On Jan. 11, I got to the office & as I always do, I checked out The Wall Street Journal on line. The home page featured 2 main articles at the top, & I wondered if the folks at WSJ realized the irony.

In the 1st article, Pres. Bush vowed to "lead" on the issue of privatizing Social Security, vowing that Congressmen who don't go along with the idea will suffer political consequences.

The 2nd article was about Argentina climbing out of a bankruptcy situation that saw record increases in unemployment, poverty, & homelessness in that country over the last 10 years. As part of the restructuring, an Argentine court ruled that Argentina need only honor its bonds to the tune of 30 cents on the dollar-----a shocking, unprecedented 70% hit to its bondholders, many of whom are laborer's pension funds.

How did Argentina get into this mess?

It privatized its Social Security system.

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by P. Pittsburgh Joe on Jan 20, 2005 ---</FONT></center>

This from Moveon.org:

Dear friend:

George Bush and Republican leaders have made phasing out Social Security through privatization and massive benefit cuts their top priority for 2005. Members of Congress are choosing sides over the next couple of weeks.

We need to make sure they choose correctly now—before a massive election-style campaign by George Bush and the Wall Street interests gets to them including what might be a $100 million TV ad campaign.

MoveOn's trying to gather 200,000 signatures to present to lawmakers when they return after the inauguration. You can sign the petition now at:
http://www.moveon.org/socialsecurity/

Social Security is a complicated issue, but the basics are really pretty simple:

-- Social Security provides monthly benefits to some 44 million Americans who are retired, disabled or the survivor of a deceased parent. It provides most of the income for older Americans--some 64 percent of their support. It has lifted generations of seniors out of poverty.

-- Social Security is not in crisis. That is an outright lie perpetrated in order to create the urgency for radical changes. Under conservative forecasts, the long-term challenges in Social Security do not manifest themselves until 2042. Even then Social Security has 70 percent of needed funds. That shortfall is smaller than the amount needed in 1983, the last time we overhauled Social Security. George Bush's Social Security crisis-talk is an effort to create a specter of doom -- just like the weapons of mass destruction claim in Iraq.

-- Phasing out Social Security and replacing it with privatized accounts means one thing: massive cuts in monthly benefits for everybody. Social Security privatization requires diverting taxes used to pay current benefits into privatized accounts invested in risky stocks. Without that money Social Security benefits will inevitably be cut -- some proposals even cut benefits of current retirees. These benefit cuts are inevitable, since diverting Social Security money into privatized accounts means less money to pay current and future benefits.

-- Every serious privatization proposal raises the Social Security retirement age to 70. That might be fine if you're a Washington special interest lobbyist but it is incredibly unfair to blue-collar Americans with tough, physical jobs, or for African Americans and Latinos with lower life expectancies.

-- Privatization means gambling with your retirement security. There is probably an appropriate place for a little stock market risk in retirement planning -- but it isn't Social Security. Privatization exposes your entire retirement portfolio to stock market risks -- and the risk that you'll outlive any of your savings at retirement. You can't outlive your Social Security benefit.

-- So who does benefit? Wall Street. Giant financial services firms have been salivating for decades over the prospect of taking over Social Security. Wall Street would make billions of dollars in profit by managing the privatized accounts -- money that would come directly from your benefits.

-- Action is urgently needed today. President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress are joining forces with the financial services industry for a major campaign to convince the public there is a major crisis and pressure members of Congress to vote for privatization. Action is needed now before it is too late. Please sign MoveOn’s petition to protect Social Security at the link below.
http://www.moveon.org/socialsecurity/

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has this to say about "adjusting Social Security, based on gender and race"

Looks to me like black women are gonna be s**t out of luck!
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From "Meet the Press", Sunday Jan 23:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me show you something else you said at the National Journal Forum that raised some eyebrows: "Women are living longer relative to men today than they were in 1940. Yet, we never ever have debated gender-adjusting Social Security. ...But, at some point if the age difference continues to separate and more women are in the workforce and you have more of an equality of pay structure in the workforce, at some point somebody might want to suggest that we need to take a look at the question of whether or not actuarially we ought to adjust who gets what, when, and how."

