Category: Issues of the Day

Rumsfeld attempts to cancel the contract for the C-130J, a plane considered unfit for duty by the Pentagon’s own inspector general. But there is Congressional opposition, so yesterday Rumsfeld advised Congress that Defense would continue the $4.1 billion five-year contract.

The plane is considered so inept it isn’t used for combat, which means that most of them are stationed in the U.S. As a result, the presence of the planes has been used as justification by members of Congress for keeping a base open.

Details in The New York Times.

Suppose you’re a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn’t get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won’t cut your Social Security benefits.

Suppose you’re earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you’re making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

I’m not being unfair. In fact, I’ve weighted the scales heavily in Mr. Bush’s favor, because the tax cuts will cost much more than the benefit cuts would save. Repealing Mr. Bush’s tax cuts would yield enough revenue to call off his proposed benefit cuts, and still leave $8 trillion in change.

Paul Krugman

More from Confessions of a Listener:

I enjoy, in small doses, the over-the-top right-wingers who have leaked into AM radio on all sides in the past twenty years. They are evil, lying, cynical bastards who are out to destroy the country I love and turn it into a banana republic, but hey, nobody’s perfect.

A high school junior in a central Georgia military town was suspended from school this week after refusing to end a long-distance cellphone call from his mother, an Army sergeant serving in Iraq.

Kevin Francois, a 17-year-old student at Spencer High School in Columbus, Ga., was in the school cafeteria Wednesday when his mother, Sgt. 1st Class Monique Bates, called to check in with him. When Francois went outside to get better reception, he was spotted by a teacher who — citing a district policy against cellphone use during school hours — told him to hang up.

Francois refused and was suspended for 10 days for disorderly conduct.

Los Angeles Times

The story goes on to get into the he-said/she said details, but like Ralph I’ve got to side with the kid on this one barring something more damning. Ralph’s got all the details on who to write/fax/email your concern.

Did you realize the word “midget” is considered derogatory?

Neither did NewMexiKen. And neither did Roger Ebert. I encourage you to read this fascinating exchange between Ebert and Danny Woodburn, familiar to many of you from Seinfeld.

The use of the word midget is, for Little People, equated with any other hate word someone might use to describe a minority group.

Apparently William and Mary is being asked to reconsider its team name. Once upon a time it was the William and Mary Indians. In an appropriate gesture to sensitivities they changed the name to the William and Mary Tribe. Now the NCAA is questioning Tribe (along with other colleges with even more potentially offensive mascots).

Blogger Herb Ely suggests the William and Mary Ethnics, which he says might offend no one or at least offend everyone. Better yet, he suggests an appropriate new fight song in response to all this. It ends:

From Rick Nelson’s Garden Party, of course.

Indeed, while NewMexiKen finds some mascot names offensive — Redskins in particular — Tribe seems pretty reasonable to me. Of course, I am using a mousepad with that very William and Mary logo on it right now.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1952

Swiped from Julie with a B. Link via MakesMeRalph.

Update May 12: Slightly corrected version with source (November 8, 1954).

NewMexiKen thought this excerpt from The Social Security Trust Fund is Irrelevant (Or How Al Gore Was Right) to be a pretty succinct summary of Social Security finances:

For all but 11 of the last 68 years, payroll tax revenues for Social Security have exceeded the amount the government spent on Social Security. The government used the excess to buy special bonds printed by the federal government. In other words, the government borrowed from itself. It then took the proceeds of the bonds and used it for other government expenditures. The idea all along has been that in 12 to 14 years, in the midst of the baby boom retirement wave, Social Security benefits will exceed payroll taxes earmarked for Social Security. Then the government can sell these bonds — to itself, of course — and use the proceeds to make up the gap.

And that’s why the Trust Fund is irrelevant. To buy the bonds in the Trust Fund from itself, the government must get the money from somewhere. It has four options. It can reduce other government spending. It can sell assets. It can increase taxes. Or, it can sell bonds [that is, borrow some more].

It’s the underlying financial crisis (i.e, the deficit) that’s the issue, not Social Security.

As he often does, The Daily Howler simplifies things, this time whether Bush is proposing “cuts” (as the Democrats say) or “increases” (as the White House puts it).

Who is “right” in this dispute? For our money, the claim that benefits would “increase” under Bush is far more misleading than the claim that they’re “cut.” But that is always a matter of judgement. Again, here are the facts that we would lay out to help people see the shape of Bush’s proposal. Note that you don’t have to use the disputed word “cut” to describe the basic facts that are involved here:

First: At present, middle-income retirees get a check from SS that equals roughly 36 percent of their previous income. Everyone agrees on that fact.

Second: Under the Pozen plan, such retirees would instead get 26 percent of their pre-retirement income. Everyone agrees on that, too.

Third: The Pozen plan only resolves about 70 percent of the system’s projected solvency problem. (Everyone agrees on that.) If Bush wants to fix the solvency problem without adding new revenue, he may have to set benefit levels even lower than he has said—at perhaps 20 percent.

Conclusion? At present, middle-income earners get about 36 percent of their income replaced by SS when they retire. Under Bush’s plan, that may be 20 percent instead. Just state those facts to the average person. Trust us: You won’t have to say the word “cuts.” And they won’t think of this as an “increase.”

