This infographic may look pretty, but it packs a mean punch:
Posts archived in Facts of Life
The Beeb, bringing our slumbers into the statistics about death club, considerately informs us that:
Getting less than six hours sleep a night can lead to an early grave, UK and Italian researchers have warned.…They said people regularly having such little sleep were 12% more likely to die over a 25-year period than those who got an “ideal” six to eight hours.
So tonight, when in front of me sits a pile of work whose end cannot yet be seen, I’ll gladly use this research to justify my calling it a night.
This past week, it has become a looming reality that the oil rig which exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, spilling thousands of gallons of oil a day, is not under control and poses vast environmental risks for the area.
Similarly becoming clear is that this newly acknowledged national disaster will re-shape the national discourse on energy policy concerning domestic and off-shore drilling specifically. As the world watched the oil slick grow to the now epic expanse of 130 miles long, an off-shore wind farm was approved in Cape Cod, Massachusetts after 9 years of mucking around in the legal system. Leaving the almost ironic contrast of these two pieces of energy news aside, a more fundamental question resounds in my brain: Is the Government ultimately responsible for the direction of and oversight of our national energy pursuits, and is this reality only tacitly acknowledged in situations where massive catastrophes occur and the private sector that profits from our energy pursuits proves to be incapable of dealing with the consequences?
Wordy, yes, but goddamn important to raise. As in the case of the oil rig, whose consequences in terms of area and volume effected have tripled in just the last day, it is overwhelmingly clear that the Federal Government (DoHS, DoD, Coast Guard) needed to act to control the spill. I say this because even Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal has asserted that oil giant BP, whose rig it was that initiated this disaster, cannot handle the clean up and mitigation efforts: “I do have concerns that BP’s resources are not adequate,” (BBC 5/1/10).
Despite these mounting concerns that big oil cannot handle the consequences of their endeavors, the company has repeatedly downplayed any suggestions of such, with their COO Doug Suttles saying “[it had mounted] the largest response effort ever done in the world,” (BBC 5/1/10)
Continuing along that vein though, the COO’s admissions as to the stark reality of tampering with such dangerous, uncertain oil exploration leaves much to be wanting in terms of clean energy in this country:
Officials from BP and the federal government have repeatedly said they had prepared for the worst, even though a plan filed last year with the government said it was highly unlikely that a spill or leak would ever result from the Deep Horizon rig.
“There are not much additional available resources in the world to fight this thing offshore,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, in an interview. “We’ve basically thrown everything we have at it.”
Mr. Suttles said BP’s efforts did not change after it was disclosed Wednesday night that the leak was estimated at 5,000 barrels a day, five times larger than initial estimates had suggested. He said BP, which is spending roughly $6 million a day and will likely spend far more when oil reaches land, had already been mobilizing for a far larger spill. However, he did not deny that BP initially thought the slick could be stopped before it reached the coastline.
“In the early days, the belief was that we probably could have contained it offshore,” Mr. Suttles said. “Unfortunately, since the event began we haven’t had that much good weather.” (NYTimes 5/1/10)
Veiled in the sympathized PR magic that any oil company must possess is the inability to ignore the fact that even when risk is assumed to be minimal, that risk is relative to the forces at play. BP, for all their planning, resources, and expertise in these deep-ocean drilling operations, now owns the fallout from this spill. 6$ million a day is a lot to spend on attempting to clean an ocean of oil, but this shit is just now reaching land and that land happens to be protected wildlife reserves. On top of that, there have been nearly 24 hr relief efforts underway for the last 9 days, with the Coast Guard at the helm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issuing statements and dedicating time to the relief efforts by setting up a second command station in Mobile, Alabama, the Department of Defense now dedicating resources and time, and fianlly President Obama will be heading to Louisiana tomorrow to see the fallout firsthand and issue another public response.
Whoever bears the final costs seems negligible at this point, even though it is likely that BP’s shareholders will suffer more than BP’s executives, because the damage caused by BP’s work will be irreversible. Burning layers of oil off the surface of the ocean, an unfettered well 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean gushing 210,000 gallons of oil a day, and now thousands more gallons of sub-surface dispersant (whose environmental effects are unknown) are being deployed to attempt to prevent oil from reaching the surface of the ocean.
