Saturday, January 08, 2005
More social security dissection
From A Tiny Revolution:
There is a clue to [Peter] Wehner's perspective in the savings bond example above.
It actually is fine with Wehner for people to buy bonds as individuals and get a return on them. Likewise, he thinks it's fine for people to have individual bank accounts and own stocks.
However, he hates the idea of Americans sharing in America's increasing wealth without investing privately. He believes ONLY private investors should get the money. Of course, they already get lots of it. And that's fine. But Wehner thinks they should get ALL of it.
For instance, imagine a teacher starting out now who works for 45 years. She awakens a love for knowledge among hundreds of young people. One of her former students invents an extremely effective medicine for heart attacks. Another starts a company that makes cars that get 150 mpg. Yet because she works at a low-paying Catholic school and never marries, she never makes enough money to save much herself.
As you're imagining her, also imagine a soldier who fought in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was shot in the leg and it had to be amputated. For the rest of his life, he works as a janitor. Perhaps he could have made more of himself, but his amputation made him uncomfortable around people, and he never tries. He never saves much either.
Do this teacher, do this veteran, deserve a modest share of America's increased wealth when they retire in 2050?
Peter Wehner says: NO WAY.
But most Americans say: YOU BET THEY DO.
That's why Social Security is so popular. And that's why Bush's only shot at destroying it is for people like Wehner to tell ridiculous lies.
posted by chris at 2:19 PM
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Friday, January 07, 2005
Screw international treaties! We're the United States, dammit!!
White House officials considered trying to rewrite the international treaties signed more than half a century ago protecting certain wartime prisoners from mistreatment, senators were told Thursday.
That revelation came during testimony by Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush's choice as attorney general, whose conclusion as White House counsel that the Geneva Convention did not apply to suspected terrorists has prompted Democrats and human rights advocates to question his suitability as head of the Justice Department.
It marked the first time that an administration official had acknowledged a desire to change the international laws of war following the 2001 terrorist attacks — the same laws that critics accuse the administration of flouting in its pursuit of Al Qaeda.
Story.
posted by chris at 4:45 PM
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Thursday, January 06, 2005
Up is down
In addition, [Bush] is dispatching his Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, to New York to reassure Wall Street that his approach, which could involve trillions of dollars in new government borrowing, is consistent with efforts to reduce the budget deficit and improve the nation's financial condition.
That doesn't even make sense.
(via John Marshall.)
posted by chris at 5:10 PM
Revving up the machine
The success of President Bush’s push to remake Social Security depends on convincing the public that the system is “heading for an iceberg,” according to a White House strategy note that makes the case for cutting benefits promised for the future.
Calling the effort “one of the most important conservative undertakings of modern times,” Peter Wehner, the deputy to White House political director Karl Rove, says in the e-mail message that a battle over Social Security is winnable for the first time in six decades and could transform the political landscape.
But the administration must “establish an important premise: the current system is heading toward an iceberg,” Wehner’s e-mail said...
...“We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course,” the e-mail said. “That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness; it is the precondition to authentic reform.”
Sounds like another catastrophic success the Bush administration tried to sell us awhile back.
posted by chris at 5:01 PM
Forcing Congress to talk about it
Democrats turned Congress' quadrennial counting of electoral votes on Thursday into a battle over Election Day problems in Ohio, forcing the House and Senate to consider a challenge to the presidential count for only the second time since 1877.
President Bush's re-election triumph over Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was not in jeopardy. But after Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., lodged a formal protest that the Ohio votes "were not, under all known circumstances, regularly given," the House and Senate recessed their joint session as required by law and held separate debates on the Ohio irregularities.
This isn't about being sore losers, it's about ensuring that our democracy works.
UPDATE:
The senators are:
Barbara Boxer (CA)
Chris Dodd (CT)
Harry Reid (NV)
Hillary Clinton (NY)
Barak Obama (IL)
The representatives are:
John Conyers
Stephanie Tubbs Jones
Dennis Kucinich
Jesse Jackson Jr.
Maxine Waters
Robert Scott
Mel Watt
Jerrold Nadler
You can call and thank them at (202) 224-3121 or 1-800-839-5276
posted by chris at 4:19 PM
Yeah, yeah, torture's bad . . . can we get this over with??
Gonzales said he does not view the Geneva Conventions as either "obsolete" or "quaint" -- words that appear in a 2002 memo he wrote to Bush referring to some of the convention's provisions. He condemned the abusive and degrading treatment of prisoners held by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, saying photos of the abuse had "sickened and outraged me, and left a stain on our nation's reputation."
