Category: Issues of the Day

Army national guard recruiting has failed to meet its quotas in recent months

Sales of Kobe Bryant jerseys have plummeted in the past year. (He had three in the top 20 two years ago. None is in the top 20 now.)

Just about NewMexiKen said, it used to be that the butler did it. Now it’s the nanny, even if there is no nanny.

NewMexiKen thinks privitization of Social Security is not a good idea, but certainly is willing for a national debate on the matter. What I do not want is for that debate to be framed by the continuing bullshit that the system is in immediate crisis or going bankrupt, or that benefits will not be paid (see below).

NewMexiKen believes in the safety net that Social Security provides — and was intended to provide. For that reason I believe its long term shortfall (beginning in 2052) should be addressed — eventually. Beyond social security, people should be encouraged to plan for the time when they can no longer earn. Tax policy should be among the means considered for encouraging this savings/investment, just as 401k plans do. Those who can save more and those who are able to invest well will ultimately be better off than those who do neither, but — in NewMexiKen’s opinion — no one should be without some resource provided by the common wealth.

Social Security is currently taking in more money than it pays out. It will continue this way, everyone agrees, until about 2018.

In 1983, the National Commission on Social Security Reform (the Greenspan Commission) recommended that the OASDI (Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance) tax be increased to provide a surplus in anticipation of the ?baby boomers? reaching retirement age. Congress agreed and each year since the surplus has been invested in government securities (just as many of us invest in savings bonds or T-bills).

Beginning in 2018 the securities will be redeemed and the surplus will be used, just as intended, to meet the shortfall between OASDI receipts and benefits paid.

If nothing is done the surplus will be gone by 2052 (according to the Congressional Budget Office) and the OASDI tax will only equal 81% of the anticipated benefits each year.

Currently there are three OASDI taxpayers for each person getting benefits — and the system produces a surplus.

This Bernard Kerik is quite a guy. NewMexiKen isn’t trying to keep track of it all, but even if some of the stories are correct it seems that though married he was carrying on affairs with two women simultaneously (in the same apartment until one found a note to him from the other). And apparently this marriage and his previous marriage overlap.

And the nanny. So far she seems rather hard to pin down. Josh Marshall is beginning to wonder if she wasn’t more of an excuse (to withdraw from the nomination) than real.

From The Marion Star:

Dr. John Caulfield thought it had to be a mistake when the Army asked him to return to active duty. After all, he’s 70 years old and had already retired – twice. He left the Army in 1980 and private practice two years ago.

“My first reaction was disbelief,” Caulfield said. “It never occurred to me that they would call a 70-year-old.”

In fact, he was so sure it was an error that he ignored the postcards and telephone messages asking if he would be willing to volunteer for active duty to “backfill” somewhere on the East Coast, Europe or Hawaii. That would be OK, he thought. It would release active duty oral surgeons from those areas to go to combat zones in Iraq or Afghanistan.

But then the orders came for him to go to Afghanistan.

Today, Caulfield, a colonel from Satellite Beach, Fla., is an example of how the continuing demands of keeping ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are forcing the military to go to extraordinary measures to keep its ranks filled. He’s attending to patients – U.S. troops, Afghan soldiers and civilians – at the Army’s 325th Field Hospital in Bagram, Afghanistan.

He is one of about 100 over the age of 60 known to be serving. The Department of Defense couldn’t provide exact figures.

Link via TPM.

Before and after photos of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschenko.

Photo from Boing Boing.

But now it’s always the nanny.

If no change is made to Social Security it can continue to pay full benefits for another 48 years, or until the youngest baby boomer is 88. After that it could continue to pay 80%.

The day may finally be coming when you will be allowed to make calls on your own cellphone from an airliner. Trouble is, so will the passengers sitting on either side of you, and in front and in back of you, as well.

Federal regulators plan next week to begin considering rules that would end the official ban on cellphone use on commercial flights. Technical challenges and safety questions remain. But if the ban is lifted, one of the last cocoons of relative social silence would disappear, forcing strangers to work out the rough etiquette of involuntary eavesdropping in a confined space.

From The New York Times

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Sunday’s Meet the Press:

Tim, all experts say that Social Security beneficiaries will receive every penny of their benefits that they’re entitled to—100 percent of them—until the year 2055. After that, if we still do nothing, they’ll draw 80 percent of their benefits. I want those beneficiaries after year 2055 to draw 100 percent of their benefits. But this does not require dismantling the program. For heaven’s sakes, they’re crying wolf a little too regularly here. There is not an emergency on Social Security.

Worth repeating: Social Security has enough money to pay everyone 100% for the next 50 years. After that, it could still pay 80%. AND THAT’S WITH NO CHANGES. Revenue increases equal to one-fourth of Bush’s taxes cuts would enable Social Security to pay everyone the promised benefits for the next century.

Meet the Press excerpt via The Daily Howler.

