Some GOP voters must believe in faith-based Soc. Sec. privatization

Yahoo reports on how many Republicans are sniffing the BushCo Kool-Aid before drinking, thinking it smells funny, and…

Still signing on the dotted line!

Republican Michael Cardwell, a land-use planner in Washington state, did the math. He would retire with $11,000 in his account, plus maybe $900 more in investment gains if all went well on the stock market.
"Wow," Cardwell, 50, said with a laugh. "I may get one additional paycheck, thank you very much." Nonetheless, he said he will support the president.

To borrow a term from Atrios, this guy’s my wanker of the day.

But he’s closely followed by Marilyn Donnelly.

Donnelly, a 46-year-old nurse on Florida's central Atlantic coast, said that with luck a personal account could grow substantially, and she relishes the opportunity to give it a try. (Emphasis added.)

These are the type of hanging-on-to the-middle-class by their fingernails folks, or dreaming bigger dreams folks, who never understand the laws of statistics, who think the slot machine on a dry run is “due” to win, who think that all lottery events are one big event so they’re eventually “due” to win, and so forth.

Can I have Greg Mankiw’s crack, or whatever he’s on?

Or, how to be both deceitful and nutbar on Social Security privatization

Former Bush Council of Economic Advisors chair Gregory Mankiw is a walking object lesson.

In a column in The New Republic , he manages to pull out just about every conservative canard about liberals from class warfare on down.

Take a look at a few doozies:

“Why are liberals in Congress (and the liberal NEW REPUBLIC, for that matter) so appalled that Bush would propose moving the public retirement system in the same direction?”
The liberal New Republic? Does he really believe that? Or is he that full of bullshit about a mag that hasn’t been liberal for a generation?

“The second reason the left hates personal accounts is that, over the long term, they could destroy one of its favorite battle cries: the alleged conflict between evil capitalists and oppressed workers.”
Don’t you just love the way a conservative like Mankiw launches a pre-emptive class war strike by accusing liberals of class war?

“After workers develop an equity stake in corporate America, they will start watching CNBC and the ‘Nightly Business Report.’”
Yeah, right. You try to get Bubba to turn off NASCAR, or The Playboy Channel, to watch a stock ticker, Greg, that’s the day Bubba breaks your fricking arm.

“The third reason for the left's opposition to personal accounts is simple paternalism. … To be sure, the paternalists raise a valid concern — some segments of the population are not economically sophisticated —but this is not so much an argument against personal accounts as a reason why we need to get the details right.”
Now he takes the class warfare jujitsu into paternalism, then adds in the insinuation that only Republicans can tell the story right, and are doing so now.

“There should be limits on how much risk people can take in their portfolios, especially as they approach retirement. There should be requirements that people annuitize enough of their accumulation upon retirement to ensure they are kept out of poverty for the rest of their lives.”
How much more Big Government can you get? Is SSA going to have an S-agent knocking at your door if you don’t invest the way the government says? Where’s the “ownership society”?

“Opponents of Bush's proposal say that funding personal accounts will require irresponsibly large increases in the budget deficit. This argument, however, is mostly fatuous. For one thing, the president is proposing to phase in the new system gradually.”
So that just means we’ll gradually phase in irresponsibly large increases in the budget deficit.

“Some economists go so far as to suggest that the borrowing to finance personal accounts is an advantage of the proposed reform.”
Now this is the hat trick — Republicans as (unconfessed) Keynesians.

Buffalo professor gets a piece of my mind

University of Buffalo professor John Della Contrada and Isaac Ehrlich claim Social Security causes delayed marriage and lower fertility rates.

The report, based on a paper by Ehrlich posted here, should fool nobody, as Ehrlich has worked with the University of Chicago’s Gary Becker on privatization and was a former economics professor there himself.

I responded to Dell Contrada, as his link was on the U. Buff story, and through him to Ehrlich:

Mr. Ehrlich, you have either unwittingly fallen for, or else willfully engaged in, a classic "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy by claiming a causal correlation from an apparent statistical correlation between delayed marriage and social security-type benefits.

Given sociological trends around the world over the last century or two, I could make many similar nonsense conclusions:

1. Electric lighting causes delayed marriage.
2. Fewer people farming in a country causes delayed marriage
3. Increased mechanization causes delayed marriage
Etc., etc.

Given your former professorate at the University of Chicago and work with Gary Becker, I have no doubt your engaging in such illogic on the economics of Social Security was willful, perverse, and academically unethical.

Patriot Act gets official constitutional rebuke

In a lawsuit involving the ACLU just now made public, a federal judge in New York has ruled the Internet snoop and search provisions of the Patriot Act violate both the First and Fourth Amendments.

Here’s the key graf from the AP story:

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero of New York ruled in September that the law violates the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and the secrecy clause violates the First Amendment because it is a prior restraint on speech.

Morning News lets N Tex Congress peddle Soc Sec malarky

The Dallas Morning News devoted a full editorial page to letting Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, along with all area Representatives (two declined) to speak on Social Security.

