why the hype?

In, What Crisis?, Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker slam dunk the case for a strong and flourishing Social Security system, right in the eyes of the Bush rhetoric.

But the question remains, if the President's arguments are just a lot of hype, what is his real motivation behind the "fix the crisis" rhetoric?

Start out by asking the audience how many of them think that over the next 50 years the U.S. economy will grow at least as fast as it did during the past 50. Expect those who raise their hands to end up agreeing with you on personal accounts.

Do-nothing Democrats are attacking President Bush's plan to strenghten Social Security.

If You Were Born in 1980: In 2047, When You Retire At the Age of 67, 2.0 Workers Will Be Paying For Your Retirement And Your Scheduled Benefits Will Be Cut By 26%. In 2055, At The Age Of 75, Your Scheduled Benefits Will Be Cut by 27%. In 2065, At the Age Of 85, Your Scheduled Benefits Will Be Cut By 29%.

--A Guide To Social Security Reform, p. 5

It seems the real goal here is not retirement security. With a slight tax increase, or a cut in scheduled benefits, or both, the system is solvent indefinitely.

What they are trying to do is wedge Americans away from investiture in our government!

America is going to be -- not a sanctuary of liberty, human rights and justice -- but a new global/economic colossus of the rich and the very rich and others. Most of us, though, won't figure into the first 2 categories.

We will have no stake in popular government. We will have all our stakes in global corporate profits.

This is the REAL DANGER of the Privatization/Corporatization plan. It is a missile hurled at the sanctuary of truth, justice and the American way. It will marry people to global corporations in the same way we are married to our government now.

The difference will be, our government is set up to be of, by and for the people. The global corporate colossus will be of, by and for the corporations.

Rights of detainees? Torture? Corporate corruption scandals? Environmental destruction? Child health care? None of them will mean anything if everybody is competing for corporate profits instead of cooperating to make the world a better place!

Will the world be governed by elected officials, accountable to the common sense of the people, their constituents? Or will it be run by others?

why we aren't exiting iraq

Chomsky had a brief interview with David McNeill of the "Independent," on Monday, January 24, 2005. It was reported in truthout.

What would happen if the U.S. allowed the Shia majority in Iraq to consolidate their power in the region? What if we were to grant them virtual autonomy and self-determination and withdraw from Iraq after "stabilizing" it as a democracy?

"It might instigate some degree of autonomy in the largely Shia regions of Saudi Arabia which happens to be where most of the oil is. You can project not too far in the future a possible Shia-dominated region including Iran, Iraq, oil-producing regions of Saudi Arabia which really would monopolise the main sources of the world's oil. Is the U.S. going to permit that? It is out of the question. Furthermore, an independent Iraq would try to restore its position as a great, perhaps leading power in the Arab world. Which means it will try to rearm and confront the regional enemy, which is Israel. It may well develop WMD to counter Israel's. It is inconceivable that the U.S. and the UK will permit this."

Chomsky believes comparisons of Iraq and Vietnam are mistaken, primarily because Vietnam was not ultimately a defeat for American strategic aims. "Vietnamese resources were not of that much significance. Iraq is different. It is the last corner of the world in which there are massive petroleum resources, maybe the largest in the world or close to it. The profits from that must flow primarily to the right pockets, that is, U.S. and secondarily UK energy corporations. And controlling that resource puts the U.S. in a very powerful position to exert influence over the world."

Yesterday, House Democrat Marty Meehan delivered a speech at Brookings Institution on "Finding A Responsible Exit." In the speech, Meehan exhorts his colleagues and the American people to improve the realism in our national dialogue about Iraq.

We need to refocus on our original goal – a stable Iraq that does not threaten its neighbors, develop WMD, export terrorism, or terrorize its own people. Hard experience and tragedy have taught us that prolonged military occupation in Iraq will not end the insurgency, stabilize Iraq , or bring us closer to our strategic goals. It will only bring more casualties, and more hatred toward America within Iraq and beyond.