A gender adjustment--what does that mean?

REP. THOMAS: Well, it was one of my ways of getting people to focus on the issue of age. To move from 65 to 68, which we did in 1983, was a benefit cut. But it also creates hardships based upon the occupation that you have, and it creates inequities on who you are and how long you live. You could just as easily have a discussion about occupations as to when would be a fair or an unfair time to require. We also need to examine, frankly, Tim, the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race? And you ought not to just leave gender off the table because that would be a factor.

Now, there are people who are saying, "Gee, this is great. We can get them into a box and maybe we can win some seats in the next election over this issue." This ought not to be about the next election. This is about how we have an opportunity given to us by the president, his willingness to work with us to solve some problems that are here and now, but will only get worse. If we're not in a crisis now, we're in a problem. Wait a few years. We will be in a crisis. We ought to examine all opportunities to solve the problem. Then we can dismiss them. But to not look at them denies us an opportunity to have yet another way to solve our problem.

MR. RUSSERT: So if someone is a woman and they live longer, they would get less per year?

REP. THOMAS: It's not that you would do it; it's something that you need to look at. Because if you extend the age beyond 78, if you go to 80 or 82, all of those concerns about race, occupation and gender are exacerbated. And you shouldn't just extend the age without understanding the additional complications and unfairness that you're bringing into the system. That's the point I'm trying to make. Don't look for a simple solution like shifting age without realizing you're creating additional problems for yourself down the road. Same thing with payroll tax. Same thing with individual accounts or other ways to bring additional revenue in the system. All of them should be examined. None of them should be labeled with the pejorative with an opportunity to try to gain seats in the next election. You are doing a disservice to the society if that's your intention in this debate. My goal is to get it as broad as possible, look for bipartisan support and give the president a bill on his desk that he can sign that addresses the real societal inequities that we have with seniors.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think Congress, Mr. Chairman, would accept any formula that said that people would be treated differently because of their gender or their race?

REP. THOMAS: If we discuss it and the will is not to do it, fine. At least we discussed it. To simply raise the age and find out that you've got gender, race and occupational problems later, I would not be doing the kind of service that I think I have to do. You and I have been around quite a while. We went through the '80s. We went into the '90s. And now we're in the 21st century. We saw the choices that were made in the past. We went to the well over and over again with the same old solutions which really aren't solutions. We've reached the point where we have to fundamentally examine it in my opinion. The president has given us that opportunity. We ought to take it.
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I'm curious. Has anyone heard ANY explanation of how putting less money into the main Social Security fund can possibly help?

I haven't seen one predictable effect that would strengthen the system.

All privatization can do is help create a crisis - or create a crisis earlier than it would have occurred.

Steve, I haven't seen anything that makes me believe that this will work...

Here's another explanation of why it won't work...
Choice Schtick

A just-released poll 2004 election voters by Hart Research for the AFL-CIO (no link currently available) has a host of useful data on voters’ attitudes toward Social Security privatization, including some very specific tests of their views toward Bush’s current plan for private accounts.
http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/001030.php

Thanks, Wyld. You always come through.

I also see a giant inconsistency.

The privatize Social Security proponents are the same people who claimed to want a tax cut for the wealthy to promote investment and create jobs. But they wouldn't, of course, allow any strings attached that would connect the tax windfall to investment or job creation.

Why then, do these same people insist on specifically creating a bonanza for the brokerage houses and guaranteed increases in fortune to those already well-invested in stocks?

If they were really interested in giving people choices and options, they would simply want to reduce the Social Security tax. That would give folks a countless number of more options.

In today's NYTimes:
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February 4, 2005
THE MIDDLE AGED
Under Benefit Plan, Early 50's Is Age Group Caught in Middle
By KIRK JOHNSON

DENVER, Feb. 3 - The early 50's are the gawky awkward years under President Bush's plan to overhaul Social Security, a fact that is not lost on Tom McEwen.

