The Democrat Thread

[Jake]

Get Ready for the Phony Debt Fight

 

"The Debt" is going to be used as an excuse to unnecessarily cut Social Security and Medicare regardless of who wins

 

Interesting.

 

I had been intrigued by the notion of Social Security cuts and even privatization, but I realized after research that the motivations behind the calls for that are almost surely ideological. Social Security has been running at a profit for so long that $2 trillion of our debt is actually owed to the Social Security fund -- so it is hard for me to say that it is near insolvency when it still has TOO much money AND provided the government pays back the debt, they will have >$2 trillion in the bank to cover any potential tough times in which they run at a deficit. Last time I looked at it, the next time it really should get some serious attention would be about 20 years from now.

[StrangeSox]

The arguments to cut Social Security are nonsense and you can tell with how it's always conflated with Medicare. "If we don't do anything, SS benefits in 20-30 years will be reduced slightly, but still more in real dollars than they are today! Better cut our throats now and get it over with!"

 

Privatization is an entirely separate disaster.

[kapkomet]

Interesting.

 

I had been intrigued by the notion of Social Security cuts and even privatization, but I realized after research that the motivations behind the calls for that are almost surely ideological. Social Security has been running at a profit for so long that $2 trillion of our debt is actually owed to the Social Security fund -- so it is hard for me to say that it is near insolvency when it still has TOO much money AND provided the government pays back the debt, they will have >$2 trillion in the bank to cover any potential tough times in which they run at a deficit. Last time I looked at it, the next time it really should get some serious attention would be about 20 years from now.

 

 

The arguments to cut Social Security are nonsense and you can tell with how it's always conflated with Medicare. "If we don't do anything, SS benefits in 20-30 years will be reduced slightly, but still more in real dollars than they are today! Better cut our throats now and get it over with!"

 

Privatization is an entirely separate disaster.

 

There's two points to this. 1. Because of declining population behind the baby boomers, you will lose income and the related future value of earnings on the current funds. 2. If the government would quit stealing money out of it to fund general spending, it would certainly make a very large difference to this whole arguement.

 

I have to say that on the surface I agree with you both on your point but even you both should have to admit that the two above points do make it difficult to support the position that it's not in trouble. But the trouble is self induced to a large extent is where I'll agree with what you're trying to say.

[StrangeSox]

It's "in trouble" in the sense that, in several decades, maybe we will have benefits reduced from what's current law, but those benefits will still be greater in terms of 2012 dollars than what we get now.

 

That's being used as an excuse for a "Grand Bargain," that Simpson-Bowles type BS that cuts services and cuts taxes for the top while 'broadening the base.' There are ways to fix SS relatively easily without destroying the program, but that's not what the people pushing for these Grand Bargains, who are almost exclusively the 1% of the 1%, want.

[BigSqwert]

Because of declining population behind the baby boomers, you will lose income and the related future value of earnings on the current funds.

 

The millenials (born between 1980 and 1995) are a larger group than the baby boomers.

[kapkomet]

The millenials (born between 1980 and 1995) are a larger group than the baby boomers.

 

 

But you still can't replace those earnings with the higher earnings of the baby boomers in real dollars.

[StrangeSox]

[bmags]

There's two points to this. 1. Because of declining population behind the baby boomers, you will lose income and the related future value of earnings on the current funds. 2. If the government would quit stealing money out of it to fund general spending, it would certainly make a very large difference to this whole arguement.

 

It could be made up with all of those people who want to come to america to work.

[Jake]

Anyone hear the murmurs about "taxmageddon"? Is there any chance of us actually letting all of those expire?

[kapkomet]

Anyone hear the murmurs about "taxmageddon"? Is there any chance of us actually letting all of those expire?

 

 

Ask the same question Wednesday.

[Jake]

Ask the same question Wednesday.

 

Once BO is reelected, it will be the top new story until it's resolved, I'm sure.

 

What confuses me is why the Republican campaign hasn't given this attention. They could have been accusing BO of having a master-plan of giant tax increases because that's technically what the current laws call for.

[kapkomet]

Once BO is reelected, it will be the top new story until it's resolved, I'm sure.

