Social Security and Manufactured Outrage

We're all entitled to our opinions about things, but as I've said here before, you're not entitled to your own facts. 

Social Security is not broke, and with minor adjustments it will be viable for my lifetime, and for generations to come. Payroll contributions continue to cover distributions. American workers provide continuous contributions. This is not a static fund. Raise the maximum annual payroll contribution figure slightly (for high wage earners) and the fund is covered for the foreseeable future.

The outrage we hear from the right is all a bit silly. The so-called "trust fund" aspect of SS monies may be debatable, but the fact is that Treasury securities held by the SSA are backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. I suppose if you have little faith in the government you might not find this worth much. Treasury securities are purchased with the revenue monies that exceed expenditures. For example in 2007 that figure was $2.2 trillion.

There are no interest payments, only interest received on the Treasury securities. By law, the assets of the Social Security program must be invested in interest-bearing government securities or in securities guaranteed by the government as to both principal and interest. The Trust Funds hold a mix of short-term and long-term government securities. The Trust Funds can hold both regular Treasury securities and "special obligation" securities issued only to federal trust funds. All the securities in the Social Security Trust Funds are special obligations. These are NOT IOU's they are interest earning securities. Big difference. In fact it's the polar opposite of an IOU.

The rate of interest on special issues is determined by a formula enacted in 1960. The rate is determined at the end of each month and applies to new investments in the following month. The numeric average of the 12 monthly interest rates for 2007 was 4.656 percent. The effective interest rate (the average rate of return on all investments) for the OASI and DI Trust Funds, combined, was 5.3 percent in 2007. This higher effective rate resulted because the funds hold special-issue bonds acquired in past years when interest rates were higher.

The laws in this case are the facts. Don't believe it? Research it yourself. I did. If contrary data of greater merit can be presented I might be swayed. Until then the "outrage" amounts to little more than bloviation.

The Straw Man

As is tradition at the Values Voters Summit, Presidential and Vice-Presidential straw polls are taken. This year Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana came out on top in BOTH polls.

Presidential Poll
1. Mike Pence (24%)
2. Mike Huckabee (22%)
3. Mitt Romney (13%)
4. Newt Gingrich (10%)
5. Sarah Palin (7%)
6. Rick Santorum (5%)
7. Jim DeMint (5%)
8. Bobby Jindal (2%)
9. Mitch Daniels (2%)
10. Chris Christie (2%)
11. John Thune (2%)
12. Bob McDonnell (1%)
13. Marco Rubio (1%)
14. Paul Ryan (1%)
15. Haley Barbour (1%)
16. Ron Paul (1%)
17. Jan Brewer (1%)

Vice-Presidential Poll
1. Mike Pence (16%)
2. Sarah Palin (15%)
3. Rick Santorum (10%)
4. Paul Ryan (7%)
5. Jim DeMint (6%)
6. Mike Huckabee (6%)
7. Marco Rubio (6%)
8. Bobby Jindal (6%)
9. Bob McDonnell (4%)
10. Chris Christie (3%)
11. Mitt Romney (3%)
12. Newt Gingrich (3%)
13. Jan Brewer (3%)
14. John Thune (2%)
15. Mitch Daniels (1%)
16. Haley Barbour (1%)
17. Ron Paul (1%)

For the time being, let's ignore the cast of characters. Going down that road would take too much time and would make me a bit crazy. But look over the names and try to get in touch with your own sense of what is evoked with the sight of each name on the list.

What does this straw poll result mean?

Well for starters it means people at this event REALLY liked Mike Pence. If they had their way we'd have a Pence-Pence ticket, or maybe a Pence-Palin ticket in 2012. I suppose that's possible, but we should also expect to see a real serious challenge from Romney this time around. The crazy has not rubbed off on him as much as some of the other contenders. Compared with the rest on the wanabee's Romney seems downright reasonable. This wasn't his base. Participants at the summit represent a narrowly focused demographic. This group is Mike Pence's wheelhouse.

Pence currently serves in the third highest-ranking Republican Congressional leadership position as Chairman of the House Republican Conference. He's been a vocal supporter of Israel, calling them "America's most cherished ally". That's what he's FOR. As far I can tell, that's it. It seems like on every other issue it comes down more to opposition than advocacy.

He does advocate extending the Bush tax cuts but that's really more of an opposition to tax increases. Pence doesn't offer a way to pay for lost tax revenue however. (check him out on Meet The Press last month NOT answering that question.) I suppose, like his colleagues, he believes the tax cuts will magically pay for themselves. This WOULD be magical given there is no evidence of this happening in history, EVER.

