Another Point

On Bush's visit to the West Virginia "IOU" building.

I think everyone who wants to call themselves a pundit or a politician (or both) should take and pass Econ 101 and 102 Micro and Macro.

period. end of discussion i am tired of this silliness with talk of IOU's what the fuck is a bond anyway? and if a bond is and IOU a stock certificate is an "I Hope to IOU" and that is what Bush and team want us investing our SS insurance money in.

Follow up

So several weeks have passed since my original post on Schiavo and I have to say that the things that happened since have reaffirmed my utter hatred and contempt for the nuts. My mom suggested Texas succeed. I said not before all dems re-populated the former Solid South, but after that I am sure that Mexico would be happy to have it back.

I wrote a nasty email Coryn (or whatever) and his staff didn't even write me a little "thanks for writing" email.

anyway. what have we come to with politicians and other should-be-respected types threatening federal judges with murder. Unreal.

I think enough has been said but I wanted to go on record as sick to my stomach.

Terri Schiavo

So weighing in on Terri.

I am getting sick on both my left and right sides at all the political jockeying in this case when it really boils down to a very unfortunate woman and what we are obligated to do with her.

I think she should be allowed to live and I think custody should be given to her parents. I also think that Mr. Schiavo should be awarded the insurance payment and divorce that will allow him to move on.

Mr. Schiavo is clearly the bad guy in this case made more clear to me by the lack of care or therapy that this woman has been given. If it was my sister and no one had tried to help her beside drop her in a bed and wait for the courts I would be pretty pissed off too. That said, he is also a victim here. He lost his wife of 6 years forever, and no one with a scientific mind really thinks she will "come back" although they say it has happened. In this light I think that Mr. Schiavo deserves whatever recompense society geives those that are bereaved be it insurance payments or Social Security assistance. It would appear that he is holding out for that and frankly I can't blame him.

It also appears that his desire for closure or recompense or whatever is guiding his decisions and not what is really in the best interests of his wife. She has never had therapy or other type of rehabiliative care that could help her regain something. She is able to breath on her own and she may have other abilities if we only tried to find them. Even massage and loving tough can trigger synapses to rebuild and abilities to come back. I had a cousin who was severely disabled and looked a lot like Terri. He has physical therapy, loving caer from his parents and showed limitied signs of improvement. Did he learn to drive a car or do math? Of course not, but he was alive and none of us could bear the thought of him starving to death. I think she deserves this chance.

I am dissapointed in Democrats for looking at this as another political fight to take it to Republicans, and I am sickened by Republicans calculating the "effect" it will have on the Evangelical Right. I don't think Congress should have gotten involved, but I think our system should be giving more weight to what her parents and family want and not just her spouse. I think the only legislation (aka not the time for an anti-abortion fight) should be on this very matter spouse vs. parental rights.

She deserves a chance and I say let her live under the care of her parents and give Mr. Schiavo what is rightfully his. Then we can move back to what government was set up to do.

PS: it sure is depressing to think about but we should all get to work on that living will. I would hate to be in this position as a spouse, parent, sibling or the person in the bed.

I'm still here

Well folks (or folk as the case may be) I am in the middle of GMAT and CFA preparation as well as trying to enjoy my last few months here in Mexico. The blog has suffered.

But I wanted to get these points down on paper:

1) why is the President saying to older workers that they do not need to worry about their benefits. If we really are in a crisis shouldn't everyone pitch in. When 9/11 happened everyone sacrificed and chipped in to get everyone back on their feet. Well why would older workers be exempt? It's a crisis right?

Clearly, I do not think it is a crisis and this telling oversight/politcal jockeying defines clearly the dismantlers goals. You can't say don't worry you won't lose anything out one side of your mouth and Hey you guys are going to get a great opportunity out the other. The goal is clear: end Social Security and be the FDR of Republicans. Well we all know this guy couldn't ride in FDR's wheelchair.

2) Where the hell are the disabled in all this!? Who the fuck is going to cover the disabled and the bereft. Kids whose parents die, people who lose eyesight. This is not some government run 401 (k) it is an insurance policy against the unforeseen and against the pitfalls of what old age means to the modern world.

Why does no one from the bloggers to the MSM to the President himself ever talk about the disabled who in my understanding receive about 1/3 of all SS benefits.

I guess no one gives hoonanny if you happen to lose a limb in the new (Your-on-Your) Ownership Society. Those are the breaks.

Well not to this guy and I don't think most people think we should all be forced to fend only for ourselves. Let's keep the fight up and move from a tentative defeat to a full on, bar stools flying brow-beating. Let's put the A__holes in their place and show them who America really belongs to.

