If some of you are wondering why I hate Republicans so much these days, a lot of it is guilt:
The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.
This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.
The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.
Good thing I joined with the folks who mocked the guy who wanted to save money for social security rather than give it away in tax cuts for the rich. That worked out well.
El Cid
He also sighed.
mellowjohn
ego absolve te.
Robin G
For the record, Cole, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a former Republican who so consistently acknowledges that he erred greatly in his past political choices. Everyone else who switched to our side usually did it with caveats of “How was I supposed to know?” and then never mentions their past. You don’t do that, and I while I imagine it’s very hard, it’s also very classy.
Kudos.
debit
What @Robin G: said. And you adopt adorable animals and stuff.
4tehlulz
Obviously, now is the best time to invest what is left of the trust fund in the stock market.
I hear Blockbuster is a steal right now!
some guy
Didn’t the stimulus package also include $300+ billion in payroll tax cuts? What a dumb fscking idea that was. Glad we put that into the bill to get those, what, 2 Republican votes…
David
OT:
Even in this Fox News online poll the Healthcare bill is popular:
“Yes. It’s not perfect, but it’s a giant step in the right direction.”
You can still vote:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/03/21/decide-health-care-victory-america/
jrg
I really wonder where the GOP thinks money for Social Security will come from. They are not going to raise taxes (that would be political suicide, see Bush the greater)… They are not going to cut benefits or means-test either (seeing as how gay-bashing, “get off my lawn” social conservatives tend to be older).
So what are they going to do? My guess is nothing. They will probably block the Dems from doing anything, either. As someone who’s been paying into the system for 12+ years, If they are going to means-test it, I’d rather them do it now, instead of after I pour another $50k into this horribly broken system.
sparky
most of us back and fill when we err. actually, i’m not even sure i would characterize your change as fixing a mistake so much as continual growth. kudos to you.
that’s (and your snark) why i keep coming here even though much of the commenting seems to have turned the place into a DLC house paper (ugh). could you (pretty please) add someone as a once in a while poster who is not in thrall to the [insert expletive of choice here] D leadership? not for balance but just in the hope of perhaps curtailing the DLC talking points recycled here over and over and over….?
ps: you should not feel too guilty: the Ds happily participated–Clinton has to take a lot of the blame for what happened, though no doubt many here will dispute that. and so far at least, Obama has merely accelerated the handover to the oligarchy.
hmmm…what party for you next?
Ash Can
Don’t beat yourself up. Be glad, like we are, that you’re on the right track now.
bkny
and what an excellent way to undermine and destroy social security. see, there’s all kinds of bennies to the great recession.
Pigs & Spiders
It’s good to be young, no?
stuckinred
@sparky: Firedoglake is alive and well if you want wall to wall bitching and moaning.
Daragh McDowell
To err is human John, to forgive divine.
I’ve been having some epic online arguments about healthcare in the last couple of days (sad I know, but I’m chained to my laptop finishing my dissertation and its the best way to take a quick break while keeping my mind sharp) and the absolute refusal of any Republican opponent to listen to objective reality is frankly astonishing (for a European elitist liberal like myself anyway.)
Lets make one thing clear – the basic underpinnings of this bill (exchanges, mandates, and subsidies, and minimum standards of healthcare provision) came from the Heritage Foundation in 1993. It was broadly supported by virtually the entirety of the Republican party, almost to the nanosecond Democrats decided to embrace the idea as well. The political opportunism and blatant bad-faith of it all is staggering. Now, its difficult to blame everyone who opposes this bill for not knowing this – after all the media (and to their fault, the Democrats) never brought it up. But even after these basic facts are pointed out to them, the GOPartisans STILL won’t change their minds that this is some form of partisan socialistic power grab. This is in addition to their belief that barring insurers from withdrawing coverage from people when they get sick constitutes some sort of tyrannical attack on individual liberty.
For a more extreme example, this thread at Time is illuminating. A Tea Partier literally denies that anyone shouted N***** at the rallies, even after being presented with a video of the proof.
drew42
And did you get a load of the number of buttons on Al Gore’s suit jackets? It was like a freaking suit jacket button buffet on his torso!
So un-Presidential.
The Grand Panjandrum
I’m just glad he invented the internet before you and your band of former brothers took him down by judicial coup d’etat.
mr. whipple
John: you are a class act.
Gregory
The other evening NPR ran a story about city pension funds in trouble for much the same reason. After the reporter clucked about the “overly generous” benefits —
his words, unattributed to anyoneedit: used in a paraphrase, so the attribution isn’t clear — and the fact that police and fire fighters can retire on half pay after 20 years — just like the military, because like the military, you know, those unworthy schlubs only put their lives at risk on the job — he went on to bury the lede: The city’s pension fund is hurting because for years its government tapped the fund rather than raise taxes.Amidst all the ominous muttering about possible benefit cuts, of course, there was nary a mention of the sanctity of contracts. Serves those union parasites right for negotiating better pensions in exchange for wage concessions.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: Gates and Mullen are on TV advancing the homosexual agenda right now.
Earl
Where you were doesn’t really matter, does it?
You’re doing a hell of a job here now, and I think that’s important…and entertaining as heck…
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@The Grand Panjandrum:
This. Some things are unforgiveable…or at least some of us have elephantine memories and hold grudges.
But what really breaks it is that you’ll root for the evil Pengooooins in the playoffs. As Caps fan, well, some things truly are unforgiveable.
Luthe
@Pigs & Spiders:
And by “young” you mean overeducated, underemployed, up to one’s eyeballs in student loan debt, and paying into a retirement system that may be broke before we get there, all while not being able to save any money for retirement due to being underemployed and in debt?
