My mother often calls me at work and immediately launches into some aspect of whatever she has been worrying about all day. I then have about three seconds to figure out what she’s talking about, while she’s had hours to ponder and reach one-liner conclusions.
She called me at one of the crisis points in the financial system crash, Lehman had just failed or something, and Bush was out there stammering, walking around in circles, looking terrified, and I said “hello?” and she said, no greeting or context, “thank God they didn’t let him put Social Security in the stock market.” My mother’s a Democrat and by 2008 she referred to Bush almost exclusively as “him.” My mother has both a pension and Social Security. She’s doing okay. Yet the very first thing that came to her mind with the onset of the financial crash was “Social Security isn’t in the stock market”. Someone or other didn’t let him gamble with Social Security.
As I mentioned here, we’re going to do our best here locally to inform people on the Romney-Ryan Plan for Medicare and Medicaid, which they’ve been lying about apparently, so I’ll have to update my presentation from last week, but my personal larger concern regarding Romney-Ryan is Social Security. I think Republicans and our friends on Wall Street have been after Social Security for a long, long time, because it’s one of the few big pots of money left that they haven’t been able to gamble with while pulling out a percentage for themselves. They want that money, and they are not going to give up until they get a piece of it.
Here’s a short intro piece on Paul Ryan’s record and Social Security:
Ryan’s Social Security privatization proposal, the Social Security Personal Savings Guarantee and Prosperity Act of 2005, which he sponsored along with then-Sen. John Sununu (whose father has been a prominent Romney surrogate), would have allowed workers to funnel an average of 6.4 percent of their 12.4 percent payroll-tax contribution to a private account. Lower-income workers would be able to divert more of their wages, as the plan allows 10 percent of income up to $10,000 and 5 percent of income up to the payroll tax cap to be diverted. By default, the private account would be invested in a portfolio set by the Social Security Administration of 65 percent stocks and 35 percent bonds. Workers could choose an 80/20 stock-bond portfolio, or a 50-50 portfolio, but would not be able to pick individual stocks or bonds. At retirement, all participants in the plan would be required to buy an annuity.
The Social Security Administration concluded that the Ryan-Sununu plan would require huge increases in general budget revenue to make up the shortfall left in payroll tax revenue. Specifically, revenue would have to increase by 1.5 percent of GDP every year, an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found, or about $225 billion at current GDP. That’s a big honking tax hike. What’s more, under the plan, investments in the stock and bond markets would skyrocket such that by 2050, every single stock or bond in the United States would be owned by a Social Security account. This would mean that the portfolio managers at the Social Security Administration would more or less control the entire means of production in the United States.
Funnily enough, Ryan also proposed a resolution in 1999 that passed the House (with only Ron Paul voting against) expressing the sense of the body that Social Security should be maintained without any changes to benefits for current retirees or increases taxes.
We know almost nothing about Mitt Romney. He has successfully stonewalled, dodged or ignored every demand for specifics. He has been on both sides of nearly every issue. He and his wife have made it clear that they believe we know all we are entitled to know about the man who wants to be President.
But we don’t have to beg and plead with Paul Ryan for ordinary disclosures. Paul Ryan has a long record.
There’s about 80 days left until the election, and we’ve already wasted a week talking about Ryan’s dreamy blue eyes and exercise regime. People need to know that Paul Ryan has left a long paper trail of really radical proposals to destroy public programs that Americans love and rely on, including Social Security.
japa21
Romney’s plan is no different than his basic approach at pain. Get control of an organization (the US), use the pension plans (Social Security) to leverage debt, walk away with billions and leave everybody else out on the curb.
He will have to use slightly different techniques so it is all in place to happen the day after he leaves office, but Wall Street will be happy to give him the billions because they will make trillions no matter what happens to the economy.
Elizabelle
Tell her not to read David Brooks.
Although she might see right through his obfuscating.
Kay
@japa21:
Jesus, but that’s scary. That is The Romney Way, after all.
Mark S.
Paul Ryan has passed two bills in his entire tenure in the House: he renamed a post office and lowered the excise tax on making arrows(?).
I remember reading something similar about Ron Paul, but everyone knows he’s a loon who has no allies in the entire District. But Ryan? He’s usually been in the majority and is actually given plum assignments by the leadership. It’s amazing how little he’s accomplished.
Waynski
Anyone under 55 who votes Republican this year is either a fool or a pig.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
If this administration is publicly appointed, wouldn’t that make Paul Ryan the socialist? He wants the government to control the means of production and investment. Paul Ryan proposed Economic Death Panels to decide which businesses survive and which fail!
Mark S.
