At the cosy Republican retreat in West Virginia this weekend, Sen. Santorum and Rep. Pryce unveiled their playbook for Social Security grabitization. You can get the PDF here, courtesy Josh Marshall.

No surprises here — just the usual mumbo-jumbo we’ve been hearing for the past few weeks. The word of the day is “inaction” – as in, those who are in favor of responsible measures to maintain Social Security instead of phasing it out in favor of a Wall Street scheme are choosing “inaction.” There are quotes from Democrats in the 90s, in favor of shoring up Social Security and in favor of private accounts; presumably these are meant to enlist Democrats in to their plan in absentia (like they’re doing with Moynihan). Of course, there is the imaginary projected $10.4 trillion figure for the shortfall.

Other talking points: “Personalization” not “privatization”; Talk in simple language; Keep the numbers small (Your audience doesn’t know how trillions and billions differ); Don’t say, “Social Security lifts seniors out of poverty” (Instead, talk about how Social Security is a “floor of protection” that keep [sic] seniors out of the most dire circumstances); etc.

It includes a few sample speeches:

You see, the trust fund is filled with government bonds. These are an excellent, stable investment under most circumstances. But in this particular case, the bonds are IOUs written by the government to the government. That’s the problem.

Think of it this way—normally, a bond works like loaning money to a friend. Let’s say you lent $100 to your friend Joe. You trusted Joe to repay you, so for 20 years, you carried around an IOU from him. When it came time to finally get the cash, you just turned that piece of paper over to Joe, and he gave you the money. Clean and simple.

But now suppose, instead of loaning that money to Joe, you had decided to just spend that $100. And let’s say you wrote yourself an IOU, promising to pay yourself back for the moeny you’d spent. You carried it around for 20 years, and then one day you found that you needed cash. Bad news—having that IOU from yourself to yourself doesn’t help. If you needed more cash, you’d have to go out and earn it.

We see this one time and time again — the idea that the Social Security Trust Fund “doesn’t exist” — and I’m beginning to think they’re up to something. Of course it’s hogwash — the only reason Social Security has stayed alive through periods of deficit spending is that it’s a separate tax with a separate ledger. It certainly does exist — it’s got $1.5 trillion in special-issue bonds, and it’s earning 6%.

But, since Bush Sr., the government may or may not have been reporting the debt to Social Security as part of its general deficit. As federal public debtorship gets grimmer and grimmer under Bush Jr., wouldn’t it be a neat trick if they took that $1.5 trillion (and presumably future surplus from the SS payroll tax) and simply wished it away?

Oh, you thought you were paying more in regressive payroll taxes towards Social Security? I’m afraid you’re mistaken — that money was for tax cuts for the rich.

I would expect nothing less from the Party of Enron Accounting.

Iraq election turnout looks pretty good so far, although it’s far too soon to count any chickens. In terms of facts on the ground, this isn’t much different than the “transfer of sovereignty"; but it is the very first motion towards legitimacy in the whole debacle. Fingers crossed.

Legal Fiction posts on the marketing strategy of “spreading freedom":

Essentially, they have adopted a two-step process to distract people from the reality they have created: (1) focus on – and isolate – one tiny piece of the overall picture; and (2) create a fairy tale out of that tiny sliver of reality.

As for the first part, let’s use an analogy. Imagine that there’s an old fugitive hiding out in some person’s basement who did some really bad stuff a long time ago (let’s say mass murder). The FBI has the house circled, and the old fugitive is completely trapped and powerless. Then, let’s say that the local sheriff suddenly comes storming in and burns down the house to kill the fugitive without the consent of the FBI. Let’s say that in doing so, the sheriff burned down half a city block, killed a thousand people, and burned down a wall of a nearby prison that allowed hundreds of criminals to escape.

When you judge the wisdom of that sheriff’s actions, you have to judge the totality of his actions. The sheriff couldn’t defend himself by attacking his accusers with lines like, “So you’re saying you’d rather have the old murdering fugitive going free,” or “I took a stand against murder - do you support murder”?

Dan Froomkin (via Wonkette and many others) traces the interesting life of a softball question at a White House press conference:

One came from Jeff Gannon, who works for Talon News, an obscure news outfit tied to a group called GOP USA. […] Interestingly enough, it’s not hard to figure out where Gannon got the idea for his question.

