Much thanks - Somebody threw me a rare donation at the Amazon Honor System, which was nice. I've accepted that this blog is a mostly solitary affair, but it's cool to get some recognition once in a while.

Social Security: protection against old-age poverty cash for boat payments

Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the signing of the Social Security Act, August 14th, 1935:

"This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent 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."

From USA Today: "Social Security hits first wave of boomers"

Casey-Kirschling recently moved with her husband, Patrick Kirschling, a university professor who turns 62 in March, into what had been their summer home on Maryland's Bohemia River. After years of working, they want the good life: time with family and friends, volunteer work, a villa in Florida and a 42-foot trawler to get them there. Its name: "First Boomer."

It gives me a warm feeling knowing that my FICA taxes, which I could have put into my kids' college fund, will go towards teak decking and nickel slots at the casino. God bless America!

Reminder - At the last census, the poverty rate for children under 18 was nearly double for those 65 and older (17.8% vs. 9.8%).

The silver tsunami - Brian Doherty shudders as the first Baby Boomers line up for Social Security: "The real beginning of the end of the 20th century." Also, in the WashPost, Dana Milbank repeats everything I write in every third post in "Smile, you're on Social Security."

Extra - Bulldog Pundit @ ABP: "The fiscal train wreck begins"

Won't somebody think of the children? - Remember the SCHIP program that was supposed to be for the kids? Well, in six states, there are more adults covered under the program than children. But it's not a pathway to socialized medicine, no sirree.

Extra - According to Gallup, lollipop-stealin', kid-hatin' Americans think that President Bush has the right approach to the SCHIP program. Wizbang and Don Surber have the details.

A foul wind blows off Nantucket - And it's the Cape Cod Commission, which is trying to block the Cape Wind wind farm project citing "insufficient information" after a three-year review.

Moonbat nightmare scenario - Randi Rhodes is "beaten" while "walking her dog" in New York City. Her attacker: Mychal Bell.

(Not)

More from Captain Ed, Wizbang, and IMAO.

First baby boomer applies for Social Security

Here they come. Here's the situation:

Under current law, Social Security won't have enough money to pay promised benefits in 2041 but there is another crunch much, much sooner, the result of the the federal government relying on Social Security to pay for its annual spending.

When Social Security gets payroll taxes it pays out most of the money in benefits. The rest is supposed to go into a trust fund. Instead the government has been spending the money on other government programs, and putting IOUs into the trust. When Social Security needs the money it'll turn to the government waiting for the payback. But the government won't likely have any.

"This money has been borrowed, it's been spent, and there's no easy way to put it back," [former Democratric congressman Tim] Penny said.

The loan is expected to be called in 2017, when the largest bloc of the boomers - those born between 1946 and 1964 - will be retiring. By the mid 2020s, the federal government will have to fork over more than $200 billion a year, and then it climbs to more than $300 billion a year.

At the same time, all that is money that was being used for federal programs will no longer be available, meaning everything - from education to defense to the environment - will face a financial crunch.

In other words, without reform, everything we call "the government" will go towards entitlement spending. So far it appears that the only Presidential candidate willing to propose something resembling a solution is Fred Thompson, who advocates indexing benefits to inflation instead of wage growth:

"The only way to fix Social Security is to reduce benefits or increase taxes," said David John, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation who provided the deficit estimates. "At least Thompson has been honest enough to adopt one or the other of those approaches."

Otherwise the political parties are falling into two camps:

Most Republicans are opposed to raising the level of income on which Social Security taxes are collected; currently, the taxes stop after an individual reaches an annual wage of $97,500. Most Democrats, meanwhile, have ruled out cutting benefits, while leaving the door open for tax hikes on wealthier Americans.

Raising taxes on rich Americans? Who says the Democrats are out of fresh ideas?!

The upside to Katrina

An educational failure and an administrative basket case, New Orleans' schools are seeing an education revival. From the Boston Globe: "The schools that Katrina built - How New Orleans could end up saving public education in America"

The destruction of the New Orleans public schools was part of the larger human tragedy that befell the Crescent City, but it is not a loss that many residents are mourning. Before the flood, New Orleans had become a poster child for what is wrong with urban education in America, with a long list of failing schools, the worst test scores in the state, and a history of corruption and fiscal mismanagement. The public schools in New Orleans were under water long before the levies broke.

What has happened since the disaster, however, is redefining urban public education. Instead of simply rebuilding the old district, based on the old institutions, policy leaders in New Orleans and Baton Rouge decided to start from scratch, fashioning a public education system based on new ideas and promising models of reform from around the country. From the wreckage, New Orleans is emerging as a bold experiment in what a city school system can be.

How bad were the schools in New Orleans? Between 1998 and 2005, enrollment fell by one-quarter as parents pulled their kids out. But there is new hope in the Crescent City now that the old bureaucracy has been washed away:

But if New Orleans emerges from the devastation of Katrina with a diverse system of excellent schools, we will see what urban public education can be without the political-bureaucratic structures that have so successfully smothered the reforms of the past. Such a real-life, large-scale example of a totally redesigned school system, developed under extraordinarily harsh conditions, promises to transform the debate about what is possible in public education.

Of course, it sounds like there's no place to go but up.

Drew Carey, call your office - Cleveland dissolves, future of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame unknown.

Getting caught up - Oooh, I missed this great WashPost editorial from Friday "Tiptoeing on the third rail": "When it comes to the presidential race, the problem of runaway entitlement spending is something like the weather: All the candidates complain about it, but few want to get specific about what they would do to change it. Indeed, some candidates -- the most egregious example is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on Social Security -- are happier describing what they wouldn't do than what they would." Hmmm...that sounds familiar.

But that's not what the Syrians said

From CNN: "Report: Israeli airstrike targeted Syrian nuclear reactor"

Syrian President Bashar Assad has said Israel bombed an "unused military building" in the Sept. 6 raid. Israel has been extremely secretive about the affair. It only recently relaxed censorship to allow Israel-based journalists to report that Israeli aircraft attacked a military target deep inside Syria.