Meehan omits the possibility that our actual goals could be different than our stated goals. He omits this consideration even after complaining about the apparent "failure" of our efforts at orderly, democratic regime change:

How did our intelligence fail us so badly about Iraq’s WMD? Was intelligence deliberately manipulated by the Bush Administration in the rush to war? Why didn’t the Administration give the UN inspectors more time? How did we allow so much chaos to grow out of Saddam’s downfall? Why didn’t we have a better plan to secure the peace?

According to the Energy Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait have over 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. That's more than North, South, and Central America and all of Europe and Asia, including Russia, combined.

Duh!!! The bigger the mess, the longer we have to stick around and clean it up. We aren't going anywhere. Need a job? Better learn Arabic, Farsi, or Persian.

Allies? What about, "The Golden Rule:" He who has the gold, makes the rules. In this case, the gold is black.

Honest

The Economic Policy Institute's "Job Watch" reports that there is a discrepancy between the predicted and the actual results of the Bush Administration's 2003 Tax Cut "stimulus" package. Who should we turn to to help us make good common sense out of all this gobbledeegook? Let's turn to our Congressional majority leader, Tom DeLay to zero in on the truth in all this.

“President Bush and the Republican Congress’ economic policies are not just intellectually and ideologically superior – they get the job done,” DeLay said. “The evidence today – actually, the evidence of the last 16 months – proves our policies have created more jobs and grown the economy by ensuring those who earn a paycheck get to keep more of it. “I’m not one to say ‘I told you so,’ but the numbers don’t lie,” DeLay said.

The numbers may not lie, but somebody else may!

What do the numbers actually say?

• All 157,000 jobs created were non-farm


• That number is a 32,300 decline from the average of the prior 3 months


• Right about even with the prior six month average


• Down 16,500 from the prior 12-month average

Okay, so that represents an increase of 2,230,000 jobs over December of 2003. Good.

Unfortunately, the unemployment rate is about 1-1/2% above what it was four years ago.

All this "superior" economic policy, would be bringing us in just below the break even point as Bush begins his second term, if that were the whole story. But it isn't.

The Budget Deficit

The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) new baseline projections indicate that if current laws and policies did not change, the federal budget would run a deficit of $368 billion in 2005 and a smaller deficit, $295 billion, next year. After that, annual deficits would gradually decline, turning into a small surplus by 2012, assuming that various tax increases occurred as scheduled. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit would equal 3.0 percent of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) this year and 2.3 percent of GDP in 2006. By 2015, the end of CBO's 10-year projection period, the baseline surplus would equal 0.7 percent of GDP.

Today, the White House announced the 2005 budget deficit will be around $427 billion, or 3.5% of GDP.

Reuters adds, contrary to Tom DeLay's sunny predictions

White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted on Tuesday that the Bush administration was still on course on its goal of reducing the deficit in half over five years by promoting economic growth and controlling government spending, although analysts are skeptical it can be done.


Bush is under pressure to bring down the budget deficit as a way of restoring faith in the dollar, whose tumble against other currencies is increasingly being viewed with concern in global capitals.

What McClellan didn't tell us is the information provided by the Center For Budget and Policy Priorities on Tuesday, January 25, 2005. The gist of the CBPP report is expressed in this quotation

The new Congressional Budget Office budget projections released today show that the nation faces a fourth consecutive year of substantial budget deficits. Some seek to portray “runaway domestic spending” or growth in the costs of entitlement programs as the primary cause of the shift in recent years from sizeable surpluses to large deficits. Such a characterization is incorrect. In 2005, the cost of tax cuts enacted over the past four years will be nearly four times the cost of all domestic program increases enacted over this period.

The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $504 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for practically half — 49 percent — of this $504 billion in increased costs. Increases in program spending make up the other 51 percent and have been primarily concentrated in defense, homeland security, and international affairs.

In other words, the tax cuts Bush promised the American people would create jobs and stimulate the economy have done neither. The economy -- measured by the budget deficit and job creation figures -- would have been better off if Bush had done nothing at all!