I wonder if that would cause a huge bubble that would blow up and destroy the economy. Wouldn’t there be a ton of stocks that were huuuuugely inflated? Well, a few people would get rich.
aimai
Kay I have always loved you madly but I love you even more now that I know we are daughters of the same mother. My mother routinely calls me, like, every night, and starts in without a Hello and goes right into political hysteria. Her emails and texts are also miracles of stream of consciousness.
aimai
japa21
@Waynski: Anyone who is 55 or older who votes for a Republican falls into the same category.
BTW, in comment 1 where I wrote pain, I meant to write Bain. But, come to think of it, they are somewhat synonymous.
Baud
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ):
You clearly live in a world of objective criteria.
Steeplejack
@Waynski:
Fix’d.
Villago Delenda Est
I refer to him in two ways: “the idiot” or “the deserting coward.”
I rarely use his given name…only the names his earned through his own despicable actions.
Waynski
@japa21: Good point. Also, too, I’m guessing most folks viewed your typo as snark, as I did.
Waynski
@Steeplejack: Thank you.
Hill Dweller
Willard released another blatantly false welfare ad overnight. It is the 4th in 12 days, but the media is worried about Biden’s tone.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mark S.:
That’s how the system has been rigged from the getgo. There was a brief period when some regulation was grudgingly tolerated but when the shitty grade Z movie star was installed in the White House, the regs were loosened, and then when the existential adversary evaporated, the gloves were off.
It’s basically an unregulated mob run cas1no.
Bago
Logically, that proposal is just f-d. We will let the government get between you and your portfolio?
This just sounds like a scheme for MBA’s to collect fees. Pure rent seeking.
Roger Moore
@Mark S.:
I think that’s a huge part of the goal. The Republicans would love to let private industry manage the investments so they can get management fees, but the bigger goal is to force people to invest in the stock market. When you bring a big new pool of money into the market without an equivalent increase in the number of things out there to invest in, you’re going to create a big asset price bubble that benefits current investors at the expense of the new ones. After that initial burst of new investors, the rate of return will eventually have to fall back to the rate of growth of the economy as a whole, which naturally undermines the whole idea of the stock market as a superior alternative to government bonds. On the scale of a lifetime, all it will do is enrich current investors at the expense of today’s workers.
Kane
Is anyone actually delving into that long paper trail and dissecting his voting record? Surely there must be more there than the handful of questionable votes and controversial positions that we are hearing about in the msm.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kane:
Sorry, the Heathers of the Village are totally hypmotized by those piercing blue eyes.
jwb
@Steeplejack: Let’s be fair. It makes perfect sense for anyone in the .01% to vote for Rmoney.
Mark S.
@jwb:
I’d be pretty tempted by the Ryan budget’s 1% tax rate for millionaires.
Chris
@Mark S.:
And a lot more would get poor. That’s at least as much a part of the goal as making a few banksters rich. Conservative sadism notwithstanding, Social Security is one of the only things left in America that the general public can count on without having to crawl to Wall Street on their hands and knees. The less of those things there are, the better for the big money behind the GOP.
That’s what it’s all about, far more than the monetary gain for the 1%. They want to take us back to an era when everything in your life came from the local
noblemanrobber baron or machine boss, who doled out your livelihood on a whim and, by implication, could destroy it if you put so much as a toe out of line. It’s about power and control, not money.Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes it is, and we let it happen, and (the word “we” in this instance referring to the white people of America) we’re still letting it happen. That’s what staggers me. If we make it through the next couple decades, beat back conservatism and save what’s left of the New Deal, it won’t be because we’ve come to our senses, it’ll be because the non-white share of the public will have increased enough to save us from our own stupidity.
Sorry for the white-people-centric point. It’s just that as a white guy, no matter how many times I’ve read of things like this happening in history, no matter how much I can intellectually understand things like racism or classism or religious prejudice, it still stuns me that so many people are so driven by hate that they’re ready to destroy their own children’s future just so that he can fuck over someone else’s in the process.
LanceThruster
There’s quite a few of my under-employed friends who still vote against their own interests even though affordable health care would benefit them greatly.
But these are the same types who ask with all seriousness when their cat dies, “Why does God hate me?” (seriously).
PurpleGirl
@japa21: I thought your renaming of the company was ingenious and a right on description. (After all, that’s what Bain caused most of the people in companies they bought.) I thought the typo was the lower case “p”.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
The other day when I asked what was the upside for conservatives in fucking with SS and Medicare I meant for regular everyday idiots. Mittens and his friends are of course doing this for the money
they thinkthey can steal.What’s in it for the enablers? The people who vote for his thieving ass? Is it the lower taxes they won’t get? Is it the less SS and Medicare benefits they will get? Do they still see the Red menace? Or is it just the Black menace? If it is the Black menace then why Clinton? Is it the religions, because it can’t be all religions or all religious people?
