Politics, Government & Public Policy: October 2007 Archives

David Brooks says that Americans are generally happy with their private lives but dissatisfied with the country at-large.

Researchers from Pew found that 65 percent of Americans are satisfied over all with their own lives — one of the highest rates of personal satisfaction in the world today.

On the other hand, Americans are overwhelmingly pessimistic about their public institutions. That same Pew survey found that only 25 percent of Americans are satisfied with the state of their nation. That 40-point gap between private and public happiness is the fourth-largest gap in the world — behind only Israel, Mexico and Brazil. ...

This happiness gap between the private and the public creates a treacherous political vortex. On the one hand, it means voters are desperate for change. On the other hand, they don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for themselves.

On the one hand, they want the country’s political leaders to take bold action. On the other hand, they are extremely cynical about those leaders and are unwilling to trust them with anything that seems risky. ...

These voters don’t believe government can lift their standard of living or lead a moral revival. They want a federal government that will focus on a few macro threats — terrorism, health care costs, energy, entitlement debt and immigration — and stay out of the intimate realms of life. They want a night watchman government that patrols the neighborhood without entering their homes.

Sounds about right to me. Amazing that this is also the federal government envisioned by our founding fathers.

This story about Congressional gridlock warms my heart.

This us-against-them mentality has been an ongoing storyline of the new Democratic­-controlled Congress. On the big items — Iraq, health care and spending — party leaders have shunned compromise.

Democrats are under tremendous pressure from liberal activists to take a hard-line approach against everything Bush. Republicans face similar pressure from their own base to stick with the president and prove they are serious about curtailing spending, even if it means less cash for a popular state-run health care program for children not covered by Medicaid. ...

The partisan deadlock is also creating more problems for the new majority. Rank-and-file Democrats have turned on their leaders this fall in a series of minor upheavals, forcing them to suspend consideration of bills to update warrantless wiretapping laws, reclassify the killing of ethnic Armenians almost a century ago, expand workplace protections for gays and lesbians and require all electronic voting machines to produce paper records.

Republicans, meanwhile, have done everything in their power to slow the legislative apparatus with the few procedural tools available to them.

It is possible, though unlikely, that the survival instinct will eventually force a behavioral change in the new Congress. Neither side wants a government shutdown, so it is likely they’ll cut a budget deal — even though conservatives are bracing for a showdown.

And to think that most people use "do-nothing Congress" as a pejorative!

As I've written before, the baby boomer generation often disgusts me with its lack of personal responsibility, and the generation's selfishness is nowhere more audacious than when it comes to Social Security. I can't explain it nearly as well as the Heritage Foundation, so go read about "How The Social Security Trust Fund Really Works". The key idea is this:

First, the Treasury estimates how much of the aggregate tax receipts are Social Security taxes and "credits" the Social Security trust fund with that amount. Then the Treasury "subtracts" the total amount paid in monthly Social Security benefits from the trust fund balance. No money actually changes hands; these are strictly accounting entries.

Any "money" remaining in the trust fund is converted into special-issue Treasury bonds, which are really nothing more than IOUs. In addition, the Treasury pays interest on the trust fund's balance by crediting the trust fund with additional IOUs. These are also strictly accounting entries, and again no money changes hands. After crediting the trust fund with the proper amount in IOUs, the government spends the extra Social Security tax collections just like any other tax revenue--to finance anything from aircraft carriers to education research.

There is no money in the "trust fund". Zero. Zilch. Nada. The only thing in the "trust fund" is a stack of IOUs, promising to repay the money that the baby boomer-controlled Congress has already spent on other crap.

What's the implication? Look at it this way: the baby boomers, via Congress, have already spent the money they contributed to Social Security. They've spent it on "anything from aircraft carriers to education research"... whatever they want. Guess who's going to have to repay those IOUs? They're going to start coming due around 2018 when Social Security is projected to start running a deficit; the people who will be forced to repay those IOUs are the taxpayers of 2018 and beyond... my generation!

So not only have the baby boomers saddled their children and grandchildren with the burden of supporting them during retirement, they've also spent all the surplus and replaced it with IOUs that their children and grandchildren will have to pay back. Starting in 2018, my generation will begin paying for all the crap our parents have been buying for decades.

Frankly, if I think about it too hard I just get angry. The dysfunction of the baby boomers knows no bounds, and as a generation they disgust, frighten, and enrage me. The baby boomers have consciously, purposefully, and systematically schemed to live far beyond their means and to leave their children and grandchildren mired in debt.

It's not exactly a high hurdle, but it's nice to see at least one major Democrat condemn the 9/11 conspiracy lunatics.

Now the Dems just need to get the stones to return the truthers' money....

The first baby boomer has applied for Social Security, signalling the beginning of the end of the system as a whole.

Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue called it "America's silver tsunami."

Kathleen Casey-Kirschling applied for benefits over the Internet at an event hosted by Astrue. Casey-Kirschling was born one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, making her the first baby boomer — a generation of nearly 80 million born from 1946 to 1964, Astrue said.

"She's leading the way for her generation," Astrue told reporters.

Despite being a teacher for 14 years, Casey-Kirschling doesn't seem to really understand the difficulties facing Social Security.

Casey-Kirschling said her generation won't let Social Security fail.

"I think the baby boomers will want to get this fixed," she said. "They're going to want to take care of their children and their grandchildren."

The only thing the boomers can do to save Social Security is to refuse to accept benefits from it. Most likely by "fix" Casey-Kirschling means that her generation is willing to vote to raise taxes on the rest of us to patch up the program.