Pelosi countered the Republican smokescreen with

Today's CBO projections confirm that President Bush and Congressional Republicans have completely abandoned fiscal responsibility. The last three Bush budgets have produced the three largest deficits in history, and now the CBO is projecting an enormous $368 billion deficit for 2005. That whopping figure does not even include the $80 billion President Bush will soon request for Iraq and Afghanistan or his $2 trillion proposal to undermine Social Security. And rather than addressing the problem, the President will deepen it by proposing a budget next month that seeks to add another $1.8 trillion in debt by extending huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

“The President set the bar low when he only committed to reducing the deficit by half by 2009, and Republicans are on a path of fiscal recklessness that fails to even meet that inadequate goal. Economists have warned that huge deficits are a drag on the economy that will eventually force interest rates up. If we do not act to restore accountability, then mortgages, car loans, credit card debt, and student loans will all cost more.

The truth is that every time Tom DeLay, Scott McClellan or George Bush talk about "growing" and "strengthening the economy," they really mean lining the pockets of the top 2% of earners and leaving the working class with the bill.

Although the average tax cut in 2001 was under $1,000, the average for the top 1% was over $50,000. It's no secret that Bush's advisors have him running the economy into a swamp of debt. But "honest Tom" doesn't have anything to say about it in his statements. All he does is praise the "intellectual superiority" of the GOP policies! As employment stagnates at pre-Bush levels, the Republican "stimulus package" hands over the public's money for education, infrastructure, health, retirement and unemployment benefits, and research and development to 1) the rich and 2) the largest corporations, especially those with military contracts.

Kos summed it up neatly in his post yesterday.

According to Norquist's plan, you starve the beast by creating budget deficits so high that government spending has to be slashed. So Bush got the "record deficits" part right.

Falling Sickness

Fox Promoted Cameron and Angle on Inauguration Day

On President George W. Bush's second Inauguration Day, FOX News managing editor and chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume announced that FOX News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes had promoted Carl Cameron from chief political correspondent to chief White House correspondent and Jim Angle from senior White House correspondent to chief Washington correspondent.

It seems like more than a coincidence that the promotions be announced jointly with the second inauguration of W.
;I guess Ailes and Murdoch have to remind our President that he didn't ascend the pedestal entirely on his own power.

How gauche that they could so blatantly thumb their noses at the skeleton of nonpartisanship, once a sacred icon in the free world!

It has a ring of Caesar and Marc Antony and the scene where Caesar thrice refuses the offer of the crown.

Bru. Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca.

Casca. I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets; and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by; and still as he refused it the rabblement shouted and clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown, that it had almost choked Caesar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air. 240

Cas. But soft, I pray you: what! did Caesar swound?

Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.

Bru. 'Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.

Cas. No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I,

And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness.

Politics of Fear

Mailbag

Dear Post,

Please inform your readers that the White House is issuing very misleading and false information about the condition of the Social Security program.

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, Scott McClellan, Bush's Press Secretary, told reporters at a news conference that:

"Right now, younger workers are facing massive tax increases or massive benefit cuts under the current system."

This statement is false on several points:

1) No workers are now facing any tax increases or benefit cuts. Under the worst case scenarios, such changes will not be absolutely necessary until after 2042 -- more than thirty-five years from now.

2) Thirty-five years from now is not right now.

3) The cuts or tax hikes will be massive in the aggregate, but minimal per capita. And that is only if they prove -- over time -- to be required at all. The 2042 projections are "worst case scenario." It is very possible that the trust fund cushion will not run out by then -- especially if the Administration pays back the money it owes the people in the form of Social Security Trust Fund i.o.u.s.

But McClellan repeats the same talking points in order to convince by hyperbole, not by reason.

One such point is:

"Your going to have shortfalls in the system. And it's only going to get worse over time until it goes bankrupt in 2042, according to the Social Security trustees."

These are misleading if not patently false statements. The shortfalls are predicted but not certain, especially since they are not anticipated to begin at the earliest until 2018. Regardless of when they begin, the system is set up to protect workers from suffering reduced benefits because of any hypothetical shortfalls, at least until 2042.

