Social Security Shocker: Propaganda works!
Every few months there?s a new mainstream media poll showing the American people believe Social Security is in ?crisis?. The latest comes today from ABC/Washington Post. However, what?s different about this poll is that, even though most commentary today follows the tried and true ?Social Security is in crisis? meme, this poll actually asks about the future ? not the present. That is a small difference with a big impact. Here?s the poll?s actual question:
Now, thinking about the Social Security system that mainly provides retirement income for senior citizens: If changes are not made, do you think the Social Security system is heading for a crisis down the road, or not?Yes No3/13/11* 81 153/13/05 71 23
So, while the use of the word crisis is ridiculous, given that what we?re actually talking about is a shortfall in the year 2037, the heart of this question shows that people understand we need to address Social Security ?down the road.? In fact, only 1% of those polled believed Social Security is in crisis now. That?s not a great return on investment for those who?ve spent decades trying to persuade Americans that Social Security won?t even exist in (you fill in the blank) number of years, and the$1billion dollar nationwide crisis campaign launched by Wall Streeter, Pete Peterson.
But of course, it?s 81%…Social Security?Crisis which fill the headlines today while the real news is buried or completely ignored. This poll shows (once again) that Americans continue to support raisingor eliminating the payroll tax cap above any other of the reforms touted by fiscal hawks who prefer benefit cuts above all else. However, rather than highlight this Washington disconnect, the Washington Post celebrates the fact that the numbers of people willing to accept benefit cuts (which is still less than a majority and less thanthose who oppose benefit cuts) has grown.Why wouldn?t Americans, who?ve been served a steady diet of fear mongering and chicken-little crisis calls about Social Security for their entire lifetime, and who are now being told by fiscal hawks in Washington ?cut it or lose it?, choose to cut it rather than lose it? The American people understand the vital role Social Security plays in their families? lives; they would do anything to preserve the program. So we say — don?t be fooled by a false choice provided by people whose true goal isn?t to provide long-term solvency for Social Security but rather cutting benefits to avoid having to pay what?s owed to American workers.As Mark Miller at Reuters correctly points out:
Republicans repeat the big lies about Social Security so often that people start to believe them; then, politicians point to the predictable poll results to justify the policies they want to pursue.
What polls like this one actually prove is that propaganda works. Don’t forget, there was also a time when most Americans believed there were WMD?s in Iraq and look how that turned out.So while millions of dollars are now being spent to fuel this Social Security spin cycle in Washington ? it?s really up to all of us to ensure America?s middle class doesn?t get hung out to dry.
Budget Showdown and Social Security
Failure to pass either the GOP or Democratic Budget proposals in the Senate yesterday leaves agencies like the Social Security Administration in a bit of fiscal limbo. Oddly, that limbo is still better than the alternative supported by the majority of GOP Senators yesterday which would cut $1.7 billion from the already underfunded agency.According to Social Security Administration head (and Bush appointee), Michael Astrue, the GOP budget would have a devastating long-term impact on the agency and beneficiaries would immediately feel the effects of a government shutdown, if we face one again on the 18th:House Ways and Means Democratic staff provided this analysis of the House GOP Budget provision:
- As many as 400,000 people nationwide would not have their retirement, survivors, and Medicare applications processed this year, resulting in a large backlog of unprocessed retirement and survivor claims for the first time in SSA history;
- As many as 290,000 people nationwide would not have their initial disability benefit applications processed, which means disabled workers, who already wait months for their applications to be processed, will wait an average of 30 days longer.
Recommended Reading for Middle Class Americans
Thanks to Richard Eskow with Campaign for America’s Future for this wonderful piece on Huffington Post.