/plight of your average new grad today
LarsThorwald
Fear not. There are plenty of us who stupidly, and out of youthful idiocy, voted for George W. Bush, only to realize what a colossal error we had made about eight months in (and before 9/11!).
It’s like Catholic guilt. Except the Catholic guilt felt by the Pope after secreting away pedophile priests in new parishes, which is to say, none.
AxelFoley
Hey, everyone, did you know that Obama’s signing of health care reform into law was his version of Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment? Well, at least according to Jane Hamshire’s minion Cenk Uygur:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/24/103446/311
Bill E Pilgrim
I think that’s why I like this blog.
Sometimes I’m almost tempted to ask, when something in the comments reminds me that you really were right wing when the blog started, arguing with the same passion about the liberal media favoring John Kerry or whatever… to just ask “so, what was up with that?”
I realize that it would likely be a book-length answer though, not a blog post. And yes, more than making up for it now. Well, I assume so, I’m afraid to go back and look.
Pigs & Spiders
@Luthe: Tell him what he’s won, Johnny!!
cleek
no biggie. the past exists so that we’ll have a place to make mistakes.
The Grand Panjandrum
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Never! I’d rather admit my sister worked in a whorehouse before I’d ever root for a team named after obnoxious little tuxedo wearing birds!
Peter J
Lock box!
mr. whipple
@cleek: Ha! I like that saying.
Omnes Omnibus
@sparky: It is my impression that most, if not all, of the front pagers and the vast majority of the commenters were supporters of at least a strong public option for as long as such a thing was politically viable. Once it was apparent that the votes for the public options simply were not there, the BJers seemed to be willing to get behind and strongly support the passage of the strongest bill that was politically viable. Practicalities must have their place. Speaking strictly for myself, the French system would work very nicely, but I know it won’t happen here in the short run. A strong public option would be better than the new law, but that wasn’t going to happen right away. Because of this, I put effort convincing people to vote for the new law. Now, I intend to put effort into convince people to make the new law work even better.
So, to sum up, you and your DLC BS can bite me.
Wilson Heath
There were a ton of “serious people” who were hawking Bush’s tax cut snake oil and saying that Social Security’s long term viability wasn’t an issue. Some of them to this day claim to be credible economists. A lot of them were backpedaling their previous doom-saying on Social Security when the goal was entirely destroying the entitlement. Saying what you mean is bad politics when your politics are “screw you, I’ve got mine.”
That’s really the unspoken tension of the health insurance debate. Why the reform occurred is because it appears that it can control long term entitlement costs. When Republicans talk about entitlement reform, they’re talking about eliminating long term entitlement costs. I think at least part of the support for Part D on that side of the aisle was in the hope of starving the beast in the long run.
(Oh, and frak the DLC.)
Pigs & Spiders
OT: I think this strategy of removing the teeth from the law before repealing the law is interesting. And by interesting I mean I’m not sure why they’re bothering unless they think it can’t be legislatively repealed.
Svensker
If you’re mulling the past, could you add “consistently wrong since 2002” and “hot air and ill-informed banter” to your tagline mix? I miss them. Not that your new decor isn’t LOVELY.
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
HEY! My undergraduate college mascot was the penquins. It is the best mascot ever.
MikeTheZ
@Luthe: And, the plight of the graduates of Virginia Tech this year, in addition to all that, is getting to have a commencement speech from Bob McDonnell.
Yeah, the same Bob McDonnell who proposed massive funding cuts to the university, and told the gay community there that they’re not worthy of protection from discrimination, not to mention kill the law that protects the students here from being kicked off their parents insurance for having the sheer unmitigated gall to get older with the passage of time.
John , I am glad you learned your lesson and didn’t go running out to these ReThugs to ask for more, unlike some.
/rant
David in NY
@David:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/03/21/decide-health-care-victory-america/
That Fox News internet poll is astonishing. I voted in it earlier on, though I recollect that there had been perhaps 280,000 who had already voted, and only about 27% were in favor of the bill. (Is there a reverse crazification factor, I wondered?) I thought the sample was too big to change. Well, now, it’s 50% favorable. I have never seen an internet poll with that kind of volume turn around like this. Really stunning.
OK, after a little arithmetic, it seems clear that the polling over the last 300,000 or so votes has been running over 70% in favor of the bill. There is some enthusiasm out there somewhere.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Napoleon: It could be worse. Mine. (Great sports school. The mascot? Well … )
Pigs & Spiders
As long as we’re comparing mascots, Go Greyhounds!
gnomedad
@Daragh McDowell:
I was not aware of this. Any pointers to sources? Thanks!
Felonious Wench
You are absolved of your transgressions, my son. Go in peace, and sin no more.
Please note: Because I am a woman, I have no standing as far as the Catholic church is concerned. However, because I am not Catholic, I don’t give a fuck.
geg6
@David:
Heh.
David in NY
You know, I did not read John before his conversion, but occasionally saw him referred to in other liberal blogs. And it seemed that he was clearly making an honest effort to be, well, honest and fact-bound. I suppose it’s a little self-congratulatory to say of course he came around, since I and my political ilk have made an error or two in their time. (I mean, I was briefly taken with the John Edwards campaign despite my original view of him as a narcissistic lightweight.) But I’m glad John has come over, and with such a vengeance. I don’t think he’s been wrong.
Violet
The good thing about you, Cole, is that you think about things. You thought about your beliefs and realized they didn’t work. So you changed directions and grew.
That’s why I love this blog. It’s not cookie-cutter along any ideological line. It’s thoughtful, as well as kind, helpful to others, and entertaining.
numbskull
John,
Growth through self-examination is one of the best things a human can do. One of these days I might try it!
The best we can do is try to do better everyday. Some days that happens in big leaps and bounds; some days in dribs and drabs. Some days we go backwards.