In the aftermath of 9/11 one step toward increased security seemed a no-brainer: more money and manpower for the Federal Air Marshal Service. And sure enough, the United States has dramatically expanded its force of marshals and increased the air-marshal budget more than a hundredfold, from $4.4 million in 2001 to $545 million in 2003. How much safer this makes you feel probably depends on whether you’ve leafed through a recent report from the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, which evaluated recent air-marshal hiring practices and conduct records. The report examined a review of 504 job applicants, all of whom had been approved and were scheduled to receive an offer of employment, and found that 161 had incidents in their records that should have raised a red flag (including misuse of government resources, and allegations of domestic abuse, drunk driving, or sexual harassment). With this in mind, it’s hardly surprising to learn that from February of 2002 to October of 2003 there were 753 documented reports of misconduct by air marshals on duty. Among the improprieties: falling asleep, testing positive for drugs or alcohol, and having a weapon lost or stolen.

“Evaluation of the Federal Air Marshal Service,” Office of Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security

As reported by The Atlantic’s Primary Sources for December 2004

Paul Krugman explains the Social Security “crisis.”

The grain of truth in claims of a Social Security crisis is that this tax increase wasn’t quite big enough. Projections in a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (which are probably more realistic than the very cautious projections of the Social Security Administration) say that the trust fund will run out in 2052. The system won’t become “bankrupt” at that point; even after the trust fund is gone, Social Security revenues will cover 81 percent of the promised benefits. Still, there is a long-run financing problem.

But it’s a problem of modest size. The report finds that extending the life of the trust fund into the 22nd century, with no change in benefits, would require additional revenues equal to only 0.54 percent of G.D.P. That’s less than 3 percent of federal spending – less than we’re currently spending in Iraq.

From WTOP Radio:

WASHINGTON — The National Archives goes to great lengths to protect national treasures, such as the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, but a WTOP investigation has found that hundreds of items are not secure.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of irreplaceable artifacts are missing – either stolen or lost.

Handwritten letters written by Ulysses S. Grant, a photo of President Ronald Reagan with Margaret Thatcher and a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt are just some of the historic artifacts that have disappeared.

Dozens of presidential pardons also have disappeared. Archives records obtained by WTOP show the presidential pardons are just a fraction of what one career National Archive employee was able to steal and sell for more than $200,000.

One of the documents found its way on to eBay. The employee involved pleaded guilty and much of what he stole was recovered.

The Office of the Inspector General for the National Archives and Records Administration says a missing painting of FDR could be in a landfill somewhere. It may have been inadvertently thrown away.

The report by the inspector general also says one missing artifact is believed to have been purchased by an unnamed city’s mayor and put on display in city hall.

Eighteen years with the National Archives and NewMexiKen doesn’t even have a Skilcraft ballpoint pen to show for it.

Thanks to Jess for the link.

entered the Union on this date in 1818, the 21st state.

Illinois is named for the Illinois Confederation — a group of Algonquian-speaking American Indian tribes indigenous to the area. Illinois means tribe of superior men.

From AP via The Santa Fe New Mexican:

The Bush administration on Wednesday won a Supreme Court stay that blocks a New Mexico church from using hallucinogenic tea that the government contends is illegal and potentially dangerous.

The government has been in a long-running legal fight with the Brazil-based O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal over hoasca tea, brewed from plants found in the Amazon River Basin.
…

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver found that the church probably has a religious-freedom right to use the tea. The Bush administration plans to appeal, but wants the church barred from using the tea in the meantime.

Link via dangerousmeta!, who located the recent Court of Appeals document.

NewMexiKen does not understand the Constitutional basis for banning naturally-grown substances.

It’s funny about Social Security, isn’t it? The only non-means-tested, universally-implemented social-welfare program in the country, and it’s paid for by the most regressive tax on the books– remember, not a single penny over the $87,900 income level is taxed– and conservatives still hate it.

Michael Bérubé

Kevin Drum sums up Social Security as well as anything I’ve seen. You should read this. Whether you agree with its underlying point of view or not, the facts are correct.

Social Security is funded by payroll taxes. In 1983, Alan Greenspan headed up a commission that recommended saving Social Security from imminent doom by raising those payroll taxes to cover expected increases in Social Security payouts. But there was a twist: Greenspan recommended raising payroll taxes above what was required to actually pay current benefits to retirees, with the resulting surplus used to buy treasury bonds that would be piled up each year in Social Security’s trust fund. And since these bonds were sold to the trust fund by the federal government, this means that the federal government got a big chunk of extra money every year for use in the general fund.

Under this scheme, payroll taxes were sufficient to cover payouts plus bond purchases until about 2018. Then, from 2018 to 2042, when payroll taxes would no longer be enough to cover payouts, the difference would be made up by cashing in the bonds in the trust fund. In other words, the feds would tap into the general fund to give back all the money that Social Security had handed over between 1983 and 2018. This money would come from the same place all general fund money comes from: income taxes.

Still with me? Here’s what this means:

• Between 1983-2018, this plan calls for payroll taxes to be higher than they need to be to cover payouts to retirees. However, because the surplus payroll taxes are handed over to the feds, it means income taxes are lower than they would otherwise be.
• Then, between 2018-2042, payroll taxes will be less than they need to be to pay benefits to retirees. However, the difference will be made up by higher income taxes, which will be used to pay off the trust fund bonds.