Here’s conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh yesterday: “[S]omebody in the White House press corps listens to this program. It is Jeff Gannon from Talon News. Here is his question, which is a repeat, a rehash, of a precise point I made on this program yesterday and is highlighted on RushLimbaugh.com.

“REPORTER: Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy: Harry Reid, who’s talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. You’ve said you’re going to reach out to these people. How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”

Limbaugh continues: “[W]hat makes me think that the reporter was listening to the program is that Harry Reid never actually said ’soup lines.’ That is my characterization of their portrayal of America. He never actually said it. He just describes circumstances reminiscent of soup lines.”

(By the way, here’s the question:

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid [D-NV] was talking about soup lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton [D-NY] was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. How are you going to work – you’ve said you are going to reach out to these people – how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Thanks to TAPPED. And by the way, Gannon himself seems proud of this, linking to Rush’s account on his personal website.)

Media Matters is on the case; they also document him cribbing verbatim from RNC talking points. Gannon was also subpoena’d for Plamegate, having mentioned possessing a memo regarding Joseph Wilson’s CIA wife.

But there’s more. Gannon/Talon/GOP-USA was an integral part of the Thune campaign mini-echo chamber, in which bloggers Jon Lauck (Daschle v Thune) and Jason Van Beek (South Dakota Politics) were on Thune’s payroll. John Stanton covered this in National Journal ("Lobbying & Law - Bloggers Targeted Daschle and the Press", 11/20/04):

Lauck, Van Beek, and other conservative activists in the state also tout a series of stories written by Jeff Gannon, the Washington bureau chief for TalonNews.com, as their ultimate proof of bias at the Argus Leader. The series, penned in summer 2003, alleged that Kranz, who went to college with Daschle, was not just sympathetic to his friend but was an actual part of Daschle’s larger campaign machine.

However, TalonNews is not the independent news source it purports to be. It’s run by GOPUSA, a conservative political publishing and consulting firm. While the Bush administration has provided Gannon with press credentials, the nonpartisan U.S. Senate Daily Press Gallery has rejected Gannon’s repeated requests for congressional press credentials because of TalonNews’ financial ties to GOPUSA.

For example, search for daschle residency and follow the bread crumbs. GOP USA, 10/15, Talon News, 10/15, JeffGannon.com, 10/15 are all the same, of course. On the same day, it makes the rounds: Daschle v. Thune, 10/15, South Dakota Politics, 10/15, National Republican Senatorial Committee, 10/15, Inside South Dakota GOP, Men’s News Daily, 10/15, Club for Growth, 10/15, etc. The Thune campaign naturally picked it up from its paid bloggers, and within a week, the story was in print.

By 10/28, here’s Stanton in CongressDaily: “South Dakota voters interviewed this week by CongressDaily said they were alarmed at the negative turn in the campaign, but some of the charges against Daschle appear to be having an effect – notably the Thune campaign’s efforts to raise questions about Daschle’s residency in the state.”

It’s a fun game — try it at home!

All this by way of saying, we know pretty much where in the food chain Gannon lies.

First Armstrong Williams was caught red-handed taking tax money to work for the Bush campaign. Then, anti-gay activist Maggie Gallagher was outed. Add another to the list – Michael McManus has been paid off to promote Bush’s Healthy Marriage Initiative. From Salon (via Daily Kos):

The problem springs from the failure of both Gallagher and McManus to disclose their government payments when writing about the Bush proposals. But one HHS critic says another dynamic has led to the controversy, and a blurring of ethical and journalistic lines: Horn and HHS are hiring advocates – not scholars – from the pro-marriage movement. “They’re ideological sympathizers who propagandize,” says Tim Casey, attorney for Legal Momentum, a women’s rights organization. He describes McManus as being a member of the “extreme religious right.”

I think the key is not that these bush-league (ha ha) columnists failed to disclose their payoffs — that’s a problem, and their commentary careers should end — but rather that the Bush administration is so blatantly using the bureaucracy to propagandize. The coverage I have seen so far has been limited to media navel-gazing, a game everyone seems to enjoy. Commentators talking about other commentators. Bill O’Reilly lovingly telling Armstrong Williams “you should have told us,” patting him on the rear and sending him to the showers. Now Salon, “a blurring of ethical and journalistic lines.”

So-called journalists are parrotting Republican talking-points – big deal! What else is new! Does it change their shilling if their paymaster is in a slightly different office than before?