Of course, the question politicians of all stripes are rushing to answer is: what does this spill, this imminent environmental disaster, imply for future off-shore oil exploration?
At the heart of that question, and ultimately the un-spoken truth revolving around this issue, is that the Federal Government must own their energy policy and its consequences.
If Sarah Palin is to get her way and we “drill here, drill now”, the risks of future catastrophes such as this one becomes multiplied by some unknown factor (even if rigs are determined safe, anything can happen because the forces at play are larger than BP’s pursuit of drilling permits). The proponents of this approach seem, however, to label epic environmental catastrophe as a consequence they are willing to accept in pursuit of a Federal energy policy that favors any and all available forms of resource extraction. I find this distasteful at the least and reckless at the most. Sarah Palin’s habitat will not be the ones covered in rusty, sweet crude oil because of that decision, nor will it be our energy future that is secured by such a move – it is merely a stop-gap, a band-aid that gives the appearance of proactive government intervention while disguising its inherent risks as weighing less than the benefits.
But what should not get lost in this conversation is our nationally accepted perceptions that the Federal Government needs to direct our nation’s and our economy’s use of natural resources.
So my question becomes, why drive a train down dead end tracks? Why should we invest our country in a short-term, low-benefit, high-cost solution?
Is it for the wind-fall profit taxes that we can use to reduce our debt? Or is it for the sake of garnering the good graces of extremely moneyed, well-connected special interests for the next 2 decades or so – to provide in campaign donations and non-adversarial policy campaigns?
And if either of these are the case, no one has yet to prove that any humble citizen’s life will improve because BP gets access to formerly protected areas. To be sure, there are negative consequences inherent in any energy policy decision made at this point, but what has been fundamentally ignored in many’s consideration of expanding domestic drilling is how marginally, if at all, the positives outweigh the negatives.
As such, I will be following the ensuing debate over how to realign our energy policy in recognition of these consequences, and whether anyone will be so bold as to offer viable alternatives that don’t amount to appeasement of special interests.
And damnit, our country doesn’t need any more stock photos of little helpless animals or shorelines coated in oil. What are we going to do about that?
Oh the humanity! If ever there was a threat to one’s sanity it is the hyperbolic world in which the mere mention of a name, and the audacity to pair that name with some image, some representation, spurns death threats.
If I were to have been on some other planet for the last decade and encountered the (islamo-manufactured) controversy surrounding the creators of South Park for airing this episode (that as far as I can tell will never be shown again), I would think it was a joke. I would think first to check my calender and make sure it wasn’t the first of April. I would check the news to see if some coup d’etat has unseated our Constitutional government and replaced it with some sort of theocracy. In fact, if I had viewed the episode un-edited (which now seems like it will never ever happen), not having known about what happened in Denmark and the ill-fated winds that swept into that country, I never would have considered it to be edgy, controversial or even pointed. I mean the cartoon featured a u-haul, a bear suit and the eight letter word Muhammad. Meanwhile, Krishna is railing lines of coke and Moses is portrayed as a sci-fi fetish, a disembodied voice and a floating head.
To quote the dastardly duo behind what is becoming one of the most dangerous ways to express a Constitutionally enshrined right, “I mean really, come on.”
So, the only option becomes either acquiesce (like Comedy Central has) to the demands of would-be terrorists, or to push back on the inanity of this bullshit controversy and refuse to allow the conversation to be control by an irrational few. Religious freedom is not the freedom in which one can impress their beliefs on another, nor the freedom to demand by threat of force to be respected in those beliefs, it is the freedom to know that your beliefs will not bring down any wrath from the authorities above you (governments, not gods). The freedom to practice, not the right to force your beliefs into another person’s life.