In the weeks that followed the attack, U.S. officials said it was aimed either at a nuclear or missile facility that Syria operated jointly with North Korea.

Who are you going to believe? Your geiger counter or your lyin' eyes?

Praying to Jesus? That's a paddlin' whippin'.

Exposing your bare skin to show whip marks? That's another whippin'.

Mix the nuts - I like this idea from Michael Barone: a bipartisan Presidential debate. "In the process viewers heard [in the 1987 precedent] the talking points and propaganda of not just one party but of two, and the prospect that the other side would soon get its turn to speak may have deterred candidates from the kind of cheap shots which would evoke cheers from a one-party audience. My impression, which was reinforced by reading the transcript this week, is that there were fewer of these than in the debates I've watched this year. And viewers got more of a preview of the arguments that would be made by either side once the nominees were determined, along with some basis to measure the candidates of one party against those of the other." (HT: Real Clear Politics)

Fair and balanced - Some reporting was done on Hillary Clinton and you'll never guess who passed Journalism 101: "It's a very sad day for a reputable news organization when it finds itself badly outdone on accuracy by Fox News, but that's exactly what happened to the Associated Press today."

Tough luck, kids - Let's put aside the Frosts and their fleet of gas-guzzlers to focus on the Democrats' plan for SCHIP expansion. To fit within the confines of their spending expansion, the program would climb to almost $14 billion in 2012 before dropping to $7.8 billion in 2013. That's right: those heartless Democrats are legislating the future expulsion of sick children off the insurance rolls. Have they no sense of decency?

Extra - Ants and grasshoppers from the Bookworm.

Step away from the credit card

Great story from Business Week:

A different breed of credit card marketer flooded college campuses across the country on Oct. 10: a counter-marketer. Credit card companies have been storming college campuses in recent years to seize a slice of the promising college market. But as student debt levels have surged, in some cases to dangerous levels, credit card companies have come under increasing scrutiny by federal and state lawmakers. Further hearings on credit card industry practices (BusinessWeek, 9/6/07) will continue through the fall before the Senate Banking Committee.

Now, activists groups are adopting the credit card industry's own practices to try to stop students from drowning in debt. Instead of credit card applications, these marketers are handing out information booklets outlining credit traps and unfair practices that can victimize students. Instead of Frisbees and T-shirts, these marketers are passing out lollipops that read, "Don't be a sucker."

The push for easy credit and overspending has sent the U.S. savings rate to its lowest level since the Great Depression. Send in the repo men.

Congratulations, Al Gore!

Al wins the Nobel Prize for his tireless crusade against ManBearPig. From Earth in the Balance:

"The Pacific Yew can be cut down and processed to produce a potent chemical, taxol, which offers some promise of curing certain forms of lung, breast, and ovarian cancer in patients who would otherwise quickly die. It seems an easy choice - sacrifice the tree for a human life - until one learns that three trees must be destroyed for each patient treated."

A beacon for humanity, that Al.

The Max Cleland-ing of Graeme Frost

For what it's worth, here's my take on the whole S-CHIP/Frost uproar. The Democrats wanted to go for the emotional jugular by putting a human face on a political issue, instead of debating the insurance expansion on its merits. But instead of picking a truly needy kid, they picked 12-year-old Graeme Frost from Maryland and a compliant press was happy to promote the narrative.

Unfortunately, the Frost family became problematic for the Democrats because, ironically, they served to support the very argument the Republicans were making that an expansion of SCHIP would help people who had the means to help themselves. And no matter how high the dudgeon of the Left blogosphere, most Americans would agree that a family sending their kids to private school, taking in rental income on a $160,000 property, living in a quarter-million dollar home, while working "intermittently" in full-employment Baltimore simply doesn't fit the description of "needy."

So the narrative had to shift and it became "Republicans attacking a 12-year-old kid."

Weak. Once again, the Left has decided that the boundaries of free speech end the very moment when one of their own is attacked. It's exactly like the Max Cleland saga, the hero who fell from grace and could not be criticized for any reason, certainly not his Senatorial record:

If you can't criticize the Senate votes of a senator in a Senate race, what can you criticize? Throughout the race, Cleland tried to hide behind the idea that his patriotism was being questioned. A columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted in June of 2002 that "this 'how-dare-you-attack-my-patriotism' ploy, replete with feigned outrage...is a device to put Cleland's voting records off-limits." It didn't work. Chambliss won the crucial endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which made its nod on the basis of the two candidates' differing records on national-security and veterans issues. The VFW wouldn't have been complicit in a gutter campaign based on smearing a Vietnam veteran.

So, back then, criticizing a Senator's record was taboo because he's a triple amputee. Then it was unthinkable to criticize John Kerry's Vietnam record - the raison d'etre for his Presidential run - because, well, he was in Vietnam. Cindy Sheehan was endowed with "absolute moral authority" and she also was above criticism. Even those who have the temerity to question global warming must be silenced. Now they roll out the Frost family and shut down debate with a wave of manufactured outrage.

Put down the human shields and debate the issues.

Extra - Captain Ed weighs in while Heading Right notes that there are an awful lot of adults taking advantage of the program designed for kids.

Homework tonight - I've gotta finish my homework. In the meantime, Real Clear Politics has the winners and losers from today's GOP debate. Back soon.

Plumbing the depths of hypocrisy, Democrats to propose personal retirement accounts


Harvard professor Martin Feldstein writes in the Wall Street Journal that a "Social Security Compromise" may be in the works with the possibility of personal accounts:

A recent proposal by Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, may point the way to a bipartisan compromise on Social Security. The essence of Mr. Emmanuel's proposal, unveiled on these pages last month, is to create universal personal retirement accounts funded by equal 1%-of-earnings contributions from employers and employees. Although enrollment would be automatic, participation would be voluntary since each individual could choose to opt out in any year.