Contempt
“Clueless.” “Stupid.” “Middle-class welfare.” Sometimes a guy who likes facts and figures gets slapped in the face by reality, and apparently today’s my day. Several recent stories showed me how some of these “austerity economics” advocates in Washington really feel about the middle class. I guess I always knew it intellectually, but these stories made me feel it on a visceral level. They let me know exactly what these politicians and pundits feel toward me,my family, and the people I grew up with:Contempt.We’re not talking about lofty and imperious disdain, either. This isn’t the old-school,”look down your monocle with a lofty air” genteel antipathy once practiced by the gentlemen at the club. We’re talking about complete and utter contempt, a repugnance so white-hot it feels like it could melt your face off.Debts of a SalesmanHow else are we to interpret remarks like these from John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives? “People in Washington assume that Americans understand how big the problem is,” Boehner said of Social Security, “but most Americans don’t have a clue.” Boehner added, “”I think the president shrank from his responsibility to lead. He knows the numbers as well as we do.”The Wall Street Journal account of Boehner’s remarks goes on to quote Democratic Rep. Rob Andrews who, according the the Journal, said “tackling big problems would be tougher if the two sides criticized each other.” Rep. Andrews: “It’s impossible if the process begins with the parties attacking each other.”Then allow me, Rep. Andrews: Boehner’s remarks are profoundly insulting to the American people. Don’t worry about his attacks on the President, who can presumably take care of himself. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about.The Speaker said: “I think it’s incumbent on us, if we are serious about dealing with the big challenges, that we go out and help Americans understand how big the problem is that faces us … Once they understand how big the problem is, I think people will be more receptive to what the possible solutions may be.”The Speaker’s already on record with his recommended “deficit solution”: cuts to Social Security that could, according to the Speaker, help pay for America’s war. The Journal article reiterated that Boehner is “determined to offer a budget this spring that curbs Social Security and Medicare.”The most generous interpretation of Boehner’s remarks to the Wall Street Journal would be to assume that the Speaker is profoundly ignorant of the funding process for Social Security. But why can’t we believe that the Speaker is merely misguided, as comforting as that would be? Because he and his party pushed a tax cut through for the wealthiest Americans last year that would have paid for any expected Social Security shortfall for the next 75 years! Specifically, as Daniel Marans pointed out, “the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans is equivalent to the cost of filling Social Security’s 75-year shortfall. Both equal 0.7% of the GDP.”In other words, the Speaker doesn’t care about the deficit. Whatever “big challenges” we face financially are largely the making of his party’s policies on taxation, military spending, and — lest we forget — deregulation, which led to the trillion-dollar Wall Street crash and the BP oil spill. Fellow conservative David Frum has the Speaker pegged when he describes Boehner’s remarks this way – “Boehner: I can sell voters on benefit cuts.”That’s exactly right. What Boehner’s really saying is “I can make these rubes buy anything.” Have you ever met a really slick and utterly amoral salesman? There’s an uber-hustler personality that’s common to all salesmen of this type, whether he’s a Wall Street banker or a car salesman in Idaho. One of the most common characteristics of the super-salesman personality is a sense of utter superiority to your sales prospect — your mark. Boehner’s really saying “I can sell you on giving up your future for my rich clients, and I’ll make you love me for it.“And yes, we know that Boehner comes from humble beginnings. A lot of super-salesmen do. With this kind of personality, that background creates even more contempt. I rose above your little world, they say to themselves, but you never will. And as for those of us from middle-class or lower class backgrounds who think there are more important things in life than dedicating yourself to the pursuit of money and power … for John Boehner and his kind, we’re the biggest suckers of them all.Middle-Class Welfare QueensRobert Samuelson just doubled down on an amateurish insult to the American middle class by repeating his assertion that “Social Security is welfare.” He gets the economics of the issue completely wrong, but the real contempt comes through with his insistence that “We don’t call Social Security ‘welfare’ because it’s a pejorative term, and politicians don’t want to offend.”No. We don’t call Social Security “welfare” because that word, like all words, has a commonly accepted definition and Social Security doesn’t meet it. Whether you’re using the conversational definition (“aid in the form of necessities for those in need”) or the legal one (“government benefits distributed to impoverished persons to enable them to maintain a minimum standard of well-being”), the word doesn’t describe Social Security. Social Security doesn’t target the “impoverished” or “those in need” by design. Here’s the word Mr. Samuelson would have found had he done some research:Insurance. Social Security is a social insurance program, not