Indeed, the only reason freedom of religion is relevant in this world today is because it falls gracefully under the umbrella of rights provided by the enlightenment notion of freedom of expression. We, in America, have that freedom (at least on paper), though it is becoming painfully clear that said freedom of expression does not go hand-in-hand with a freedom of movement. Protesters are being relegated to pre-approved “protest zones”; street performers, artists and musicians are being forced off public grounds and forced to find and compete for areas that actually allow for their freedom of expression; Universities are silencing free speech on campuses, in favor of free speech contained to one demarcated zone; and now religions of old are being used to justify the basic renunciation of a word within our consciousness, saying that that word cannot be paired with an image. Lo and behold, people’s first reaction to this is to shit their pants. If not the police attempting to coerce using force, asking for permits to protest, relocating homeless people, telling others that their particular form of self-expression does not belong here, then it is these psuedo-authoritarians who think that just because they subscribe to something’s sacred value, that the entire fucking world must abide lest they feel the wrath of a self-conscious, radicalized few.
Above all, the difference is that this is America, and we take our personal/individual freedoms very seriously. But that does not mean that every individual expression, in public, on the street corner, or on TV, is serious. It is because it is. We express because we can, and this tendency comes to define our very humanity.
What follows is another completely legal, completely constitutional and completely human form of expression. It encourages expression. It does not stifle it. And the (grossly mis-) perceived danger of such a free expression is not owned solely by the fundamentalists who would threaten violence on cartoonists, but it is also endorsed by those who urge the censoring of our airwaves, those who burn books and ban books, those who snicker and ridicule and castigate at the mere sight of difference, and ultimately by those governments (local, state and federal) who put up barriers to free citizen’s self-expression.
This conversation need not be dominated by those who manifest their will in the most extreme ways, but rather it needs to focus more upon the less noticed, more accepted abridgments of our freedom of expression. Our public schools, universities, media and municipalities have institutionalized the slow disintegration of true freedom of expression in favor of an engineered society that minimizes conflicts and accepts authority. So lets not succumb to the intimations of the least rational, most radical among us. Their impulses to silence and censor pervade many different aspects of our lives, with or without some cartoons depicting Muhammad to stir the controversy.
I recommend that we all start carrying legit, permanent markers around, the kind that KRINK makes, that will draw on literally every surface under the sun, rain or snow. And whenever any urge to express oneself comes to the surface, regardless of its controversy or propensity to offend, the marker will be ready to find the appropriate canvas. That simple adjustment to our considerations of how we are able to express ourselves, and when, would do more within this country than a sensationalized cartoon on cable TV ever could.
So lets drop that pretense that expression is for some, and take back what is fundamentally yours – your voice!
I suppose there is something to be said about accountability in this country. Deserved or not though, demanding accountability by threat of force evokes images of an ousted Honduran president, a Burmese junta, a deposed Chilean leftist. It does not evoke images however, of a modern, democratized America.
Alas, this is the context in which we find ourselves today. Extremists, paranoid and delusional, attempt to leverage a constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms in order to oust democratically elected governors. When a Department of Homeland Security assessment, commissioned by the Bush administration, warned of the increasing threat of domestic, home-grown, violence and terrorism, the (conservative) media spun it as a lead-up to partisan policing of dissenting groups and ultimately tried to use it to discredit the incoming administration.
Do those media figures feel remorse about their indignant responses to a sober analysis of our country?
Probably not.
Does the appearance and publicizing of recent extremism in our nation suggest a new illness in our society’s politics?
Probably not.
Is there a connection between politicians’ publicly aired diatribes likening the Obama administration to past despotic regimes and the presence of these extremist threats towards government officials?
Absolutely.
But lets not jump to any conclusions just because of that acknowledgment. The DHS and the FBI have been responding to these sorts of threats for some time, as I’m sure they were just as pertinent during Bush’s administration. And if our country’s panic laden responses to airport security measures is any indication, the role of concerned citizens in this issue should be one of urging restraint and calm from our elected leaders. We need to be, as a nation, confident on certain things.
For one, no crackpot militia (or any militia for that matter) is going to overthrow our government.
Same goes for foreign terrorists – they simply have no chance of overthrowing our government and no chance of disrupting our ability to choose the way we live our lives. Whatever tangential threats exist, they are not existential threats, and to treat them otherwise is to give far too much credence to the power of these groups.