No, the important story here is the direct involvement of the Bush administration in propaganda. “Video news releases” were produced by the Office of National Drug Control, the Office of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Education to promote Bush’s programs, and were run by lazy TV stations as if they were actual news reports. Even the Social Security Administration is up to something. This is only the tip of the iceberg of “covert propaganda.”

As more conservative “journalists” are uncovered to be in the employ of the Bush administration’s propaganda arm, let’s forget about their pitiful careers in whatever cobwebbed corner of the media they lie in, largely unnoticed. We need to keep pressure on the emerging narrative of government propaganda itself. “Journalists” aren’t accountable — but our government should be.

The editors at Daily Kos have put together a blog-petition to oppose Gonzales for AG.

Michael Posner of Human Rights First observed: “After the horrific images from Abu Ghraib became public last year, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the world should ‘judge us by our actions [and] watch how a democracy deals with the wrongdoing and with scandal and the pain of acknowledging and correcting our own mistakes.’” We agree. It is because of this that we believe the only proper course of action is for the Senate to reject Alberto Gonzales’s nomination for Attorney General. As Posner notes, “[t]he world is indeed watching.” Will the Senate condone torture? Will the Senate condone the rejection of the rule of law?

I agree completely. Anybody Bush would nominate would be a slavish toady with no concept of justice, but there is only one candidate whose appointment broadcasts to the entire world, “America loves torture!”

While there is no doubt he will be confirmed, I want to see every Senator vote his or her conscience – and that should include all Democrats and the few Republicans, such as Lindsey Graham and John Warner, who have surfaced in this debate. First, this battle will prime the tables for the second term, the term of negative accountability (since the first was zero). Second, we must do all that we can do save face among our dwindling allies. Make a stink that will waft across the globe.

And third, we don’t want to give Team Bush one whit of closure on Mr. Gonzales — I have a feeling he’ll be back to face the Senate again before too long, and if there’s one thing worse than having the author of the Torture Memo as your Attorney General, it’s having him as your Chief Justice.

The Conservative Marketing Machine

Laurie Spivak has written another fine piece on Alternet highlighting the many different egregious angles in the The Armstrong Williams story (the conservative, African-American commentator was paid a sweet $240,000 in taxpayer dollars to hype No Child Left Behind for the Bush Administration). For example there is that fact that he didn’t disclose this big conflict of interest to the various media outlets that he wrote for, or appeared on. There’s the fact that this type of stealth propaganda is illegal. And there’s Karen Ryan:

the PR hack who posed as a reporter back in early 2004 to tout President Bush’s Medicare reform plan in fake news spots paid for by taxpayer dollars. In May, 2004, the nonpartisan General Accounting Office investigated the Medicare spots and determined that they were illegal because they violated a ban on publicly funded “covert propaganda.” Lest a little thing like legality stop this administration, Karen Ryan surfaced again in October in her latest fake news story touting another of President Bush’s programs just in time for the election – you guessed it – No Child Left Behind.

However, Spivak rightly points out that these are all just symptoms of a larger ailment.

While each of these angles certainly makes for a tasty scandal story, they are all pieces of a much bigger story, one that is decidedly less delicious, and one that the mainstream media has consistently missed. This isn’t just a story about a self-serving pundit “entrepreneur,” or the erosion of public trust in the media, or hypocrisy, or using covert propaganda to sell controversial Bush programs like Medicare reform and NCLB, or the misuse of taxpayer dollars, or the undermining of the American people’s trust in the public sector.
It is the story of the conservative movement and its well-oiled marketing machine; a packaging and distribution system of ideas that has been shaping American public opinion for more than a quarter century. It is also one of the most important stories behind the 2004 election.
While Democrats are still debating whether John Kerry was likeable enough or whether the Party ought to change its position on gay marriage and gun control, they are failing to see the big picture. What they were up against wasn’t a poor debater, his Machiavellian consultant, and a portfolio of privatization policies, but a well-established, conservative movement with media outlets, think tanks, foundations and advocacy organizations as well as a host of pundits, journalists, consultants, and politicians all working collaboratively to advance their right-wing agenda (and many of the latter, like Williams, working the double shift as “entrepreneurs” and getting mighty rich).

Have you lost track of how many times you’ve said “If this were Clinton …"? Salon (via Oliver Willis) has put together a list of 34 of the top scandals of Bush’s first term. Among the contenders: no-bid Halliburton, the Energy Task Force, Senate hackers, the DeLay bribe (and a plague of other incidents around the Majority Leader), GOP jamming phone lines in New Hampshire, “video news releases” and the Armstrong Williams propaganda contract, torture, and my favorite: those pesky weapons of mass destruction.

