Bakley's Blog

Words from my life South of the Border in Mexico City for friends and family. I intend to post artcles and other things that are funny or interesting. I am a huge soccer fan, like to cook and am currently consumed by politics. I work in finance and am busy trying to get my Spanish to the next level. Hope you enjoy.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

My Favorite Topic at the Moment

We can never insure 100% of the population against 100% of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.


-FDR

BUT we should, as James Carville says, Propose not just Oppose.

Former Clinton aid and current DLC President, Bruce Reed had some good thoughts:

We need to show we're serious about finding a sensible solution in addition to stopping his crazy one. I don't think Bush can pull this off, but the best way to stop Bush from passing a bad plan is to point out what's wrong with it and show what a good plan would look like.


More on Social Security

My comeback to any talk of better returns on the market and privatization are these:

1) Who gets better prices from brokers? You and me with our thousands or the Social Security Administration with 1.7 trillion. Think Wal-Mart and suppliers.

2) It is called Social SECURITY for a reason. We should not subject people nearing retirement to fears surrounding the market. It would have been great to retire in 2000 but what about 2002. You may have thought twice seeing your personal account plumet.

3) Despite the Republicans willful ignoring of this, it is a fact that people do not always act in their own best interests. People are not experts in everything and are liable to make mistakes. That is fine in life but not in Social SECURITY.

Look to Sweden where people that should be thinking of capital preservation and current income (older people) have used their Social Security personal saving account to lever up on high tech growth stuff. Well when 2001-2003 comes along that is a very bad decision for someone in their 60's. People are too swayed by trends to make good decisions all the time.

We should have something for the elderly and the disabled that is secure so they stay off welfare and, more importantly, have decency and dignity in old age.

My grandmother is a signature beneficiary of Social Security. She and my Pop-Pop were working class FDR dems and she bought into the system hook line and sinker. Well good for her because it worked. She is in her mid eighties and has been able to live for the last 20 years with financial strength due to her husband's union pension and Social Security. She is an intelligent and wise person but i am not sure she would have made the best investment decisions if left to her own devices. Throw in brokers fees and what have you and I fear for what she would have experienced.

In Mexico and many other countries, old people must live with their grown children because there are no savings and there is no Social Security. In the US we moved away from this model a long time ago and we owe it to the people that came before us to provide dignity and security for our seniors.

I wish Bush was intelligent enough and had the pelotas to tackle what needs reforming: Medicare and health care in general. That seems to be the real crisis.

Domestic WMD

So the Washington Post has jumped into the fray and helped to point out the administration's lies and scare tactics.
President Bush plans to reactivate his reelection campaign's network of donors and activists to build pressure on lawmakers to allow workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market, according to Republican strategists.[...]The campaign will use Bush's campaign-honed techniques of mass repetition, never deviating from the script and using the politics of fear to build support -- contending that a Social Security financial crisis is imminent when even Republican figures show it is decades away.

This whole thing has gotten me riled up, but my preliminry feeling is along the lines of "fool me once..." We have been down this road before and look where it led us. I think public support for this is not good and the second time around it will be a lot harder to panic people. The system at worst needs some adjustments not overhaul.

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Social Security

An editorial in the NYTimes today by Krugman basically says what I and many others have been saying which is that the Bush team is trying its tested Iraq tactics with Social Security. Exaggerate, lie and create a sense of panic and pending crisis to push its agenda.

This administration thinks that widespread deception and lies - coupled with undue pressure and coersion on non-elected civil servants (CIA analysts to Social Security Actuaries) is justified so they achieve their goals.

Well. I think the dems need to look at this thing like the Republicans looked at Clinton and Healthcare except this time Bush will not have time to recover. We cannot jump too fast or seem to eager to torpedo him. This country is on the Republicans side at this time, so see the other good NYTimes Op-Ed for more color.


Monday, January 17, 2005

Rep. Charles Rangel - I am proud to know

That he is my voice in Congress.

Text from a letter written to constituents on Dec. 29 2004.
You can reach him at CONTACT: Emile Milne (202) 225-4365


MAYBE NEXT YEAR
by Congressman Charles B. Rangel

WASHINGTON, December 29, 2004 -- As we close out the year 2004 with a catastrophic earthquake and tidal wave in Asia, we are reminded of the power of nature and the frailty of humankind. Even as we mourn for the tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters who have perished in that natural disaster, I remember, with bitter sadness, the calamities wrought on our nation by the deliberate actions of our leaders.

It has been nearly two years now since President Bush and his henchmen in the Administration moved to implement a plan to invade Iraq by exploiting the anger and fear born of the Nine-Eleven calamity. Iraq and Saddam Hussein were made the scapegoats for the terrorist attack. Americans were harangued by the President and Vice President, Secretary of Defense and State, and the National Security Advisor with warnings of the imminent threat of Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction and nuclear capability. None of it was true.