Criminals are criminals are criminals are criminals. Regardless of whether they attempt to hide behind a veil of patriotism or are honest in their intentions, we already have the means to deal with their effects. Any further discussion of issues regarding homegrown terrorism, militia violence or threats of violence should be isolated within an intellectual forum – it should not enter the legislative forum.
If ever these sorts of threats should teach us something, it is that the boundaries of legislative efficacy are true. The concerns about militias and domestic terrorism are concerns primarily for the communities in which they occur, and no amount of legislating can hope to change that fact.
I don’t take these instances of/the threat of violence lightly. They are indeed serious issues, issues that exist within almost every society. They are issues that will outlive the governments of today and issues that cannot be categorized into a notion of historical pertinence. They are basic issues of human nature.
As such, I cannot stomach the idea of our government trying to legislate away human nature any more than it already has through existing penal codes. If ever a slippery slope existed, it is the slippery slope that brings us from protecting our security toward confining our liberties. In the context of foreign terrorism, racial profiling has become an actual policy goal for conservatives who wish to seem tough on security. That slippery slope has already brought our country back towards institutionalizing the racial prejudices and discrimination that directly contradict the values enshrined in our founding documents.
So while it can be startling to hear/read news of threats of violence becoming more widespread within the political discourse, we may all need a collective moment to breathe.
The proper authorities are on the case, will continue to be vigilant, and can accomplish more than a bunch of up-tight, insulated politicians could ever hope to accomplish.
As our leading institutionalized voice of calm and rationality recently stated:
So as Americans, we reject the false choice between our security and our ideals. We can and we must and we will protect both. (Obama, 5/22/09)
“Today, a significant water line bursts on average every two minutes somewhere in the country, according to a New York Times analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data.”
This story popped up in the aftermath of a heavy Northeastern storm this weekend, one which also knocked out power to nearly 500,000 residents (which is another example of how our infrastructure fails us so often). But more to the point here, and this is one whose context extends beyond the shoddy line work of the Northeast, rainstorms have been backing up sewer systems and causing other infrastructural havoc for as long as such systems have existed. The consequences of these systematic inefficiencies are gross. The consequences of the inability of a system to handle the volume of precipitation is what caused the city of Chicago to raise its streets by more than 30 feet before the 20th century. The costs associated with fixing these problems are serious, but that is not surprising considering the scale upon which sewer and water systems exist, but also considering the degree of the consequences it is hard to imagine that people would not support a taxpayer investment into their infrastructure:
In Washington alone there is a pipe break every day, on average, and this weekend’s intense rains overwhelmed the city’s system, causing untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. (3/14/10 NYT)
That is disgusting. Beyond disgusting. For those of us wishing to keep up the guise that we live in an advanced, modern society, this fact destroys any pretense of our modernity. Our own nation’s capitol cannot even prevent its shit and piss from coursing through its heralded, historic waterways.
But where there exists a shit filled river on the East coast, there exists a better solution on the West coast.
Oregon is no stranger to rain, and the fact that we get basically all of our annual precipitation in only 8 months, peak flow of waterways is a real problem. The Willamette river, traversing Northward to Portland through the valley below, once made new tracks through the valley each decade, but now as a product of our creation of cities and the ensuing desire to prevent those cities from flooding, the Willamette river has been entrenched in the same path for some time. This makes Portland a particularly crucial juncture in considering the health of this waterway, as Portland is the last stop along the way for the Willamette to the Pacific Ocean, before it meets the great Columbia. In Oregon, we protect our waterways, or at least try to be proactive in doing so.
That is why the city of Portland, much like Chicago a century ago, has been going through great pains to devise a city-wide plan for mitigating their stormwater and reducing the amount of polluted surface water that reaches the Willamette river (the river divides the city on its east and west, so nearly the entire city has the potential to drain into the river). And they’ve found a workable solution.