He's been opposed to the recent health care reform legislation (calling for a total repeal), birth control (as he said this weekend to the Values Voters crowd: "... let's deny any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America."), same-sex marriage, stem-cell research, hate crime legislation, amnesty for illegal aliens, closing Guantanamo, setting a date for withdrawal from Iraq, the Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters, and online gambling. Just say no!

Pence is a self-described Christian-Conservative-Republican. In that order. His personal religious and moral views trump his political positions, and by extension may well outweigh his stance on constitutional protections established under current law. He holds firmly to the tenets of the 1994 Contract With America. So I guess in some sense he is FOR "the good old days". Remember to glory days of the mid-90's. The continuous skewering of the Clinton's. The government shut-down. It seems like only yesterday when Newt Gingrich was referring to Bill and Hillary as "the enemy of normal America". We don't have to try too hard to recall Newt's hyperbolic rhetoric, we're witnessing a virtual replay, hearing it all again with recent comments about Obama and his Kenyan anti-colonialism, whatever the fuck that means. But I digress. I'll return to the Newt-ster at another time. He deserves his own post. Hell, someone should write a biography on crazy-ass Uncle Newt.

In his speech to the Values Voter Summit, Pence makes the now tired argument opposing what he calls Obama tax increases. The fact is the Bush tax cuts were designed to sunset at the end of 2010. This does not equate to an Obama tax increase. Another obfuscation comes from Pence, or any of his Republican colleagues, conveniently omitting the fact that Bush didn't provide a way to pay for his tax cuts. The reduced tax revenue has contributed  to the deficit year after year. In addition, the tax cuts did NOT stimulate job growth during the Bush years, but again in some conjuring of magical tax-reducing power, tax cuts WILL lead to job growth now.

Pence attempts to saddle Obama with the creation of the, now historically high, gap between the richest and the poorest Americans. He doesn't say HOW it's Obama's fault. It just IS, okay! Obama made more poor people even poorer. When you say it with authority, people clap and nod. Throw a few Pelosi references in and you've got a winner! Run Mike Run!

With melodramatic, big-ending, flourish Pence engages the rapt and standing audience with a mythic tale of an America "engaged in a great moral battle for life, traditional marriage and religious liberty without apology." Wedgie! Values voters suck this shit up, with a straw, like the last bit at the bottom of the Slurpy cup, working to get every last drop.

There are two realities in play. The REAL reality, you know the one that's based on facts and the real world, and then there's the fantasized reality of a world Mike Pence and his supporters imagine to be lost, that must, at all costs be taken back. But there is an apparent contradiction in his closing remarks..."If we don't succeed in November, all that was once good and great in America could someday be gone!" WAIT A MINUTE! I thought it was already gone and that you had to take it back. Which is it? Is it gone, or not? Are we still good and great, or not? I'm confused!

Why Elections Matter

I found this article in the Wall Street Journal very compelling. It provides one more indicator, to me anyway, why American voters should prevent Republicans from retaking majority control of our government.

Here's a few selected excerpts:

• "... stagnant wage growth that made the past decade the worst for American families in at least half a century."
• "...Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008—the highest since 1994."
• " The inflation-adjusted income of the median household... fell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation."

This one is real chestnut:
"The oldest Americans endured last year better than their younger counterparts. Those 65 and above saw a substantial increase in real median income, up 5.8% for the group... largely because the fortunes of older workers are tied more to Social Security checks than the job market. Without Social Security income, the report showed, some 14 million people eligible for benefits would have fallen below the poverty line."

And so as I listen to the electioneering going on right now, what do Republicans want to do? Cut Social Security, privatize it, or raise the age requirement. This is their dumb-ass response for a system that IS NOT BROKE, and a system that kept 14 million people above the poverty line in the past decade.


Cut entitlement programs. Fuck the poor! End unemployment extensions for the lazy bastards! How Christian of them? It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that these guys have failed in their fiscal responsibility time and time again and then attempt to blame Democrats. What's clear is that the right-wing propaganda machine is effective, VERY effective. Too many Americans believe their "big government is the problem" BS.

The WSJ article goes on:
"The threshold for poverty in the U.S. in 2009 was a family of four earning $21,756. But this only takes into account monetary income, while omitting the many benefits that now form the backbone of the government efforts to lift the poor. Such programs include subsidized housing and the Earned Income Tax Credit.


The poverty rate "misses most of the programs that have been added or expanded in the last 20 years to reduce poverty," says Bruce Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago.
For instance, the government estimates if the food stamp program was counted, it would have lifted 3.6 million people above the poverty threshold last year.


Let's add up a few numbers here to summarize:
43.6 million below the poverty line
14.0 million kept above the line by Social Security
3.6 million kept above the line by food stamps

That's 61.2 million people, more than 1 in 5 Americans, 20% of us, and it doesn't include those getting extended unemployment benefits, or those who no longer have health insurance because they don't have a job, or other forms of government aid and welfare. All issues that Republicans perpetually oppose at every turn. It begs the question: What are the values of the so-called values voters?

