Right After Calling For Social Security Privatization, GOP Candidate Claims To Oppose

[cal04]

Right After Calling For Social Security Privatization, GOP Senate Candidate Claims To Oppose Privatization


A slew of Republican Senate candidates have recently tried to dress up their support for Social Security privatization as something else entirely, denying that they support privatization while continuing to advocate for the creation of private Social Security accounts that could be invested in the markets. Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, Ohio Republican Rob Portman, Arkansas Republican John Boozman, and Colorado Republican Ken Buck have all said they oppose privatization, while simultaneously advocating for private accounts. Oregon’s Republican Senate nominee, law professor Jim Huffman, became the latest to join this club during a debate last night with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), asserting that he hasn’t argued for privatizing Social Security, literally one sentence after calling for the creation of private accounts:

I have argued for allowing newcomers to the Social Security system to have the option of private accounts. I have not argued for privatizing the Social Security system. There’s nothing in the record that would uphold that argument.

Watch it: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/22/huffman-social-security/


This is all part and parcel of the concerted conservative campaign to change the terms — but not the policy prescriptions — of Social Security privatization. Privatization polls badly, so conservatives want to change the word, but not the idea. As the Wonk Room explained, the fact remains that creating private Social Security accounts would impose new risks on seniors, force new administrative costs and benefit reductions, and wouldn’t even set Social Security on a path to solvency.

[arbusto_baboso]

1. There's a term for these GOP candidates.

Lying Sacks of Liquefied Pig Shit.

[texastoast]

2. Forked tongue?

Oh, yes, these evildoers have it.

[gratuitous]

3. They simply don't know what they're talking about

And anytime someone asks one or two shrewd probing questions (like "What do you mean by 'private accounts'?"), you discover that these nitwits don't know what they're talking about. Oh, they know the words to avoid, they've all got the same playbook. So they'll never say "privatization" in reference to Social Security. But ask a question or two about the substance behind the sound bite, and they'll reel off a perfect description/definition of privatization, probably without even knowing it.

But for some reason, those questions almost never get asked by our bulldogs of the Fourth Estate.

[mrcheerful]

4. Well look at the nit wits who back these corporate boot lickers, they carry signs that say keep your

government hands off my medicare in anger over the D's electing a black guy who wanted to make things easier on them yet they ignore the fact that the only danger to their medicare as well as their SS retirement fund are the people they vote for. You can't fix stupid.

[tblue37]

8. Remember Isaac Asimov's novel _The Gods Themselves_? The

novel's title comes from a statement by Schiller: "Against stupidity the gods themeselves cannot prevail."

[unblock]

5. of course piratization doesn't help solvency. all it does is add a private profit cost.

piratization of any government function only lowers the government's costs if the government is doing something horrendously inefficiently, because piratizing means not only that the private entity must do the same function as the government did but also pay a profit to investors, but it add layers of overhead because the government must (if it's not republican) have oversight and administration to make sure that the private company is doing what it should be doing, and the private company has overheard to comply with the government's forms and such.

the private market is more efficient than the government in certain ways and UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS. when there's only one customer (the government) who is not necessarily motivated to put pressure on the private companies to produce superior results at a low cost, then it's doomed from the start.


more fundamentally, a HUGE part of the private sector's "efficiency" comes from DENYING service to those who are inefficient to serve, and focusing on those from whom they can extract a good profit and serve cheaply. in the case of private mail delivery, this means refusing to deliver to obscure places in alaska, for instance, while the u.s. postal service delivers everywhere.

in the case of social security, this means providing above average returns at the expense of guarantees. THE ENTIRE POINT of social security was to provide a GUARANTEED retirement source of income, to be supplemented privately if possible. by definition, the role of piratization will be to remove the guarantee. on average, some people will do better, but the only GUARANTEE will be that some people will do worse.

and we will end up with grandma and grandpa, who worked hard all their lives, retiring to the streets. exactly the problem social security was meant to solve in the first place.

[cilla4progress]

6. In my day we called that a

flip flop!

[tblue37]

7. I am reminded of the way the creationists got all sly and tried to get

creationism in through the side door by calling it "intelligent design." They know that a significant portion of the American people are too inattentive and uninformed to figure out what they are really saying.