The creation of green streets and other low impact on-site treatment facilities such as green roofs:
A Green Street is a sustainable stormwater strategy that meets regulatory compliance and resource protection goals by using a natural systems approach to manage stormwater, reduce flows, improve water quality and enhance watershed health. (Portland Bureau of Environmental Services)
The city has endorsed pilot programs, drafted a city-wide resolution supporting their use and installation and is now tracking these facility’s impact on the city’s storm sewer system. The latest round of monitoring results (from December 2008) show that the existing green street facilities have reduced peak flow by a minimum of 80%. These results were gauged as being indicative of the facility’s ability to perform in a 25 yr. storm (the statistically worst storm that is likely to occur in 25 yr period of time). That 80% reduction is significant enough to forever prevent untreated sewage from entering waterways, and they’ve done so without having to unearth ancient infrastructure at an enormous cost to the taxpayer, because green street retrofits consist of altering solely the streetscape at ground level.
When comparing these two historical solutions – Chicago’s lifting of its city by 30 feet and Portland’s installation of bioswales and strategic curb cuts that form Green Streets (because trust me, Portland’s program is becoming a model for how cities can deal with their water and sewer system problem), it is easy to see how much more realistic, implementable, affordable and inviting the latter is.
For what it is worth, there are obviously going to be detractors claiming that any municipality’s investment in such a project is wasteful, overstepping or inefficient. Especially if such a project was undertaken in DC, I can almost hear the lunatic reactionary Congress people of the GOP spouting off about government spending. But when you propose the two simple alternatives – shit flowing through the Potomac every time there is a bit of a rainstorm (the same Potomac that George Washington infamously crossed, mind you), or sidewalk planters filled with native grasses and beautiful tree-lined streets, I don’t think any rational human beings would opt for the feces river.
That said, this problem in Washington DC is being approached through a fairly narrow lens. The current head of DC’s Department of the Environment, George S. Hawkins (who is tasked with providing a solution to fixing the ancient infrastructure that courses beneath the city), is proposing a rate hike to replace the old pipes. That is his entire solution to the fact that raw sewage enters the Potomac when it rains, to the fact that the same sewage also appears in DC resident’s basements during those rains, and to the fact that during those times water service often is disrupted for most of the city: rate hikes. He is offering to allow residents to pay more for a service they already expect that currently and compulsively under performs, and his solution would provide no relief or benefits to any of the residents who would be effected by the rate hike – none whatsoever. Because when you boil it down to how these folks are really considering this issue, Hawkins’ plan is a 100 year plan to fix the infrastructure which should be translated into the perception that nothing will improve anytime soon. That is his solution.
Does this guy even know that there is more to water and sewer infrastructure than the pipes themselves? Does he realize that there are larger issues at play here, surface runoff and pollution, peak flows and volume retention, that have caused basements and rivers to be inhabited by raw sewage? New pipes sound nice, but the work involved with unearthing and replacing the miles and miles of piping would make the city’s residents lives inconvenienced, it would disrupt their service almost inevitably, and they would have no tangible payoff to their putting up with this plan.
If this Hawkins character was at all adept in his ability to get the people of the city behind his plan to fix the water and sewer infrastructure, he would have paid attention to how more than one thing can be accomplished through the city’s investment. He would offer better streets, safer streets, cleaner air, more shade, less urban-heat-island effect, less greenhouse gases, more jobs, and oh yes – no more shit in your river or basements.
Time will tell how his plan works out though, whether city residents will sit idly by while their rates increase by nearly 60% and they continue to experience the same service interruptions and sewage backflow or whether someone with a better idea and more support from the community will raise their voice and offer the residents of DC a way forward.
I think bankers have distracted some of the public from what used to be the cause celebre demon-economic-seed: the Military-Industrial Complex.
Obama says he wants to enter into a new era of arms reductions, specifically for nuclear arms, but what of the same Merchants of Death who were called out as the root cause for the first World War that continue to pump the world full of ammunition and instruments of death?