This is almost exactly what President Bush proposed two years ago and here's where Professor Feldstein loses me. On the one hand, he claims that Democrats are not honest brokers on the Social Security issue, and will abandon reform if they can use it as a political cudgel:

The record strongly suggests that President Clinton was on his way to proposing a Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts. This didn't happen because the Democratic leadership in Congress wanted to use the Republicans' investment-based approach to Social Security as an issue in the 1998 election and persuaded President Clinton to drop his proposal.

But then he suggests that Republicans play Charlie Brown to the Democrats' Lucy one more time:

Reforming the tax-financed Social Security benefits to avoid a future fiscal shortfall is a bridge that need not be crossed now. The important point is to start the personal retirement accounts as soon as possible. The rapid aging of the population and the imminent start of the baby-boom generation's retirement make it important to avoid delay. The White House and congressional Republicans should reach out to Mr. Emanuel to see if the compromise needed to save Social Security and increase savings can now be achieved.

No thanks. Rahm Emanuel and his Congressional buddies can take the heat this time around.

Gore to take a fat 767 to Oslo - Rumors are flying that Al Gore may be awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Sure, why not? Gore can join other great winners like Rigoberta Menchu, Yassir Arafat, and Jimmy Carter. Give it to Bjorn Lomborg instead.

Wards of the state - This Mark Steyn blurb on the Corner takes a double-whack at media bias and the culture of entitlement that afflicts even those who live in half-million dollar houses.

Extra - Here's the background on that "needy" family from the Democrats' weekly radio address. You can't make this stuff up.

"Lexus lanes"

Remember the day when a traffic jam was an egalitarian affair, affecting everybody rich and poor? Well, since Massachusetts is desperate to raise highway funds (i.e. pay for the Big Dig) one of the options on the table is a special lane with variable tolls based on what time of day it's driven.

John "Two Americas" Edwards, call your office.

All the dishes are Supreme

Erick Erickson recounts his dinner with Clarance Thomas:

Justice Thomas had a lot of great stories and really spoke highly of the other Justices on the bench with him. He said he gets along with all of them and they regularly eat together at Sandra Day O'Connor's insistence.

Heh. All I can think of is the image of Antonin Scalia showing up at O'Connor's house, bearing a plate of Rice Krispie squares. She asks him to wipe his feet.

Hooverville, it's not - Suitably Flip: "It's Official: Bush Economy Achieves Longest Period Of Job Creation On Record" I blame the tax cuts. (HT: Astute Bloggers)

Firefighting while intoxicated - Jay Tea has a follow-up story about two Boston firemen who perished in an August restaurant fire. It turns out that one of them was fall-down drunk, according to the autopsy report. I'm betting there's a lot more to this story that the firefighter's union doesn't want exposed which is why they're going after the leak.

It's a mystery - PowerLine: "In today's installment, the AP reports "Atlantic City mayor drops out of sight." And he apparently took his party affiliation with him."

And lo, the seventh seal was opened - After qualification today, Michael Waltrip is on the pole for the UAW-Ford 500 at Talladega Speedway tomorrow.

And in an ironic twist for both the UAW and Ford: non-union Toyota holds five out the top six starting positions while the highest qualifying Ford is starting at slot #15. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Big Dig update

They're not fooling around when they say "hang up and drive" in Boston. From the Globe: "Tunnel concerns block cell service"

The Big Dig tunnels, which state officials pledged to have wired for cellular phone service by summer, remain a dead zone after federal officials refused to approve the long-delayed project because they said the planned wiring could put too much weight on walls that are anchored in place with epoxy.

Commuters shouldn't think of the Big Dig as a roadway but as a $15 billion thrill ride. "Will we make it through alive? Wheeee!"

Oh those wacky Nobel laureates

From CNN: "Ig Nobel awards celebrate the sillier side of science"

This year's planned Ig Nobel program included a two-minute speech by keynote speaker Doug Zongker consisting only of the word "chicken," and a mini-opera entitled "Chicken versus Egg," performed by professional mother-daughter opera singers Gail Kilkelly and Maggie McNeil.

Sounds like a fowl affair.

Reel 'em in - Via MSN MoneyCentral: "Confessions of a credit card pusher"

That was quick

MSN: "Recession isn't an 'if' but a 'when'"
Larry Kudlow: "Recession off the table"

First the communists, now the casinos

From the Boston Globe: "Some foresee domino effect in N.E. gaming"

Early one morning a few weeks ago at his home in Hanover, N.H., Jim Rubens stared with dismay at an e-mail from a Massachusetts friend that carried news of Governor Deval Patrick's plan to bring three casinos to the Bay State.

Rubens, a onetime gubernatorial candidate who now heads the Granite State Coalition Against Expanded Gambling, pounced on his keyboard and began dashing off e-mails to fellow gambling opponents warning that Patrick's move bodes ill for keeping slots out of New Hampshire.

"It was like sticking a hot poker in our eye," Rubens said. "You put casinos north of Boston and it's an invitation to our legislators who want casinos to say: 'Look at the money that is going to bleed out of our state.' "

The government shouldn't be in the business of profiting off of people's vices. But the monster is insatiable, so it's casinos and lotteries and alcohol taxes and cigaratte taxes, the last of which is carefully calibrated so that just enough people stay hooked to generate revenue. Brace yourself, Vermont! Ben & Jerry's is next.

Loser of the day

Here in Western Massachusetts, there are no responsibilities, only rights. And hurt feelings. So when there are hurt feelings, there's the right to sue. From the Boston Globe: "Student takes his 'C' to federal court"

Plenty of college students grumble when they get a mediocre grade and feel that they deserved better. When Brian Marquis got a C instead of an A-minus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he made a federal case of it.

Literally.