I mean really, if Somerby can explain it so succinctly, why can’t the mainstream media?

Michael Ventura suggests America is like Wile E. Coyote — a few steps past the cliff, only we haven’t looked down yet. It’s a fascinating, if depressing column. His key point:

Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing (“Benson’s Economic and Market Trends,” quoted in Asia Times Online) — so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can’t war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon by next spring, and rising — $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts. Their economy can afford it; ours can’t. We may hobble along with more or less the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4 America changes. Drastically.

And it was $3.19⁹ in Needles last week.

Thanks to dangerousmeta! for the link.

Billmon at Whiskey Bar has close tabs on Virginia’s Senators:

Back in the early ’80s, when I lived in Virginia, one of our Senators (not John Warner, but a senile old fart named Scott) was voted the dumbest man in the U.S. Senate. As it happened, I actually had met Scott once or twice, and I can’t say the honor was undeserved.

Nor was it unusual. The Old Dominion has been producing politiicans of very little brain for many years now — a case of reversion to the mean, I suppose, after giving the nation the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Even by the state’s contemporary standards, though, Allen is a dunce. One of the few politiicans, in fact, who could make people refer to John Warner as “the smart one.”

Which, needless to say, could make him a hot prospect for the GOP presidential nomination.

Click on the link above to see what Allen said and the Whiskey Bar parry.

on the runaway bride and the Albuquerque Police Department from AbqAvgJoe. Be sure to take a look.

In The New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin takes a look at Martha Stewart’s probation. Did she violate by attending Time‘s party? Here’s the essential facts as discussed in the article:

On April 19th, Martha Stewart attended a cocktail party and gala dinner, at the Time Warner Center, that was billed as a “celebration” of Time‘s “100 Most Influential People” issue. The evening seems to have been convivial, although Jon Stewart (no relation), who performed at the party, did note, after Martha’s departure, that he had seen her “fashion a shiv out of a lamb shank.” Her attendance raised certain questions, however, because, influential or not, she remains under home confinement after her conviction, last year, for, among other things, making false statements to federal prosecutors. The terms of Stewart’s probation allow her to leave home for up to forty-eight hours a week for “employment,” medical and dental appointments, food shopping, and religious observance. The question that Stanton’s office is now investigating is whether the party constituted a genuine work obligation or mere socializing.

DeLay has long been one of Congress’ most vocal critics of what he calls Castro’s “thugocracy,” which is why some sharp-eyed TIME readers were surprised last week to see a photo of the Majority Leader smoking one of Cuba’s best—a Hoyo de Monterrey double corona, which generally costs about $25 when purchased overseas and is not available in this country. The cigar’s label clearly states that it was made in “Habana.” The photo was taken in Jerusalem on July 28, 2003, during a meeting between DeLay and the Republican Jewish Coalition at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

TIME, which has the photo.

“Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court,” [James C.] Dobson said. “They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”

Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.

The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts.

Los Angeles Times

NewMexiKen sees a big comeback in the Friday fish and chip specials of my youth.

The Dow is now about 5% lower than it was five-plus years ago when President Bush was selected and we went to more or less total right-wing Republican control. (This is not to tar all Congressional Republicans as rightwing; but you will not find moderate Republicans in the leadership.)

In that same time, we have also lost the good will of much of the world and added 35% to our national debt.

But at least we got Bin-Laden.

Andrew Tobias

jkottke: In the book, you say “a slight tweak [in incentives] can produce drastic and unforseen results”. If you were the omnipotent leader of the US for a short time, what little tweak might you make to our political, cultural, or economic frameworks to make America better (if you can forgive the subjectivity of that word)?

Levitt: I would start by increasing the IRS budget ten-fold and doing a lot more tax audits. If everyone paid their taxes, tax rates could be much lower and otherwise honest people wouldn’t be tempted to cheat. For some reason, everyone hates the idea. But we can’t all be cheating more than average on our taxes. I think it would be for the better. And after I got done with that, I’d legalize sports betting, and I would also do away with most of the nonsense and hassle that currently goes into airport security.

From exchange between Jason Kottke and Stephen Levitt the economist behind Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

THE “I’M NOT A DOCTOR BUT I PLAY ONE ON CAPITOL HILL” AWARD, bestowed for advances in congressional oversight of science. And the nominees are …

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who convened a hearing on Internet smut and remained straight-faced while being advised that pornography is a leading cause of breast implants. Later, the abstemious congressman heard how porn causes the “direct release of the most perfect addictive substance.” Say what? “That is,” said one witness, “it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can’t do, in effect.”

Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). The retired surgeon relied upon his cardiac training to describe his new strategy for battling Democrats: “I can play hardball as well as anybody,” he told the New York Times. “That’s what I did, cut people’s hearts out.”

Mother Jones

There’s going to be a lot of rich people “kept” alive by their heirs in 2009 in anticipation of the estate tax going away completely in 2010.

Click here to access IRS Form 4868, Application for Automatic Extension of Time to File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. You may apply for the extension electronically.

Will Rogers said, “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf.”

Ogden Nash wrote, “Indoors or out, no one relaxes / In March, that month of wind and taxes, / The wind will presently disappear, / The taxes last us all the year.”

The Writer’s Almanac