Every once and a while, we need a reminder of just how weapon crazy this world is, and just how responsible the United States of America is for perpetuating that reality. Thanks to GOOD:
From a Q&A session at Princeton University following a speech by Andrew Sullivan:
I am not a Catholic, nor a religious man, but far be it from me to say that the social and political influence of religion (‘The Church’ so to speak) has waned. In the recently despicable efforts undertaken by those in power in Uganda to criminalize and punish (execute) homosexuals we’ve seen the way religious arguments can utterly shift a person’s and an institution’s consideration of an issue (I’m speaking of the American evangelicals…C street/’the family’…whose influence in Uganda is overt and documented, but also the singularly religious framing of homosexuality among those in Uganda pushing for the legislation). In America, the issue at hand does not bear such obviously extreme consequences but, as it should be obvious by now, the issue of gay marriage and equal rights bears extremely personal and existential consequences for those who are not granted equal protection under the law. This disparity in understandable consequences of the particular form on discrimination, in my opinion, is the reason why so many religious establishments in American have spoken out against the “kill the gays” bill in Uganda, but have remained steadfast in their opposition to gay marriage.
The notion of love, not orientation or gender, being the deciding factor in marriage is not anything new to me. Nor should I have any reason to think that it is anything new to anyone else. The injection of politics and hate into the discussion of love and marriage is truly disgusting to watch and it is impossible to reconcile within any conception of America as just or as “the Land of the Free”. Keep Reading »
Eclipsing Sarah Palin as the GOP’s go-to media figure, even securing himself a seat at the much coveted bi-partisan health reform summit, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has outdone his party this time.
The budget of legend, released shortly after Obama’s State of the Union address, promised to eliminate deficits, lower the national debt and “rescue and strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security,”. It even came with a cool interactive graphic showing just how wonderfully awesome this shadow budget is and just how miserable the Obama administration’s budget is.
The problem though, as was alluded to a month ago by a host of news sources and bloggers, is that Ryan himself provided the numbers upon which the CBO estimate of the long term effects of the budget was be scored and these numbers were just assumed to be 100% correct by the CBO. It is worth noting that the whole composition of this budget basically exists as a manifestation of all the extremely unpopular conservative pet policies of the past decade including, but not limited to privatizing social security, privatizing and raising the eligibility age and premiums of Medicare, all while simultaneously freezing discretionary spending for a decade. Oh, and don’t forget that in tackling this tough problem of debt and deficit, Ryan elected to eliminate the Childrens Health Insurance Program and Medicaid in favor of “vouchers” and “credits” to force low-income people buy the same private insurance that these children and families aren’t being offered. So despite Ryan’s valiant effort to take radical GOP policy projects and implant them into the mainstream of 2010, we find now that indeed Ryan’s budget proposal wouldn’t even fulfill the outlandish promises it holds so dear – not raising taxes and decreasing deficits and debt.
[The Tax Policy Center] estimates that even with its middle-class tax increases, the plan would reduce federal revenues to 16 percent of GDP in 2014. Because the tax cuts for the wealthy would dwarf the tax increases for the middle class, the Ryan plan would allow the federal debt to continue growing for a number of decades to come, despite its steep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
Compare these deviously disparate charts showing (1) projected government spending as a percentage of GDP (as crafted by Ryan after blindly assuming what revenues would be) and (2) projected debt as a share of GDP (as crafted by the Tax Policy Center after actually trying to calculate what revenues would be under the changed tax structures).
(1)
(2)
I’m all for trying to rectify our federal government’s long-term fiscal outlooks, but not at the cost of dishonesty in the way we consider our government’s responsibility to govern. As such, Ryan’s proposal undermines every substantial policy achievement in the last 100 years without just cause. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements need reform, that is without doubt, but the Republican supposition that reform in 2010 means elimination (think about what their health reform plans are…) is completely absurd. On top of that, the Ryan proposal seems to ignore the immense fiscal problems still facing most of our 50 states, problems that threaten to even further undermine the structures upon which our nation has grown in the past, including unprecedented cuts to public education. When looking at the graph created by Ryan, it seems so wonderful to see that red line just magically drop away from the rampant spending of the Democrats as represented by the blue line, but you can’t have that magic diversion without completely ignoring the fact that we haven’t fixed the problems that led to or resolved the consequences that ensued from this, the largest depression since the one we call “Great”.