Marquis, a 51-year-old paralegal seeking bachelor's degrees in legal studies and sociology, filed a 15-count lawsuit in US District Court in Springfield in January after a teaching assistant graded a political philosophy class on a curve and turned Marquis's A-minus into a C. Marquis contends that the university violated his civil rights and contractual rights and intentionally inflicted "emotional distress."

Little did I know that my years at college were filled with so much "emotional distress." This is par for the course for the culture of entitlement here in the Happy Valley. At least the judge had the good sense to toss the case.

Can't anybody play this game? - Debra Saunders on the SCHIP mess: "It is as if Washington Dems and Repubs have reached a cynical pact - an agreement to pass bills which expand the size and scope of government, without ever coming up with an honest way to pay for them." So this shouldn't be a surprise: "Congress, Bush Approval Ratings Lowest Ever."

The unshakeable Joe Strummer - A tenacious commenter keeps swinging away at Matt Yglesias and his acolytes on Social Security.

Free speech for for me, but not for thee - Sister Soldjah assembles the evidence against Harry Reid and others: "Another liberal free speech hypocrite"

Stop spending money, it's already been spent many times over

From Heritage: "Increasing the National Debt Limit Should Spur Congress to Tackle Entitlements"

Although it has no immediate economic impact, debt held by the government becomes significant over the long-term. Such debt will eventually have to be converted into public debt, which means its economic impact will be felt by future generations. For instance, in 2017 the Social Security system will need to begin drawing from the Trust Fund in order to pay benefits. Since the Trust Fund contains nothing but government debt, the government will need to generate cash to pay back the money it has borrowed. Absent large budget surpluses in the future (a highly unlikely prospect), repaying government debt will necessitate that debt be sold to the public. This shifting of government debt to public debt will not by itself cause the total stock of debt to change, but it will force the Treasury to begin making interest payments that it was earlier able to avoid. As these new interest payments compound, the debt will rise significantly. Absent any other policy changes, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that net interest on the public debt will rise to 12.4 percent of GDP in 2050, which will amount to more than $9 trillion per year.

And here's the conclusion:

While today's $9 trillion debt seems high, it is small compared to the debt that future generations stand to inherit. In order to spare them this crushing burden, Congress must act now to reform entitlement programs, which will become the main drivers of government spending and borrowing. If it does not, Congress will have to raise the debt limit many more times, and future generations will pay the price.

The Democrats' transparent ploy with the SCHIP program is galling on so many levels. First of all, there's the idea that no good deed should go unpunished: the Republican-led Congress passed the children's insurance plan a decade ago only to have it used as a cudgel now by the Democrats. Second, here's a modest program that worked well and focused on the poor kids who need health insurance; now some states want to expand entitlements to people making $80,000 or more. The moral hazard, of course, is that with a new entitlement Americans will let the government pay for insurance - the first step towards the kind of socialized medicine that sends Canadians fleeing south. Finally, the Democrats expansion of SCHIP is paid for with a huge 61-cent cigarette tax (that will disproportionately fall on lower-income Americans) that still won't paper over the budgetary chicanery:

What happens in the sixth year, 2013, under the Democrats' plan? The projected SCHIP spending will drop by 92 percent. After five years of federal spending distorting the private health-insurance market, it will likely be impossible for families who will lose the SCHIP money to find affordable private coverage. When Republicans and Democrats - working together - created the SCHIP program in 1997, we made sure it had 10 years of stable funding. Democrats should follow that example, instead of endangering health coverage for millions of children.

Why re-new a good program when there's demagoguery to be made? I think Americans see the game of chicken the Democrats are playing at the expense of kids. They don't want compromise, they want an issue, and they might get one. There's no money left for a new entitlement at the moment in our history when a huge bill is coming due on a half-century of unsustainable expansion. Raise the cigarette tax? That's just the beginning.

Extra - From Captain Ed: "Vetoland, population 4"

Busy busy busy - It's crunch time for me as I've just started my "Design of Experiments" class which is the final course I need for "Green Belt" certification. So that's why blogging is sparse right now. What? You didn't notice? Oh.

Not a talking point, a genuine problem

Megan McArdle does an admirable job of summing up how history has not supported the Left's insouciance over Social Security:

If economic growth were going to save us, it should have while we were paying for the unusually small age cohort that preceded the boomers. If productivity growth could save Social Security's finances, we should have seen it push back the date at which the government starts paying out more in OASDI benefits than it takes in in taxes. Instead, the reverse is true.

If there's one mantra that grips the Left on Social Security it's that the real problem is years away and, therefore, there's no crisis. True enough, but adopting reform today will significantly cushion the reckoning that's going to occur when the SS Trust Fund is dry around 2040. The "no crisis" position means no action and kicking the problem down the road.

Load up on your 401(k) kiddies, you're gonna need 'em.

Britney Spears gets a "parenting coach" - How bad a parent do you have to be to have a judge appoint somebody to tell you things like "Don't put Mountain Dew in your kid's sippie cup."

Things I did not know - According to this Fox News article, "Rolling Stone" is some kind of music-themed magazine. All this time, I thought it was a political pamphlet with Calvin Klein ads.

Dodge duck dip dive and dodge on Social Security

From today's WashPost's editorial: "Sen. Clinton's empty table - The candidate has no plan to fix Social Security"

Once there was a Clinton who understood three key things about Social Security: The system is not sustainable without changes; these changes entail either risk or pain; making them sooner is easier than making them later.

That Clinton, of course, was Bill Clinton, quoted above from December 1998. But listening to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), you'd think nothing ails Social Security that a little bit of fiscal responsibility wouldn't cure. If something more is needed, Ms. Clinton isn't saying what.

Golly, that sounds familiar. (This too.)