Sen. Hutchison and Reps. Hall, Hensarling, Sam Johnson, Sessions bear watching. Some samples:

Hutchison:
"(Bush's) changes may result in some initial costs, but those pale in comparison to the status quo. According to the Social Security trustees, the cost of inaction is more than $10 trillion and escalates by $600 billion with each passing year."
NOTE: Bush plan's startup cost, and outgoing costs, are nowhere mentioned for context; claim of SS trustees $10 trillion + $600 billion are nowhere explained or put into context.

"First and foremost, current and near retirees (emphasis added) should know that I am committed to completely preserving the benefits they have been promised."
NOTE: The usual weaseling.

Cornyn:
"There is no question Social Security is currently on the road to bankruptcy."
Yes there is.

"One of the more promising options is personal accounts."
NOTE: "Private" still verboten

"Savings earned cold be passed on to children and grandchildren."
NOTE: Do tell, Senator? That's not what I've heard from any Bush plan. It's "you die, you lose it."

Rep Joe Barton:
"I am committed to taking action to strengthening the Social Security system for generations to come, while fulfilling the promises made to current retirees and those nearing retirement. ... I would not support any plan that would take away Social Security checks from our senior citizens."
NOTE: "Strengthening" - the spin word. Again, the divide and conquer with the retirees and near retirees.

"By investing through a partially private Social Security system now..."
NOTE: Didn't he read the WH memo?

Rep. Chet Edwards:
"We should strengthen Social Security, not privatize it."
NOTE: Nuff said. ... but??

"By working in good faith, Congress and the administration can forge a bipartisan plan to protect Social Security without privatizing it."
NOTE: Watch out for that bait and switch, Chet.

Rep. Ralph Hall:
"Rearranging the cap on taxable income is a suggestion I examined 10 years ago and was told by actuaries at the Social Security Administration that it didn't raise enough money."
NOTE: "Rearrange"? That could mean anything from eliminating it to raising it 2 percent. And who told you that, and what were the details.

"I would also support adjusting ... the retirement age."
NOTE: To what? 70? 72?

"Additionally, we could reconsider aid to foreign countries that vote against the United States 90 percent of the time in the United Nations."
NOTE: Is it any wonder that the typical citizen thinks foreign aid makes up 10-20 percent of the federal budget when a bozo congressman like this aids, abets and perpetuates that myth? Geez, the Dems should have booted him from the party a decade before he jumped ship himself. (He was the only Democrat to vote for all 10 items in the Contract on America.)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling:
"Unforunately, due to changing demographics, Social Security as we know it will not be there for future generations."
NOTE: Scare tactic No. 1.

"Without reforms, today's younger workers will face either a 27 percent benefit cut or a 36 percent tax increase by the time they retire."
NOTE: What age in specific? Whence these figures?

"We can give younger Americans the freedom to build their own family nest egg."
NOTE: First, the spin words; second, the implied family portability of accounts, not in the original Bush plan.

"By protecting the remaining Social Security surplus from Washington..."
NOTE: Deception. Didn't you vote for the Bush budgets, Congressman?

"... We could substantially fund any transition costs."
NOTE: We'll rob Peter to pay Paul and finish gutting Social Security in the process. How ingenious.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson:
"Social Security is not in crisis as the president suggests. ... It does and will continue to have (emphasis added) a proven record."
Amen.

Rep. Sam Johnson:
"You keep 6.2 percent to invest in a personal account."
NOTE: Out-Bushing Bush on the startup -- a full one-half of the 12.4 percent.

"The government gets 6.2 percent to meet its obligations to those over 55."
NOTE: Again, the divide and conquer.

"You also get back the amount you already paid in." (Emphasis added.)
NOTE: What the hell? Is he saying, "Let's cash the system out right now?"

Rep. Pete Sessions:
"Anticipating future cuts in Social Security, Galveston County employees voted overwhelmingly in 1981 to opt out of Social Security and create an alternative plan at virtually no risk to beneficiaries. This alternative plan pools employee money and lends it to a top-rate financial institution in return for guaranteed rates."
NOTE: This is so different from the Bush plan that I'm surprised Karl Rove himself didn't write up this bait-and-switch.
The Bush plan does not: guarantee rates; lend money to financial institutions or invest in financial institutions in any way; pool risk through group rather than individual contributions or otherwise create shared risk.
Indeed, Sessions' plan sounds much like an idea discussed by some Democrats in the 1990s -- to have the government invest part of Social Security funds in something outside of Treasury bonds. Of course, Congressional Republicans shot it down.

James Baker: Global warming is real

Even James Baker is deserting President Bush on climate change, global warming and the need to look for and move to alternative energy sources.

Plus, he gave this speech in Houston. Wonder what the ’Ol Hammerhead, Tom DeLay, has to say about that one?

You have to wonder, with Baker's abundant Middle Eastern connections, if he doesn't also have some information on Hubbert's Peak, the peak in worldwide oil production detailed in “The End of Oil”.