You’re moving forward. No need to feel guilty.
Strange
Off-topic, but I thought people here would be amused/worried by this news:
http://totalbuzz.freedomblogging.com/2010/03/17/birther-lawyer-to-run-for-secretary-of-state/31791/
Orly Taitz for Secretary of State! Does that mean we would all have to provide birth certificates to leave our houses in the morning?
Crust
And of course, the irony is that the whole earth tones story was invented anyway, IIRC originally as unsourced speculation by Dick Morris. Gore denied it, Naomi Wolf (who supposedly gave him the advice to wear more earth tones) denied it and nobody has ever so much as claimed direct knowledge it was true. Not that it would mean anything if it was. (Bob Somerby has documented this story and the countless other bogus anti-Gore scripts in exhaustive detail at the Daily Howler.)
Napoleon
@The Grand Panjandrum:
I will take my bird over that guy, that is for sure.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@David in NY:
Added my vote. Currently it’s running 50% yes, 3% unsure, 46% no, and 1% “other”. That’s pretty damned astounding.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
At least you could recognize the problems and decide for yourself that the Republican party had lost its way. The problem for the Republicans is that you actually were paying attention to what was going on. While you were ‘with the program’ at the same time you started asking yourself questions. That or someone screwed up your reality distortion filter.
Maybe your Republican KoolAid subscription ran out? ;)
Since your political ‘rebirth’ you have been a fire-breathing monster when it comes to dressing down your former party for their shenanigans. You have led some very successful fundraisers for Democrats and now you are supporting animal shelters.
I hate to say this John but I think you have always been a Democrat but you just didn’t want to admit it to yourself. A cat? A little dog? Neti pot? Fancy cooking? Actually understanding enough about computers to keep a blog running? You just had to find a reason to ‘come out of the (Republican) closet’ and they gave it to ya. ;)
Either way, you’re one of the good guys John, don’t beat yourself up.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Heh heh, I was referring to the esteemed Mr Cole’s rooting proclivities.
In DC, it usta be you hated the Cowboys but that was back when the Redskins were relevant. The Pengooooins have been a thorn in our hockey side for a generation now.
Penguin? Hoboken? OOOOOOOOOOhhhhhhh, I’m dying again!!!!!!!!
John, you still approach a lot of issues from a different perspective than the rest of us. That’s actually quite useful and helps keep us inbred Dems less inbred.
And it dawns on me, I’m sure somebody like Hamsher has been, like me, a librul all her adult life. And today I ask myself, who would I rather have discussing or being the “face” of modern libralism, you or her?
Asked and answered.
LD50
It seemed completely normal to me…
jenniebee
@jrg: what part of “starve the beast” do you not understand?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Crust:
For that, his work is for the ages and shows the stark decline of traditional media that we know and loathe all too well today.
Too bad he went koookooo for cocoanuts.
Daragh McDowell
@gnomedad
Here you go
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-comparison.aspx
I’m afraid that just compares the 1993 Republican bill and the Obama Bill. The Heritage Foundation’s papers on the subject seem to have curiously fallen into the memory hole. The broad point remains though.
LD50
Whatever you do, don’t contemplate the billions or trillions or whatever dollars that the Man We’d All Like To Have A Beer With spent on the Iraq War, and then wonder how much of the deficit or HCR it would cover. And don’t factor in his 2001-2 tax cuts, either. REALLY don’t do that.
jeffreyw
@Pigs & Spiders: Saluki! It’s a greyhound with good hair. http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/saluki.htm
RareSanity
@sparky:
Do you actually read this blog?
David in NY
It is worth noting re Social Security that the government’s obligation to pay off the notes, and thus SS’s ability to pay full benefits without governmental default (unthinkable), does not end until 2037. I suppose that could accelerate with continued bad economics.
Even after 2037, SS will be able to pay 75% of current benefits without any changes. I believe that when one considers built-in annual adjustments, the ability to pay may in fact be greater than that, but can’t remember the details.
Given the increasing income disparity in the country, it seems to me that there would be justification for increasing taxes on those who benefit most from that disparity, the highly-paid, those with income from capital gains, and so on. But the old Social Security hands (even, as I recall, lefties like Max Sawicky) fear that this would break the original “contract” which tied benefits to wages and set up SS for an ultimate backlash.
RareSanity
@David in NY:
I know for sure that I saw the poll posted on Reddit, it probably made Digg as well. That would account for slow building, high volume of votes. Both of those sites skew left.
Alice Blue
John, I enjoy BJ so much, I probably would have been a regular reader even before your conversion. But I’m awfully glad you saw the light!
Btw, I know lots of folks have said this already, but I’ll say it again: thank you for this place.
Crust
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Hear, hear.
Say what?
Honus
The idea that you were a republican has always puzzled me, since I got here (I think via a link from Sadly or Altercation) well after your conversion. I have trouble visualizing what you were like.
It reminds me of a friend of mine I worked construction with for several years, a tall guy, with bushy shoulder length hair, and full ZZ-Top style beard, who was a recon marine in vietnam. I told him one day I was having trouble seeing him as a marine, and he told me he looked pretty much the same when he enlisted as he did now; he was just knocking around, out of school, and decided to join the marines “to let somebody else make his decisions for him for a while.” then he paused and said “after I got that out of my system…”
David in NY
@RareSanity:
Interesting. I remember Atrios’s attempts to ridicule some of the smaller polls by gaming them to demonstrate their lack of any scientific value (“Torture Lou Dobbs”), but had never seen it work on a big poll.
I learned of this poll from the Great Orange Satan, so there were probably a lot of voters from there, but it must take stuff like Digg and Reddit to really put it over.