More - From Econlog: "I have this quaint definition of fiscal responsibility as anything that reduces government liabilities to bring them into line with realistic expectations of tax revenues. The future President's definition of fiscal responsibility appears to be that long-term liabilities of the government do not matter at all. If a corporate president were to defiantly announce that he planned to do nothing about the corporation's long-term liabilities until the short-term profit picture improved, I do not think his company's stock would do very well." (HT: Memeorandum)

A-mazing maze of maize


It was a beautiful day here in Western Massachusetts and we took a ride over to Sunderland to walk through Mike's Maze at the Warner Farm. This year's maze was in the likeness of Louis Armstrong and the clever twist was that there were musical trivia clues throughout the maze. They were set up in a sequence of tubular bells that were spaced out such that when you walked in a steady pace and hit the tubes with a metal "baton" they would play out recognizable tunes. Lotsa fun. (We got 18 out of 20)

There are those unintended consequences again - From the NYT: "As Prices Soar, U.S. Food Aid Buys Less" - "Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year." I blame Al Gore.

Extra - From TCS: "Gore Dodges Repeated Calls to Debate Global Warming"

"I didn't have to go out to a field with my friends and have 18 beers" - From CNN: "Author: Letting kids drink early reduces binging"

Math is hard

From No Left Turns: "Acceptable and unacceptable ways to scam the rich"

Just because liberals never have paid a political price for Social Security taxes doesn't mean they never will, however. Abolishing the Social Security Wage Base would be a huge tax increase - a 12.4% surcharge on all income over $100,000. It would affect one in every six households. It would, additionally, be quite awkward, given that the liberal party line on entitlements is that Social Security is fundamentally sound, and entitlement reform really means health care cost controls to bail out Medicare and Medicaid. That’s a big tax increase to fix what we've been assured is a very small problem. If conservatives can’t turn such contradictions into a teaching moment, we deserve a long walk in the wilderness.

This blog post has a problem. It assumes that the liberals will raise taxes on the "rich" but, somehow, the general American public will rise up in outrage at what would be one of the largest tax hikes in history. The Republicans have played "Whack-A-Mole" long enough on this issue. Let the Democrats do the dirty work or let them do nothing and watch the whole program slip into insolvency. More Americans than ever, through 401(k)s and IRAs, understand the long-term strategies of saving for retirement. When they're getting pennies on the dollar for their Social Security benefit, political support will wither away.

Think of the children - When you can't convince the public or pass legislation to do what you really want to do, there's always the tactic of incrementalism. By the way, do you know how to capture wild pigs?

Too good to excerpt - The Seattle Post editorial board gets it: "Social Security: No easy fixes"

The French rattle their sabers against Iran

Talk about role reversal. From Charles Krauthammer: "France flips while Congress shifts"

Ahmadinejad at Columbia provided the entertainment, but Sarkozy at the U.N. provided the substance. On the largest possible stage -- the U.N. General Assembly -- President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world."

His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had earlier said that the world faces two choices -- successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the U.S. in imposing serious sanctions.

"Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace," he warned. "They lead to war." This warning about appeasement was intended particularly for Germany, which for commercial reasons has been resisting U.S. pressure to support effective sanctions.

Krauthammer goes on to opine that Congress has slowly moved towards a similar policy of containment in the Middle East: "It takes time for reality to seep into a Washington debate." In a peripheral fashion, this is why I've always thought it was better to let Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have his say: because it exposes him, for all the world to see, as a nutcase head of a regime that has invited international sanctions.

Eyes wide open.

Say nothing

From AP: "Dodges undercut Clinton image"

Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign slogan is "Ready for Change, Ready to Lead" yet she has adopted the time-honored, front-runner strategy of dodging tough questions, contradicting the image of a strong leader.

The former first lady and New York senator refused to take a position on a range of substantive issues during Wednesday night's debate, from Social Security reform to U.S. troop deployments in Iraq to whether Israel, if threatened, has the right to attack Iran.

She even ducked the question of which team she'd root for if her hometown Chicago Cubs met the New York Yankees in next month's World Series. "Well, I would probably have to alternate sides," she said.

For the record, here's her non-stance on Social Security:

She dodged when asked what she would "put on the table" to save Social Security, such as a proposal to raise Social Security taxes on incomes above $97,000. "I'm not putting anything on the proverbial table until we move toward fiscal responsibility," she said, adding, "I don't think I should be negotiating about what I would do as president.

There's a word for that folks, and it's "leadership." What? It's not? Nevermind.

Effusion for "The Confusion" - Well, today I finally finished book two in Neal Stephenson's Baroque trilogy which was just about the best historical fiction I've read since "The Right Stuff" (and much better than "Quicksilver.") Who knew that a book on monetary policy in the late 17th century could be so interesting?

Extra - From Wired magazine: "Clearing up the Confusion"

Playing in a whole different league - Via Wizbang and "Silence in Syria, panic in Iran" comes word that the Syrian air defenses were utterly neutralized before the Israelis made their Sept. 6th raid. Cool.

We don't know nothin' about no MoveOn - The New York Times has situational amnesia about how discounts are given on advocacy ads.

The Social Security trajectory: up then down down down

From Congressional Quarterly "Congress to Lose Its 'Cash Cow' Soon"

The annual Social Security cash surpluses that have long offset other federal expenses likely will peak in 2009, one year after the first baby boomers become be eligible for this retirement benefit. By 2017, the surplus will be gone and the federal government will be on the hook to find new funding for Social Security as more and more Baby Boomers age into the program.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson included estimates on the surplus in a report released yesterday, widely seen as his attempt at a Social Security wake-up call. The report reinforces the message sent by Social Security Trustees earlier this year - Congress will soon lose the annual Social Security surpluses that lawmakers have used to fund other government activities.

The annual Social Security cash surpluses likely will peak around $99 billion in 2009. About a decade after that, Social Security could have a deficit rivaling its peak surplus, according to a chart in the report.

What's to be done?

Social Security has three options for its future financing, according to GAO Chief David Walker, who, like Paulson, has been pushing for Social Security reform. The U.S. government will have to raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more from the public. "Treasury will honor those claims - the United States has never defaulted," Walker said in a January testimony to Congress. "But, there is no free money."