Embrace Science And Realize A Better Future

Be skeptical but when you get the proof...accept the proof.

Science denial seems to be on the rise in America. Vaccine rates are falling. Anthropogenic climate change -  fuggedaboudit! Fear of big scary scientists is used by talking heads and fringe politicians to drive the illiterati back into the dark ages. People hate big government. The fear of "bigness" is applied everywhere these days. Fear The Man!

Denying real science has consequences. Failure to accept facts, may result in sickness, misery and death. Scientific research is a process. If we become too afraid to accept scientific advancement we become victims of our own idiotic choices.

Facts colliding with values creates tensions, whereby stubbornly held values can prevent an acceptance of facts. Science on its face has no morality. The application of science however, may have moral ramifications. There are times when the moral acceptance of specific scientific advances appears arbitrary. An example might be: stem cell research bad, laser guided bombs good.

Once facts are established, opinions about the validity of those facts should be excluded. Knowledge counts. Every opinion does not count. Good people are often distracted by the wrong things, the wrong ideas and loudly shouted opinions.

The behavior of the typical science denier follows certain patterns. First there is the challenge, regarding the adequacy of the scientific evidence. Never mind the scientific consensus, or that the challenge is made by an outsider, observer or rank amateur. Then there's the insubstantial evidence provided to counter the real data. This "evidence" is often provided covertly through interests bent on stopping, or forwarding legislation that will enrich their industry or business. The shills that eat this up often have no notion of the hidden agenda, they just buy it because they trust the guy that said it.

It is clear that those opposed to, or loudly arguing against, established scientific facts are uninformed, misinformed, selectively cherry picking data to reinforce preconceived notions or simply wing-nuts that like to listen to themselves rant. Their arguments can be silly, naive, specious or pseudo-scientific.

The Obama administration is embracing science and technology and appointing scientific experts to senior cabinet positions. This will result in better outcomes than we have seen in the past through the appointment of industry and business leaders with conflicted interests and a dearth of expertise.   

   



   

 

 

 

I am in your debt

I just read  "The Halliburton Agenda", documenting the history of the company and their subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). I didn't realize how far back the relationship went between these contractors and the federal government. KBR grew in stature and prominence under LBJ starting with an over-priced dam project in Texas, military bases all over the place, Vietnam support facilities and NASA's Mission Control station in Houston. They fell on hard times after the cold war but re-surged when Clinton sent troops into Bosnia to support the UN peacekeepers. As we all know, in today's world Halliburton and KBR are inextricably linked to the war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

My interest was piqued by a few paragraphs in one of the last chapters of the book, describing how in the 80's and 90's Cheney and Rumsfeld worked in unison to slash the defense budget. This got me thinking about a comparison between defense spending, and spending in general under Republican and Democratic administrations. So I did a bit of research.

Today's Republicans like to hammer Obama about how he and the Democrats will spend America into oblivion. Despite the massive spending and borrowing over the Bush years, this argument still resonates. The battle for the hearts and minds of the voters is the identification of the Republican brand with fiscal conservatism.

When confronted with the failed fiscal performance of the previous 8 years, Republicans do everything but take responsibility. I watch the talking head shows a lot, probably too much, and one Republican talking point is resonating lately: Whatever the cause of our fiscal mess, it is not the fault of Republicans. It is Democrats who love to spend! It is the Democratic Congress!  ....and now in order to rescue the government, and our collective futures, we should allow lawmakers to cut Medicare and Social Security. I'm calling bullshit on this!

Some facts are in order:

In the '70s the Republican Party began its love affair with supply-side economics. Despite tax-cut rhetoric, (that is now party mantra) the true size of government is measured by spending. To cut taxes and keep spending, as Bush did, is not fiscally conservative, it is simply dishonest. The argument that Republicans are either the party committed to smaller government or to balanced budgets is complete fallacy. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are lying about this every time they appear on TV.

Looking over more than forty years of data available from OMB and the CBO, through twenty-four years of Republican leadership and sixteen years of Democrat leadership, the overall size of the federal government, as measured by total spending, has remained nearly constant at 20% of GDP.

During this period there has been the growth of mandatory spending programs (primarily Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) which have risen from 5.6% of GDP to 10.6% of GDP, and a 44% decline in discretionary spending (which is mainly defense and domestic spending).