Here is McClellan's and the Administration's biggest lie. They say in 2042, "the system goes bankrupt, according to the Social Security trustees."

The Trustees, however, in their 2004 report, didn't say the system would go bankrupt in 2042. They said:

"Pressures on the Federal Budget will thus emerge well before 2042. Even if a trust fund's assets are exhausted, however, tax income will continue to flow into the fund. Present tax rates would be sufficient to pay 73 percent of scheduled benefits after trust fund exhaustion in 2042 and 68 percent of scheduled benefits in 2078."

Under these conditions, it will be more than prudent to develop contingency plans for reshaping, strengthening and preserving the Social Security system. Then, given the historical playing out of the variables in the economy, an appropriate set of modifications could be rolled out when the FACTS prove it necessary.

Preparing for different contingencies would be a wise method of dealing with the "pressures on the Federal budget," should they in fact arise.

But that is not what the Bush administration is advocating. Yesterday, Scott McClellan told the press that:

"[W]e have a serious problem facing Social Security and we need to act now to solve that problem, because this is a problem that will continue to get worse over time, our options would become much more limited."

The administration is confusing "acting now" with "looking at our options."

Looking at our options is critical. Acting before we look at our options is irresponsible, if not stupid.

But McClellan keeps repeating this mantra to the press:

"It's important that -- or I think significant that members are talking about how we can solve this problem and the need to act now."

The Bush administrations insistence on running "the need to act now" sense of urgency up behind "talking about how we can solve this problem" belies their disingenuousness.

Anyone who has read the Congressional Budget Office, Office of Management and Budget or the Social Security Trustee reports knows that there is no crisis in Social Security.

The crisis will be precipitated by privatization profiteers who want to "act now" before we "look at our options."

This is the tactic the Bush administration used in the 2000 election in Florida, the post 9/11 terrorism scare, the run-up to the Iraq war, and now, here again, the Social Security crisis.

Please tell the readers the truth:

The Bush administration wants everyone to believe there is a crisis so that we will enact hasty and inequitable changes to the system. These changes will greatly favor those in the investment community and will please neo-conservative idealogues who hate government programs and taxes.

The changes the Bush administration is proposing are not to strengthen Social Security. To do that, we must instead act calmly, circumspectly and deliberately, even while the raven's of doom cry, "Crisis! Crisis!" in our ears.

---

1/20/04

Dear NY Times, LI Newsday, WS Journal, NY Sun:

I have yet to see evidence that privatizing Social Security will make it more secure for workers or retirees.

And I am very troubled by the unchallenged impropriety of any legal requirement for workers to pay money into private investment accounts. Instead of lending money to our own government, worker/investors will be legally compelled to lend money to private investment firms and brokers.

This will remove the "social" benefit of the current system by privatizing and corporatizing the mechanism, and eliminating the balancing of benefit under the current system.

Most importantly, privatizing Social Security will eliminate the "security" from the system, by opening the system to piracy by corporate raiders and white collar criminals, not to mention the vicissitudes of the financial markets.

Showing the real numbers on Social Security would take a competent economist only a few minutes, but privatizers want the public to invest trillions of dollars of Social Security money based only on their word. That's not a gamble we should take.

Keep the system public. Tweak it as necessary to keep it solvent.

But don't try and sell the American people "privatization" as a scheme to enrich big investors or to default on the Trust Fund i.o.u.s.

1/21/04

1000 words

Rice is the Wrong

Let's face it. The transcripts are too sickening to go over. Anybody who saw 15 minutes of CSPAN yesterday knows this is another disaster in the making.

The woman has brains, but she is also very very narrow minded. She is not creative. She doesn't know anything somebody else hasn't told her. She doesn't have a clue.

She's being put in to not get the job done. That's the whole point.

Her credibility is zero, and so is her independent judgment. She's the chocolate pudding to Bush's whipped cream, but they only manage to comprise a light dessert. The whole cabinet and the President himself seem to be side-dishes, at best. It's Rumsfeld and Cheney, Inc.