True that. But don't expect any straight talk from the Presidential candidates who have no intention of putting forward any painful, yet honest, solutions for the entitlement problem. Are there any leaders in Washington or are we just going to keep kicking this can down Pennsylvania Avenue?

More - The Treasury Department's report on Social Security: "Not taking action is thus unfair to future generations. This is a significant cost of delay." Also, from the WashPost: "The longer policymakers wait to address the problem, the more severe the tax increases or benefit cuts will have to be, the report said, echoing warnings made by others, including Social Security trustees and congressional researchers."

Praise the Lord, pass the carbon offsets

If environmentalism is the new religion, can carbon indulgences be far behind? From American Spectator: "A Pardoner's Tale"

Are you a carbon-using Christian? Feeling guilty about all that carbon dioxide (CO2) you pump into the atmosphere by such awful things as breathing, heating and cooling your home, lighting your work or study space, or driving to church? Now, like traditional sinners whose only mistake was breaking the Ten Commandments, you can atone for your carbon sins by buying carbon offsets from the Evangelical Climate Initiative -- though I thought it was pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism, not Protestant evangelicalism, that endorsed indulgences.

Well, they certain like the color green.

Those numbers don't add up - In a complement to my previous post on Social Security, here's Ramesh Ponnuru with "The Democrats on Social Security."

At Columbia - From the Corner: "Eyewitness to nonsense"

Not the sharpest scimitar in the drawer

I think Columbia's Lee Bollinger might have stumbled onto something here:

Bollinger levied repeated criticisms against Ahmadinejad, calling on him to answer a series of challenges about his leadership, blasting his views about the "myth" of the Holocaust as being "absurd," and saying that he doubted he "will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions."

"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader's Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?"

Ahmadinejad has gained this undeserved reputation as being "crazy like a fox" but I think he's simply crazy...and maybe a little dim. His answers are impenetrable and immune to any kind of logic but why should we attribute this to some kind of guile? Maybe he's just a dope. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one.

It shortened my commute, so there

Here's an astonishingly self-centered view of the disaster that is Boston's Big Dig:

The result was a colossal two-decade-long inconvenience and staggering costs of at least $14.6 billion. As far as I am concerned, it was worth every dime - even the graft, bribes, and corruption.

Don't forget about the deaths!

Steven Spielberg finds his sequel to "Munich" - Damn, this is something: "Israeli Forces Seized Nuclear Material During Syrian Raid" - "Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to Sunday Times report citing informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem." Wow.

What liberal media?

Hello, New York Times, have you met the petard? The NY Times' ombudsman declares that the newspaper violated its own policies to publish MoveOn's attack ad on General David Patraeus:

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, "We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature." Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was "rough," he regarded it as a comment on a public official's management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

The New York Times justifies their actions by mouthing about the "tough choices" they must make but these choices consistently find favor on one side of the political spectrum and not the other. Watch that stock hit a five-year low.

Extra - More details from Althouse.

Number 5 was a surprise - The top 15 languages in the world, via Dr. X. Do they speak Javanese at Starbucks?

Sunday morning talk show lineup - Hillary! She's everywhere! Gaaaaa!!!

Obama's innovative new way to save Social Security: tax the rich

Who says the Democrats recycle the same tired ideas? From ABC News: "Obama floats Social Security tax hike"

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is considering a major tax hike on the rich to shore up the nation's Social Security system.

"If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,000," Obama wrote this week in an Iowa newspaper, "we could eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall."

Brilliant concept. Except that when FDR was formulating Social Security, he knew the program would have no political support if Americans knew that the super-rich were going to get back a benefit proportional to their larger income. So the cap on earnings taxed (which, adjusted for inflation, is now $97,000) was also a cap on the maximum benefit any American could expect.

By eliminating the cap, Obama (and Edwards and other Democrats who have floated the idea) will alter Social Security from an entitlement that taxes all and benefits all to a welfare program that funnels money from the rich to the poor. But when you have no real solutions, taxing "the other guy" is always a crowd pleaser.

Stop thief! - When seagulls give in to peer pressure

Quote of the Day

Dilbert Blog on firefighters removing a 900-lb. man from his apartment:

This is the sort of publicity that makes it hard to recruit firemen. It's a noble profession, but there's nothing good that happens after your boss says, "Kenny, get the forklift and a tarp."

Heh.

Say it with me: "incarceration" - Via Stratasphere, MIT student straps fake bomb to chest, walks into Logan Airport, calls it "art." I call it "communal shower."

Bizarro world update: I agree with Josh Marshall

Talking Points memo: "Grow up"

A president with some dignity and sense of the greatness of his country would say, good he [Ahmadinejad] should go there. Maybe he'll learn something about us and our loss.

If we as a country were a person, I'd say grow up. Act like a man. Have some self-respect.

By golly, I concur. Ahmadinejad should be allowed to go to Ground Zero so we can show him the hole in the ground where his fellow Muslims murdered 3,000 people. Let him soak in the hard glares of hundreds of New Yorkers who have not forgotten. I don't see what "victory" Ahmadinejad gains by laying a wreath; quite to the contrary, it forces him to come to grips with how his religion is viewed by Americans and much of the world.

Some say it would be an insult to the memory of the 9/11 victims and their families and I don't presume to speak for them. But we should think about whether we have more to gain or lose with that crazy Iranian at Ground Zero. If he's turned away, I think he engineers himself a greater propaganda win. He'll return to Iran and stir the pot: "See how the Americans refused your President? They're filled with hatred!" Keep in mind that many Iranians are sympathetic to the United States; why give this guy ammunition?

Ahmadinejad's a nutter. Let's be the adults in the room and send the message that we're made of stronger stuff.

More - Sister Toldjah takes the opposite view. Respect.

And this - But Dr. T appears to lean towards my view.

