Bush on social security: "lie-down-and-rot"

You have to hand it to George W. Bush. There isn't a single person on the face of the earth he doesn't want to be passionately angry at him. The man doesn't understand politics at all—he's truly the antithesis of Dale Carnegie's Winning Friends and Influencing People. Anyone with a smidgeon of common sense or who's been to a movie theater or show knows if you want a group's agreement, loyalty, cooperation, adulation, you give them something they want. Not George. He wants to take everything away from everyone and give it to a few people who are already too wealthy. Now that he has his wars and domestic surveillance running full bore, he's gone back to his orgasmic obsession with eviscerating social security, like he did with habeas corpus and posse comitatus.

It would be a damn shame if anyone but the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent made it out of the Bush administration alive. What better way to assure a glowing legacy than complete agreement that everyone profited wildly from wise neocon governance by wiping out the 99.9% of people you robbed to make them so very rich? A smart plan, but it depends on the unfailing disintegration of that 99.9%—and, try as he has and will continue, Bush just doesn't have the snap to get rid of all those troublesome bodies. It's enough to keep you awake nights crying about how he can't wipe out the whole world despite stealing two elections, and that people will remain to write his real legacy for future generations, vilifying Bush and America more than Hitler and Nazi Germany.

So, today we got this story from MSNBC to get us acquainted with our short, future retirement of starvation and death:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said in a new report Monday that Social Security is facing a $13.6 trillion shortfall and that delaying needed reforms is not fair to younger workers.

Okay, hold it right here. What is this figure, $13,600,000,000,000.00 shortfall? Below is a graph of the 2008 Discretionary Budget Request showing social security and medicare costing $10.1 billion. Did they pull the $13.6 trillion out of their asses? That amount is more than a thousand times what social security and medicare will cost next year. Is $13.6 trillion the needed outlay for the next five centuries? And what is this rationale about not being fair to younger workers? Is it so fair to everyone else? This is typical neocon-speak. Make big claims and never explain the reasoning, and run away from evidence and empirical data.

A report issued by the Treasury Department said that some combination of benefit cuts and tax increases will need to be considered to permanently fix the funding shortfall. But White House officials stressed that President Bush remains opposed to raising taxes.

How typically unimaginative and servile. Yes, all you baby boomers really screwed America with the calamitous moral failing of your occurring in such irresponsibly high numbers. Damn you to hell, you shouldn't have done that! But we'll fix you, we'll fix you and you damn fucking sure won't do that again: we're going to tax honest, working people out of existence while eliminating your social security benefits—and take anything else you might have as well. That way, there's more money for defense.

It said delaying necessary changes reduces the number of people available to share in the burden of those changes and is unfair to younger workers. "Not taking action is thus unfair to future generations. This is a significant cost of delay," the report said.

In another key finding, the report said: "Social Security can be made permanently solvent only by reducing the present value of scheduled benefits and/or increasing the present value of scheduled tax increases."

The paper went on to say: "Other changes to the program might be desirable, but only these changes can restore solvency permanently."

Then Bush goes on to say useless things, and the article says it's a daunting problem. Then, there is a link to another article in Newsweek by Robert J. Samuelson:

There's already a bipartisan consensus: do nothing. No one plugs cutting retirement benefits or raising taxes, the obvious choices. [...]

The aging of America is not just a population change or, as a budget problem, an accounting exercise. It involves a profound transformation of the nature of government: commitments to the older population are slowly overwhelming other public goals; the national government is becoming mainly an income-transfer mechanism from younger workers to older retirees.

Consider the outlook. From 2005 to 2030, the 65-and-over population will nearly double to 71 million; its share of the population will rise to 20 percent from 12 percent. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—programs that serve older people—already exceed 40 percent of the $2.7 trillion federal budget. By 2030, their share could hit 75 percent of the present budget, projects the Congressional Budget Office. The result: a political impasse.

Social security, medicare and medicaid already exceed 40% of the federal budget? That's a very big claim which certainly isn't supported by the 2008 Discretionary Budget Request, which shows it as a tiny fraction of one percent. Yes, Robert, consider the outlook.