Pigs & Spiders
@jeffreyw: Are Saluki’s as stubborn and misanthropic as their greyhound cousins? I spent a summer caring for the school mascot and I can tell you that they are pretty much 4-year-old children.
Waynski
I know how you feel, John. I thought the Iraq war was necessary at one time, although I never voted for Bush. That I was for such an utterly collasal epic fail will be to my eternal shame, but at least I know I won’t get fooled again. The good thing about the Republicans these days is that at least you can see, in full flower, the essence of their vitriolic, hate-filled nature. The moderates of the party used to mask that. Many here saw through that mask all along. I commend them for it. You and I got hoodwinked, but I’m sure neither of us will make that mistake again.
Some Guy
Stupid social security, stupid earth. Heh, heh.
The Republican strategy on social security, a la Norquist, is to make is blow up so they can say ‘see, it sucked.’ Never mind the lives ruined and the idiotic goal of taking a well-running, effective system and smashing it because it offends your sense of national identity.
Goodness knows purity of black heart is more important than people being able to grow old with a modicum of dignity. Those old people suck because they are all people I don’t know. Old people I know would never grow old and dependent without coercion.
slag
@Violet:
Exactly this.
And yes. Once again, Al Gore was right. But so is David in NY. The Social Security situation isn’t armageddon. We can fix it if enough of us follow your lead and make a sincere and determined effort to learn from our mistakes.
jrg
@jenniebee:
The part where the idiot “conservatives” actually think it will work. If Social Security and Medicare run out of money, we will quickly see the marginal tax rate hit 90%. We would become a truly socialist state in a new york minute.
I mean, really, do these people think that the “size of the government” will be a big concern when grandma’s living in the basement, eating cat food? F*cking morons.
jrg
@jenniebee:
The part where the idiot “conservatives” actually think it will work. If Social Security and Medicare run out of money, we will quickly see the marginal tax rate hit 90%. We would become a truly socia1ist state in a new york minute.
I mean, really, do these people think that the “size of the government” will be a big concern when grandma’s living in the basement, eating cat food? F*cking morons.
J. Michael Neal
@Pigs & Spiders:
So, more mature than Republicans, but less mature than cats (who are about ten)?
Fair Economist
I used to be an anarcho-capitalist. Glass houses, stones, etc.
Trinity
@debit: this
RareSanity
@David in NY:
It usually does.
Digg and Reddit (especially Reddit) users really love making “conservatives” whine.
The Reddit post had about 1500 comments. I wouldn’t even know how to estimate the number of people, who like me, didn’t comment and just voted on the poll.
Brick Oven Bill
Let us again behold math.
The top tax bracket, back before the economy crashed, brought in ~$600 billion. Raising this tax bracket from 35 to 39.6% would raise:
4.6 percent times $600 billion equals $27.6 billion.
But things have now started to fall apart so figure probably $10-15 billion in more money today from these high income employed people.
Your President is running a deficit of $1.5 trillion and now wants to spend another quote $100 billion unquote cough cough more annually to spread the wealth around.
So raising the tax rate on top earners would cover around one percent of the current deficit, or only 15% of the new spending proposed in the reparations health care bill.
The answer is, of course, work and charity. This government stuff is going to get people in trouble.
jeffreyw
@Pigs & Spiders: LOL! I really don’t have a clue. I know the university kept a Saluki breeding kennel for years because the wife of the school president liked them. That went away when he died.
nodakfarmboy
@Pigs & Spiders: To hell with your dogs and weak small flightless birds.
Go Satans!
No, I’m not kidding.
http://creativeimpressions.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/devils-lake-satans-transfer/
There’s nothing quite like watching 600 HS age kids chanting Satan’s name, over and over and over again at a basketball game. Good times.
Guster
@Brick Oven Bill: I know! Their damned Obama, creating their $1.5 trillion deficit in 14 months, and not doing a damn thing to address it! At this rate, their deficit will be $3 trillion by 2012. And in their US, tax increases only apply to tax revenues, not incomes. They have a very silly country.
Brent
[email protected]Fair Economist:
I’m into anarcho-syndicalist communes myself. They avoid the violence and repression inherent in the system. And yes, self examination does lead to growth, which is the primary reason I took up yoga.
David in NY
Yeah, BoB, but who destroyed the surplus that Bill Clinton and Al Gore left, eh? There was no deficit under the Democrats. Only the big Republican give-away-to-rich-people and the wars-that-do-not-cost-anything and the worst-economic-failure-since-Herbert-Hoover have created that deficit of which you complain.
And, by the way, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit.
Cris
I think quite a few of us here are lapsed Republicans. John is sort of a host of an informal recovery meeting.
RareSanity
@Fair Economist:
Hello, my name is RareSanity and I too was once an anarcho-capitalists.
I think that it is really easy to get caught up in ideologies that strike you as the way things “should be”. Then, if you are intelligent and do your research, you may come to the realization that, “If this stuff ever actually got implemented, it would be a disaster.”
That’s when the healing can begin.
It took me about a year to realize that libertarianism and laissez faire capitalism are pipe dreams and would serve only to increase misery and lead to the most extreme have/havenot split in human history.
Alien-Radio
@Fair Economist:
Jesus man, I’ve recently had to come to the conclusion that I was an anarchist, it was tough, My natural inclination is towards being a social democrat, and I’ve loathed Libertarians since I started to understand their ideology, and felt anarchism veered far too close to libertarianism for my liking. I’ve slowly been coming to terms with it, but admitting to having being an Anarcho Capitalist? ouch, at least you’ve seen the light.
Fair Economist
@Brent:
I can at least claim to have been an open-minded anarcho-capitalist. I wrote a paper on anarcho-syndicalists in college (because anarcho-capitalists haven’t done much) and was surprised at how little you hear in America about a fairly major movement in Europe. Anarcho-syndicalists ran substantial parts of Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and fairly successfully. Somehow Fox News never mentions this.