That's a relief - From Scrappleface: "Hillary promises no new health bureaucracy, just new bureaucrats"

The Soviets hold a grudge - Interesting story from a different age: "The KGB's long war against Rudolf Nureyev" (HT: Arts & Letters)

Rolling back socialism, ringing in personal freedom - It's happening here in America and across the pond in France. Viva la difference!

A respectable 50 out of 60 - And you better believe I got question #60 right: American Civics Test. Via Betsy, who claims she got 59 out of 60, the show-off.

Wally's modus operandi

Positivity Blog: "7 habits of highly ineffective people" (HT: Maggie's Farm)

No wonder we can't find Osama - Even with the incentive of a substantial reward, searchers simply can't locate millionaire Steve Fossett, somewhere in Nevada. Not Pakistan, the U.S. state Nevada with Google Earth mapping every square inch.

Neat-O - A rendition of M.C. Escher's "Relativity" in LEGO form.

The joy of E-ZPass - Dave just got his transponder for what I often call "the greatest invention ever." Last Thanksgiving, on our way to Pennsylvania, we passed fifty cars in each cash line and sailed through the E-Z Pass lane. I couldn't resist yelling: "So long, peasants!"

Same package, different bow - Opinion Journal "Hillarycare's new clothes": "What's striking about all this is how little new thinking there is. Like the other Democratic proposals, HillaryCare II would mark another major government intrusion into health care. It would keep all of the system's current problems, most of them created by government policies, and entrench and expand them. The creativity is all in the political repackaging."

Suckers - From the Boston Globe "Liberal gaming critics feel betrayed by Patrick plan"

The return of Krugman - The single-minded NYT columnist has started a blog and wastes no time in shading the facts to make his case. Can he seriously claim that the "great compression" in income through the mid-1940s was based solely on FDR's New Deal, without a word for World War II when the top tax rate hit 94%? Are there no other factors aside from federal policy (e.g. globalization) to explain widening income disparity today? Puh-leeze.

Democrats dance to MoveOn's music

Here's Jeff Jacoby with "Pandering on the left":

So this is what the Democratic Party has been reduced to - wobbling and weaving for fear of offending the moonbats in far left field. Do Clinton, Edwards, and Obama really have no idea of the esteem in which most Americans hold military officers? Did they learn nothing from the "botched joke" that ended John F. Kerry's presidential hopes? Is retaining MoveOn's good will so important to them that they will look the other way even when the integrity of a distinguished American general is recklessly trashed?

"If you are not tough enough to repudiate a scurrilous, outrageous ad such as that, then I don't know how you are tough enough to be president of the United States." So said an indignant Senator John McCain the other day. You don't have to be a Republican to feel the same way.

General Petreaus was affirmed by Congress without a single dissenting vote and, at the time, Democrats praised him as a straight-shooter who could shift tactics in Iraq for the better. His transformation from respected military mind to traitor was complete when he failed to deliver the news that MoveOn wanted to hear.

Extra - From Wizbang: "Antiwar left yanks leash on Harry Reid"

Standing proud - No flippin' way! I have to learn how to embed videos.

How to tell you're a music lover

A song came on my satellite radio today and, without looking down, I knew the XM display read:

MFSB
TSOP

I think that's all I have for tonight. I really don't care about that Tasered kid in Florida, OJ is in deep trouble but Phil Spector might get off. Hillary's health care plan will cost at least five times what she estimates, so she'll bury the details.

"Oh Lizzie
You frightened me with your Right viewpoints
So I'm staying away
Oh Lizzie
You watch Fox News and you're scary
And I need Rosie back, oh Lizzie"

Casinos in Massachusetts - we have no choice!

From the Boston Globe: "Would-be hosts, foes rev up for casino bid"

But others insist that the state has run out of ways to find new sources of revenue as Patrick tries to undertake a $1 billion life science initiative and a $1.5 billion capital spending plan, among other economic developments.

"This is the last true revenue source, absent taxes," said Senator Michael W. Morrissey, a Democrat from Quincy. "We've done some creative things, but this is really the last frontier of revenues."

Seriously, what is wrong with these people? Here's a wacky idea: stop spending money you don't have! Lottery, gas tax, sales tax, casinos; the only thing left is to license out public buildings to Taco Bell.

OJ tries again - Does anybody besides me think that OJ Simpson's latest escapade is some kind of bizarre attempt to see how far he can go, only to be cleared by the legal system again? "How can you be this dumb?" Yeah, it's really inconceivable.

That IPod song - It's "1234" by Feist and here's the pretty cool video. Nice choreography!

I hate Massachusetts

There were two stories in today's Boston Globe that have caused me to seriously doubt whether I want to remain in this state. The Bay State is now so overextended with liabilities and prolific in spending promises that it is resorting to new methods of direct and indirect taxation.

Proof positive that "elections matter" is that, after decades of Republicans in the governor's office, we now have the perfectly awful Deval Patrick who has decided to bring in the easy cash of casinos:

Governor Deval Patrick plans to propose as early as tomorrow that the state sell licenses for three full-scale resort casinos in Massachusetts, citing their potential to spur economic growth, create jobs, and generate new government revenue, according to State House officials who have been briefed on his plan.

Hey, why stop at casinos? Why not bring in some whorehouses which will also "create jobs" and "generate new government revenue." Aside from the social issues and crime that a casino invites, there's the new image of Massachusetts. Old and busted: Plymouth Rock, USS Constitution and Tanglewood. New and hot: slot machines and the "hard eight."

Second point: as I may have mentioned, I commute a hundred miles a day (50+50) to Connecticut because I can't find a decent job in Massachusetts. However, I pay income taxes to both states and property taxes in Massachusetts. Clearly, I must be punished: "Major hike in gas tax, fees urged"

A special state commission looking for ways to keep the state's roads and rail systems from falling into disrepair will recommend that the state raise the gasoline tax by 11.5 cents a gallon next year and impose a "user fee" of 5 cents a mile to drive on major state highways, according to an outline of the panel's recommendations.