• The biggest decline in discretionary spending came under Nixon as defense spending dropped significantly with the Vietnam War winding down. 
• Discretionary spending declined significantly under Clinton and modestly under Reagan.
• Under Jimmy Carter, overall discretionary spending was relatively flat (defense spending rose a bit, domestic spending fell). 
• Discretionary spending rose as a percentage of GDP under Ford and George W. Bush.

So that's all a bit dry and a bit muddled, but here's the zinger:

Discretionary domestic spending, declined under Carter and Clinton, while it rose under both Bush presidents.

The data on the public debt is clearer. The Republican Party's embrace of Friedman economic theory brought with it an acceptance of deficit spending and increased debt as "the price of growth", even if over the long-term the growth never led to a balanced budget.

• Fiscal deficits soared during the Reagan presidency, as tax cuts were implemented without reductions in federal spending. 
• The public debt doubled as a percentage of GDP during the Reagan-Bush years.
• During the Clinton years, shrinking deficits and ultimately budget surpluses contributed to a decline in public debt.
• Under George W. Bush, new tax cuts combined with war spending contributed to a renewed increase in the national debt.

Faced with the evidence that Republican presidents have left deficits and debt in their wake, supporters now insist that deficits are the fault of Congress, and particularly Congressional Democrats. But here again, the data tells a different story. Despite the desire to pin the fiscal mess on Congress, the primary driver of fiscal outcomes is the recommended administration budget.

The evidence shows that the fiscal culprits are NOT the over-spending Democrats. Congressional over-spending during years when Democrats controlled the government averaged 0.4%-0.6%. During years when Republicans controlled the government overspending averaged 2.3%-4.6%.

No doubt campaigning Republicans will continue to push the tax and spend attacks on Obama and attempt to link all Democrats to this falsehood. But the fact is that both parties spend. The difference is whether they pay for their spending, or borrow the money and postpone the pain.

Now, as the day of reckoning is coming closer and our fiscal obligations are weighing heavier, the dishonesty of the Republican leadership, when discussing the budget over the past quarter century, should be discussed openly and honesty. Because, all politics aside, it's time to fix the problem.

I often receive forwarded emails expressing conservative America's dislike for Obama, his policies, or Democrats in general. Many of those emails are fearful and built on false premises. What I'm presenting here is a story told by a review of the facts. Look it up yourself. For decades, most of my adult life, Republican politicians have lied about their fiscal stewardship and steered us into one disaster after another, all the while enriching themselves and their fat-cat contributors. The hypocrisy of it is self-evident and increasingly disturbing. There appears to be no moral or ethical compass in place to guide the Republican party. They are driven by outside interests. Those interests are not mine and they're not yours.  

Being conservative. What does it mean?

A friend regularly forwards me the latest right-wing outrage emails. The most recent one highlighted the perceived hypocrisy of  Al Gore and others preaching to Americans that they need to "cram their families into hybrid cars to go shopping for compact fluorescent light bulbs to save the planet while they themselves continue to live large".

This got me thinking about the definition of the word conservative, and the hypocrisy of this word being used to self-define the political right. It is to be disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., and to limit change; to behave in a way that is cautiously moderate or purposefully low, having the power or tendency to conserve; preservative.

In a political context, conservatism is more about preserving some ideal society that has never actually existed. An illusory pursuit of "the way things were". Policies forwarded by today's conservatives such as laissez-faire economics, religious conservatism and militarism are not good for America or the world in general. The proof of these failed ideas is overwhelming. "Free market" economic philosophy has caused financial harm of biblical proportion. Militarism for it's own sake has also been disastrous. Military spending robs the nation of resources (financial and human), well beyond any single line item in the budget and it's certainly arguable that recent military action has not made us "more safe".

We need a military for defensive purposes, but we also need to dismantle the Iron Triangle. Through government channels, created by the Pentagon, entire industries have been developed to funnel taxpayer money to private companies whose very existence relies on making more war. Socialized warfare in the guise of a strong national defense. It is a blatant hypocrisy.

Religious conservatism is the right of every individual, not something to be put upon us by moralists. Your family, your church and your locale are your business. Mine is my business. A good example of the over-reach of religiously conservative politicians defying the notion of individual liberty is the all out war to deny constitutional equal protections by defining marriage as the relationship between one man and one woman (thereby prohibiting same-sex marriage). Eventually this issue will reach the Supreme Court, The Constitution will prevail and federally mandated equal rights protections will extend to same sex marriage.

One particular element of Libertarian conservatism is more in line with The Constitution and may be palatable to our society if adopted honestly by conservative politicians. The idea that government should not have a role in defending moral values. It would be refreshing to hear conservatives advocating a hands-off approach by the government, where social values are concerned.

Individuals and businesses can and should make their own decisions, so long as they do not harm others. This simple principle should be the provisional measuring stick. Harm others and your freedom to serve your own interests must be checked.