SkaroffBlog

If you read any of the blogs in the left/liberal/progressive blogosphere then you’ve probably encountered the excellent writing of Joshua Micah Marshall over at Talking Points Memo. Since Bush’s re-election and resulting assault on Social Security, JMM has devoted most of his posts to a point by point dissection and refutation of Bush and his cronies’ SS dismantlement plan. A few of the more salient points:

• Bush’s current campaign to travel across the country and promote his political and partisan ideas is being paid for with public money. Me and you and every other tax payer in this nation is paying for this propaganda. But oddly, the average American is not allowed in unless they already agree with the President.
• The Republican talking point is frequently about those ‘wortheless IOUs‘ or ‘worthless paper.’ These are Treasury Bills they’re talking about. USA public debt. Is he saying the US will default on our debt?
• Oh, and by the way, Am.XIV, Section 4 of the US Constitution says “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” So is Bush violating the presidential oath of office in which he promises to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution?
• Bush’s claim that SS is heading towards a crisis somewhere around 2042 is based on an assumption that demographic growth will lead to an economic slowdown. However the success of private accounts is predicated on the assumption that financial markets will prosper while facing that same demographic problem. Cake and eat it too?

That’s just a little taste of the massive hypocrisy that this whole debacle has inspired from this President and his party.

UPDATE: David Sirota has some numbers on what Bush’s SS tour is actually costing.

As an aside – Leo McGarry makes absolutely no sense at all as vice presidential candidate for Santos on the West Wing. Yes, it makes for good story telling, but what does he add to the ticket besides a recent heart attack, a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and a total lack of demographic or regional appeal? This is even more hackneyed than CJ as chief of staff.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 7th, 2005 at 1:46 pm and is tagged as Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.