In true "Big Brother" fashion, the user fee would be assessed by forcing motorists to use a GPS system to track mileage, and the tax would be imposed at gas stations. But the tax would be used to "fix the highways," which is a fancy way of Beacon Hill saying that "we spent everything on the Big Dig."

I think this guy might have the right idea: lower taxes and I'd be closer to Loudon for the NHIS races. I've been in Western Massachusetts for sixteen years, but now that the Democrats control every level of government, there are no checks against socialist legislation, the subversion of democracy, and unfettered taxation. It might be time to "vote with my feet."

Hello Cleveland!


This is an improbable story for the normally-stodgy Economist: "Turning rebellion into money - Why old rockers are squeezing back into leather trousers meant for men half their size":

Ageing rockers are almost indecently keen to shout to the world through towering speakers that they have still "got it". Many claim that the mid-sixties to around 1980 were unsurpassed golden years in the history of rock music. And so audiences are given opportunities to judge for themselves - again and again. The 55-year-old Sting has laid down his lute to reform The Police, currently on a worldwide tour. Genesis, never scared to over-extend a tune, recently got back together for a belated encore. In recent years, and despite the inevitable losses to the rock‘n’roll lifestyle, the Eagles, Queen, Pink Floyd, Cream and a host of other music-makers have hit the road again.

Despite the riches accumulated by these titans of rock in their heydays most commentators suggest that cash is the motivating force. "Musical differences" generally precipitated the acrimonious splits that took the bands off the road in the first place. But time and money - and there is plenty of profit to be made - are great healers.

The list of acts appearing at the Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun casinos read like the Top 40 list from Billboard, circa 1986. Hall & Oates? Check! Joan Jett? Check! Deborah ("Debbie") Gibson? Check!

As in "where's my check?"

All bets are off in '08 - Writing in Time magazine, Bill Kristol notes that 2008 is a volatile and atypical election year. For example, this will be the first election since 1952 that an incumbent President or Vice President will not be on the ballot. (Hat tip: RCP)

I got a fever for stopping trucks from ramming into low overpasses and the only cure is more cowbell.

All too true

Speaking of Greenspan...from the Chicago Tribune "Greenspan says GOP deserved to lose":

Alan Greenspan's new memoir is tough on Republicans and President Bush and it could be turned into a campaign manifesto for Democrats in certain respects.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the former Federal Reserve chairman writes that the GOP deserved to lose power in Congress last fall because it abandoned its small-government principles and let the budget get out of control.

Congressional Republicans "swapped principle for power," he wrote. "They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose." And though he urged Bush to veto bills to exercise fiscal discipline, the president did not follow through, and that was a "major mistake."

Yes, the deficit is much lower than predicted, but certainly not due to any kind of drop in spending. In fact, President Bush made the government's institutionalized liabilities much worse by pushing for the Prescription Drug Benefit on top of the pile of entitlement spending. The big bill will be coming due soon and all of Washington glances away, whistles, and hopes somebody will reach for the check.

The chairman shrugged - Alan Greenspan *hearts* Ayn Rand.

Massachusetts flunks economics - Demand is up, supply is down, and health care costs in the Bay State are rising 50% faster than the rest of the country. New England Republican suggests it's our demand for high quality health care but doesn't mention the artificial demand set up by the new requirement that everybody have health care insurance.

Here's how I think the required health care coverage experiment is going to play out: remember years ago when AOL dropped their minute-by-minute billing and just went to a flat, unlimited rate? A week later, they were shocked to discover that people were logging on and never logging off. The system was overloaded, other customers couldn't connect, and AOL had to scramble to add capacity.

Watch what happens when everybody rushes to the hospitals because - why not? - somebody else is going to pay. Primary doctors are going to head for the hills and the whole system will go into de facto paralysis.

Extra - Q&O: "The ultimate end of nanny state health care"

Assemble the circular firing squad - From the NYT "U.A.W. Picks G.M. as 'Strike Target'": "The talks are focused on the creation of a health care trust, the chief demand by G.M., the Ford Motor Company and Chrysler. G.M. has pushed the most heavily for such a trust because it faces a health care liability of about $55 billion for its workers, retirees and their families."

The Detroit automakers are just coming out of an extended slump and the unions are going to stick by their antiquated notion that promises made a half-century ago are valid in a 21st century economy. Good luck with that.

They just needed the cash - Don Surber has a slide-ways take on the NY Times/MoveOn ad controversy: "Maybe the NYT was desperate."

Second verse, same as the first - Unable to save the old retirement entitlement, Democrats seek to carve out a new one. And just like Social Security, you'll be thrilled to hand over another 2% of your salary in exchange for the 1% annual gains.


Graph from CATO: "The hidden burden of taxation."

Quote of the day - From an abrasive Mike Gravel: "I'm prepared to tell you that Americans are getting fatter and dumber." Refreshingly honest!

That was unnecessary - President Bush's speech tonight seemed like a perfunctory follow-up to General Petraeus' testimony. The Democratic response was just as predictable with amorphous grandstanding acting as a substitute for doing anything. No wonder Osama is cross with them.

What liberal media?

Only a day after Media Matters claimed that conservative columnists were over-represented in newspapers, a claim quickly diffused by the New Republic, there's this gem from the NY Post: "Times gives Lefties a hefty discount for 'betray us' ad"

The New York Times dramatically slashed its normal rates for a full-page advertisement for MoveOn.org's ad questioning the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Headlined "Cooking the Books for the White House," the ad which ran in Monday's Times says Petraeus is "a military man constantly at war with the facts" and concluded - even before he testified before Congress - that "General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us."

According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."

A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.

So while the liberals whine that the top newspapers carry two more conservative columnists than progressive columnists, what we have here is nothing short than a direct political contribution by the New York Times for an anti-war group.

Extra - The legal minds on the conservative right are massing.

More - Rudy Giuliani forges his own ad and asks for the discount rate.