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No, I believe you that President Clinton offered your sister $100 for that when she was your age, but we've stopped that program, dear.

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No, we are going to execute your father. Can you spell "execute"?

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the stereotypes that you "liberals" have dragged out show that racism is certainly not limited to any one party. in fact the very selection of the photo as being "funny" shows abject racism.

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Look, I told you not to go long on the Eagles.

Just because Rocco is looking for you is no reason to take it out on us.

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Update record- Gatti hates blacks and Italians.

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For the record, let me be clear: I hate what appears to be the Dem party-line position on SS -- "do nothing." SS has a long-term problem. It is one that can be fixed by some tweaks that address the factors that brought that problem about (mainly, longer life spans and smaller families).

I would respect Bush for his determination to address the long-term problem if it didn't seem to me that he has already decided on the solution. And that solution, I fear, imposes greater dangers for SS, imposes huge and dangerous costs elsewhere, is contrary to the very purpose of SS, and is motivated more by ideology than by a well-founded belief that it will cure the problems at issue.

Raise the retirement age. Means testing. Reduce benefits growth, or make the benefit 95% now. These things should be on the table and should be getting discussed. Instead, what's happened is that Bush has made PSRs the centerpiece of every discussion -- and the way he posits the discussion, they are free from any risk (because all investments in the stock market are, right?), and we don't need to consider the cost (because hey, what's another few trillion in borrowings -- especially if they mostly happen after his term ends?). So, he puts it to the Dems to say "no, we should cut benefits" -- because the Bush plan would never, ever need a cut in benefits because we can just borrow the money and rely on the guaranteed returns of the stock market.

So,yes -- the Dems are being cowards. But the White House has set up a situation where that was a foregone conclusion. If a handful of Repubs comes forward with an alternate plan, one that at least puts cuts and changing the retirement age on the table, then I would hope the Dems join in that. BUt without such a Concord Coalition-like effort, it'll never happen.

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Actually, I had an abject need to find a picture to replace the text of an inadvertant second post, RP-style. But good thinking with the racism thing.

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Bold talk from someone who thought it was funny when he was calling the kid's sister a whore.

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You mean because they hit home?

Hank, how come you and I have been agreeing so much lately?

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Interesting discussion of scope of money involved in private account thingy -- I note that they still, STILL, are not bringing in the question of administrative costs. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...042EST0073.DTL ETA note to liberal media conspiracy theorists -- the article originally appeared in the WSJ



Robert Pozen, chairman of MFS Funds and a member of the presidential commission that backed private accounts, estimates that about $65 billion will flow into the accounts every year. That compares, for example, with $242 billion that all stock and bond mutual funds took in last year, according to Financial Research Corp.

Others in the industry are less certain. "I don't think that anybody -- including the administration -- knows how many people are going to opt in" to voluntary private accounts, Mr. Riepe says. "I think the speculation about this gigantic pool of money is just speculation -- and it would be a long time before it's a big pool."

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Coming up with the things you each did shows that you each think that way. Everyone has some biases G, you shouldn't claim perfection. My point is simply that you as a group all seem to have biases in a direction against blacks.

And Sidd, i said "offered" the money, not that she took it.

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I enjoyed those care-free, salad days when I didn't need to worry about anyone else. Mom and Dad could take care of themselves, the kids handn't come along, and all I need to think about was me. Me, Me, ME!

Ah, good days indeed. Liquid crystal liberation. Nothing between me and the object of my desires but a bit of lambskin.

But, those days are past for me as for most. And now I know that when most of us think about ourselves, we think about the whole family for whom we have some responsibility. Mom and Dad aren't always taking care of themselves, there's a batty aunt up in someone's attic, a nephew who lost some of his equipment in some equipment, that cousin who crispied while on the volunteer fire department and left three small kids, and then a kid of our own who has one or two issues.

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So we didn't agree?

What I said implied there are a disproportionate number of black in the military. True?

And that the kids parents' voted Democratic. What are the odds of that?

And that Laura Bush might think of blacks as people who do her fighting for her. Hmmmm. How many Republican members of congress, Senators, or Cabinet members have children in the military?

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Well, he who gets off his ass to speak first tends to get to set the initial terms of the debate. Honestly, though, I don't see why Bush positing PSRs has rendered the Dems incapable of suggesting anything else, discussing the cons thereof in terms other than "Scare tactic!" or otherwise sucking it up and acknowledging that of the various variables (amount of benefit, universiality of benefit, age of retirement, amount &/or source of contributions) something has to give (and hopefully acknowledging that, of those, the amount &/or source of contributions is probably the least flexible for all the demographic reasons giving us the problem in the first place).