a welfare program. And like any insurance program, it’s designed to pay benefits when an insured event happens: A car accident. A plane flight you had to cancel at the last minute. Your retirement. Insurance programs aren’t “means tested.” If you’ve paid your premium and the insured event takes place, you receive the benefit. And Samuelson’s argument that you should get back exactly what you put in is shown to be ludicrous when the proper word is used. I haven’t “gotten back what I paid in” on my car insurance. And I could die without ever collecting Social Security benefits. I’m not being ripped off, I’m being protected.Since he couldn’t be bothered to look up the definition of the word, Samuelson just made up his own: “Here is how I define a welfare program,” he writes. “First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it’s pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people’s own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits …” Leaving aside the misleading statement that Social Security “taxes one group to pay another,” what else could be considered “welfare” under the making-sh*t-up” Samuelson definition? Let’s see … Military paychecks. The President’s salary. The Senate dining room. The coffee they serve when junior Cabinet members meet with members of the press.Yes, Samuelson’s argument is that absurd, and the pejorative overtones of the word “absurd” are deliberate.Robert Samuelson’s essentially calling the American middle class, whose pension plan was funded through a government-managed trust fund, “welfare queens.”Contempt.Stupid. Greedy. Teat-Sucking.“You’ve got a country that is stupid, a government that is stupid,” said the always-quotable Alan Simpson today. What’s so stupid about us? Here’s Simpson’s explanation: “… (W)e’re always talking about the couple at the kitchen table–well, here it is: For every buck we spend, we borrow forty cents. If that isn’t stupid–we’ve got a country that is stupid, a government that is stupid, to borrow forty cents, not from your good old uncle Henry, but from the world.”We’ve already dissected the lame analogy that says our country’s spending is like a family’s budget. It isn’t – not even a little. But what really expresses Simpson’s contempt for the American public is this: The set of personal suggestions he put together with Erskine Bowles (after the Deficit Commission they co-chaired collapsed into deadlock and failure) actually proposes lowering the maximum income tax rate for for wealthy individuals and corporations. Like Boehner, Simpson thinks he’s found a bunch of suckers he can hoodwink in the American middle class.For the record, Simpson’s first name really is “Alan” and not “Abe,” although he shares the Simpsons character’s tendency to go off on foul-mouthed, insulting rants (in what’s an arguably ageist characterization). It was Abe – sorry, I mean Alan Simpson who sneered at the entire population of the United States by saying government programs were like “a cow with 310 million tits.” (That makes every one of us a “teat sucker.”) It was Simpson who insulted a representative for women – and a lot of other women, too – after she wrote about his comment. It was Simpson who called elderly Americans “greedy geezers.” It was Simpson who screamed at a female reporter in the 1990’s (she screamed back) and went off on an activist in a now-famous profanity-ridden video tantrum.And it’s Simpson who has now insulted younger Americans – the ones who would be most hurt by his draconian anti-Social Security proposals – with another logorrheic rant, this one against young Americans who, he says, are “walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man (presumably meaning Eminem) and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg.”It’s not funny anymore – not that it ever was. The typical DC elite’s response – “Oh, Alan’s being Alan again” – doesn’t cut it. This is vile, contemptible, hate-filled behavior with creepy scatological overtones. The crowd that loathes bloggers for the rude language of anonymous commenters embraces Simpson on a daily basis. Who in either party has said of Alan Simpson, “I can’t work with somebody so unpleasant, so close-minded, so rude, so uncooperative, and who clearly holds the public in such vile disregard?”I’ll make the answer easy for you: Nobody. Such is the arrogance of the Beltway insider, and such is alienation of Washington reality from the hard work and anguish of the American middle class. A Washington culture that prides itself on “bipartisan” civility – that is, politeness to fellow members of the elite – finds Simpson’s abuse of the American public perfectly acceptable.Like I was saying: Contempt.______________________(Dean Baker has an excellent piece on Samuelson that makes many of the same points, plus quite a few others, and which reinforces this point: “Social Security is a pension that is run through the government.”)Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future. This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.He can be reached at “[email protected].”Website: Eskow and Associates
Something to Remember
When someone standing in line at the grocery store…or at the bus stop…or even at your own dinner table tells you “we just can’t afford Social Security”,think of this article from Mother Jones which shows just how farour nation hascome inkeeping the rich richer, and working Americans poorer. Here is just one of their 11 charts showing thatA huge share of the nation’s economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.