Rove, Norquist and Mehlman are going to run everything ... right off the road. Bush, Rice, Snow, and the others are just there to take the blame. That's what they're getting paid for.

So, "Let the blames begin." Talk is cheap.

X Files meets Punchinello

Tom DeLay stole the show on Thursday during the challenge to Ohio's electors. He made his curtain call, introduced by "coach" Denny, and sang a paen of outrage. I was moved as I watched him gesticulate on CSPAN streaming video on my office computer. Never has a Republiclown looked and sounded more ridiculous.

Tom DeLay doesn't get it.

They accuse the president — who, we are told, is apparently a closet computer nerd — of personally overseeing the development of vote-stealing software.

This is probably the least salient point -- if it can be indirectly deduced at all -- from the Conyers report. I just searched the PDF for "nerd" and it came back: 0 matches. So, Honorable Mr. DeLay, didn't you have time to read the report? It was dated January 5, 2005: yesterday. It was only 102 pages!

"Closet computer nerd?"

Many observers will discard today’s petition as a partisan waste of time, but it is much worse.

It is an assault against the institutions of our representative democracy; it is a threat to the very ideals it ostensibly defends.

Tom DeLay, this sounds like a claim of extra-legal actions on the part of the challengers, when, in fact they followed the letter of the law. Where's the threat to ideals: rigorous honesty, accountability, equal rights?

The Democrat Party was once an idealistic, forward-looking policy colossus.

The New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Great Society, the space program, civil rights … And yet, today, one is hard-pressed to find a single positive, substantive idea on the left.

Instead, the Democrats have replaced statecraft with stagecraft, substance with style, and not a very fashionable style at that.

Well, as majority leader, Tom is going to be putting forth more colossal Democratic policies, just not about voting rights, this year.

The petitioners claim they act on behalf of disenfranchised voters, but no such voter disenfranchisement occurred in the election of 2004 or for that matter, the election of 2000.

Everybody knows it. The voters know it. The candidates know it. The courts know it. The evidence proves it.

This is the coda to Tom DeLay's Vesti la Giubba of January 06, 2004. Not only is history written and erased and then rewritten with a sweep of a sweaty palm, but it's okay with America because voting doesn't matter. And besides, there wasn't any disenfranchisement.

Yes, Mr. DeLay, this is serious. But you made me laugh, in spite of everything. No matter how grave the issue, I just can't take you seriously. You are the Prince of the Republi-Clowns!

Looking forward to your next schtick.

The feint

Today the Republicans are going to throw the American public and the Democrats in Congress a two course meal of fishing bait.

One course is the challenge to the Ohio electors. The other is the Gonzales confirmation hearing. Neither one is critical to the Republican strategy in the early 2005 legislative session.

What is critical to the Republican strategy is success on Social Security reform. Josh Marshall has an incisive analysis of what that really means.

I couldn't believe Tom DeLay up there at the end of the House debate denouncing the Democrats for an attack on democracy by challenging the Ohio votes. What a stink pot! What was even more ridiculous was the applause the other House Republicans gave him afterward. His thesis seemed to be that any suggestion of partisan voting irregularities in Ohio was a shameful attack on America. Any questioning of the notorious voting process, like everything else a Democrat ever says, is cause for rebuke.

Headbangers

The Informed Citizen's Guide To The 2004 Election, by Georgia, today, on Daily Kos.

It's unbeleivable how wimpy Americans are. Nobody wants to challenge Bush's reelection: but the evidence shows that Ohio was dirty. Because it was dirty, no one can truly say what the outcome actually was or would have been. Why? Because the authorities have been arguing over "if" and not "how" ever since November 3rd. They ran out the clock, but the fact remains that Ohio's election was tainted and should be thrown out, like Ukraine's. How can the American people and their representatives stand for this?

Gonzales: Must be a joke I just don't get. After all, nobody seems to get my jokes either. Oh well, I guess I'll just keep smiling ...

energy < American life = collapse

Peak Oil

There is a great film at http://911busters.com/video/IQ1_20_END_OF_SUBURBIA_VIDEO_24.2_.html.