With Bush’s second inauguration tomorrow, what do you think we can look forward to? As John Kerry put it – “More of the same.” And I’m not holding my breath for a change of heart on accountability. Republicans have tasted near-absolute power, and they like it.

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial comments on the Supreme Court’s doubly-split (in)decision on mandatory sentencing guidelines. (I’ll leave unraveling that tortured decision to the experts.) Predictably, the editors are in favor of such guidelines.

The guidelines deserve at least part of the credit for the lower crime rate the country is currently enjoying. (See the nearby charts.) With more criminals–especially recidivists–behind bars, the rate of violent crime is now at a 30-year low. This is precisely the outcome that Congress intended when it responded to public outrage over crime by passing the guidelines.

The charts, labeled “Cause and Effect?", show the increase in the prison population and the decline in violent crime since 1993.

What’s odd is that I have seen similar charts together before, but with the opposite conclusion. There the question is, if the crime rate is going down, why is the prison population going up? It seems like an intractable chicken-egg problem, until you trace the trends further back. Quoting from The Independent Institute:

The imprisonment rate seems to bear little relationship to the incidence of violent crime. From 1980 to 1986, the number of prison inmates increased by 65 percent and violent crime declined by 16 percent. From 1986 to 1991, the inmate population increased by 51 percent – and violent crime also increased, by 15 percent. Since 1991, incarceration rates have continued to increase, and violent crime seems to have leveled off – but is still much higher than in the 1950s or 1960s when we imprisoned a much smaller percentage of the population.

According to the Sentencing Project (pdf), “For the period 1980-1996, for example, a time when the inmate population tripled, 88% of this rise was a result of changes in sentencing policy, and just 12% due to changes in crime.”

Neither side questions that mandatory minimums have ballooned the ranks of the incarcerated. (We may have surpassed Russia to earn the title of most prisoners per capita.) Whether mass imprisonment prevents crime is debatable – the data above suggests its effects are dubious.

But the real objection of prison reformists (like myself) is to pointlessly long and cruel sentences that are ineffective at “correction” and inappropriate to the crime. And, as Publius at Legal Fiction points out, “truth in sentencing” seems more fair: “When the Guidelines were adopted, there was overwhelming evidence that criminal sentences varied along racial and class lines. The length of the sentences imposed by the Guidelines (especially gun and drug crimes) may be unjust, but they’re not unfair. Everyone gets screwed equally.”

This is worth considering — ideally, we don’t want arbitrary or prejudiced judgments, and isn’t that the point of writing down laws in the first place? But still there must be a human factor. We have juries and judges, not computers, because the limit point of legalism is that every case is different. (I think there’s a Walter Benjamin quote here somewhere — something about Kafka …)

And I would point out that sentencing guidelines themselves fall on race and class lines – crack versus cocaine, drugs versus drunk driving, white collar versus “street” crime. I agree with Publius that judicial liberty can be devastatingly unfair, but I don’t see mandatory sentencing as the solution.

Conservatives will try to make this a flash point in their “judicial activism” campaign, but hopefully it will not gain traction, since as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, violent crime is at a 30-year low. And I would hope that people might see that if judges are to have any job description at all, it would be deciding individual cases.

William Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition accuses those of us opposed to torture-enabler Gonzales of being racists:

Far left Democrats think they own blacks and Hispanics and they become livid and hateful anytime a black or Hispanic conservative appears in public… The Democrats are now accusing [Gonzales] of promoting torture by US troops in Iraq and being in favor of limiting Constitutional rights. The real truth: if Alberto Gonzales’ name were Albert Smith and he had the same beliefs, the uproar from the Democrats would be far more subdued. The Democrats just don’t want any Republican blacks or Hispanics in high profile Cabinet positions for fear many blacks and Hispanics will start to listen to their conservative ideas. From looking at Senator Ted Kennedy’s red hot face as he insulted Alberto Gonzales during the hearings I actually think he hates any Hispanic Republican more than he hates George W. Bush.

This particular bit of mudslinging has become commonplace in recent years, as it gives conservatives the appearance of moral superiority and adequate cover for their ideology, by taking it out of the context of policy or history, and putting it into the realm of imaginary talk-show psychology.