| Can America really not afford an average $14,000 annual Social Security benefit contributed by the workers themselves? Really? |
What Will a Billion Dollars Buy You? : Redux
We first asked this question just over a year ago about multi-billionaire and anti-Social Security scold, Pete Peterson. Back then he had just started spending the fortune he’s promised to invest convincing Washington that Social Security is to blame for our fiscal woes. While he hasn’t spent the entire billion dollars yet, it’s clear he definitely owns a large share of the inside-the-Beltway thinking.
Here’s where some of that money has gone: millions to groups who deliver his anti-entitlement message as their own, a propagandist movie CNN airs as a legit documentary, a “news service” the Washington Post used without identifying it’s funder, (until called on it), “loaning” Peterson-paid staff to the President’s fiscal commission and now funding yet another seemingly bi-partisan, unaffiliated effort to keep the spinners spinning. Meet the new Moment of Truth Project, led by the New America Foundation which collected up to $999,999 from the Peterson foundation.
Claiming, “the era of deficit denial is over”, this project gives Fiscal Commission Chairs, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, new jobs now that the Commission has finished its work without issuing a final Committee report. The “Truth” Project’s kickoff event is a virtual who’s who of Washington fiscal hawks and commission members who voted in support of the Chairmen’s fiscal recommendations. Not surprisingly, those who voted against the Chairmen’s fiscal proposals were not invited to next week’s shindig.
So, Bowles and Simpson move from Presidential Commission Chairs to Peterson Foundation-funded advocates. The connections between these groups and the fiscal commission were shocking even in this era of pay-to-play politics. Maybe in that light, this is just an extension of that growing hand-in-glove relationship between those with a political mission and the money to sell it and those who have the power to deliver.
So, that’s what led us to ask the question again…What does a billion dollars buy you? Apparently, in Washington these days — quite a lot.
Social Security Shocker: Propaganda works!
Every few months there?s a new mainstream media poll showing the American people believe Social Security is in ?crisis?. The latest comes today from ABC/Washington Post. However, what?s different about this poll is that, even though most commentary today follows the tried and true ?Social Security is in crisis? meme, this poll actually asks about the future ? not the present. That is a small difference with a big impact. Here?s the poll?s actual question:
Now, thinking about the Social Security system that mainly provides retirement income for senior citizens: If changes are not made, do you think the Social Security system is heading for a crisis down the road, or not?Yes No3/13/11* 81 153/13/05 71 23
So, while the use of the word crisis is ridiculous, given that what we?re actually talking about is a shortfall in the year 2037, the heart of this question shows that people understand we need to address Social Security ?down the road.? In fact, only 1% of those polled believed Social Security is in crisis now. That?s not a great return on investment for those who?ve spent decades trying to persuade Americans that Social Security won?t even exist in (you fill in the blank) number of years, and the$1billion dollar nationwide crisis campaign launched by Wall Streeter, Pete Peterson.But of course, it?s 81%…Social Security?Crisis which fill the headlines today while the real news is buried or completely ignored. This poll shows (once again) that Americans continue to support raisingor eliminating the payroll tax cap above any other of the reforms touted by fiscal hawks who prefer benefit cuts above all else. However, rather than highlight this Washington disconnect, the Washington Post celebrates the fact that the numbers of people willing to accept benefit cuts (which is still less than a majority and less thanthose who oppose benefit cuts) has grown.Why wouldn?t Americans, who?ve been served a steady diet of fear mongering and chicken-little crisis calls about Social Security for their entire lifetime, and who are now being told by fiscal hawks in Washington ?cut it or lose it?, choose to cut it rather than lose it? The American people understand the vital role Social Security plays in their families? lives; they would do anything to preserve the program. So we say — don?t be fooled by a false choice provided by people whose true goal isn?t to provide long-term solvency for Social Security but rather cutting benefits to avoid having to pay what?s owed to American workers.As Mark Miller at Reuters correctly points out:
Republicans repeat the big lies about Social Security so often that people start to believe them; then, politicians point to the predictable poll results to justify the policies they want to pursue.