As just one example of precisely how cavalier the Ryan budget’s attitude toward pragmatic governance in the face of economic realities is, take the potential consequences of his Social Security privatization:
Under the Ryan plan, individuals who divert a portion of their payroll tax contributions to private
accounts would be guaranteed that they would receive back in retirement at least as much as they
contributed, plus an adjustment for inflation. In essence, they would be given a federal guarantee against
stock-market losses. The chief actuary of the Social Security system has estimated that, on average and
adjusting for market risk, an earlier version of the Ryan plan’s guarantee would cost the government
$2.9 trillion in present-value terms (although the actual cost could turn out to be higher or lower,
depending on actual bond and stock returns).25This guarantee could require a major federal bailout of private accounts during periods when the stock market
performs poorly. The cost of this guarantee, unlike that of traditional Social Security, could escalate
rapidly and add suddenly and unpredictably to the federal deficit. Providing a federal guarantee for
stock-market investments also could encourage risky investment decisions by individuals, as well as
misguided attempts by policymakers to shore up weak or falling stock prices in response to pressures
from constituents who are relying on these accounts to support them in old age. [emphasis original]
Yet, Ryan claims in his response to the TPC’s rebuke of his budget’s infallibility that he is not privatizing social security:
“The Roadmap makes no change for those 55 and older. It provides future retirees with the option to either stay in the traditional government-run system or to enter a system of guaranteed personal accounts. Neither option is privatized. In the personal-accounts system, the accounts are owned by the individual, and managed and overseen by a government board — not a stockbroker or private investment firm.” (3/11/10)
But he chooses to not answer the concerns of guaranteeing the personal accounts which are encouraged with high incentives in Ryan’s budget, specifically for those with the most to lose from allowing their Social Security contributions to be taxed (the rich), which are the overriding issue of concern. It isn’t a question of correct terminology, “privatization” or “guaranteeing of personal accounts” result in the same forlorn conclusion about the solvency of Social Security and its effect on future governance.
Rep. Ryan’s plan would provide a further incentive for upper-income beneficiaries to divert their
Social Security contributions into private accounts. Most of their traditional Social Security benefits
would continue to be counted as part of their taxable income, as they are today. But benefits
generated from their personal accounts would be entirely exempt from the income tax.The result would be a system in which Social Security is very unattractive to affluent people. (CBPP 3/10/10)
The result would also be a system in which all the radical changes to tax structures (which pass burden from producers to the consumers), and social benefits such as Social Security and Medicare (ie their outright disenfranchisement from government responsibility in favor of private, tax-exempt, guaranteed account and “vouchers” for some other service respectively) that ends up continuing to cost the tax-payer and government more than it promised and in return the tax-payer gets hit with heavier taxes and diminished social returns. That is, the disenfranchisement of the tax-payer from the incentive to encourage good governance.
This budget, if enacted, would prove to the taxpayer and average American that our country in ungovernable. Unrest would ensue from the slashing of Medicare benefits and rising of premiums, from the uncertainty involved in upending the Social Security system with no potential benefits for those who pay into the system, and future administrations would be bound by arbitrary “spending freezes” while dealing with the consequences of a permanently diminished tax revenue.
It is a Republican ideologue’s dream though, is it not? I mean, they’ve been saying all along that the government simply can’t solve the country’s problems, so why not just let everyone fend for themselves in an even more embattled century?
For the last 2 weeks student riots, protests, and other civil unrest made the pages of several leading publications; the topics receiving the most scorn from students and most attention in the media’s coverage were tuition hikes, funding cuts, and student loan reform. These protests have been focused in California, spreading across nearly every state campus from Berkeley to LA, because of the enormous cuts threatened by the state legislatures as results of massive budget shortfalls.
The economic stimulus package provided California over 36$ billion, more than 2$ billion of which was allocated directly by the Department of Education, yet the state continues to face large enough of budgetary issues to warrant continued underfunding of public school districts and state colleges. With stories like this coming to represent not isolated issues that are a product of a state whose legislature refuses to legislate, but widespread economic instability undermining our nation’s ability to improve our education system, it becomes hard to bow to arguments against a second economic stimulus in favor of reducing national deficits and debt.