Pat Robertson’s CBN has an interesting article on immigration. Note the groups represented in the sources:

Some three million illegals likely sneaked across the border
between Mexico and Arizona last year. In their way are a few tens
of thousands of ranchers and other Arizonans, Americans who are
growing angry at the crimes and hassles these illegals inflict
on them as they sweep in from Mexico.

Cochise County Concerned Citizens founder Larry Vance said, “We’ve
been robbed, our dogs have been poisoned, our house broken into.”

Glenn Spencer, founder of the American Border Patrol, remarked,
“We’ve had murders, mayhem.”

Chris Simcox, Civil Homeland Defense founder, added, “Property
damage, cut fences, homes being shot up.”

A pretty disturbing collection of vigilantes, screwy militia types, and white supremacists.

Meanwhile, evangelicals are preparing for the inauguration. Some groups are concerned over the scheduled performance of Bush supporter Kid Rock. Among the charges: “His lyrics often focus on the recreational nature of sex and send a message of female sexual exploitation.”

But Focus on the Family’s Citizen Link e-mail uncovered a much more menacing plot by the values administration:

The Scriptures refer to the Cross as an offense, but is it
a weapon?

It at least has the potential to be, according to the
Secret Service, and displaying a cross will not be allowed
along the presidential inauguration parade route.

An evangelical group, the Christian Defense Coalition
(CDC), however, has vowed to go to federal court to change
that.

(You can follow this breaking story on World Net Daily.)

Finally, the Family Research Council’s CultureFacts memo unearths a belated response to Henry Waxman’s damning report on the inane and inaccurate abstinence-only sex ed programs. You can see the response from the “Medical Institute for Sexual Health” here.

The Waxman report fails to recognize one irrefutable fact, as described by Alma Golden, deputy assistant secretary for population affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services: “One thing is very clear for our children: Abstaining from sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, STDs, and preventing pregnancy.”

Will this be the face of American justice?

However deceptive and arrogant Bush’s march to war was, however incompetent its execution, however suspect its motives, nothing, not even loss of life, is as despicable and deplorable as the humiliation, abuse and torture of prisoners of war by Americans at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and elsewhere. Nothing under this administration has done more to stain the flag than the bloody images of this torture, seen around the world and burned into the eyes of our would-be friends in the Arab world.

As with all of his mistakes, President Bush won’t take responsibility. Don Rumsfeld kept his job (a regular Dagwood Bumstead, that man). A few rotten eggs, conservatives say.

But the Bush administration endorsed torture, even if they didn’t commit it with their own hands. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote a memo advocating that neither the War Crimes Act of 1996 nor the Geneva Conventions should apply to the so-called war on terror. And the head of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee, wrote Gonzales a 50-page memo asserting that torture “may be justified” and laws against it “may be unconstitutional.” This memo became the basis of new CIA field guidelines. Are we to believe that these are merely historical documents? That it’s just a coincidence?

Bybee is now a federal judge. And in a perverse, Orwellian twist, Gonzales is up for promotion to the represent our nation in the Department of Justice. Four years ago we thought there couldn’t have been a worse man for the job than John Ashcroft – I guess we were wrong!

In long and grinding confirmation hearing yesterday, although he said he found it “disgusting,” Gonzales repeatedly refused to disavow torture as a valid and legal method, thus renewing his endorsement. Let me emphasize: he said he thinks torture is bad, but he held to his legal position that the president was free to do it. Apparently he still doesn’t understand the gravity of his colossal misjudgment. Sure, as he asserted under questioning from Lindsey Graham, the lawless terrorists we face do worse. But we have higher standards – we are supposed to be what we once were, a model of integrity and a beacon of justice and the rule of law for the world. The photographs from Abu Ghraib show how turning on a narrow, dubious legalism and making exceptions to our most fundamental values can cause an implosion of our moral weight.

Some Democrats might be tempted to give this man a free pass. He carries an impressive coming-up story, until his lackluster career with Governor and President Bush. And there are rumors from the right that he may be ambiguous on abortion. But politics-as-usual pales in comparison with the notion that this man may be one of the officials most responsible for American torture in the 21st century. And if Golzales squeaks by now, he will have an easy time when Bush nominates him for the Supreme Court.

Even today, after the images from Abu Ghraib and as more revelations come out from Guantanamo, even today, when the German government appears to validate the story of a German who was kidnapped and interrogated for five months because he has a name similar to a suspect, there are those who defend torture and the elimination of protections for the innocent. This disgusting exceptionalism hurts us in our reputation abroad and our basic values at home. To nominate Gonzales is to endorse the endorser of torture. He must be stopped. FUGOP has list of petitions.