I heard about it on "Morning Sedition."

Of course, the problem has been explained for at least two decades already, to anybody who is interested, on sources such as Culture Change. Those of us who voted for Barry Commoner, the Constitutional Party candidate in 1980, had the whole story early. Our energy consumption is unsustainable.

George Soros mentions in Chapter 4 of The Bubble of American Supremacy,

The true motives for the Bush administration's determination to overthrow Saddam Hussein remain shrouded in mystery. It is possible to conjecture what these motives were, but it is impossible to identify them with certainty, because they have never been discussed.

... the real motives [for the invasion of Iraq] remain shrouded in mystery but nation building could not have ranked high among them.

Everybody knew it was oil, even though we told them weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, freedom and so on. The point is that we are at peak oil now. Without an increase in our source of energy, we can have no economic growth.

Social Security

So, since the administration never came clean about their true motives for going into Iraq, is there any reasonable expectation of truth behind other public programs, like "saving" Social Security?

Edmund L. Andrews gave us some vivid foresight into what are the Bush administration's lines of credible reasoning and justification for their colossal decisions in his editorial:

White House officials say it is reasonable to treat the expected transition costs separately, because they will eventually be repaid as the government's obligation to pay benefits declines sharply after 30 or 40 years.

"These aren't costs, they are savings," said Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's spokesman, at a recent news conference.

This deliberate misleading of the public is a familiar pattern now, but can anyone see where these blind men are leading us?

Privatizing Social Security may get the government off the hook for having to repay the Social Security Trust Fund after our economy collapses due to Bush's energy policy. People won't be able to blame Bush then for not paying out benefits that his friends on Wall Street have blown speculating on phony energy companies with inflated balance sheets. And maybe when the crunch comes he'll be able to raise taxes on the rich in order to keep up the corn dole.

But it may also be that he's trying to prop up the financial services industry in order to shore up ebbing capital in the American global financial marketplace.

As Bob Somerby noted today, discussing Bill Frist's appearance on the Sunday talk shows

But so what? Frist--presented with a mark--just kept misleading the voters.

Yes, Frist was eager to "mislead non-experts" when he played the pimp on This Week. But then, it's something the "press corps" has allowed Bush to do on every sort of budget matter--a fact which explains why he's willing to pimp that ludicrous plan for "halving the deficit."

So, Bush may not be orchestrating a meaningful dialogue on the talk shows and among the press corps, and he may not be planning for solutions to the upcoming energy and financial trainwrecks, but he is working very hard at one thing, at least as important as anything else (from a GOP perspective): avoiding the blame for the collapse!

satan cannot cast out satan

The evangelical Christians are being misled by Republican leaders and that's why they partner in the GOP/Christian alliance.

Abortion has been the wedge issue from the Christian side, but so have militarism, censorship, racism and other unChristian character defects from the liberal side.

The reason the evangelicals align with the right is because they perceive the right to be evangelical, too -- and hence, more amenable to a Christian social agenda -- even though they're not. The American evangelicals are neither Democratic or Republican. But the Republicans have convinced them that they are more like evangelicals than we are.

It's not true. Satan, as always, is deceiving the children of God. But guess what, he's deceiving his own children: us, too.

The evangelicals seek God's righteousness, not man's. So they seem foolish to us when they are led by others who profess God. But we can't persuade them. We don't have the weapons to win the argument.

Anyone who thinks can see that profiling muslims and middle easterners -- or foreigners, for that matter -- trying to dominate the rest of the world through military power, destroying the environment, repressing free speech, impoverishing the poor and enriching the rich are not Jesus's teachings.

But Satan cannot cast out Satan, or, as a famous Republican once quoted Jesus as saying

A house divided against iself cannot stand

.

Why can't the liberals throw the conservatives off the backs of the evangelicals? Because "Satan cannot cast out Satan."

We are not really any more righteous than the GOP, because we don't seek to do God's will and gain His righteousness.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you

.

There is no righteousness in us apart from what is given by our Creator. We cannot throw the elephant off the Christians' backs, but God can.