For one thing, any solutions to fixing our debt and deficits would not actually remove said debt or deficit for many years, potentially even decades for that staggering debt we have. What remains as a more potent reality though, is that when our economy is producing goods and producing jobs and producing real economic growth, our deficits will fall as a product of increased revenue. The only reason deficit spending remains a valuable option for our federal government in rectifying our national and state economic disparities is specifically because the government has the ability to do so. States have much more difficulty doing so, yet the ensuing year after the first stimulus became law provided copious evidence to suggest that the deficit spending of the federal government has helped economies locally, regionally and nationally. Principled arguments against deficit spending in recessions can be as principled as they like, but while their principle is thriving more Americans would be losing jobs, states would be facing even more dire budgetary shortfalls, public schools would suffer, and unemployment insurance would have dried up last February for millions of Americans. This plight is exactly what the Obama administration staved off with the enactment of the Recovery Act and other assistance given to state and local municipalities, but that plight would be an ensuing reality if principle were allowed to outweigh the constraints of a recession that strangles our economy.
Such is the backdrop to the debate in Washington that will hopefully be passionately advocated for by the Democrats in Congress whose election was secured in no small part due to the involvement of young voters and students – as bailed-out mega banks like JP Morgan, Chase and Sallie Mae are lobbying to get their paws on even more taxpayer money that would otherwise go towards helping students in college and those seeking higher education with the enactment of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (HR 3221). I’ve written about this in the past, complaining specifically “Where are the Student Groups?“, when not one week after Obama laid out his reforms to help defray the rising cost of college tuition in the State of the Union Address news broke that the largest student lenders were spending millions to lobby Congress to stop HR 3221. They currently receive massive subsidies to provide low-interest loans to students seeking financial aid, and those subsidies would stop as the federal Direct Loan program would be the sole entity to disburse the federal financial aid that some 10 million students originated just last year.
My hopes seem to have been vindicated in these last few weeks though, as national campaigns to pass the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act have been gaining momentum through the media coverage of protests in California and the support of several progressive media outlets. Firedoglake, for one, has originated a petition and a ‘call you Senator’ campaign advocating for student lending reform – they call it “Students not Banks”. Indeed, part of their campaign as well is to urge the Senate to pass this needed reform as somehow attached to the Health Care Reform so as to need only 50+1 votes to secure its passage into law.
The bill, which would decrease direct spending by 13$ billion by 2014, is yet to be introduced on the Senate floor. As such, it sits in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), and there are no scheduled actions regarding the bill at this time. We’ll be checking back later.
If you’ve got the time, or you’ve got the inclination, see if your Senator is on this list of committee members and give them a call.
Democrats by Rank
Tom Harkin (IA)
Christopher Dodd (CT)
Barbara A. Mikulski (MD)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Patty Murray (WA)
Jack Reed (RI)
Bernard Sanders (I) (VT)
Sherrod Brown (OH)
Robert P. Casey, Jr. (PA)
Kay Hagan (NC)
Jeff Merkley (OR)
Al Franken (MN)
Michael Bennet (CO)
Republicans by Rank
Michael B. Enzi (WY)
Judd Gregg (NH)
Lamar Alexander (TN)
Richard Burr (NC)
Johnny Isakson (GA)
John McCain (AZ)
Orrin G. Hatch (UT)
Lisa Murkowski (AK)
Tom Coburn, M.D. (OK)
Pat Roberts (KS)
For anyone continuing to think that the Recovery Act (the stimulus) was a waste, think again.
These provide countenance to the fact that not only has our economy turned around, but that said turn-around occurred like clockwork with the Recovery Act becoming law. I was propelled to include these charts after criticism mounted over the supposed “bias-nature” of the graphic released by the White House that was created with the same data that created the above graphs. For a refresher, or for those who didn’t happen to see it, this is the White House’s graphic on job loss/the recession/the stimulus:
Beyond the obvious red/blue divide, nothing more partisan exists. One cannot simply claim the graph is partisan because it displays facts that support the arguments and views of a political party, especially not when these facts are indeed true. Add to the overall objectivity of the White House’s release of stimulus-related and economic data these charts on real GDP and Payroll Job Losses and you can see that there isn’t much room to claim on principle that the stimulus failed. (Both come from a Feb 17th report on the 1 year progress of the stimulus issued by VP Joe Biden).
News To (Me)dia
…and everything in between
Stay on point :