Payroll taxes are paid mostly by the middle class and the poor. Income taxes are paid mostly by the well off.

So: for 35 years the middle class and the poor pay excess payroll taxes and the well off get a break on their income taxes. However, for the following 24 years the middle class and the poor get a break on their payroll taxes and the well off finance it by paying higher income taxes.

Now, this may sound like a dumb idea to you, but that was the deal. The bottom 80% take it on the chin for a few decades, followed by a couple of decades in which the well off get socked.

But suppose — as conservatives are laying the groundwork for — that Bush decides the trust fund is a mirage, just a giant IOU from one part of the government to the other. And as part of his “reform” plan he proposes a complex scheme that, when stripped to its essentials, entails doing away with the flim flam of that illusionary trust fund and the higher income taxes it will require when 2018 finally rolls around. What would that mean?

It would mean that the middle class and the poor got suckered into overpaying their taxes for three decades, and then when the bill came due the well off ducked out of their end of the bargain.

Christian Engeldrum of Ladder Company 61 in Co-op City in the Bronx, was killed while serving with the New York National Guard on Monday when a roadside bomb exploded near his convoy outside Baghdad. He lived through the attacks of 9/11 that took the lives of many of his friends and comrades, which took place even though his government was repeatedly warned to be on the alert for just such an attack but took no measures whatever for the protection of the nation. (He even helped raise the first flag over Ground Zero after the attack.) He lived through the still-unknown health effects on his respiratory system, after breathing the air at Ground Zero when his government lied to him about its safety. What he didn’t live through, however, was a war, which his government lied to try to tie to the attacks, in order to win the support of people like Christian, who had every right to be furious at America’s assailants, but whose duty and courage was exploited to attack people who had nothing whatever to do with it. Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda couldn’t kill Christian Engledrum, but his own government’s dishonesty and incompetence could. His two sons have lost a father, his wife, a husband, his parents a son, and for what? Yes Saddam Hussein is in prison, but is anyone really better off for the unending chaos and catastrophe this bunch has unleashed in Iraq? Most Iraqis certainly don’t think they are and the rest of the world hates us more than ever. Isn’t it about time we had an anti-war movement in this country to honor the deaths of exploited heroes like Christian Engeldrum and do our damnedest to minimize the number of brave mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, husbands and wives, must follow in his footsteps?

Eric Alterman

Presidential succession:

• Vice President Richard Cheney
• Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
• President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
• Secretary of State Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice
• Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
• Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
• Attorney General John Ashcroft Alberto R. Gonzales

Some of the things your children and grandchildren will be paying for as reported by The New York Times:

Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, so it is no surprise that the bill is studded with grants to projects in his state. Waterloo, Iowa, a city of about 70,000 people, will receive $135,000 for its arts center, $500,000 for a museum of history and science, $450,000 for a school injury prevention program, $2.5 million for highway improvements, $250,000 for a technology center and $200,000 for an industrial park.

Representative Jim Nussle, Republican of Iowa, is the fiscally conservative chairman of the House Budget Committee. But he boasted this week of all the money he had secured for his district, including $500,000 for a hospital in Dubuque and $1 million for sewer construction in Davenport.

Another Republican, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, boasted that he had secured $1 million for a flood-control project on the Rio Grande, $1 million for a clinic to treat children with heart problems in San Antonio and $300,000 to improve emergency communications in El Paso.

Not to be outdone by the Republicans, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, issued more than 50 news releases in the last two days boasting that he had obtained millions of dollars earmarked for constituents.

The money includes $500,000 for the New York Botanical Garden, $100,000 for the American-Italian Cancer Foundation, $500,000 for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, $3 million for research on the genetics of grapes and $199,000 for the control of Canada geese. “The geese have overrun and polluted our water and land,” Mr. Schumer said.

So has the pork.

Functional Ambivalent has the best post mortem on Arafat NewMexiKen has seen:

My mother taught me never to say anything bad about the dead. So: May God have mercy on Yasser Arafat’s soul.

Or not.

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.

In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government.

— James Madison, Federalist 51

Watch out Arizona, you may soon be alone (Hawaii notwithstanding, as daylight time makes no sense there).

Gov.-elect Mitch Daniels wasted no time jumping into one of the state’s most politically treacherous issues, promising Thursday to fight to bring daylight-saving time to Indiana.

For years, the time-change issue has divided Hoosiers. And time and again, that division has killed efforts to have Indiana join the 47 other states that observe daylight-saving time.
…

Some farmers say changing the time twice a year would interfere with their daily work habits; parents fear children would be waiting for school buses in the dark; others fight over which time zone Indiana should join.

From Indystar.com

Via Three Bed Two Bath

New statistics from the Department of Justice for the end of 2003:

• 1,470,045 men and women in state and federal prisons
• 742,430 in city and county jails and juvenile detention centers
• 2,212,475 total behind bars

• 44 percent are black
• 35 percent are white
• 19 percent are Hispanic
• 101,179 are women (6.9%)