media, particularly TV, is action and spectacle and the right is just better at providing it. The southern style preachers, in particular, put on a helluva show. I have always believed that this was the key to Clinton’s survival as well. He was a media star as much as a politician. And after 9/11, George W. Bush became one too.
It is entirely possible that the economy is going to seriously go to hell in a handbasket, which always tends to make people get serious — it’s not very glamorous to go broke — but in the meantime we are going to have to face the reality that liberals are severely charisma challenged and haven’t figured out how to disarm the other side. One of the reasons, I believe, that we are so often underrepresented on these screamer shows is that we don’t have very many people who can play the role of angry advocate. I keep thinking that this barking heads and playing against type format (dozens of African American Republican mouthpieces, for instance) would grow stale. But, I don’t see any signs of it losing favor at the moment. In fact, our new lukewarm war makes verbal combat more fashionable than ever.
It’s possible that Hollywood will become gunshy after all this criticism of their political activity, but I would hope that the Democrats would at least prevail upon them for some help in the presentation department. Our people do great on the Lehrer News Hour and I and 140 other people in the country tune in religiously. But that’s not where the action is. They can say what they will about Michael Moore but he gets people’s attention, doesn’t he? In this noise fest we call a media, that’s half the battle.
The concept of requiring all Californians to carry their own health insurance is gaining momentum in the Capitol, as some lawmakers and healthcare advocates see it as a politically viable way to deal with the state’s 5.3 million uninsured.
With the November defeat of Proposition 72 halting efforts to require employers to provide healthcare coverage, the concept looks likely to be part of next year’s legislative debate. But it faces huge hurdles over how to make it financially feasible for the poor and enforce it.
[…]
‘We have too many people that are uninsured in this state,’ Schwarzenegger said in October at the Panetta Institute in Monterey. ‘We have to really address this once and for all, and figure out a way of how we do it, like with car insurance, where we make it law that people carry insurance and that they are really insured, because it’s unfair to so many people when you have people using the hospitals for emergency, and then creating a huge cost.
Hookay. Here in California it is illegal to drive without car insurance. If you are stopped by a cop or get into an accident you can be fined or jailed for failing to have it. You cannot register your car without showing proof that you are insured.
Just how in the hell are they going to enforce a law mandating that every individual buy health insurance? Refuse you medical care? Arrest you? Kill you?
I don’t know how many of you have had to buy individual health insurance policies recently, but it has become absurdly expensive. And the older you get, the more expensive it gets. Here in California between 45 and 65 it is astronomical even for a healthy person. If you’re sick, you’d better be able to afford more than a thousand a month — and that’s if you already have the insurance.
I would dismiss this as an unattainable Republican wet dream, but at this point I take everything they do very seriously. Ahnuld is a cult in this state and it seems he’s actually convinced people that he is doing more than speaking like a cartoon character. This could be an attempt to end medicaid and employer based health insurance all in one fell swoop. The way things are going, they might just succeed.
Welcome to the ownership society. You will now be able to own your own health insurance premium in its entirety! Cool huh?
It seems that most market players sufficiently discount what Bush says about economics that his remarks had no major effect on the markets. They seem to understand that Bush has no clue about economics. Nevertheless, his remarks still reflect staggeringly poor judgement on Bush’s part, particularly for calling into question the Fed’s motives for its interest rate policy.
But perhaps Bush was then trying to fix things (in an odd sort of way) when he later made it completely clear exactly how poor his understanding of international economics is:
Bush said one way to combat the U.S. trade deficit, which hit a record $55.6 billion in October and which is a major factor behind the dollar’s slide, was to buy American.
‘There’s a trade deficit. That’s easy to resolve. People can buy more United States products if they’re worried about the trade deficit,’ he joked.
If Bush ever listened to his economic advisors he would understand that the trade deficit has nothing to do with Americans’ preference for imported goods over domestic goods, and everything to do with Americans’ preference for consuming more than they produce. So maybe the clever Bush added this comment to reassure the markets that he really has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to international economics, so they really shouldn’t pay attention to what he says. If it weren’t for the slight detail that Bush is actually the person who gets to make the final decisions on economic policy for the country, reassuring the markets that he doesn’t understand how the economy works would be an excellent idea.
Perhaps this is what the last remaining thinking Republicans believe when they hear Bush speaking unintelligible gibberish — he is actually reassuring markets that they needn’t pay any attention to what he says. But it is past time that they come to the realization, however frightening it may be, that Bush actually is making decisions. In the first term it seemed clear that he was manipulated by a powerful group of courtiers who were able to guide him in the direction they wanted him to go through flattery and access. Now that he has been validated by the people his personal arrogance has come to the fore.
All we need do is look to the Kerik debacle to see that Bush himself is now making decisions and he is doing it against the will of his advisors. It is obvious that Kerik appealed to Bush as a man’s man. It was a sympatico relationship — a pair of testosterone cowboys, one blue, one red, in love with their images as tough guys who take no shit. Bush saw in Kerik the man he now believes he is — self-made, salt of the earth, leader of men, killer of bad guys. The empty frat boy and the crooked bureaucrat teamed up as adventure heroes.
