Balkinization  

Friday, January 14, 2005

Why Should I Trust This Man?

JB

When President Bush tells me that the Social Security system is in crisis, and that the only way to fix it is through privatization, should I trust him? Well, let's see; he has made misleading claims about almost every important policy issue I care about. And perhaps the most major crisis he put before the American public was the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, which, by the way, the Administration has finally admitted were not there. You might give him the benefit of the doubt for deception on that one, at least, although as Matthew Yglesias points out, there was plenty of evidence at the time that inspections were working, if you hadn't already made up your mind for war.

No, I don't think I trust the man. In fact, I think he's misleading the American public once again.

Harold Meyerson puts it more bluntly:

[W]hen historians look back at the Bush presidency, they're more likely to note that what sets Bush apart is not the crises he managed but the crises he fabricated. The fabricated crisis is the hallmark of the Bush presidency. To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none.

So Iraq became a clear and present danger to American hearths and homes, bristling with weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear attack just waiting to happen. And now, this week, the president is embarking on his second great scare campaign, this one to convince the American people that Social Security will collapse and that the only remedy is to cut benefits and redirect resources into private accounts.

In fact, Social Security is on a sounder footing now than it has been for most of its 70-year history. Without altering any of its particulars, its trustees say, it can pay full benefits straight through 2042. Over the next 75 years its shortfall will amount to just 0.7 percent of national income, according to the trustees, or 0.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That still amounts to a real chunk of change, but it pales alongside the 75-year cost of Bush's Medicare drug benefit, which is more than twice its size, or Bush's tax cuts if permanently extended, which would be nearly four times its size.

In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits.

Politically, however, Social Security is facing the gravest crisis it has ever known. For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935. But Bush doesn't need Karl Rove's counsel to know that repealing Social Security for reasons of ideology is a non-starter.

So it's time once more to fabricate a crisis. In Bushland, it's always time to fabricate a crisis. We have a crisis in medical malpractice costs, though the CBO says that malpractice costs amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs. (In fact, what we have is a president who wants to diminish the financial, and thus political, clout of trial lawyers.) We have a crisis in judicial vacancies, though in fact Senate Democrats used the filibuster to block just 10 of Bush's 229 first-term judicial appointments.

With crisis concoction as its central task -- think of how many administration officials issued dire warnings of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or, now, by Social Security's impending bankruptcy -- this presidency, more than any I can think of, has relied on the classic tools of propaganda. Indeed, it's almost impossible to imagine the Bush presidency absent the Fox News Network and right-wing talk radio. . . . I can't think of [a president] so fundamentally invested in the spread of disinformation -- and so fundamentally indifferent to the corrosive effect of propaganda on democracy -- as Bush. That, too, should earn him a page in the history books.



Comments:

Write the url www.boycott-republicans.com on your one, five and ten dollar bills please.


If you want to thwart the Republican Party then look to the companies who donate to them.

Tell THEM you want an increase to the minimum wage.

Tell THEM to stop social security piratization and instead lift the limit of taxable income for the FICA tax which will keep social security solvent.

Tell THEM you want to repeal the faulty prescription drug law and replace it with a real prescription drug benefit that covers 80 percent of medication cost.

Tell THEM you remain outraged about the 2004 stolen election in Ohio.

They put the Republicans into office. Tell THEM what you want and boycott THEM until you get what you want. Join together and use the power of your purchases to get what you want in congress.


Join the revolution for progressive legislation

http://www.boycott-republicans.com

Write this url on your one, five and ten dollar bills. Also
visit these fine websites
www.Buyblue.org

www.choosetheblue.com

www.bushblackout.com

www.imblue.net







Please call a Wendy's restaurant LOCAL to you and tell them that you will not go to their restaurant ever again UNLESS they can get their CEO to get a revote in Ohio by speaking to Kenneth Blackwell the secretary of State of Ohio.

Similarly call an Outback Steakhouse local to you and tell them you will not go to their restaurant ever again unless they get their CEO to get a revote in Florida by speaking to Glenda Hood, the secretary of State of Florida.

Thank you

Sign the petition to demand a revote in Ohio and Florida

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/Revote

Sign the petition to stop social security privatization, increase the minimum wage,and repeal the faulty Republican prescription drug benefit and replace it with a simple 80 percent coverage of medication under Medicare Part B.

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/progressive

Sign the petition to stop the War and Occupation in Iraq

http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/stopthewar
 


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2nd Drunk Driving Conviction
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