Over the years, the major think tanks have published tens of thousands of words on Social Security and Medicare. Most of the reports are technical, though some propose major (even radical) changes. But the two programs are usually treated separately, and the larger questions of adjusting to an aging society are mostly evaded. I think I know why: wrenching honesty might be deeply embarrassing.

Liberals might have to concede that government could grow too large and that spending and benefit cuts are needed. Conservatives might have to concede that, even with plausible benefit and spending cuts, tomorrow's government would be bigger than today's. For think-tank scholars, brutal candor might offend friends and political mentors. For the ambitious, it might jeopardize future appointments to top government jobs.

Yes Robert, liberals might have to concede that you are just another neocon blowhard mistating facts to bolster your role as a GOP sycophant and Official Corporate and Defense Fundraiser. Robert's article is almost completely worthless, except when he says:

As an antidote to this timidity, I propose that some public-spirited sugar daddy (the MacArthur Foundation? Warren Buffett?) sponsor a short book. A possible title: "Facing Up to an Aging America."

I just love to laugh at idiots. Robert, if you write to Warren every day and ask nicely, he might let you give him fellatio sometime. You could become one of those public restroom weinie washers republicans like, and like to be, so much.

The reality of inequality. The "enormity of the problem" can be daunting, especially if you write the sentence that way. All that's really needed is a little leadership to spell things out in clear language.

The year I graduated from college, affirmative action became the law, and I had the pleasure of being denied graduate school and many jobs because, as a white man, I did nothing for affirmative action. The way it was sold, I was all for affirmative action. Then, I discovered the real purpose was to decimate the middle class, which was dominated by whom—let's all say it together—white men.

I didn't establish a track record in various career paths because there was always a reason for my company to lose me: no experience fresh out of school, I had original ideas which helped a client's bottom line and it scared my boss, the company didn't want to pay me $11,000 a year, liars who dropped bombs like he sells heroin to small children, he's an alcoholic, he's a sex offender, he's a union organizer. It was so easy to keep me out of a job. Finally I've found myself forcibly and involuntarily retired for reasons I won't discuss, but now I'm totally dependent on social security.

Before that, I had known years of going hungry and losing my home, and struggling for basic sustenance. During one thirty day period I had nothing more to eat than a five pound bag of sugar. Despite the fact all my bosses told me I was not the best worker they had, but the best worker they'd ever seen, once some clown told the lie, I was history, hungry and in harm's way. But, just when I start thinking my ghost story is the scariest I ever heard, someone next to me tells one that makes my hair stand on end. I'm not telling you all this to cry for myself.

I noticed in my time in the workforce that every single person, almost without exception, suffers unjust discrimination which operates as something more than a temporary setback or inconvenience. I knew a lot of talented, hard-working individuals who were good about staying on the job, living cheaply and simply and saving money, who suffered some private disaster that wiped them out and thrust them to the netherlands of poverty. Yeah, I knew a few people who got rich, and their ability and industry played an important role, but it was far more important that they had a little good fortune and not too much misfortune that they left behind a record of achievement and received monetary reward. That didn't happen to the vast majority of us, and I saw far more unfair things happen to others than what happened to me.

It always happened for the same few reasons: some authoritarian type wanted to prove his or her strength and teach "character" or simply punish the innocent; a radically changing economy caused companies and old trades to become obsolete; someone shows initiative or works extra hours, is cast as a fool and thrown out. Stuff like that. My last 13 years, I worked over 100 hours a week, many weeks 160 hours or more, which meant getting practically no sleep, so don't get the mistaken idea I wasn't trying. I worked harder and longer than anyone I ever knew, and knew many people who worked hard and smart. It didn't help me at all. But, I walked away alive, so in my mind I'm a very big success. Too many people I knew didn't.

Fixing social security. Social security isn't broken. It is the only self-funded federal program, so get over the incorrect notion it's broken. The problem is social security does everything it can to keep your money while Washington loots it. For once, how about considering a model from some other perspective than the supply side? You don't have to make money on everything, and the destitute don't contribute to a healthy economy. "Experts" quote different figures, but you can figure retirees to number over 70 million by 2030, making them the biggest political and social bloc in the nation. That's a group politicians should listen to for their own sake, although I don't have to tell you they never will.