What polls like this one actually prove is that propaganda works. Don’t forget, there was also a time when most Americans believed there were WMD?s in Iraq and look how that turned out.So while millions of dollars are now being spent to fuel this Social Security spin cycle in Washington ? it?s really up to all of us to ensure America?s middle class doesn?t get hung out to dry.
Budget Showdown and Social Security
Failure to pass either the GOP or Democratic Budget proposals in the Senate yesterday leaves agencies like the Social Security Administration in a bit of fiscal limbo. Oddly, that limbo is still better than the alternative supported by the majority of GOP Senators yesterday which would cut $1.7 billion from the already underfunded agency.According to Social Security Administration head (and Bush appointee), Michael Astrue, the GOP budget would have a devastating long-term impact on the agency and beneficiaries would immediately feel the effects of a government shutdown, if we face one again on the 18th:House Ways and Means Democratic staff provided this analysis of the House GOP Budget provision:
- As many as 400,000 people nationwide would not have their retirement, survivors, and Medicare applications processed this year, resulting in a large backlog of unprocessed retirement and survivor claims for the first time in SSA history;
- As many as 290,000 people nationwide would not have their initial disability benefit applications processed, which means disabled workers, who already wait months for their applications to be processed, will wait an average of 30 days longer.
Recommended Reading for Middle Class Americans
Thanks to Richard Eskow with Campaign for America’s Future for this wonderful piece on Huffington Post.
Contempt
“Clueless.” “Stupid.” “Middle-class welfare.” Sometimes a guy who likes facts and figures gets slapped in the face by reality, and apparently today’s my day. Several recent stories showed me how some of these “austerity economics” advocates in Washington really feel about the middle class. I guess I always knew it intellectually, but these stories made me feel it on a visceral level. They let me know exactly what these politicians and pundits feel toward me,my family, and the people I grew up with:Contempt.We’re not talking about lofty and imperious disdain, either. This isn’t the old-school,”look down your monocle with a lofty air” genteel antipathy once practiced by the gentlemen at the club. We’re talking about complete and utter contempt, a repugnance so white-hot it feels like it could melt your face off.Debts of a SalesmanHow else are we to interpret remarks like these from John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives? “People in Washington assume that Americans understand how big the problem is,” Boehner said of Social Security, “but most Americans don’t have a clue.” Boehner added, “”I think the president shrank from his responsibility to lead. He knows the numbers as well as we do.”The Wall Street Journal account of Boehner’s remarks goes on to quote Democratic Rep. Rob Andrews who, according the the Journal, said “tackling big problems would be tougher if the two sides criticized each other.” Rep. Andrews: “It’s impossible if the process begins with the parties attacking each other.”Then allow me, Rep. Andrews: Boehner’s remarks are profoundly insulting to the American people. Don’t worry about his attacks on the President, who can presumably take care of himself. It’s the rest of us I’m worried about.The Speaker said: “I think it’s incumbent on us, if we are serious about dealing with the big challenges, that we go out and help Americans understand how big the problem is that faces us … Once they understand how big the problem is, I think people will be more receptive to what the possible solutions may be.”The Speaker’s already on record with his recommended “deficit solution”: cuts to Social Security that could, according to the Speaker, help pay for America’s war. The Journal article reiterated that Boehner is “determined to offer a budget this spring that curbs Social Security and Medicare.”The most generous interpretation of Boehner’s remarks to the Wall Street Journal would be to assume that the Speaker is profoundly ignorant of the funding process for Social Security. But why can’t we believe that the Speaker is merely misguided, as comforting as that would be? Because he and his party pushed a tax cut through for the wealthiest Americans last year that would have paid for any expected Social Security shortfall for the next 75 years! Specifically, as Daniel Marans pointed out, “the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans is equivalent to the cost of filling Social Security’s 75-year shortfall. Both equal 0.7% of the GDP.”In other words, the Speaker doesn’t care about the deficit. Whatever “big challenges” we face financially are largely the making of his party’s policies on taxation, military spending, and — lest we forget — deregulation, which led to the trillion-dollar Wall Street crash and the BP oil spill. Fellow conservative David Frum has the Speaker pegged when he describes Boehner’s remarks this way – “Boehner: I can sell voters on benefit cuts.”That’s exactly right. What Boehner’s really saying is “I can make these rubes buy anything.” Have you ever met a really slick and utterly amoral salesman? There’s an uber-hustler personality that’s common to all salesmen of this type, whether he’s a Wall Street banker or a car salesman in Idaho. One of the most common characteristics of the super-salesman personality is a sense of utter superiority to your sales prospect — your mark. Boehner’s really saying “I can sell you on giving up your future for my rich clients, and I’ll make you love me for it.