 

What confuses me is why the Republican campaign hasn't given this attention. They could have been accusing BO of having a master-plan of giant tax increases because that's technically what the current laws call for.

 

I do think most of them will expire if he's re-elected.

 

The 2% FICA holiday one is going to anyway, which hits everyone that is currently working.

[mr_genius]

The 2% FICA holiday one is going to anyway, which hits everyone that is currently working.

 

yep

 

 

[Jake]

There are some that probably will, I agree, and some probably should. I just hope that Congress agrees to negotiate each separately so that there is no chance that everyone gets f***ed over because they can't agree about one part of the taxes. They could dig into the deficit substantially if they let them expire, but from what I can tell it would probably end any notion of recovery.

[LittleHurt05]

I do think most of them will expire if he's re-elected.

 

The 2% FICA holiday one is going to anyway, which hits everyone that is currently working.

 

What a stupid idea that was...

[kapkomet]

What a stupid idea that was...

 

 

I agree with you on this, for many reasons.

[BigSqwert]

More liberal racists.

[StrangeSox]

What a stupid idea that was...

yup

[StrangeSox]

Voter Suppression Enters the Home Stretch

 

Mike Tomasky writes today about something that a lot of us have spent the past couple of years deploring: the increasingly naked Republican campaign to suppress the nonwhite vote.

 

Up to now its measures were local and somewhat haphazard—scare-tactic fliers circulated in black neighborhoods, GOP elections officials "forgetting" to ship the right number of voting machines to minority areas, that sort of thing....Now, though, in these past couple of years, the GOP strategy has been institutionalized. It's come above ground, and the thugs in black outfits distributing handbills in the dead of night before Election Day have been replaced or at least supplemented by thugs in suits and ties trying to put a respectable sheen this obviously anti-democratic business.

 

Florida arbitrarily closing polls in Democratic-heavy counties, Ohio changing provisional ballot rules at the last second.

[Jake]

I decided to support Barack Obama pretty early in the Democratic primary, around spring of 2007. But unlike so many of his supporters, I never experienced a kind of emotional response to his candidacy. I never felt his election would change everything about American politics or government, that it would lead us out of the darkness. Nothing Obama did or said ever made me well up with tears.

 

Possibly for that same reason, I have never felt even a bit of the crushing sense of disappointment that at various times has enveloped so many Obama voters. I supported Obama because I judged him to have a keen analytical mind, grasping both the possibilities and the limits of activist government, and possessed of excellent communicative talents. I thought he would nudge government policy in an incrementally better direction. I consider his presidency an overwhelming success.

 

I can understand why somebody who never shared Obama’s goals would vote against his reelection. If you think the tax code already punishes the rich too heavily, that it’s not government’s role to subsidize health insurance for those who can’t obtain it, that the military shouldn’t have to let gays serve openly, and so on, then Obama’s presidency has been a disaster, but you probably didn’t vote for him last time. For anybody who voted for Obama in 2008 and had even the vaguest sense of his platform, the notion that he has fallen short of some plausible performance threshold seems to me unfathomable.

 

Obama’s résumé of accomplishments is broad and deep, running the gamut from economic to social to foreign policy. The general thrust of his reforms, especially in economic policy, has been a combination of politically radical and ideologically moderate. The combination has confused liberals into thinking of Obamaism as a series of sad half-measures, and conservatives to deem it socialism, but the truth is neither. Obama’s agenda has generally hewed to the consensus of mainstream economists and policy experts. What makes the agenda radical is that, historically, vast realms of policy had been shaped by special interests for their own benefit. Plans to rationalize those things, to write laws that make sense, molder on think-tank shelves for years, even generations. They are often boring. But then Obama, in a frenetic burst of activity, made many of them happen all at once.

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/barac...-yes-great.html

[Jake]

Dear Mitt Romney,

 

Well, it's November 5, and that can only mean that your lifelong quest to become President of the United States will die its death tomorrow night. No, for real. Take my advice and don't try to talk to anyone about starting the war chest for 2016. It's not going to work out any better. You are not going to be President of the United States. Not now, not ever. I know, you really really really wanted it. The thing is, though, really really really wanting something is not enough. You can want s*** like crazy, but that doesn't mean you have the power to make it happen. Most of us have already learned this. You've been protected by privilege so long, though, that I suppose you might not have learned it yet. Ah well. You'll have that lesson down by Wednesday.