Whether the real motive for the invasion was domination of Middle East oil reserves, or an insane strategy to protect Israel, Americans were distracted by a pack of lies. In the meantime, the President's allies in Congress raided the U.S. treasury, yielding massive tax cuts for the rich while our poor and working-class soldiers were marched off to war.

We have paid a heavy price for the President's war of choice: 1 million troops deployed overall, 300,000 of them more than once; 1,325 killed, 100 of them on their second tours, 145 of them National Guardsmen or Reserves; 10,000 wounded in combat; 15,000 injured in battlefield accidents, 12,000 of them too severely to return to the front. As of last October, by one estimate, 160 have lost limbs; 200, all or part of their eyesight; and hundreds more have suffered head and spinal chord injuries.

In Upper Manhattan, we have lost Marine Staff Sgt. Riayan Tejeda, a 26-year-old father of two young children, in a battle in Baghdad on April 11, 2003. Dozens more, including members of our beloved 369th National Guard Regiment, have been placed in harm's way in Iraq. Some are grandparents, and most have left behind families who never expected they would be called on to sacrifice yet again for their country. In New York State, we have lost at least 45 dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amid all of this no one has been asked to make any personal sacrifice or contribution. The brave and loyal troops and their families are given lip-service for their patriotism, while they continue to bear the burden of war as well as the economic cost of President Bush's policies.
The war's projected cost into next year is expected to reach $200 billion. The nearly $130 billion expended so far could have paid for 19 million children to attend a year in Head Start, or hired 2.5 million additional teachers, built 1.3 million housing units, or fully funded worldwide AIDS programs for 14 years.

But the biggest financial cost to Americans is the President's tax cuts. Drastic reductions in government revenues have turned a budget surplus at the start of the Bush Administration into a massive deficit and increase in the national debt, all of which will be passed down to our children and grandchildren. This decimation of the nation's wealth did nothing to stimulate jobs, as was advertised by the President. The highest income households benefited most, while Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, programs vital to the poor and middle-class, were put at risk. Where is the outrage?

While the number of children living in poverty increased by nearly 1 million to 13 million last year, while 36 million people lived below the poverty line, while half of the Black men in New York City were unemployed, where was the outrage? The silence of the churches, the synagogues and mosques in the midst of this assault on the poor and suffering borders on hypocrisy when pronouncements over same sex marriage take precedence over Matthew's admonition of compassion for the least of our brothers and sisters.

Maybe, someone has asked where you were and what you did during the struggles of Civil Rights Movement. Maybe you were too young to have been involved. Someday, someone else may ask, what were you doing when Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest were spreading war in the Middle East, sacrificing our children, and starving the poor.

Maybe we can spend next year doing something about it.

Social Security

Okay so i have been trying to gather info on this important topic for a few days now and really like the NYTimes article from the weekend. The takeaways are these:

-This is another case of Bush and Team's scare tactics (think of a Domestic WMD) to get us to do something that is harmful to ourselves.

-Since the beginning, the Social Security Program has been well thought out and not mismanaged like the neocons would have us believe. For example the actuaries on FDR's committe in 1934 predicted that the retiree proportion of the population would be 12.65% in 1990. They were wrong but conservatively. The actual number was 12.49%.

-Look at the UK and their Privatization of National Insurance. Costs are high (fees to brokers) and the system truly is bordering on crisis. Many pundits in the UK are now calling for a revamp of the system. Their model: The New Deal Social Security System.

So I urge everyone to do something. We New Yorkers have two important people in the fight against thes scare tactics.

Hon. Charles Schumer is on the Senate Finance Committee
Hon. Charles Rangel is on the House Ways and Means Committee

Anything Social Security will have to pass through these committees first. Contact them as I have and let them know what you think. Protect our benefits and those of our fellow citizens.




Thursday, January 06, 2005

Check out TheJaker's blog

My friend Colin has some real good stuff this morning.


Check it out.

Gonzales

I could write a diatribe but the facts HERE and the opinon of Maureen Dowd HERE do it better. He is (like many in the current administration) arrogant, wreckless and extremely close to George W. Bush. Clinton had prominant Republicans in his cabinet, Bush wants none of it - he prefers to live in his own self-created fantasy world.

Distressing. The impact our torture has had is grave in parts of the world not defined as Red or Blue states. It is way beyond a slap in the face to Muslims and others to see people being tortured by the "bullies" in the US. It is a call to arms for terrorists and extremists.

Bush and his team have made the world less safe through their wrecklessness and arrogance.

Listen to the hearings
 
There Is No Crisis: Protecting the Integrity of Social Security