Had Ted Kennedy been on MTP this weekend acknowledging "yeah, there's fucking trouble brewing, it is a crisis, and it's a crisis right now just like discovering an asteroid that is 99% certain to destroy the earth in 50 years is a crisis right now, because it's gonna take some serious time to figure out how to fix it and put that plan into operation. But what's been suggested isn't the way to fix it, here is why it doesn't fix it, and you may not want to hear what will fix it but we're not gonna insult your intelligence and lie to you and so here it is: ________," I'd have been pleased as a pig in muck even if his suggestion for fixing it was "let's raise taxes on today's younger workers who haven't even been able to afford to buy houses like their parents could, so we can maintain benefit levels for their parents, and then phase in reduced benefits that will hit just when they retire so they're screwed after they've paid for everyone else to live on (relative) easy street," because that would have been an honest suggestion and we'd have a debate on our hands. Instead, he said "there's no problem, BUSH LIED just like Iraq" and "the [nonexistent] problem would be solved by rolling back 1/3 of Bush's tax cuts [which would make sense only if he was suggesting re-raising those taxes as (flat or regressive) SS payroll taxes, unless he's thinking of a rather bigger structural overhaul of the SS system than even Bush is]."

BR(Tim Russert did sort of made him look like an ass - I heart Tim Russert)C

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Yes. you are perfect. you are a good-thinking liberal man. You are not racist. You went through the above before posting.

Yes. you are perfect. you are a good-thinking liberal man. You are not racist. You went through the above before posting.

Yes. you are perfect. you are a good-thinking liberal man. You are not racist. You went through the above before posting.

Yes. you are perfect. you are a good-thinking liberal man. You are not racist. You went through the above before posting.

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Good point, Hank. I'll never again suggest that Republicans like black people.

S_A_M

P.S. It is the kid's expression which makes the picture mildly amusing.

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You posted something stupid. You can't think of any defense.

You posted something stupid. You can't think of any defense.

You posted something stupid. You can't think of any defense.

You posted something stupid. So you posted something stupid again. Why not?

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Please. He who controls the White House and Congress gets to set the agenda.

If the Democrats held the White House and Congress, I would hope that they would try to do something about Medicare and the budget deficits, which are more pressing problems than SS.

This White House has absolutely zero interest in reaching a bipartisan compromise to save and better fund Social Security. What you say is a little bit like saying that Charlie Brown ought to take another run at the football, because Lucy might let him kick it this time.

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Last time I checked Arts. I & II, there is no such person.

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the citizens of the United States?

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Yeah, but he doesn't necessarily get to set the terms of the public debate, or guide public opinion of the direction thereof.
That would be nice, but past performance makes me wonder how fast ol' Ted would insist there is no Medicare crisis at all, bush is LYING, if Bush were to propose structural reform there, too. (I only wish that were likely, 'cause there's only one possible reform there, which is to hugely diminish benefits. And/or force all oldsters into strictly managed care, which would probably work not at all in practice but at least has some arguments for it in theory. Come to think of it, nevermind, I'm sure both parties can find ways to fuck it up further and generally avoid the truth.)
Well, I certainly don't think he should sit on the sidelines and proclaim that he won't kick because there is no game going on, and even if there was Scroeder's lously rushing technique has lost more points than his field goal would be worth anyhow so there is no need to try.

BR(I deny any responsibility for this choice of analogy)C

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Good lord, give me the strength to ignore this troll.

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This is the common refrain these days - If Bush is going to do X, he should do it here first. We saw it with Iraq ("Are we going to invade every country with human rights violations") and we are now seeing it with SS.

I agree with most of BRC's posts (surprise surprise) - the DEMs won't come up with a plan to save SS because they absolutely do not want Bush/GOP to get credit for "fixing" it. So instead they equate fixing SS with PRAs, meaning that if you are against PRAs you must be against SS reform. It's a smart PR campaign.

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Yes, please continue to contribute substantive comments which have been enthralling me so for the past few weeks!

Are you friends with... ahh, forget it.

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We've discussed this before, you and I. Not every criticism is couched in a bullheaded refusal to award credit -- some of them, just possibly, could be because the proferred solution has little to do with fixing the problem that he's articulated in the previous breath.

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Quick! Someone identify changes Bush is going to make other than Private Savings Accounts!

Bush has framed the discussion in PSAs because he doesn't want to talk about cutting benefits. Indeed, the one thing he has said on benefit cuts is that he won't cut them on anyone over 55. That means he is against means testing, by the way.

A number of Dems have been saying for years either than there should be a separate revenue base, not just the SS tax, or that the cap should be lifted and the rate lowered. These have been voices in the wilderness, but they've been there. I've posted in the past that a tax on employment was a fundamental problem, since it puts us at a competitive disadvantage overseas.