If you're in your 20s or 30s, you don't think much about it. But you'll do little more than blink your eyes and roll over in bed, and the quality of your retirement will become your number one personal issue. The Bush administration plan for retirees is "lie-down-and-rot"—let everyone be bludgeoned to death as a worker and thrown into the gutter to decompose as a retiree. It's a hell of a plan. For the sake of enough money to be able to live somewhere, eat and have transportation, retirees can live productive lives and make important contributions in society, but the business-blunderbuss-George-Bush plan is to add retirees to the people he wants dead, and now, spending their savings on foreign wars, prisons, eavesdropping and harrassment—you know, punk-ass shit like that.

I say social security should make every retired person fiscally solvent—or rich, but not necessarily rich; however, every individual should be extremely solvent in retirement and easily able to provide for his or her housing, health care, food and transportation. Hey, let them buy me a nice, big house in the country and let me drive new cars. I haven't been able to buy a new vehicle for 30 years. If public servants don't want to make that happen, retirees may hunt them down like the vermin they are. Let them know they have that choice. I hang by the slenderest of threads. With the way the cost of everything has shot up thanks to the gigantic GOP budgetary deficit and irrresponsible policy at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere, I can hardly feed myself and keep the internet and electricity turned on. Social security's annual 1% adjustment for cost of living isn't cutting it when we're actually seeing double-digit inflation, triple-digit in the case of some necessary commodities. And the government's answer is to just cut off my income? What have I to lose? If you don't face these choices today like I do, you will—believe me—so quickly it will seem immediate and unbelievable in retrospect. If the system that never gave as much as it asked plans to give nothing for retirement, then the people controlling that system can answer to us with their jobs and personal welfare. I read an article the other day that said the waste in Bush's wars was more than what the IRS collected in taxes last year. How could that be? Shave a little out of every federal program, defense in particular, and make funding social security of primary importance. We didn't force this "get them before they get you" situation, they did. I'm not afraid of these people. I faced death every minute of every day during my last very hazardous career. If retired baby boomers understand they have the strength of numbers, and can muster the teaspoonful of courage it takes to insist on the good quality of life every American has earned, social security will work like a well-oiled sewing machine.

Put some poor people to work in Washington. Rich lobbyist-thieves, bankers and oil men despise those not born into privilege no matter how many of us there are, and they can be swatted like flies.
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Update: I mentioned "public bathroom weinie washers" in this article and you might have assumed I was referring to Sen. Larry Craig and his troubles in Minnesota. Tomorrow a judge will hear his request to throw out his guilty plea for disorderly conduct following his arrest in the Minneapolis airport bathroom sex sweep. I wish to make a few comments about that case before the hearing.

I read the police report and saw the comedic reenactment on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. I don't mean to defend this silly behavior or an undistinguished republican lawmaker, but the event doesn't seem to rise to the standard of noncompliance with the law, as mentioned in this article by Frank Rich in Sunday's New York Times.

Such a police fundraiser is extraordinary, causing me to assume it came in response to complaints from airport patrons. I'm struck by the meanness of statements made about Craig from all directions, and I didn't mean to be a part of that. As a commercial driver for many years, I used public bathrooms in every state. I have firsthand knowledge of sexual encounters of all types in parking lots and bathrooms, and I can tell many, many stories. I always refused. Looking for love while traveling is a very bad idea, and a good way to get robbed or killed. I saw every kind of thing there is. I had no trouble saying no, and never considered it a problem. As Rich said, "[e]ven had he invited the police officer to a hotel room, there still would have been no crime. The last American laws criminalizing gay sex between consenting adults were thrown out by the Supreme Court in 2003." The advance noted in the complaint of finger-waving and toe-tapping is behavior totally unknown to me, causing me to wonder if it even happened in the first place.

Sex of all kinds is handled clumsily and poorly in the context of our culture, politics and religion. I joked around a lot in this article making some points which are hard to express, but I'm serious when I tell you we're a failure as a society when it comes to discussing intimacy. There was no need for any of that to happen to Larry Craig, and the ensuing scandal was embarrassing in its unkindness and craven ignorance. The judge would be correct to throw this one out tomorrow. I care about what politicians do in their public lives, don't care about what they do in their private lives, and I don't want to know.