“And yes, we know that Boehner comes from humble beginnings. A lot of super-salesmen do. With this kind of personality, that background creates even more contempt. I rose above your little world, they say to themselves, but you never will. And as for those of us from middle-class or lower class backgrounds who think there are more important things in life than dedicating yourself to the pursuit of money and power … for John Boehner and his kind, we’re the biggest suckers of them all.Middle-Class Welfare QueensRobert Samuelson just doubled down on an amateurish insult to the American middle class by repeating his assertion that “Social Security is welfare.” He gets the economics of the issue completely wrong, but the real contempt comes through with his insistence that “We don’t call Social Security ‘welfare’ because it’s a pejorative term, and politicians don’t want to offend.”No. We don’t call Social Security “welfare” because that word, like all words, has a commonly accepted definition and Social Security doesn’t meet it. Whether you’re using the conversational definition (“aid in the form of necessities for those in need”) or the legal one (“government benefits distributed to impoverished persons to enable them to maintain a minimum standard of well-being”), the word doesn’t describe Social Security. Social Security doesn’t target the “impoverished” or “those in need” by design. Here’s the word Mr. Samuelson would have found had he done some research:Insurance. Social Security is a social insurance program, not a welfare program. And like any insurance program, it’s designed to pay benefits when an insured event happens: A car accident. A plane flight you had to cancel at the last minute. Your retirement. Insurance programs aren’t “means tested.” If you’ve paid your premium and the insured event takes place, you receive the benefit. And Samuelson’s argument that you should get back exactly what you put in is shown to be ludicrous when the proper word is used. I haven’t “gotten back what I paid in” on my car insurance. And I could die without ever collecting Social Security benefits. I’m not being ripped off, I’m being protected.Since he couldn’t be bothered to look up the definition of the word, Samuelson just made up his own: “Here is how I define a welfare program,” he writes. “First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it’s pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people’s own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits …” Leaving aside the misleading statement that Social Security “taxes one group to pay another,” what else could be considered “welfare” under the making-sh*t-up” Samuelson definition? Let’s see … Military paychecks. The President’s salary. The Senate dining room. The coffee they serve when junior Cabinet members meet with members of the press.Yes, Samuelson’s argument is that absurd, and the pejorative overtones of the word “absurd” are deliberate.Robert Samuelson’s essentially calling the American middle class, whose pension plan was funded through a government-managed trust fund, “welfare queens.”Contempt.Stupid. Greedy. Teat-Sucking.“You’ve got a country that is stupid, a government that is stupid,” said the always-quotable Alan Simpson today. What’s so stupid about us? Here’s Simpson’s explanation: “… (W)e’re always talking about the couple at the kitchen table–well, here it is: For every buck we spend, we borrow forty cents. If that isn’t stupid–we’ve got a country that is stupid, a government that is stupid, to borrow forty cents, not from your good old uncle Henry, but from the world.”We’ve already dissected the lame analogy that says our country’s spending is like a family’s budget. It isn’t – not even a little. But what really expresses Simpson’s contempt for the American public is this: The set of personal suggestions he put together with Erskine Bowles (after the Deficit Commission they co-chaired collapsed into deadlock and failure) actually proposes lowering the maximum income tax rate for for wealthy individuals and corporations. Like Boehner, Simpson thinks he’s found a bunch of suckers he can hoodwink in the American middle class.For the record, Simpson’s first name really is “Alan” and not “Abe,” although he shares the Simpsons character’s tendency to go