Or is it that they are just haters, people with such a dark interior that that’s all they see?
We all know people like this, I’d like to know their motivations. That’s the only way I see to understand and possibly affect some attitude change.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
These people cannot enjoy their gourmet meals unless they know, with absolute certainty, that others are starving.
They are sick twisted fucks who are wired differently than the rest of us.
PurpleGirl
@Ruckus: For years the Republicans have told people that they could probably make more money if they could control the SS money. Haven’t you ever seen the comments like “if I could invest that money I’d have X amount more.” Besides since the beginning Republicans have called SS theft and said the government was stealing the peoples money and not giving very much back. The Bush plan was just the latest scheme for how to privatize SS and get Wall Street involved.
Privatizing SS shouldn’t be confused with hate or racism.
Villago Delenda Est
@PurpleGirl:
The irony here is that the way Social Security is funded and paid out is by its very nature actually conservative, in the original sense of that word. Sure, small return, but your principle is kept as safe as it can be kept, to insure that you do get a return. The entire idea is that you don’t want to put that at risk, which is what the stock market, aka the Great Cas1no of Wall Street, is supposed to be about.
All the Republicans see in the SS trust fund is money they can steal from its rightful owners. They do not care if there’s no return for the investors in SS…they see money that is not in their pockets, and they want it. Badly.
Yet, in another stroke of irony, these same people DEMAND that their risky ventures be guaranteed to pay off for them..and the rest of us pay to make sure that happens. OvenMitt’s fear that Bain Capital wouldn’t work out well, and that he might take personal hits in his wealth and his reputation, caused him to be assured that HE was taking no risk at all on either score. If Bain flopped, he wouldn’t take any hits at all, no matter how badly he personally fucked up.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
Sure I see there are at least two sides here. Money and…
That’s really my question what are the other reasons. The big money boys are greedy fucks who just want all the money and power. What do the enablers get? Have they just deceived themselves that they can be rich too? How did that work out for your 401K over the last 10 years? How’s that pension plan working out? Have you actually won anything of substance in the Lottery? That new job going well?
Chris
@Ruckus:
You got me: that’s kind of what I was getting at earlier when I said I was mind-boggled by Republicans’ willingness to burn everything down for ridiculous reasons.
But one thing I think does help is that they (the activists, the real base that follows politics closely) are hooked 24/7 into a perpetual outrage machine that’s dedicated to telling them that everything that’s happening to them is someone else’s fault (always a popular theme with people), that the world is conspiring against them, and who to blame for it.
I mean, just look at today’s PJMedia: you’ll find one story about a Hispanic fifth-columnist manipulating crime stats to make us think we’re safe from the roving bands of Hispanic thugs, one story about how this is the nastiest election year ever and it’s all the Democrats’ fault, one story about how Obama’s foreign policy is a “debacle” and only an Israeli attack on Iran can save us, one story about Solyndra and one story about the Family Research Council attack (and that’s a slow news day). No matter what brought them to the Outrage Machine in the first place, they’re plugged into it well and good now and live in a world of anger, fear, hate and resentment. I don’t know how to break through to that.
rikyrah
I think the Dems are doing a good job with Ryan and COUPONCARE.
My only quib is that I think they should begin everytime they discuss Ryan with – he was Bush’s point man on the scheme to privatize Social Security. They should link the two everytime someone hears about Ryan on tv from a Democrat.
Dr. Dave
@LanceThruster: Did anybody else hear the Romney-leaning Wisconsin couple that was interviewed on NPR this morning? Wife said (I think) that she has VA healthcare, husband has no health insurance, but he claimed a great family health history and was sure that if anything went wrong that either they would pay for it themselves or their kids would step in and take care of him, because everybody ought to pay their own way. How did these people make it to age seventy?
Maude
Dems should tie Romney to the Ryan/Bush privatize SS scheme like Seamus to the rood of the car.
It is an evil plan.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ruckus: Before the crash, I was often told that the 401K was doing SO MUCH better than SS that the person wished they could move their SS contributions into it.
The one who made the most sense was the gal with health problems who wanted her SS privatized so that her kids would get that money if she died before she could file her claim. She didn’t know about the minor child survivor’s benefits.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
I think the big thing the Republicans are offering is a defined hierarchy. There are some people who are desperate for some kind of status and are willing to sit low on the totem pole and have others look down on them just so long as there’s somebody else even lower who they can look down on in turn. Men like this idea the most because they know they’ll be higher up than the women and children in their lives; they’re allowed to be petty tyrants in their own homes. Some women are willing to accept it because they know there will be other women who are even lower status than they are. I think that’s where the women who support slut shaming come in; the sluts are lower on the totem pole than they are.