The minute I read about this I knew that this had been a case of Bush saying “I take the man at his word, Alberto, now make it happen.” This wasn’t sloppy vetting. It was Junior issuing an edict based upon his vaunted “gut” with the predictable result. And I have no doubt that rather than blame himself for this mess, the Preznit blames Kerik for not being the man that Bush wanted him to be and blames the others for being right. (And I imagine that Bush will stick with Rumsfeld no matter what for the simple reason that so many want him out. That’s the way dumb megalomaniacs think.)
This is the big story of the second term. Bush himself is now completely in charge. He did what his old man couldn’t do. He has been freed of all constraints, all humility and all sense of proportion. Nobody can run him, not Cheney, not Condi, not Card. He has a sense of his power that he didn’t have before. You can see it. From now on nobody can tell him nothin. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, doesn’t it?
Josh Marshall offers some excellent advice on where to go (and where not to go) with this social security debate. I would imagine that we will all have a lot to say about this in the next few months, but I would like to offer one small observation right now.
It is true that the president is lying about the crisis and about his solution, but that is a very complicated point to make to the public, particularly in the media climate in which “A Barney Christmas” is shown on a loop. We are right to formulate the argument for those occasions when we are dealing with people who are really interested in the details, but we should not make the mistake of thinking that reason is going to win this fight. This fight will be won on emotion.
The Republicans have been planting these seeds for a long, long time. They have been saying for decades that Social Security was going broke. This is what they do. They create a slogan then they wash rinse and repeat again and again if need be to instill a sense of CW about the issues they care about. They have slowly built the sense of crisis where one does not exist and now that they have President Reckless in the White House they are going to see if they can get away with taking action.
The main question that needs to be asked and answered is why and I think it’s clear that they have sown the seed of “crisis” for many years simply because they want to destroy social security. And the good news for us is that that meme has been in the body politic for far longer than the social security “crisis,” (which is why they were forced to dress this thing up as reform in the first place.)
They want to destroy social security. They voted against it in 1935 and they have been trying to figure out a way to get rid of it ever since. The Republicans do not believe that we should have a safety net for old people. They never have.
Don’t get bogged down in details, just repeat, repeat, repeat. They do not believe that the government should provide all Americans with a small guaranteed income when they are unable to work due to old age or debilitating illness. They never have. The Republicans want to destroy social security.
My grandfather used to believe that back in the 60’s and it’s still true today. He believed it because people like Ronald Reagan were saying back then that social security was a bad deal:
But we’re against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They’ve called it “insurance” to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term “insurance” to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they’re doing just that.
A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary — his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he’s 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can’t put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they’re due — that the cupboard isn’t bare?
That was forty years ago. Later, in the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan’s indiscreet budget director David Stockman admitted that the purpose of ginning up the social security crisis was “to permit the politicians to make it look like they are doing something for the beneficiary population when they are doing something to it, which they normally would not have the courage to undertake.” And then with masterful chutzpah, considering his famous “Choice” speech from 1964 excerpted above, Ronnie then went on to use the so-called “looming” SS crisis to great effect — he flogged the GOP contention that the program was insolvent (as they’d been doing for fifty years) and also raised the payroll taxes which they immediately raided to cover their budget deficit. And now, lo and behold, we are “in crisis” again. Imagine that. Brilliant.
It’s been the same old crap forever. But unlike today, the Democrats of 1964 were willing to fight fire with fire on these issues and they had absolutely no problem depicting the Republicans as wanting to throw old people out on the ice flow as an illustration of their true intent on social security. (Rick Perlstein’s “Before The Storm” is indispensible for an understanding of the politics of that era.) It’s true that Goldwater never said that he wanted to destroy social security, but Lyndon Johnson had no problem accusing him of it. And the fact is that he, like all wingnuts, have always wanted to destroy it. He was a hero of the John Birch Society and the destruction of social security was always right up there with the abolition of the graduated income tax, the impeachment of various high government officials, the end to busing for the purpose of school integration and the end to U.S. membership in the United Nations. (Hmmmmm)
“Republicans want to destroy Social Security” has been in our civic bloodstream for a lot longer than “private accounts.” Every citizen over 45 has heard it a million times. Let’s wake it up and put it to work. Demagogue the motherfucker, just like LBJ did. That’s what they would do. That’s what we used to do. I’m sorry we don’t live in a wonderful era of reason and good will but we don’t. The Republicans have always wanted to destroy social security and they have always said that it was running out of money and that it was a bad deal for the average worker. And they have always been wrong. We need to remind America about that.
Update: Liberal Oasis thinks that Marshall is wrong to say that we shouldn’t argue that the Wall Street fat cats will benefit from this new scheme and I think he’s right in that it is a useful piece of the populist argument. However, I don’t think as he does that it goes to motive as powerfully as the argument that “they just don’t believe in it, they never have.” Their motive for destroying social security is that it puts the lie to their contention that government can’t be trusted to do any positive social good. They are wrong and social security proves it. That’s why they must create the lie that it won’t work even while it’s clearly working. As the quotes above prove, they’ve been crying wolf for decades and yet the program continues to provide millions of old and disabled people a bare minimum of income when they are past their working years and it will continue to be funded, fairly painlessly, for at least another forty years. It’s very existence is a slap in the face to the Republican philosophy. That’s why they must destroy it.