off on foul-mouthed, insulting rants (in what’s an arguably ageist characterization). It was Abe – sorry, I mean Alan Simpson who sneered at the entire population of the United States by saying government programs were like “a cow with 310 million tits.” (That makes every one of us a “teat sucker.”) It was Simpson who insulted a representative for women – and a lot of other women, too – after she wrote about his comment. It was Simpson who called elderly Americans “greedy geezers.” It was Simpson who screamed at a female reporter in the 1990’s (she screamed back) and went off on an activist in a now-famous profanity-ridden video tantrum.And it’s Simpson who has now insulted younger Americans – the ones who would be most hurt by his draconian anti-Social Security proposals – with another logorrheic rant, this one against young Americans who, he says, are “walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man (presumably meaning Eminem) and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg.”It’s not funny anymore – not that it ever was. The typical DC elite’s response – “Oh, Alan’s being Alan again” – doesn’t cut it. This is vile, contemptible, hate-filled behavior with creepy scatological overtones. The crowd that loathes bloggers for the rude language of anonymous commenters embraces Simpson on a daily basis. Who in either party has said of Alan Simpson, “I can’t work with somebody so unpleasant, so close-minded, so rude, so uncooperative, and who clearly holds the public in such vile disregard?”I’ll make the answer easy for you: Nobody. Such is the arrogance of the Beltway insider, and such is alienation of Washington reality from the hard work and anguish of the American middle class. A Washington culture that prides itself on “bipartisan” civility – that is, politeness to fellow members of the elite – finds Simpson’s abuse of the American public perfectly acceptable.Like I was saying: Contempt.______________________(Dean Baker has an excellent piece on Samuelson that makes many of the same points, plus quite a few others, and which reinforces this point: “Social Security is a pension that is run through the government.”)Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future. This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.He can be reached at “[email protected].”Website: Eskow and Associates
Something to Remember
When someone standing in line at the grocery store…or at the bus stop…or even at your own dinner table tells you “we just can’t afford Social Security”,think of this article from Mother Jones which shows just how farour nation hascome inkeeping the rich richer, and working Americans poorer. Here is just one of their 11 charts showing thatA huge share of the nation’s economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.
| Can America really not afford an average $14,000 annual Social Security benefit contributed by the workers themselves? Really? |
What Will a Billion Dollars Buy You? : Redux
We first asked this question just over a year ago about multi-billionaire and anti-Social Security scold, Pete Peterson. Back then he had just started spending the fortune he’s promised to invest convincing Washington that Social Security is to blame for our fiscal woes. While he hasn’t spent the entire billion dollars yet, it’s clear he definitely owns a large share of the inside-the-Beltway thinking.
Here’s where some of that money has gone: millions to groups who deliver his anti-entitlement message as their own, a propagandist movie CNN airs as a legit documentary, a “news service” the Washington Post used without identifying it’s funder, (until called on it), “loaning” Peterson-paid staff to the President’s fiscal commission and now funding yet another seemingly bi-partisan, unaffiliated effort to keep the spinners spinning. Meet the new Moment of Truth Project, led by the New America Foundation which collected up to $999,999 from the Peterson foundation.
Claiming, “the era of deficit denial is over”, this project gives Fiscal Commission Chairs, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, new jobs now that the Commission has finished its work without issuing a final Committee report. The “Truth” Project’s kickoff event is a virtual who’s who of Washington fiscal hawks and commission members who voted in support of the Chairmen’s fiscal recommendations. Not surprisingly, those who voted against the Chairmen’s fiscal proposals were not invited to next week’s shindig.
So, Bowles and Simpson move from Presidential Commission Chairs to Peterson Foundation-funded advocates. The connections between these groups and the fiscal commission were shocking even in this era of pay-to-play politics. Maybe in that light, this is just an extension of that growing hand-in-glove relationship between those with a political mission and the money to sell it and those who have the power to deliver.
So, that’s what led us to ask the question again…What does a billion dollars buy you? Apparently, in Washington these days — quite a lot.