Equality, at least the kind of equality we’re likely to get in real life, is a big problem for these people. The equality we’ve managed to create has come primarily by leveling things out at the bottom rather than dragging people down from the top. That means a lot of people in the middle who used to be able to look down on somebody don’t have that status advantage anymore. Meanwhile, the people at the very top are still there looking down on the rest of us. People who care about their status really resent that and want to push the people at the bottom down again so they have someone to be better than again.
Nellcote
It’s really a shame that apparently the msm doesn’t have access to Ryan’s congressional record.
LanceThruster
@Dr. Dave:
You’re not supposed to be able to own firearms if your mental health is severely compromised, but being fully delusional is no obstacle to voting (or running or serving in office for that matter apparently).
LanceThruster
@Dr. Dave:
I’ll put my money on life being a terminal condition.
I intend to live forever, or die trying. ~ Groucho Marx
LanceThruster
Len Hart of The Existentialist Cowboy has a good piece on the movie “They Live” and how it relates to typical Rethuglican thinly disguised poison.
I added the quote to the comments about the delusions of those jumping on the bandwagon, supposedly in pursuit of what they thought were their own interests.
Drifter: What’s wrong with having it good for a change? Now they’re gonna let us have it good if we just help ’em. They’re gonna leave us alone, let us make some money. You can have a little taste of that good life too. Now, I know you want it. Hell, everybody does.
Frank: You’d do it to your own kind.
Drifter: What’s the threat? We all sell out every day, might as well be on the winning team.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
That sounds as good as any thing else I’ve ever heard.
The only opportunity I want is to be able to stand on someone else’s head.
/conservative.
That’s why they want to go back several centuries, not because life was actually better but because everyone knew their place. I’m a rich person or, my dads a butcher so that’s what I’ll be. They want order. It doesn’t have to be a good order, just order. Social standing is spelled out before you are born, to the manor or to the fields. There is no real opportunity in life, only a tooth on a cog.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I think another part of the problem is that the message the Republicans have been selling since at least 1968 is, “The government can’t protect you, so you’re on your own!” It was much more literal at the time (soaring crime rates, race riots, Weathermen, etc.) but I think that’s the message that lingers. A lot of people would rather pay more out of pocket and feel like “they did it themselves” than depend on a government that they have good reason to believe will let them down.
See also, New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. The government won’t help you, so you’re on your own.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
This. Best explanation I’ve read yet.
Especially here:
I remember one of Krugman’s observations in “Conscience Of A Liberal” was that the original support base of movement conservatism (e.g. the people who rallied behind Goldwater in 1964) didn’t come from Wall Street. Rather it came from small business owners who were having to deal with a newly empowered working class, strong unions, etc, and found it harder to absorb the costs of these things than the megacorporations… and instead of trying to pass on the cost to the feds (e.g. universal health care and the like), reacted by going “fuck it, let’s stomp on them until we’re back where they came from.”
Tsukune
@Roger Moore: The Republican party is fueled by people who would willingly strap themselves to an oar in a galley ship as long as they were promised a top row oar and that the “others” would be stuck on a bottom oar.
Nutella
Both sides aren’t aiming for privatization but both sides are intending to reduce Social Security from what it is now (and what we have all paid for) even though it is perfectly healthy and will last forever if only they take off the cap that lets people at the top (making over $110k) pay a lower percentage than everyone else.
Dick Durkin, supposedly a Democrat, wants to screw up Social Security:
link
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
I also get the timeline(I am on SS now myself, paid into it for 50yrs). I get faux news and all the bullshit. I just don’t get that so many people buy into it without any actual thought. There’s never a coherent process, it’s all just shouting at the rain. I’ll give conservatives this: They have manipulated a pretty good portion of the population to believe their bullshit and hypocrisy is real, that society has to be this way or nothing. What better example than R/R running for president? Even with decades of proof that a safety net and prosperity come hand in hand.
James E. Powell
I am curious about Romney releasing the fourth welfare “He’s giving our money to the [insert racial epithet]!”
Is this because the argument is working or because it is not working?
Hungry Joe
@LanceThruster: I=I’m pretty sure it was Yossarian (in “Catch-22”) who planned to live forever or die trying. It would have been nice if Groucho could have pulled it off, though.
Hungry Joe
@LanceThruster: I=I’m pretty sure it was Yossarian (in “Catch-22”) who planned to live forever or die trying. It would have been nice if Groucho could have pulled it off, though.
LanceThruster
Here’s the dialogue from Catch-22 that I think describes the rMoney mindset quite nicely.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He’s dead.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn’t have time to have a family.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don’t need it, they’re rich.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then they’ll understand.
craigie
Individual mandate, anyone?