Social Security is a social safety net program that was designed to prevent poverty among American seniors. The big misconception about social security is that it is a government managed retirement account, i.e. you pay in all your working life and draw benefits from that purse, like an IRA. This is not true. Today’s benefits to today’s seniors are paid by today’s payroll taxes. It is widely accepted that Social Security has been very successful in reducing poverty among the elderly.

Thus social security is in fact an intergenerational transfer of wealth. Our payroll taxes support today’s seniors, as tomorrow’s payroll taxes will support us. This is fair game for debate. So is means-testing Social Security - since benefits are not completely based on what you’ve paid in, should rich people get less? Unfortunately none of these factors are the basis for the current debate.

Politically, Social Security has also been an unprecedented success. It is one of the most popular government programs ever, especially among seniors who vote in much higher numbers than, say, students and twenty-somethings. It has been a major staple of the New Deal social compact and coalition. Tampering with it has been long considered the “third rail” of American politics, a third rail that has been much more harmful to Republicans than Democrats. Correspondingly, the Democrats have reaped a much greater slice of the political benefits of social security. If you look at it this way, you could see why Bush and Rove would want to “save” it.

Does Social Security face an imminent crisis? Probably not. It will run into problems when the baby-boom generation retires. The ratio of workers paying in to retirees drawing benefits will be much smaller and the Social Security trust fund will run into problems. However, this will not happen until something like 2042.

Paul Krugman had this to say on the subject:

Here’s the truth: by law, Social Security has a budget independent of the rest of the U.S. government. That budget is currently running a surplus, thanks to an increase in the payroll tax two decades ago. As a result, Social Security has a large and growing trust fund.

When benefit payments start to exceed payroll tax revenues, Social Security will be able to draw on that trust fund. And the trust fund will last for a long time: until 2042, says the Social Security Administration; until 2052, says the Congressional Budget Office; quite possibly forever, say many economists, who point out that these projections assume that the economy will grow much more slowly in the future than it has in the past.

The real problem is that the administration is going to destroy Social Security in order it to save it. Privatization will wreak havoc on the program’s financing by drawing today’s money away from paying today’s checks. The government will therefore run up trillions of dollars in new debt meeting near term commitments. Add that to the Bush deficits (cutting taxes while waging war) and you’ve got a real mess.

Of course, trillions of dollars of new debt aside, economic flat-earthers argue that (what else) the panacea of the free market will fix everything and cure all ills, as the fantastic pie in the sky future gains from investing private accounts in the stock market will cause such increased returns as to make everything peachy. Not to mention the windfall for Wall Street.

Surely the political black belts on the Rove team are aware of the potential pitfalls of all of this, in the near wake of Enron, MCI, etc. So keep an eye out for some high level, highly visible prosecutions and settlements as this thing heats up, e.g. the MCI and Enron current settlements where for the first time ever, board members paid investors out of their own pockets. The story line will have the Bush team policing the markets and taking a strong stand to make them safe for a portion of your social security check.

This week saw leaks concerning the administration’s debates about the percentage of payroll taxes that would be allowed to go into private accounts and the amount of guaranteed benefits that would be cut by tying benefit increases to consumer price indexes, as opposed to the current tie in to wage increases, which have traditionally been higher. (Predicate that stat on declining national savings rates and you’ve got a real national pathology to ponder, but we’ll save that for a future piece.) The New York Times reported (a piece of political ‘inside baseball’ so juicy that ABC New’s “The Note” was drooling over it) on an internal Administration email to that effect:

In an e-mail message this week that circulated among conservative activists, Peter Wehner, a top aide to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior adviser and political strategist, made clear that the White House was leaning toward a reduction in scheduled benefits, partly because failing to do so would unsettle the financial markets and risk harm to the economy.

“You may know that there is a small number of conservatives who prefer to push only for investment accounts and make no effort to adjust benefits, therefore making no effort to address this fundamental structural problem,” Mr. Wehner said in the message. “In my judgment, that’s a bad idea. We simply cannot solve the Social Security problem with personal retirement accounts alone.”

There are much more severe fiscal problems facing our country, like our insane levels of national debt, and the impending Medicare/Medicaid crisis. The proposed Bush privatization of Social Security will greatly exacerbate these problems by adding trillions of dollars to the national debt.