Fair Economist
@RareSanity:
I wish I could claim to have come around so quickly. I was an anarcho-capitalist for 20 years. I came around when the truth about the California electricity crisis of 2001 came out: that it had been deliberately caused by monopolists gouging the public. When I realized the capitalists couldn’t even keep the lights on without supervision – literally – I had to change.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Crust:
Somerby went off the deep end many years ago. He’s got real issues which unfortunately colored much of what he’s written over the last 3 years or so.
Brick Oven Bill
David in New York says:
And, by the way, the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit.
Mathematics provides perception, and thus certainty.
Religion, on the other hand, is Belief in the absence of perception.
And we will now watch Barry provide more services to more people for less money, as the government is efficient.
He will heal us.
Here’s your snake.
jibeaux
@Robin G:
I know! We need to determine the exact process by which John succeeded in rewiring his brain, and try to replicate it. Bwahahaha!
Guster
@Brick Oven Bill: Preach it, Brother Bob!
My wife’s like, ‘If we weatherize the house for $1,000 this year, we’ll save $2000 over the next five years,’ and I’m all, ‘Woman, if you spent $1000 this year, you’ve got one thousand fewer dollars!’ and she starts speaking in tongues.
And calling him ‘Barry’ is funny. I’m going start calling their president that, myself. Is it your own?
Mnemosyne
@David in NY:
You wouldn’t even have to mess with capital gains and other non-wage income. Just remove the wage cap. Right now, only the first $106,800 of wages is subject to the Social Security tax. Remove that cap and the problem is solved.
BenA
@Mnemosyne:
Hay watch it now… I’m self employeed I pay that thing twice… let’s not get crazy now. Of course if I used BoB’s math it wouldn’t hurt so bad. ;-)
I might get audited and get fined and what not… but those first couple of checks would be lower.
Viva BrisVegas
The only thing that Fox News knows about the Spanish Civil War is that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
And aren’t they sorry about that. The Generalissimo knew what to do about social justice.
David in NY
@Mnemosyne:
That’s right, eliminating the cap would probably do it; but this essentially makes SS into a social welfare program, redistribution of wealth not merely return of what you put in, especially since the upper levels will contribute vastly more than they ever contribute. There is a fear that doing this will undermine the broad acceptance of the program. It will be seen more like welfare, and less like what the government owes one for working and paying into the system.
I am not sure if I buy this, but it is plainly essential to keep SS broadly accepted and maybe the people who want to keep the traditional system are right.
Brick Oven Bill
Guster;
Barry dissolved on a Christmas day in 1980 when the Almighty strode back from college and announced in a baritone voice, with electronic reverberation put in place by David Axlerod:
‘No more Barry.’
So, in the Easter spirit of resurrection, Barry the Healer lives again, to give us Hope against that Great Satan, Mathematics.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Bill E Pilgrim:
John Cole,
You really should write a book about your political journey over the last decade. Do what Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism did and take a sabbatical to concentrate on writing it. Judging by recent election results a fairly large number of Americans have at some point made the same transit from right to left that you have, but to my knowledge nobody has produced a good memoir length account of what that process felt like at the time it was happening. Doing that now, getting it down on paper, would be a gift to future generations who will look back on our era and wonder what was going through our heads at the time. As good as it is to have a digital archive via the blog, there is no substitute for an old-fashioned tree-killing book, if nothing else because the format forces the author to focus his/her thinking and tighten up the narrative.
If you need financial support to do this, I’d be willing to chip in to help.
El Cid
You can’t make money by spending money. That’s why businesses never spend borrowed money in advertising campaigns, because Mathematics says it can’t work.
catclub
To err is human, to confess, sublime.
Re: Daragh @ 14
as in, sublimely difficult.
John has.
Hypnos
Another thing you don’t hear is how the communists utterly crushed the anarchists (in Spain and elsewhere). Too bad, as they were the only ones who might have made socialism kind of work. Just maybe.
Anarcho-capitalists on the other hand should know about them, as they even copied the FAI-CNT red and black flag.
Funny thing, I was probably one of the 5 or so European anarcho-capitalists in existence. I came around recently, mostly out of sheer debate-exhaustion (you think it’s hard being a liberal in the US, try being a laissez faire capitalist in Europe – we got rid of the market in 1848, and good riddance). I also kind of saw through the whole “market works like magic” thing, and reached the conclusion that market anarchism has already been tried, except that it was called feudalism. No government with any real power of sort, and markets as free as you can only dream of. They were so free merchants had to make up their own laws – lex mercatoria – because there was no government that could regulate international commerce, and they needed rules.
If you want to know how the common people – that is, 99% – had it in such a free paradise, you need only look “Frankenhausen” up on Wikipedia.
catclub
Um, all those worries about “Will Social Security be there
when I retire?” [by some whippersnapper who has been paying for 12 whole years]
are decades old and still unfounded.
Social security will be there as long as old people vote more than young people, plus infinity.
Social security is more stable now than at any time in its first 35 years. Ask Dean Baker.
RareSanity
@Brick Oven Bill:
(sighs) I hate when I have to access the ‘geek’ part of my brain in a non-work environment but…
BoB: You do understand that you cannot just multiply the revenue to the Government to calculate the effect of a tax increase, right?
You do realize that it is the actual amount taxed that the percentage must be applied to? Judging by the performance of the stock market recently and the bonuses being handed out on Wall St, the pool of taxable money will be larger than last year.
By how much, I don’t know. But, just by the fact you are making calculations based on the wrong numbers, invalidates any point you are trying to make with said calculations…
Try again…
tim
Hey Cole: your humility is admirable. Kudos.