He also declared that "torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration," and he pledged to ensure that the United States complies with international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions.
Actions speak louder than words. And as Maureen Dowd points out, it's pretty bad when the president's choice for attorney general has to promise not to support torture. Shouldn't that be a given?
posted by chris at 4:13 PM
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Wednesday, January 05, 2005
La-la land
To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues and omit the cost of major initiatives like overhauling Social Security.
To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.
By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion and claim victory if the deficit falls to just $260 billion.
As the Howler says:
Incredible, isn’t it? Rather than cut the actual deficit in half, Bush will tackle an imaginary deficit—a projected deficit, one that never existed, one he pulled straight outta his keister. We truly do live in fictitious times—when a sitting president can even dream of making such an absurd presentation. But don’t worry! The press corps has glugged down gallons of budget cant from the Bush Admin over the years. Result? You live at a time when a White House has made a clear decision—that there is nothing so phony and fake that the press will refuse to accept it.
Unbelievable.
posted by chris at 4:50 PM
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Tuesday, January 04, 2005
It's just that simple
A Tiny Revolution takes us to the Land of Boring Graphs About Social Security and shows us all around. He talks real nice and slow-like so everybody can understand. Even the President. And he breaks it up into nice bite-size parts for us:
Part I
For people who don't care about the details.
This part will say: THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH SOCIAL SECURITY, AND WE'VE GOT TO STOP GEORGE BUSH FROM KILLING IT. That's all you really need to know.
Part II
For people who want to know a little more, either for themselves or so they can discuss it with family and friends.
Here I'll provide a few easy to read graphs, etc. This will be similar to this page by the economist Dean Baker, co-author of Social Security: The Phony Crisis. In fact, it will be more than similar -- I'll probably just rip it off in its entirety.
Part III
For people who really want to know the nitty-gritty.
Most of what I've written below will go in this part.
Parts I and II are great and all, but start at Part III - it's worth it.
posted by chris at 4:58 PM
"Like sticking your hand in a wasp nest"
The Bush administration has signaled that it will propose changing the formula that sets initial Social Security benefit levels, cutting promised benefits by nearly a third in the coming decades, according to several Republicans close to the White House.
Under the proposal, the first-year benefits for retirees would be calculated using inflation rates rather than the rise in wages over a worker's lifetime. Because wages tend to rise considerably faster than inflation, the new formula would stunt the growth of benefits, slowly at first but more quickly by the middle of the century. The White House hopes that some, if not all, of those benefit cuts would be made up by gains in newly created personal investment accounts that would harness returns on stocks and bonds.
But by embracing "price indexing," the president would for the first time detail the painful costs involved in closing the gap between the Social Security benefits promised to future retirees and the taxes available to fund them. In late February or March, the administration plans to produce its proposed overhaul of the system, including creation of personal investment accounts and the new benefit calculation.
"This is going to be very much like sticking your hand in a wasp nest," said David C. John, a Social Security analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation and an ally of the president. "And the reaction will be similar."
Story.
posted by chris at 4:41 PM
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Monday, January 03, 2005
House reverses course
House Republicans suddenly reversed course Monday, deciding to retain a tough standard for lawmaker discipline and reinstate a rule that would force Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside if indicted by a Texas grand jury.
The surprise dual decisions were made by Speaker Dennis Hastert and by DeLay - who asked GOP colleagues to undo the extreme act of loyalty they handed him in November. Then, Republicans changed a party rule so DeLay could retain his leadership post if indicted by the grand jury in Austin that charged three of the Texas Republican's associates.
Weird.
posted by chris at 9:43 PM
2004 in review
Democracy Now! looks back at 2004 and I promise you George Bush does not turn out to be Man of the Year.
posted by chris at 9:35 PM
Throwing away the key
The United States is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial, replacing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with permanent prisons in the Cuban enclave and elsewhere, it was reported yesterday.
The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put on trial for lack of hard evidence.
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The State Department is proposing the transfer of Afghan, Saudi and Yemeni detainees to their home countries for incarceration in purpose-built jails to be financed and constructed by the US, according to a report in the Washington Post.
The Pentagon has built a new 100-cell prison on Guantanamo Bay, known as Camp 5, and plans to ask Congress this year for $25m (£13m) to build Camp 6, a 200-bed version. The two jails are intended for suspected members of al-Qaida, the Taliban or other extremist groups, who are unlikely to go before a military tribunal because military prosecutors lack proof.
More.
posted by chris at 9:17 PM
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