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You blew it Hello. Everyone has ignored him for weeks here and on FB. He gave up on FB- I think- I have him on ignore. his post was just a copy of one I did to him last week, so he was just trying, desparately now, to get some response. I think he would have left if you hadn't responded.

6 more weeks of winter now.

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You mean explicitly, right? Because the fact that it's on-budget and accruing IOUs from the general fund means that the income tax is the separate revenue base, at least starting around 2018 or so.

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I'm not talking about the critisism, I'm talking about that strategy. The DEMs do not want Bush to pass SS reform, even if it excluded PRAs. The only thing coming out of them is PRA = Evil. What I haven't heard is the following: "We, the DEMs, strongly disagree with PRAs for reasons X, Y, and Z, but we look forward to working with the President on a bipartisan solution."

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I mean explicitly, so that social security is not paid for solely from the wage base.

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I don't believe that's true. If they could get Bush to advocate increases in taxes and reductions in benefits that would provide a long-term solution, they would be quite happy to let him solve that problem and take the heat. But they're not going to propose that as an opening response for obvious reasons. They'll let Bush build the support and then "grudgingly" go along, at least in the safe seats, and let hte no votes come from the 6 unsafe districts and in the contest senate states.

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This President doesn't work on bi-partisan solutions.

I think the Dems need to view our role as offering an alternative, showing what can be done, and doing our best to defeat any unwise solutions.

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I don't think that's right. After all, Tip O'Neill was able to work with Ronald Reagan to reform social security via a bipartisan commission back in the day. And as hated as Dubya is today, remember that the Gipper was truly loathed by liberals in the early 1980s.

I predict that when his efforts to strong-arm the Senate fail, he'll fall back to the bipartisan commission approach, and will find a Moynihan or two (George Mitchell and Warren Rudman) to work a deal.

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Are you kidding? Of course he's setting the terms of the public debate. And no Democratic plan is even going to come to a vote in the House.

If this is going to turn into one those Kennedy bull sessions, why don't you and Hank just do it by PM and save the rest of us.

Conservatives have been telling people that the end of SS was nigh for years. The projected demise keeps moving back, though. So you have this situation where everybody knows there's a problem, but the problem is mostly what they know.

As for Medicare, it seems to me that what ails Medicare is also what ails private health insurance, which gets more and more expensive every year. I don't really know how to solve that one; RT has my proxy.

Indeed, I now regret the analogy. Congrats. But why are we talking about this game at all, instead of Medicare or the unsustainable deficit? Craziness. Too much more of this GOP rule is really going to fuck the country over.

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No shit. Because Bush has picked his battles. Iraq didn't threaten us, and Social Security is not nearly immediate a problem as the Bush deficits or Medicare. And yet the man pretends to be concerned about the funding shortfall Social Security faces in 2052. So no wonder people point out that other programs are going to run out of money much earlier.

If Republicans really cared about fixing it instead of (a) ending it, and/or (b) not sharing any credit, they reach the sort of bipartisan compromise we talked about the other day. That this is not happening is, first and foremost, because Bush does not want it to happen.

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I don't even agree with this. If Bush agreed to real reforms that maintained SS as a guaranteed benefit and ensured its funding, he'd easily pick off enough Democrats to get it passed and call it bipartisan. But that would mean strengthening the program, and his people want to end it.

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2. Please get someone started on this any time now. 'Cause I don't think the private account idea has been thoroughly thought out yet, and if no one suggests alternatives I think there's an increased chance it will pass without serious consideration.

BR(Hillary might be smart enough to try "bridging the gap" w/ the Bushies on this issue, which might go a long way towards de-fanging what Pat Buchannon very amusingly called her "Madame deFarge image" among the anti-Clinton psychos, which might actually start to make her nationally electable by '08)C

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It's the third rail. Give Bush credit for at least that--that's why he's got this overworked alternative, which spares the older set any changes and purports to provide advantages for the younger set.

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Give him credit for what? Raising the issue now that he's not going to run for reelection? Congressional Republicans are really happy about that. If he'd run on the issue, he could more plausibly claim a mandate on it, but they're worried that he's hanging them out to dry. This is what I really don't get about those of you who are on the board complaining about the Democrats: Bush doesn't have the Republicans' support yet on this stuff. He'd have more of it if he could pick off a few Dems for cover, but they've been burned by his fake bi-partisanship so many times now that they're not biting.

Social Security is one of the most popular government programs ever. Bush wants to end it. It's not surprising that he's having a hard time drumming up supporting.

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He recognizes that changing SS isn't politically palatable. It's a non-starter if the proposal is the standard raise taxes/reduce benefits. He knows that, so he's making a bold play with a proposal that might appeal to (or not be opposed by) the usual interests. I'm not saying it's a winning proposal, or even the highest priority. But I guess you'd prefer to have no one do anything for hte next four years.