Despite the common misperception, current beneficiaries are not supported by their own contributions to Social Security, but rather by current workers. The taxes my generation pays to Social Security go towards supporting the baby boomers, not ourselves, and the baby boomers will make absolutely no contribution towards my Social Security benefits (if any). Their generous willingness to raise taxes on other people is absurd and highlights the selfishness of the boomer generation. I wish the Associated Press and other news organizations would do the basic reporting required to explain how the system actually works to their readers, rather than just quoting ignorant retirees.

If Casey-Kirschling and her generation really want to help their children and grandchildren, they should refuse to accept benefits from Social Security and instead provide for their own retirement. Yes, via Social Security the boomers' parents took advantage of them, but someone needs to break the cycle of current workers supporting current retirees. It would be noble of the baby boomers to take the first step.

Another exciting chapter in British socialized medicine: people pulling their own teeth because the National Health Service is such a miserable failure.

Some English people have resorted to pulling out their own teeth because they cannot find -- or cannot afford -- a dentist, a major study has revealed.

Six percent of those questioned in a survey of 5,000 patients admitted they had resorted to self-treatment using pliers and glue, the UK's Press Association reported. ...

One respondent in Lancashire, northern England, claimed to have extracted 14 of their own teeth with a pair of pliers. In Liverpool, one of those collecting data for the survey interviewed three people who had pulled out their own teeth in one morning.

"I took most of my teeth out in the shed with pliers. I have one to go," another respondent wrote.

Others said they had fixed broken crowns using glue to avoid costly dental work.

Valerie Halsworth, 64, told British television's GMTV she had removed seven of her own teeth using her husband's pliers when her toothache became unbearable and she was unable to find an NHS dentist willing to treat her.

Halsworth admitted that the first extraction had been "excruciatingly painful." But she added: "It got that painful that I just had to do something... When you have taken a tooth out... the pain has gone."

I trust the American people aren't naive enough to follow suit....

Having observed the incontestable success of Boston's Big Dig California is now considering it's own underground Irvine-Corona Expressway. What could go wrong?

This winter, test borings are expected to begin for one of the most audacious tunnel projects ever proposed. One concept calls for a set of three tunnels—two for cars and one for both trucks and high-speed light rail—that would stretch for 12 miles, burrowing beneath the Santa Ana mountain range, and carrying up to 70,000 cars a day between California’s Riverside and Orange counties. The route would run in the same general direction as the 91 freeway, which is one of the most congested thoroughfares in the country. Once completed, it would be the longest traffic tunnel in North America, ahead of Boston’s comparatively puny 3.5-mile Big Dig.

The tunnel proposal, currently called the Irvine-Corona Expressway, has been making the rounds for seven years. It was first studied officially by the Riverside County Transportation Commission in June 2004, and its future now depends on those test borings. If the ground soil and bedrock contain too much water, tunneling could be deemed overly difficult. For opponents of the project, water content is the least of the expressway’s problems. For example, the massive tunnels would cross multiple fault lines, but none of them are active. ...

If the borings hold up, and the project survives an extensive chain of reviews, construction could last until 2023, with a price tag of at least $5.8 billion.

The Big Dig ended up costing five times its original estimate, so don't be surprised if this new Expressway ends up clocking in around $30 billion.

Am I against the project? I'm neutral. Serious steps need to be taken to mitigate Los Angeles' traffic problems, but I'm not sure this sort of project is the most cost-effective. I'm very much in favor of building new freeways, but why not also put some effort into encouraging the region's illegal aliens to return to their homelands? That alone would reduce the number of vehicles on the roads by 25% (not to mention reducing congestion in the schools, emergency rooms, etc.). Vegetables might get more expensive, but $5.8 billion is a lot of lettuce.

Deroy Murdock explains why social conservatives shouldn't write-off Rudy. I basically agree with him, though Giuliani isn't my ideal candidate.

(HT: Instapundit.)

A few junior Republican representatives in the House are proffering a flatter, simpler tax plan that would give citizens a choice as to whether or not to continue filing under the existing system or to use the new system.

Those taxpayers presumably would accept this offer: give up all your current deductions, and your annual earnings up to $100,000 would be taxed at 10 percent, with a 25 percent rate on everything above that. But that is not all. The bill would repeal the hated Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), giving up $840 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. Government would have to get leaner.

There's also a standard exemption of around $39,000 for a family of four, so a family might really only be taxed 10% on income between that and $100,000. No other deductions though, apparently.

Allowing taxpayers to make individual choices as to whether to join the new plan or stay with the old is a nice feature, and should reduce the carping from people who don't want to lose their mortgage interest deductions and so forth.

No information in the article about how capital gains would be treated in the new system.

The citizens of Durham, North Carolina, demanded pandering from their candidates for office, and that pandering led directly to the horribly corrupt rape prosecution of the three Duke lacrosse players. The pandering required by voters in this case was racial, but that's hardly the only kind of motivation for corruption that we citizens force upon our politicians.

Three former Duke lacrosse players falsely accused of rape have filed a federal civil lawsuit against several defendants, including former District Attorney Mike Nifong and the city of Durham. ...

The players maintain their rights were violated in the yearlong investigation, in which they were indicted, then later declared innocent, of allegations that they raped, sexually assaulted and beat an exotic dancer at a team party.

Last month, civil attorneys for Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann met with the city's attorney and gave the city until early October to respond to a reported $30 million settlement to avoid the suit.

Neither Durham Mayor Bill Bell nor City Manager Patrick Baker would comment on the lawsuit and referred all questions to the city's attorney.

The settlement money, well-deserved, will come from the pockets of the Durham citizens who demanded the pandering that led to the corruption. We citizens need to carefully consider the consequences of the demands we make of our politicians, because in the long run we'll reap what we sow.