Month: January 2005

From the New York Times, via everywhere:

“Over the objections of many of its own employees, the Social Security Administration is gearing up for a major effort to publicize the financial problems of Social Security and to convince the public that private accounts are needed as part of any solution.

The agency’s plans are set forth in internal documents, including a “tactical plan” for communications and marketing of the idea that Social Security faces dire financial problems requiring immediate action.

Social Security officials say the agency is carrying out its mission to educate the public, including more than 47 million beneficiaries, and to support President Bush’s agenda.

“The system is broken, and promises are being made that Social Security cannot keep,” Mr. Bush said in his Saturday radio address. He is expected to address the issue in his Inaugural Address.

But agency employees have complained to Social Security officials that they are being conscripted into a political battle over the future of the program. They question the accuracy of recent statements by the agency, and they say that money from the Social Security trust fund should not be used for such advocacy.

“Trust fund dollars should not be used to promote a political agenda,” said Dana C. Duggins, a vice president of the Social Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 50,000 of the agency’s 64,000 workers and has opposed private accounts.

Deborah C. Fredericksen of Minneapolis, who has worked for the Social Security Administration for 31 years, said, “Many employees believe that the president and this agency are using scare tactics to promote private accounts.”

This is our money, which is meant to be spent on legitimate government functions. If the President wants to get out his political message, he can continue to use the ample supply of free media at his disposal. Alternately, he can use his prodigious fundraising abilities. There is no reason to drag our tax dollars into it.

This is not the first time the Bush administration has used our tax dollars to promote his political agenda. They paid Armstrong Williams to promote No Child Left Behind. Under this administration, both the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy released videos that the GAO found (pdf, via Ignatz) to be in violation of the Congressional ban on using funds for propaganda not specifically authorized by Congress.

Let me say that again, just so it’s clear: it is against the law to use taxpayer money for propaganda. The HHS and ONDCP cases have already been found to have broken the law. The Armstrong Williams case fairly clearly does so as well*. Whether or not this particular episode counts as propaganda is less clear to me, but it surely violates the spirit of the law. And besides, it’s just plain wrong.

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A quick thought on Vox Day’s "The Merits of Anti-Semitism," which set off a wave of let’s-point-at-the-bad-man in the usual quarters.  (As well as a witty and insightful post from the Young Yglesias.) 

I’m not going to leap on Vox with the rest.  Vox is merely doing what he sometimes does, which is to find the most offensive and silly way to argue a point that, in other’s hands, could be made easily defensible.*  His comment was foolish, but I don’t read it as anti-Semitic (or, at least, not intentionally so).

Update ———–

A lot of commentators view the foregoing as a defense of Vox, and want to prove that Vox is, indeed, anti-semitic.  In fact, it’s not a defense of Vox (re-read it if you don’t get why) and I’m wholly disinterested in defending Vox’s statements (again, re-read it if you don’t get why).  For more regarding why I’m not defending Vox, see CMDicely’s and my comments on the Yglesias post noted above.

End Update ———–

Now, stretching things a bit:  the jump-on-Vox moment reminded me of a point that I meant to make a little while ago but, due to work and other constraints, never got around to.

We (meaning "people," myself included) can have a very childish view of racism, anti-Semitism, and the like.  We always like to reduce things to bad words and unutterable thoughts — rather than look at context or intent.  Worse, there a dangerous tendency to game charges of racism or sexism or anti-Semitism for maximum political effect.  After all, a person with a childish concept of bigotry has a limited concept of bigotry, and it’s easy to whip such folks up into a frenzy because they don’t want to accidentally fall into the wrong camp.   

I’m not merely talking about race-baiting, and I’m not doing a very untimely riff on the O.J. Simpson trial.  I’m also not saying that it’s all intentional — childish notions can be both abused and self-abused.  [That’s an unfortunate turn of phrase …]  Nor am I suggesting that the left or liberals bear the most of the blame (as one might wrongly assume).  Indeed, the most recent examples of gaming bigotry seem have occurred with folks who are to the right, or, at the least, among those who identify as non-lefties. 

For instance, take the charge by some that the term "neoconservative" is crypto-code for "Jew," and that railing against neoconservatives in the Bush Administration is thinly disguised anti-Semitism.   Clearly, some on the far Left seem to hate both neoconservatives and Jews.  But this is hardly an excuse to conflate neoconservatism with Judaism — which, so far as I know, don’t share a theology.  No, the excuse to conflate neoconservatism with Judaism is to shut up administration critics with counter-charges of anti-Semitism.

Now, sometimes the Bush Administration needs to be defended.  And some terms deserve to be criticized.  For instance, David Bernstein eventually made a good point as to why "Likudnik" is an unhelpful term (Bernstein’s first shotgun post on "Likudnik" committed the sin of which I here complain).  We should take care to confront hidden bigotries and evils. 

Still, a clear charge of bigotry should be reserved for a response to a clear expression of bigotry.  Giving the benefit of the doubt should still most tongues.  It’s the only way to keep the system honest — and make sure that our power is not diluted when actual evil comes calling.

Indeed, all this huffing and puffing by people eager to be at the front of the condemning line reminds me of, well, myself.  Back in the days when my white ass was growing up in Indiana without Black people.  (A gross overstatement, but you get my point.)  When I felt that I had to impart to every person of color than I that I did, indeed, feel their pain and was on their side.  Do you have any idea how much it demeans the Civil Rights movement to feel that I shouldn’t ask that no black beans be put on my burrito because it might be taken as some racist slur?   Do you have any idea how much of an annoying, unaware f_ck I was?

Don’t be that f_ck.

(This may help to explain, incidentally, why I know the lyrics to virtually every Public Enemy song published prior to 1989.)

(For the record, I eventually came to love black beans.)

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Otherwise titled If At First You Don’t Succeed, Fail Fail Again or Soros Reloaded, the sequel to the 2004 ballot box flop Soros Revolutions.  Last month, three billionaires conspired in San Francisco, deciding how to best influence the Democratic Party and left-wing politics.

A group of billionaire philanthropists are to donate tens of millions more dollars to develop progressive political ideas in the US in an effort to counter the conservative ascendancy.

George Soros, who made his fortune in the hedge fund industry; Herb and Marion Sandler, the California couple who own a multi-billion-dollar savings and loan business; and Peter Lewis, the chairman of an Ohio insurance company, donated more than $63m (£34m) in the 2004 election cycle to organisations seeking to defeat George W. Bush.

At a meeting in San Francisco last month, the left-leaning billionaires agreed to commit an even larger sum over a longer period to building institutions to foster progressive ideas and people.

Also taking part was Steven Bing, who is a few sheckels short of a billion but no slouch in his own right.  How much will they give to the progressive cause?

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I haven’t read much from Sebastian Mallaby but he writes a cogent piece in the Washington Post on the costs of our current tort system:

In 2003, according to Tillinghast, the tort system cost $246 billion — meaning that the average American paid $845 for it via more expensive goods and services. But the really shocking thing is where the billions went. Injured plaintiffs — the fabled little guys for whom the system is supposedly designed — got less than half the money.

According to Tillinghast’s 2002 data, plaintiffs’ lawyers swallowed 19 percent of the $233 billion. Defense lawyers pocketed an additional 14 percent, and other administrative costs, mainly at insurance firms, accounted for a further 21 percent. The legal-administrative complex thus guzzled fully 54 percent of the money in the tort system, or $126 billion. That’s 43 times as much as the federal government has budgeted this year to combat the global AIDS pandemic.

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