alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

October 2, 2006

I Read the Post Today Oh Boy

by AltHippo @ 9:31 am. Filed under propaganda

I wanted to look at a couple of articles in today’s Washington DC.

Take Sebastian Mallaby. Please. He asserts that immigration and social security were the big stories from last week, somehow glossing over the watering down of civil rights, aka Habeas Corpus (or absence thereof), aka The Great Writ.

Actually, I hear they’re going to change the name from the Great Writ to the Writ That’s Pretty-Darned-Good-Considering.

Anyway, back on planet Mallaby:

Today, a pragmatic Republican such as Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah can propose a progressive fix to Social Security that does not involve personal accounts. But Democrats won’t come forward to support him.

In rejecting Social Security discussions last week, the Democrats painted the conservatives’ petition as a Trojan horse designed to get personal accounts back onto the table. Even if that were true, since when was all mention of personal accounts taboo for Democrats?

Good question. When was that exactly? I suspect it had something to do with the bamboozlement tour Bush undertook in 2005 with the aim of gutting Social Security and replacing it with private accounts, even though private accounts did nothing to insure the solvency of Social Security.

Social Security is a successful Democratic program. Therefore the Bush Revolution- the best example of an army of one that I’ve seen- decided it must go.

Josh Marshall has also suggested a darker motive: to fund deficits during the Reagan years we borrowed against Social Security. Private accounts would be a means for Bush to avoid paying it back:

But about $3 trillion of those dollars we needed to fund the 1980s and 1990s deficits we managed to borrow closer to home. We borrowed it from the Social Security (and a few other government) trust fund(s).

Almost the entirety of President Bush’s Social Security phase-out plan comes down to a simple proposition: finding out how not to pay it back.

Bookmark on del.icio.us

2 Responses to “I Read the Post Today Oh Boy”

  1. KCinDC Says:
    October 2nd, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    He writes a column headlined “A Party Without Principles” today and it’s about the Democrats!?

    And he starts off by complaining about Democrats not standing up for what they believe it, then proceeds straight to a complaint about Democrats standing up for Social Security, by refusing to open discussions that will inevitably (given the people currently in power and the history) lead to destroying it. How does he avoid whiplash?

  2. AltHippo Says:
    October 2nd, 2006 at 9:49 pm

    I’m certainly not getting the viewpoint he’s espousing.

    Do you know anything about Mallaby? What’s his deal?

Leave a Reply

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-Spam Image

« Water Boarding in the Ministry of Love
I Read the Post Today Oh Boy: Part II »

[powered by WordPress.]

hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

contact

TBA 2008

The Alternative Hypothesis

the elephants of anwr

issues and insight

capitolists

alt media

sounds

critical resources

flora and fauna

law & order

events

cinema

literati

propaganda

use with extreme caution

internal links:

categories:

search blog:

archives:

October 2006
M T W T F S S
« Sep   Nov »
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  

other:

95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

comments

Recent Comments

HippoWire

  • Recent Trackbacks:

    • 27 queries. 0.640 seconds