 

You were a terrible candidate. You were chosen more or less by default from a field crowded with people whose overt radical-right insanity made them nonviable in a general election. The people who chose you didn't really know why you should be POTUS, and you didn't really know either (except see above, re: really really really wanting it). You spent the entire campaign lurching from one position to another, driven by a purely mercenary and cynical hunger for financial and popular support. All politicians are chameleons to some extent; but you really took it to a brand new place. Most lying politicians at least have an ideologically coherent persona that they are trying to use these lies to maintain. You were so eager to tell the magic lie that would put you over the top that you actually destroyed your own ability to make a meaningful statement. About anything. By the end, your language was so completely evacuated of any verifiable content that you might as well just have stopped talking. During the third presidential debate--especially in the last ten minutes--you could have been reciting Vogon poetry and it would have made just about as much sense.

 

At the end of the campaign, here are the only things that the American electorate can say for sure are true about you: 1) You are white. 2) You are rich. 3) You lie. 4) You think 47% of the people in the US should f*** off and die.

 

That's not a winning platform in twenty-first century America, Mitt.

 

As far as political theater goes, your campaign had its moments. Clint Eastwood vs. Empty Chair. The "charity" photo-ops staged for you and Ryan. Firing Big Bird. Can You Say That A Little Louder, Candy. Horses and bayonets. Binders full of women. I used to really relish this stuff; it provided so much great fodder for political satire and cultural analysis. But I have a five year old daughter, and I no longer find this bulls*** amusing.

 

Because, Mitt, you are also on tape mocking Obama for wanting to "slow the rise of the oceans," and being uproariously applauded for it. I grew up in New York, across the sound from Long Island. Everyone in my immediate family has lived in Manhattan at some point in their adult lives. And to you and all those laughing people, Mitt, I have this to say: f*** you. Seriously. If you don't think climate change is a real problem, you have no business being near any elected office in this country. We heard so little about climate change in this election, and there's just no political will in Congress or, really, outside of it to push us toward the massive, foundational, infrastructure-altering changes we'd have to make in our daily lives to slow the rise of the oceans. And you want to make stupid f***ing jokes about it. I love this planet the way it is. I do not think I will love the planet PJ's going to be coping with when she's my age. It seems even too muhc to hope for, some days, that in 38 years most people in this country will still be able to buy food, and there will be a few beautiful things left.

 

So no, I do not think it's hilarious that Obama promised to "slow the rise of the oceans." I only f***ing hope we can still do it.

 

And what keeps the oceans rising? A lot of things; but certainly you are one of them, Mitt, with your whole-souled commitment to the worst kind of chew-it-up-and-s***-it-out capitalism, to a rapacity that strives to convert the whole planet into money, to the cynical gaming of an already corrupt system. Certainly you, Mitt, consumer of companies, hoarder of resources, high priest of unequal distribution. So don't let the superstorm hit you in the ass on your way out.

 

I could talk about what a disaster you are on women's issues; but what's the point? You're done. Get out of the spotlight. Go find George W., wherever the hell the party goons are keeping HIM, and you can lick your wounds together.

 

I'm sorry. I'm being so negative. I should think of something good to say about you. Well, Mitt, there is one thing I will miss about you:

 

link:

 

Without you, Mitt, I probably wouldn't ever have found out about "Gangam Style." And I certainly wouldn't have enjoyed it as much or as often as I have.

 

Goodbye, Mitt. I would like to say it's been nice knowing you. But that would be a lie so big even you wouldn't tell it.

 

The Plaid Adder

 

another message board poster

[StrangeSox]

Really only posting this because I found this statistic pretty surprising:

 

 

In the 2000 election, approximately 70% of Muslims in America voted for Bush; among non-African-American Muslims, the ratio was over 80%.

 

Four years later, Bush’s share of the vote among Muslims was 4%.

 

What happened? Well, a lot.

[StrangeSox]

George Will on the dangers of voter-registration-by-mail!

 

[mr_genius]

George Will on the dangers of voter-registration-by-mail!

 

 

George Will is an idiot

[GoSox05]

 

Guess who's back.