Guster
Ha-ha! Thanks for the link, Mr. Oven Bill.
Yeah, well I don’t like the deficit he single-handedly created, and I’m stuck with that! Too bad, Barry! Ha-ha!
BenA
@RareSanity:
I imagine the 600 billion number is probably suspect as well. It’s just fail all around…
So if “Mathematics provides … certainty.” I’ll just leave it at that.
SGEW
Aw, John . . . you take all the fun out of saying “I told you so.”
Actually, it was never very much fun anyway.
Brachiator
@jrg:
Raising taxes really isn’t the issue. The news story itself points to the problem.
If you have a decline in jobs and wages, you have a smaller revenue base to tax. I agree with you about means testing, etc. But not even Gore’s lockbox could come to the rescue of a declining economy.
BenA
@SGEW: I don’t know… I still get a little bit of a kick out of saying it to most Naderites and Firebaggers…
bemused
John, anyone with your wicked, sardonic & lol funny sense of humor could never have been a diehard to the core rightwinger.
Brick Oven Bill
As I am weary of being Healed, you can Google it yourself RareSanity, but the top bracket used to generate ~$600 billion.
This does not include the revenue generated from the income earned that fell under the top tax rate threshold, so this particular class of earners paid more than $600 billion.
You can make this class of Americans out to be the bad guys, but that still will not generate money to cover the spending. None of this, of course, will apply to Soros, you know, that frequent Obama visitor.
He banks in the Caribbean.
Rick Taylor
Well at least you’re not among the folks who having mocked Gore for advocating a lockbox are now attacking social security as a ponzi scheme and opining how todays workers will have to give up their benefits for the good of all.
Rick Taylor
And to add, after that election and the ensuing eight years, I have no clue why anyone takes Republicans the least bit seriously whenever they open their mouths to talk about the deficit or fiscal responsibility. Funny how being responsible always seems to boil down to the working class making sacrifices, and never to the rich giving up their bonuses (we need them to run the economy after all) or tax cuts (we need to encourage investment).
Brent
@Brick Oven Bill:
The Bush tax cuts cost 2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. Your math is as faulty as your logic.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/study-bush-tax-cuts-cost-more-twice-m
Llelldorin
@BenA:
Bad mathematics, though, provides bullshit with numbers!
(You have to admit, given the Republican Health Care plan from about a year ago, bullshit with numbers is a bit of a step forward.)
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
FWIW, in college (just 6 years ago now) I was a big fan of Ayn Rand, a member of the purity brigade, and voted for Schwarzenegger. Now I live in San Francisco, am an athiest, and volunteer for the local democratic party. So it goes.
LongHairedWeirdo
Well, the other side of it is, there were (still are!) a lot of people who made it seem like the most ridiculous thing in the world that he could be correct about a bunch of stuff.
A lie seems more reasonable if a lot of people repeat it, and it’s easy to get people to question reality, and assume they made a mistake, if everyone else disagrees with them.
And, memory is very malleable – get a family to “remember” the time you were lost in the amusement park, and soon, you’ll remember that you were lost in the park – and “remember” details about the incident that you’d “forgotten”.
Put those two things together, and it’s not any surprise that you, and a lot of folks, have gotten sucked in to believing a bunch of crap. Too much guilt isn’t helpful. (But a bit of guilt can be useful – everyone faces peer pressure to believe in some kind of goddamned nonsense sooner or later.)
jenniebee
@gnomedad:
I was not aware [that the HCR bill was copied from Heritage Foundation/Dole & Gingrich/Mitt Romney blueprints].
May I just say, this is what I’ve found so infuriating about the “practical, rational” vilification that BJ commenters in general decided to pour out on anyone who thought it might be a good idea to try to pressure Democratic lawmakers to maybe please include one or two palliative measures in this codification of health-care for profit. You’re not the first one to evidently not have been aware that we essentially adopted what used to be what Republicans said they were willing to agree to if the public made it clear that they wanted something done, and in so doing, actually allowed Republicans to move their own goalposts. Even the provision to buy across state lines that is still in the Republican talking points as something that they would have been in a Republican bill is in this law.
And what was even more aggravating was the vitriolic defense of the individual mandate in spite of evidence that it’s the subsidies, not the mandate that are the key to getting healthy young people into the risk pool and attacks on even the suggestion that the mandate was bad politics.
It’s not terribly surprising that the mandate – which was incidentally the core of the Romney/Massachussetts reform – is now the target of the Republican lawsuits. Not because they actually have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the suit (there’s no reason to think that they actually hope to win that suit, since winning the suit would almost certainly only remove the mandate to buy private insurance – which Republicans actually like, as long as that preference doesn’t get too much publicity – and leave the rest of the law intact) but strictly in order to raise public awareness about the mandate. Personally, I’ve never met a person who didn’t resent being compelled to do something they wanted to do anyway, and most people want to have health insurance. This plays right into the Republican narrative about the Democratic nanny-state making decisions for you and telling you how to conduct your personal business, and they are going to play it to the hilt, until the first thing anybody knows about this bill is not that it saves jobs or raises wages or makes it so that people with pre-existing conditions can get insurance. They will keep going and talking about the individual mandate until the only things that low-information voters know about this law are that 1. it kills babies (they aren’t going to let that one die on the vine) and 2. it’s a mandate. whodathunkit?
