Posted on 02/09/2005 8:00:39 PM PST by CHARLITE
IT MUST BE stressful to be a Democrat. You never know what wars to oppose, what government bureaucracies to support, what lies to tell; everything changes everyday. Also, increasingly, it’s really hard to find friends. One reason for this may be Iraq, the country that was going to be just fine with Saddam, in which containment would do wonders, and in which there were no WMD because George Bush is a big fat stupid liar. All we heard from liberals for years was how risky and precarious and implausible elections were for that country, but now, like magic, the Left loves the war. The New York Times just celebrated with a breezy editorial called “Reason for Cheer in the Mideast.” Writer Nicholas Kristof, who predicted tremendous political success for ex-Senator John Edwards, now thinks that Bush should be more hawkish. On the issue of North Korea, he says, the White House has been “startlingly passive.”
Kristof has cited “reports” which argue “that the uranium in Libya's former nuclear program may have come from North Korea.” If that turns out to be false—or even if I decide that I would like it to be false—I plan to follow Kristof’s example and talk about it for the rest of my life.
Social Security, a boring issue but an extremely important one, is the same way. Back in the late ‘90s, when inventor Al Gore was painstakingly trying to cultivate an issue, Social Security was as dead as yesterday. We were assured that if we didn’t elect Gore, bad, bad things would happen to the elderly. According to Gore, we needed a “lockbox,” and if we didn’t get one Social Security would crumble.
Gore’s “lockbox” was Kerry’s “Vietnam.” We weren’t supposed to ask any questions, but whenever it was brought up, you’d best listen. So ubiquitous did Gore’s “lockbox” harping become that Tom Shales, writing in the Washington Post, once noted that “some…may have felt Al Gore should be put in a lockbox.”
Just as the horrible war in Iraq is now great, the dead-as-a-doornail Social Security is now foolproof. “The Social Security System is in no danger whatsoever of going broke or even of having to pay out less than full compensation for at least 50 years,” Molly Ivins recently croaked. (Then, in the same bizarre column, she asserted that “global warming” is a “problem.” Thanks, Molly: while you’re out rounding up aerosol cans, we’ll fix Social Security.”
Equally hallucinatory is Paul Krugman. “Social Security,” he says cheerily, “has a large and growing trust fund….So where’s the imminent crisis?”To review, this is the jovial chap who wrote that “Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.” That’s how much Paul Krugman knows about imminent crises.
The great all-knowing forces at CNN have also spoken up, most notably in a recent Web article subtly entitled, “Social Security: Crisis? What Crisis?” “Not only is Social Security not in crisis,” chirps the piece, “it is as financially sound as ever…”
The basic problem is that Social Security is not a separate fund, as liberals pretend. There is not some gleaming pile of cash under the Oval Office desk waiting to be doled out to grandmas and grandpas. The government takes from the productive, spends the money, and then Democrats claim that they’ve carefully filed away all of the dollars we need for Social Security. That’s a lovely scheme, but it’s a lie.
In reality, we once had a “lockbox.” Unfortunately, the key was apparently not hidden very well, since Lyndon Johnson was able to destroy it. Beginning in fiscal year 1969, Social Security funds were added to the general, unified fund, allowing the government to spend it with abandon. Consequently, Congress was able to disguise massive budget deficits by padding the numbers. Apparently it wasn’t enough for LBJ that he was losing Vietnam; to make his legacy really something special, he had to decimate the already seedy Social Security boondoggle.
Isaiah Z. Sterrett
Comments:dsterrett@earthlink.net
© Copyright 2005 by Isaiah Z. Sterrett
bflr
the morning-chorus from hell.
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