"I'm not in the 65-year-old group which he says will keep the benefits and not in the 25 group that gets to invest all their money," said Mr. McEwen, a 50-year-old lawyer who was having coffee and reading a paperback in a Starbucks here on Thursday morning. "So I'm the most affected of all."

The great middle band of the Social Security debate agrees perhaps only on that point, that the president's plan, for better or worse, has put them on the cusp - too old to see much benefit through the miracle of compounding in a private retirement account, too young to have any guarantees.

But their numbers, and the role they might play in the debate, are enormous. People born in the peak year of the baby boom, 1957, turn 48 this year, and millions of those who came immediately before that, in the giddy ramping up of fertility during the Eisenhower administration, have already charged into their 50's.

Other demographic groups have their issues. People in their 20's and 30's fret over the array of important choices and long-term consequences that could come with managing part of their retirement fund.

People in their 60's are relieved that promises about inviolate benefits for people over 55 - first made in the New Deal in the 1930's - were repeated on Wednesday by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union speech. But they also worry that younger people will not be disciplined enough to flourish under the new system.

For the in-betweeners, like Mr. McEwen, the palette of opinion about Mr. Bush's plan is unbounded - from confidence to fear to resignation, all tempered or heightened by the pervasive sense of being caught in the middle.

Steve Whitcomb, a 54-year-old tax accountant, said that he long ago discounted the idea that Social Security would be there for him at retirement, and that he supported Mr. Bush's plan.

Two of Mr. Whitcomb's co-workers who were strolling with him down the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver - also tax accountants in their early 50's - disagreed, but in subtle ways.

Pat Ranney, 50, said she thought that Social Security might well need an overhaul, but that private accounts would create a divide in society between people who manage their money well and those who do not. Most do not, Ms. Ranney said.

David Aull, 51, said that he thought he would be O.K. under the Bush plan, but that the broader society, and how it holds together, might not.

"I'm lucky in that I have a good job and things are going well for me - but I also realize there's a lot of people who aren't doing so well, and I don't think these guys care," Mr. Aull said, referring to the Bush administration. "The older I get, the more I see this and the more I care about the poor falling off because it's pulling the country down."

Some people in their early-to-middle 50's said they supported Mr. Bush's ideas despite any personal sacrifice they might have to make because of their between status.

"Is it the right direction in our personal finances?" asked Kathy Robertson, 52, a financial analyst who lives in nearby Aurora. "Any time you're taking away something, no, it's not quite the right direction."

"But I think it is something that needs to be fixed," she said.

Most of the people interviewed in a day's snapshot of middle-aged opinion - one morning, one city and the chance encounters of a reporter and photographer - said that politics, at least to a certain degree, colored their views. People who voted for Mr. Bush tended to be more optimistic about his plan, while people who did not generally took a dimmer view.

Ms. Robertson and her husband, Mike, a fireman who is also 52, were exceptions who said that parties had nothing to do with it. They voted for Mr. Bush, they said, but also supported former President Bill Clinton.

"You think about Clinton and even Clinton said it was a concern of his," Ms. Robertson said, referring to the Social Security system. "So it's not a President Bush thing."

One man who described himself as a Republican and a Bush supporter couched his support for Mr. Bush's plan in terms so cautious that he sounded almost neutral, though he said he was not.

"They may go bankrupt and possibly some of these savings plans that he spoke about might be good," said Tony Geneva, 53, a hairstylist from Littleton. Mr. Geneva said that he was counting on Social Security to make up at least half of his retirement income, and that he hoped for the best. "I've got confidence in him," he said of the president.

Other in-betweeners said they were bracing for the worst.

Elva Chavez, 53, who lives in Denver and described herself as disabled, said that for her, Social Security was likely to be the difference as she gets older between getting by and not getting by at all.

"It's that or nothing at all," Ms. Chavez said. "I'm scared."

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...the afl-cio has a petition goin round....against the plan....don't have the link, but if you can't find it....i'll get it and post it.....

Saying it won't affect those over 55 is a ploy to get us (over 55ers) to endorse or at least not oppose the plan.

It's foolishly magnanimous since projections show that my benefits wouldn't have to be cut until I'm 102 years old if the plan is left alone.