Not saying that we should let Republican talking points dictate policy, but this one was just walking into a knife in order to solve a problem that had not yet manifested itself (young people were obviously not yet refusing to buy health insurance even when offered subsidies and guaranteed acceptance by the insurance company) and which only existed in glibertarian theories of human behavior (we have one study showing that income level is a strong determining factor and no studies investigating other factors – like availability through the workplace for the part of the population that is least likely to be either established in a career or married to someone who is – but we accept the explanation that young people have money and are just recklessly playing the odds). Come November, congressional campaigns are as likely as not to be turning on Dems offering voters the complex technical explanation on why they voted for a mandate vs. Repubs shouting “government mandates take away your freedoms!” And if hardly even anybody on BJ picked up on it that mandates have been a Republican favorite position in the health care debate, what chance do you think the Dems have in convincing the public at large of the same?
sparky
the interesting thing about the responses to my quasi-intemperate post is that no one else thought that was even an idea worth considering. not a bad illustration of group-think.
what i was trying to convey, somewhat maladroitly, is that i miss the much more free-form contributions that used to be found here. now it’s all just variations on the same theme. and yes, i agree the GOP has decided that being a carnival barker is the way to go, and (idiotic policies aside) they are imbeciles for not realizing that’s nothing but a dead end. to me that’s no reason to utter nary a peep about the literally sickening things the Obama administration is doing in the name of US citizens. come to think of it. it’s probably my surprise at the silence here that has driven me to post more.
now, the logical response to this is: who cares what i think? true and a valid response, to boot. my answer is actually a simple one: this is one of the few fairly popular places in ze tubez that is pretty much an open forum (i salute here the programmers and those who labor in the fields of moderation filters, a thankless task if there ever was one). basically, i’m saying i hope it comes back. or, if not, JC can troll his own blog, or get Glenzilla to do it. i’m not fussy. :)
FWIW i started coming here sometime after Schaivo, though i lurked for a long time. i thought then, as i think now, that it takes a certain degree of intellectual honesty (which has, unfortunately, become an increasingly rare quality WRT ideology) to compare the facts with one’s ideology and jettison the latter when it is found wanting. so, again, kudos to you, John.
ps: as for the suggestion to go to FDL, thanks but no thanks. never read them (or Kos) much before and have no reason to start now. most mindless rants are all pretty much the same–devoid of thought. so till JC bans me y’all can either ignore me, respond, or install cleek’s pie filter on my ass. or challenge the CW here yourself. incidentally i have no desire to play troll here. i might if i was better at it but as i suck, forget it.
Paul L.
From Saint Albert Earth’s Interior ‘Extremely Hot, Several Million Degrees’ Gore
Mnemosyne
@jenniebee:
The mandate may be bad politics, but it’s good policy. Krugman supported a mandate wholeheartedly and even mocked Obama when the plan Obama campaigned on didn’t have a mandate.
You need both a carrot and a stick: the subsidies are the carrot, and the mandate is the stick. Of course people are going to reflexively not like it. They don’t like Social Security being taken directly out of their paychecks, either. Does that mean we should make Social Security a purely voluntary program because the politics are better that way?
David in NY
“you can Google it yourself RareSanity,” BoB
You know, you can provide a fucking link if you want us to believe you. It’s that easy. And from my recent attempt, the info you cite is not there, so I’d be happy to see your link.
And furthermore, I suggest you go back to 8th grade and do some story problems. You still don’t understand the error in your “mathematics” and we’re damned if we’ll tell you what it was, either.
Nicole
What drew me to this blog originally (back before Schiavo) was John’s intellectual curiosity. I think the need to know “how things really are” is something some people are born with- the search for as close to the truth as you can get takes precedence over everything- feeling secure, satisfaction at being right, everything else. I think it’s what brings so many of the regular b-j posters (oh, how happy it makes me that the initials are BJ. Because, deep down inside, I’m still 12 years old and it makes me giggle) here and what keeps me here. I think of it as a pragmatist’s blog. Readers here seem focused on what is best to do, and how it might be possible to move towards getting it done.
Anyway, I found the blog because I’m a liberal who tires easily of the echo chamber, and worried I wasn’t getting the whole story on liberal blogs. And I thought the posts were always smart and well-thought, even when I disagreed. And the blog’s position and shape has changed, but I think to something even better- a bunch of bright, clever, curious people eager to (most of the time) politely debate and discuss things. Best of all, very rarely do the people who comment here forget the other person posting is a real human being, and they respect that.
And the snark. Can’t give up the snark.
Mnemosyne
@sparky:
Given how often John attacks the Dem leadership for, among other things, their abysmal record on civil liberties and Guantanamo, the reason you didn’t get much response is because you’re full of shit and no one wanted to bother to point it out.
People didn’t agree with you on healthcare. We agreed with the leadership. Get over it, you whiny-ass titty baby, and stop claiming that any point of agreement with the Dem leadership is proof of being “in thrall” to them.
twiffer
@nodakfarmboy: not as fun as satan, but for some reason my high school’s mascot was the “Redcoats”. baffling. maybe the town was once a tory hotbed?
mattH
The massive disparities between the top and bottom started in the 1980s, when the top marginal tax bracket was removed. Reagan and Greenspan increased the SS tax more than was needed to secure SS, and the extra money was “borrowed” to fund 1980s spending. Any money that a reinstitution of higher marginal brackets could easily go back into the system to help fund SS, and that surely wouldn’t be all of that money if we simply reinstituted one bracket at the 1980 level.
Daragh McDowell
@Mnemosyne
Hear hear! I’m afraid expecting people to pay for health insurance when they’re healthy, when they know that they can simply purchase it when they get sick with no economic cost to themselves is a bit optimistic. Sure you’d get a few who would do so out of civic duty, knowing that otherwise the system would collapse, but I suspect most of them would a) not be aware of this problem, b) still make the (rational in the short term) choice not to pay in effect a ton of money for a service they don’t presently need that they can get for a lot less money when they do. Just because costs are driving young people out of the market NOW, doesn’t mean that subsidising will automatically fix the problem – especially since a lot of the basic rules of the system will have changed.