Krugman - Krug-MAN

Paul Krugman in a little more than 700 words summed it all up in my opinion. This attack on Social Security and the legacy of FDR and JFK/LBJ from the right wing is an ideological battle to end the New Deal society that we have. Or as they would call it the "welfare state." The Right has a fundamental aversion to government and any aid government gives to its citizens. The fact that the citizens that are viewed to receive this aid tend to be poor and minorities is not lost on me.

But their ideological battle is not founded in dollars and cents - or sense. When Jefferson laid out his "right wing" view of government 200 years ago, the majority of people lived off the land and could at least feed themselves. The Depression proved once and for all that we had moved out of an era where people were able to fend entirely for themselves. Once you move to New York City, you can no longer rely on your three head of cattle and wheat range to feed you and your family. FDR saw this and put in place a system to protect the society from the inevitable changes brought by our industrial might.

The dollars and cents plays in because social disparity has a cost. It has a cost in terms of strife and it has a cost in terms of GDP because: rich people save their money, the middle class spends theirs (simply put) and the poor tend to take money from society through need or through other less appealing ways like criminal justice costs. More poor and more rich gives you something like what I see here every day in Mexico. Very rich people that asve their money in the US and spend their money on imported cars from Europe and very poor people that sap the society's resources either through corruption or crime or whatever. The Great Depression proved that eventually everyone is subject to the direction of society. No one is immune and the wealthy folks on 5th avenue after ignoring the hordes on Bowery for years, finally had to take notice. They saw a true Crisis. A true unravelling of society and where did everyone turn - they turned to a society set out to protect all its members for the betterment of all its members.

We need buffers in a modern society. It is not welfare in the Right's view of the word. It is the "haves" paying a little more to protect themselves from the inevitable costs when you do not.

Read it here

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.

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.

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.

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

This Really Angers Me

Some rich jerks in a posh 5th Ave. apartment were blessed with the presence of two Red Tail Hawks that lived happily on a ledge and produced something like 30 chicks over the years. The hawks were a nice and wonderful piece of nature in about as man-made a place as there is on earth. New Yorkers gazed at them year round and one can presume they may have inspired children and adults along the way to think twice about nature and the world we live in.

These jackasses removed the bird's nest and evicted them. Come on - live and let live you pricks.

The New York Times is pissed too.

Women's Football

On a non-political note, I want to mention that last night 3 women footballers retired from the game. Arguably three but certainly two of the best footballers in history - male or female. It is special to me because they have for 15 years inspired men and women through their unbelievable skills and devotion to developing women's sports and sport in general. In a nation that usually ignores both soccer and women's team sports, it is a tribute to Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy that over 90,000 spectators watched live and 90 million on television as they won our second World Cup in 8 years, and through Brandi Chastain's shirt removal, they made one of the lasting images in the history of sports.

These women are the first generation of American athletes to reap the full benefits of Title IX which affirmed the equality of women's sports - especially team sports - to men's sports. I am personally sad to see them leave the game but happy to see them move on to other things. Let their legacy of excellence live on. And as a massive soccer fan, they are special to me because for the time being, they remain the only champions we have. They have 2 World Cups and 2 Olympic Gold Medals to their names and the thoughts and inspiration of a nation who despite its problems stands for equality in all arenas. We will miss them.

Afghanistan Parliament

So the NYTimes editors agree with me that yesterday's swearing in of Hamid Karzai was a great day, but they make a ciritical point that I overlooked: Afganistan has a President but no parliament. They need both, and based on the citizens bravery and forward looking actions to even vote (women voted, everyone faced terrorist threats), we absolutely have to give it to them. Having a broad reaching parliament would go a long way to reducing the powerful warlords all over the country.

The (tenuous) success in staging the Presidential election does not excuse our failures in abandoning where the real terrorists lived and continue to live. We have to now use so far ignored diplomacy and so far unseen dedication to the cause to do our best to ensure that a parliament will form by 2006.

Read it here

The House of Reprehensible Representatives

I am starting to think that Bush may not be the biggest enemy to our liberal, "Blue" society. It may just be the House who has started to break from Bush - to the right. We are already talking about the most conservative President in history and his Congress is defying his wishes to a more conservative bent.

This may be the real fight. We have elections for the House in less than two years - about a year until the campaigns start. I think the time is now to get moving in whatever ways we can. We should find out who our Reps are -whether we like them - and get active.

Mine is Honorable Charles Rangel. A rapscallion and a great minority voice in the House. About a year and half ago he went nuts on Tom Delay right on the House floor.

He said:

You will treat the minority with respect or you will not be treated with respect.

Touchet.

Read it here in the NYTimes