And if siphoning money to the stockbrokers makes that date come earlier (or if it doesn't), it would only take another Congressional vote to cut my benefits at any time.

And at that time there would be fewer of us, and we'd be less able to defend ourselves.

I'm all for doing something to preserve Social Security for future generations. I don't believe the president's plan is a step in that direction.

Unfortunately, the task is to first protect it from the president and the stock market interests.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has posted a Social (IN)Security Calculator on his website... This may be a handy tool to use when discussing the issue with people who aren't sure about the proposed changes....

In my last post I made a point of how ridiculous it was for the administration to promise no change for those 55 or older - since we'd be over 100 before there was a problem if the plan is left exactly as it is.

I recently read an interesting perspective on this in my local newspaper. A letter-writer made a point that I didn't even recognize at the time.

He said that Social Security doesn't even need to be tweaked, it's doing just fine. The surplus that is not expected to keep up with demand is projected to run out around the middle of the century.

But by the time the surplus is gone, we baby boomers - the "demand" - will also be mostly gone.

So the surplus will accomplish exactly what it was designed to do - build up as the number of future Social Security beneficiaries increase at the rate it needs to until that number goes down again.

Social Security is something Republicans have opposed since its inception. If it were a legitimate issue now, the president might have at least mentioned it during his last campaign. For Bush it's another Iraq, except in this case all the casualties will be Americans.

The Bankruptcy Bill: Another example of the war against poor people. Instead of just tightening it up to prevent abuse, they shoot down an amendment that would have protected victims of catastrophic illness.

So, even if you lose your insurance, get cancer and rack up a million dollar bill, you won't have protection. I heard they may even be able to come after your house in one version of the bill. Adapt, or die. That's what Bush supporters can be proud that they gave us.

I heard some other nonsense that they worded it so that the one person who could still get bankrupcty protection would be an abortion protestor who was sued for big bucks for hurting someone. Could that be true?

So, to conservatives, vigilante nutfucks and the super rich are worth protecting from bankruptcy, but hard working middle class grandma who gets sick and loses coverage can just rot in the gutter.

You Republicans must be busting with pride.

Ran Dumb Thoughts on the Social Security "crisis:"

It was good to see Ted Kennedy on TV Sun. morning saying that the Dems weren't negotiating with Bush on this. How can we negotiate, he said, with somebody who wants to destroy the system?

Somebody told me about an AARP study which stated that all the government has to do to make Social Security solvent is to raise the taxable wage base by about $2,000 (currently it's $90,000; a guy making $90,000, which ain't a hell of a lot these days, pays the same as Barry Bonds or Donald Trump) & raise the tax rate by a quarter of a percent. "Crisis" resolved.

The more I think about it, these private accounts smell a lot like the "tax-free savings accounts" that the rich have been lobbying for for a long time, but did not get, when Bush was busy cutting the tax rates on capital gains & dividends. Privatizing Social Security with accounts that people will "own" & can transfer to the next generation is the way that Bush can deliver the tax-free savings accounts without being accused of giving another tax break to the rich.

The president's admission yesterday that personal accounts DON'T address Social Security's problems should be carved into stone somewhere. He and his right wing wonks will soon be back asserting how it WILL save the system.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-03-16-bush-news-conference_x.htm

The story in USA Today was already updated on the Internet to tone down the emphasis on personal accounts being no solution.

"Personal accounts do not solve the issue," Bush said at a White House news conference. "But personal accounts will make sure that individuals get a better deal with whatever emerges as a Social Security solution."

This is one way the today's right garners support. They're mostly dealing with the intelligence-challenged who are happy to believe that they are as well-equipped as anyone to choose stocks.

Joe, you're way correct on the personal accounts looking suspiciously like "tax-free savings accounts."

A part of what George W. Bush and his friends try to foist on the public always sounds fair and feasible.

I have no problem with people investing retirement money in the stock market. I have nothing against people sending their children to private schools.

For me, be it the savings accounts, these personal accounts, school vouchers and most other money issues, it seems to boil down to: not bad ideas, with one big exception . . . USE YOUR OWN MONEY.