I agree that this is not the kind of HCR I would support in an ideal situation. But the sad reality is its the best that the current political climate and system can do. Social Security was pretty shabby when it first passed as well, but once that hurdle was jumped making substantial improvements along the way became progressively easier.
In short, I think Jane Hamsher was making a classic progressive mistake of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, or perhaps more fairly the adequate. If this bill didn’t pass, there wasn’t gonna be another bite at the apple for 20-30 years at least. And during that time, millions of people would suffer as a result (not to mention Health Care costs would have ballooned to the point that they were roughly on par with what the Soviets were spending on defence in the 1980s. IIRC, that had some rather adverse effects on the Soviet economy.)
Cris
It’s really hard to find on Google (which favors more recent results), but I seem to recall that even while John was a pro-GOP warblogger, Daily Kos used to link to him as “one of the few sane conservatives.”
Tsulagi
Guilt is good. It’s kinda at the root of Christianity and most religions.
Toward wingnuts/teabaggers, I go with anger. In my working world back in 02,03 when I didn’t pod as way too many of co-workers did after 9/11 becoming articulate idiots in the Cheney mold, then cheerleading our most excellent misadventure in Iraq, my financial security and a little more was actively threatened by some. Know what it’s like expecting the possibility of a brick coming through a window or worse. It was a weird time.
Threatening my economic security by extension threatens my family as well. Try to screw with my family and you have an enemy for life. Christian mom would point out holding a grudge too long is one of my failings. Yeah, well, piss off, mom. But of course I mean that in the most loving way.
jenniebee
@Mnemosyne: Krugman’s stance then was in conjunction with the presence of public insurance. He hasn’t walked it back, but he has acknowledged that:
My point is, we don’t any of us have any idea what the size is of the actual population of healthy young people who would choose to buy insurance if it was subsidized and they could buy on the exchanges without being turned down for pre-existing conditions, but the evidence that we have is that the percent insured in the upper third of income is as high as the percent insured in any other pre-Medicare age bracket, and that young people tend generally to have lower incomes than older people which skews their overall numbers downward. We assumed, before we measured the problem, that it exists (as I said, based on libertarian theories of human behavior, which are remarkable for their accuracy – note all the producers who have, as predicted, gone Galt!) and is sufficiently large as to require solving it with a guaranteed to be unpopular action.
We could have put in the subsidies and then gone back if they proved inadequate and put in a mandate – if everything else could have waited for the next chance to expand the bill, this could have waited, too.
Comparing this to Social Security is ridiculous. This is more like eliminating Social Security and, in its place, fining people for not contributing to their 401K.
Mnemosyne
@jenniebee:
I noticed a very important thing that blog post didn’t even mention: how many 18-to-23 year-olds have coverage because they’re covered by their parents’ insurance, not because they’re buying their own insurance or have it through their own employer or college? Without knowing that, you have absolutely no idea how many people are forgoing insurance for financial reasons.
Do you have some statistics that differentiate between the people in that age bracket who are still getting insurance through their parents and ones who are paying out of pocket for their own insurance? Without that number, we do not have an accurate count because we don’t know how many of those 18-to-24 year-olds are paying for their own insurance in the first place.
Also, you should keep in mind that the problem is not that people will be paying money to private insurance companies to get health insurance. Japan, Switzerland and Germany — to name only three — are all countries whose healthcare is based on having people pay money to private companies to get health coverage. The difference is that those countries only have nonprofit insurers and providers, unlike our profit-based system.
Paul in KY
You’re doing your best to make up for your past sins.
I absolve thee ;-)
Brachiator
But the point here is that from an actuarial perspective, you want to get young people’s money into the insurance pool, but have them be healthy enough to not need to use insurance to a large degree.
Robert Waldmann
It’s OK. Not only did he wear earth tones, he was going to grow a beard and gain a lot of weight. You just rationally expected him to be fat and (for a while) bearded.
Also he took a leading role in the development of the internet and caused people like me to waste lots and lots of time.
Tax Analyst
I wish I could remember how I found this site, but it escapes me. I DO remember it was when John was still a Repub, but I also remember recommending the site to a friend who is more of an Independent, but was absolutely appalled by Bush & Co. I remember telling him that although the blogger was a Republican that he seemed quite fair-minded and reasonable in his approach to things.
Bill Murray
I’m pretty much with Jenniebee here — with the caveat that the problem in general wasn’t JC or DougJ but the commentators. The individual mandate, in particular, in my opinion was included as a sop to the insurance companies, as the mandate is not the only or even the best way to keep control on costs even without a true public option.
Eventually, if the health care plan works well, the Republicans are going to rewrite history and claim it was their idea all along, so they should get credit for it, and the MSM won’t say anything to contradict the new story.
Mnemosyne
@Bill Murray:
It’s not a cost control measure. It’s a funding measure. It ensures that there are enough healthy people keeping the system afloat to take care of the chronically sick ones whose care will be much more expensive.
There is no — not one — country with a universal healthcare system that does not have a mandate. Not a single one. The mechanism of the mandate may be slightly different from country to country, but every single country requires every citizen to pay into the system.
kay
@Mnemosyne:
You are a trooper. I’m so glad you post comments here.
Back to work! Sorry for the interruption.
Bill Murray
@Mnemosyne: It’s not a country but New York state has universal coverage and no individual mandate. An individual mandate is one way to keep “the system afloat to take care of the chronically sick ones whose care will be much more expensive”, but it is not the only way. Also, do any of the other countries do a mandate without either a single payer system or heavy regulation on the mandated policies? If they don’t your point is moot since you aren’t really comparing the same thing.
Caravelle
Brick Oven Bill :
Could you explain why you’re multiplying $600 billion and 4.6 percent ?