Martin Frost was just on Fox, making his case for Democratic Chairman. He didn’t jump to the bait about “the left” and merely made the point that the country is somewhere in the middle. He pointed out that the Democrats were actually more serious about fighting terrorism — that we had proposed the Homeland Security department and 9/11 commission and the president had opposed them. He’s not my choice, but at least he didn’t say that we should start some Stalinesque purges in the party.
The FOX whore switched on his robotic talking points at the appropriate moment, interrupting Frost’s litany of Democratic responses to terrorism with the required smirk, asking Frost how he explained the presence of Michael Moore at the Democratic convention?
Frost, like all Democrats, seems stymied by this and I don’t know why. Democrats should just laugh and reply, “Oh come on. Republicans having the vapors over Michael Moore just makes me laugh. There are plenty of provocative Republican media personalities making tons and tons of money saying shocking things. Rush Limbaugh said that Abu Ghraib was a harmless college prank. Ann Coulter said that the terrorists should have blown up the NY Times. I could go on.”
“But they aren’t invited to sit with former presidents at the Democratic convention!”
“Nope. The sitting Vice President himself appears on Limbaugh’s show.”
This fuss about Michael Moore is useful to us. We can use this to point out the nutty eliminationist rhetoric on the part of their guys. From now on nobody should ever mention Michael Moore without getting a Rush Limbaugh anecdote in return. They are both partisan media personalities and if they are going to trot out Moore as being the personification of left wing “moonbattery”, it’s a great opportunity to draw a comparison to the wild-eyed wingnuts of the right and perhaps bring them back into the realm of crazy aunts in the attic. That reduces their power. Gotta chip away at the Wurlitzer every way we can.
Of course, that means that Democrats have to be prepared before they speak to the media. Never mind.
Am I crazy or does this stultifying Barney video go on longer than Titanic?
I thought it was aimed at kids but CNN just informed me that this is the White House’s gift to the entire country for Christmas. I shouldn’t be surprised. Only an infantile electorate could have elected such an infantile president.
Discussions on climate change are at an impasse. Some of those who fret about man-made emissions of greenhouse gases claim it’s a threat that trumps all others, including terrorism. Others argue that we have more pressing concerns, such as the developing world’s dehumanizing poverty and disease.
So the people who dispute the science of Global Warming do so because they are concerned about the more pressing concerns of poverty and disease. Uh Huh. Of course, they have faith that if they just do exactly what they want, the magical market will solve everybody’s problems and we can all live happily ever after rolling around in our thousand dollar bills. Clap Your Hands!
At some level, science probably will never resolve what to do about global warming. Climate change is complex, with scores of variables and time-frame considerations of decades and even centuries. Both sides have substantial data that support their points of view. Both sides also believe that to the extent the science is “settled,” it’s settled in ways that undergird their respective policy prescriptions.
But science is inherently descriptive, not prescriptive. It can only inform us about the likely consequences of actions. It doesn’t tell us — and shouldn’t tell us — if those actions should be taken. That arena is reserved for politics, where moral judgments and philosophical views matter alongside scientific truth. Morality and philosophy are often best examined and illustrated not through scientific discourse but through narratives, theology and storytelling.
Jesus H. Christ. These guys are not only rejecting the Enlightenment, they are laying the groundwork to consciously bring about another dark ages.
I’m telling you, we need to be concerned that people who think like this are operating heavy machinery. Let’s examine the moral and philosophical dimensions of gravity, shall we? Or perhaps we should have some theologians weigh in on whether we should worry about bacteria.
There is, interestingly, one area in which they do not feel it necessary to discuss science in a philosophical, moral or, let’s face it, Biblical sense. In fact they prefer not to discuss it in public at all if possible:
If the Bush administration succeeds in its determined but little-noticed push to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, this sun-baked desert flatland 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas could once again reverberate with the ground-shaking thumps of nuclear explosions that used to be common here.
But “Icecap,” the test of a bomb 10 times the size of the one that devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, was halted when the first President Bush placed a moratorium on U.S. nuclear tests in October 1992. The voluntary test ban came two years after Russia stopped its nuclear tests.
[…]
Last year the White House released, to little publicity, the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. That policy paper embraces the use of nuclear weapons in a first strike and on the battlefield; it also says a return to nuclear testing may soon be necessary. It was coupled with a request for $70 million to study and develop new types of nuclear weapons and to shorten the time it would take to test them.
I think that the real Republican agenda is to make liberals’ heads explode trying to wrap our minds around the endless contradictions of the GOP position. It is a cunning plan and one that I fear is working only too well.
Even if you choose not to vote, go check it out for the great links to new blogs, underappreciated blogs and best post nominations. It’s a treasure trove of great unsung lefty humor and insight.
UPDATE: While you’re over there, put some $$$$ in the tip jar. It’s costing the Wampum team big bucks to do this thing. This is a labor of love for the left blogosphere and we should give some of that love back.
