NYT Blog Unaware of the $60 Billion Question

...But they are on top of the great lapel pin flap. In a probing analysis of the candidates' stance on lapel pins, The NYT Political Blog gives us close ups of the lapel pins each candidate is wearing. Surely our selection of President rests on what kind of lapel pin he or she is wearing. This is an issue far more important than any other, so you'll excuse them I'm sure if they lose track of the minor issues.

Their analysis can't identify the strange markings and symbols found on Bill Richardson's lapel pin. What could it possibly be? "And we are still waiting to hear back from Governor Bill Richardson's campaign on what the pin on his lapel represents" they say.

Here's the answer. Richardson's lapel pin is a pie chart of the discretionary Federal Budget. The red part is what we spend on the military. The rest of the slivers are everything else. For over 7 years now the Priorities! campaign, a broad coalition of business leaders and military experts have pressured Congress to take a scalpel to the waste in the huge red pie slice that is the Pentagon and redirect it towards children's health care, education, renewable energy, and infrastructure repair.

The Priorities! campaign has bird dogged over 600 candidate events, placed hundreds of op-eds in major newspapers across the country (including the NYT) and engineered the introduction of the Common Sense Budget Act into Congress with 39 sponsors. One of the components of the Priorities! campaign, TrueMajority.org, has sent more faxes and e-mails from it's three hundred thousand members to Congress than any other organization except perhaps MoveOn.org.

Yet our elite press isn't aware of this movement because it's too busy tracking down lapel pins, cleavage and expensive haircuts.

Everyone act surprised =:0 .

For Most Americans, Income Drop Is Much Worse Than What the NYT Reports

The New York Times reports yesterday that average incomes in 2005 were still less than they were in 2000, despite 4 years of the Bush "recovery". Citing newly published IRA data, The Times shows that 2005 average income was $55,238, while 2000 income, adjusted for inflation, weighed in at $55,714, a drop of $476 or 0.9%. This marks the very first time since World War II that incomes failed to advance in any 5 year period. This unprecedented weakness goes far to explain why Americans show great uneasiness on the economy even while statistics like GDP, unemployment and the Dow Jones Average look so great.

Admirable though this article is, it doesn't go far enough.

While the Times does report how the highest income earners enjoyed the most robust growth in the last five years, it does not go the one extra step to calculate what that means for the rest of us. If one group of people enjoyed huge growth, while the whole society slid back a little, that must mean that the rest of us fared even worse. Sure enough, that's what the IRS data shows.

What the Times did not report is that the average income for those earning less than $100,000 in 2005 was $31,849, $2,914 lower than the $34,763 earned in 2000. In both years, the "bottom" 90% of us earned less than $100,000. (In 2000, those earning less than $100K comprised 91.4% of all filers, while in 2005 this group represented 89.3%. These means the groups are closely but not fully comparable until academics are able to obtain detailed enough data to compare exact percentiles with each other. Until then however, this is close enough to get a thumbnail picture of the situation.)

To get these figures, download the 2005 and 2000 IRS income spreadsheets. Then grab the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers to adjust for inflation. Since the Federal fiscal year ends in October, I used the CPI for October 2000 and October 2005. Here's how you do it: to express an income of 30,000 in 2000 in 2005 dollars, divide 30,000 by the 2000 CPI (174) and multiply by the 2005 CPI (199.2) to find that 30,000 earned in 2000 had the buying power of $34,345 in 2005.

So basically, the "bottom" 90% of us are living on wages that are 8% below what they were in 2000, much worse than the 0.9% reduction the Times reported. This doesn't mean that everyone experiences this income drop in exactly this way. What it does mean is the IRS data conclusively proves that the old adage of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is quite literally true in the Bush era. The White House response to the growing imbalance of wealth and income? It "is not a very interesting story."

Well excuse me. Maybe if the White House could bestir themselves to pay attention to this boring story, they would know why most Americans think the Bush administration's economic performance is so poor.

It is Time to Impeach Bush and Cheney

Bill Moyer's Journal has possibly the most important discussion found on TV this century so far: a discussion of impeachment with conservative Bruce Fein and progressive John Nichols. As a constitutional law scholar, Fein helped draft the impeachment articles against Bill Clinton and has long been a fixture at right wing think tanks and media outlets. Nichols is Washington correspondent for the Nation and the author of the book "the Genius of Impeachment". Together they make the case for impeaching both Bush and Cheney for their imperial behaviors as absolutely necessary to preserve the Constitution in future terms.

I highly recommend that you watch the show, or if you're computer is video challenged, read the transcript.

If this show motivates you to action, then what? Well, True Majority makes it easy to write your Congressperson to tell them to act on impeaching Dick Cheney. Now.

OpEd News and Peoples' E-Mail Network also has a nifty utility where you can write your thoughts about impeachment in an online form. They can then be sent automatically to your nearest newspaper as well as to your own representatives in Congress.

For lurking conservatives unconvinced by Bruce Fein's arguments about upholding the Constitution, just ponder one thought: President Hillary Clinton. Do you as a conservative want her to have the same powers that Bush enjoys today?

Take action.

Oil, Republicans and the Rise of Terrorism

I've tried to keep this blog around for occasional original content, rather than more frequent links to cool stuff laying around the tubes of the internets. However, this analysis from the Existentialist Cowboy merits special attention.

The connection between oil, Republican administrations and the rise of terrorism is nailed:

"So much so that one would think GOP regimes cause terrorism."

Must read stuff here.

Taking the Over Bet on the Jobs Report

I might be deleting this post if I'm wrong.

The monthly jobs report is due out in about a half hour. Consensus is calling for a gain of about 100,000 new jobs created in the month of April. Atrios takes over/under bets shortly beforehand just for fun. This month he predicts the report will come in below consensus predictions. Usually that's a safe position, but this month I think I'll take the over bet. Why? Because of an artificial statistical technique the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses called the Birth Death Model.

This model attempts to capture the jobs created by new businesses that haven't filed with their respective state employment agencies yet. I've written about this model and the distortions it creates in our jobs statistics here and here. Long story short, the model assumes for each business that goes kaput, another business in the same area and industry rises from the ashes. From that assumption comes the next assumption that jobs lost by the old business are replaced by the new. Therefore, measuring jobs lost allows you to "impute" (that is "make up" or "imagine") the same number of new jobs in the same areas. The way the BLS describes the math and application of this model suggests that the vast majority of job growth reported under the Bush administration may be totally imaginary.

There's a seasonal quality to this model that's consistent from year to year. For last month's report, an average of 152,000 "imputed" jobs were added to the actual measured statistics in the last three years. For the April report, the model added an average of 234,000 "imputed" jobs in the last 3 years.

This suggests that if the jobs report comes in at 100,000 new jobs as predicted, the actual statistics are pointing to a net loss of some 100-150,000 jobs, papered over by the substantial addition of "imputed" jobs by the Birth-Death model. I don't think we're in that bad a shape, so I'm going to predict that the jobs report will show some number well above 100,000 jobs. This will result in an orgy of optimism that we've "turned the corner" in the anticipated economic slowdown and everyone will imagine nothing but sugar plums and ponies for the US economy from now into the long term. Which, on Wall Street, means sometime after lunch.

Beware irrational exuberance and keep your hands on your wallet at all times.

UPDATE: The jobs report just came out. Atrios wins. This is not good. Not because Atrios won and I lost, but the report shows a net gain of only 88,000 jobs. Not only is that only about half what the economy needs each month to keep up with population growth, but it looks to be much worse than that. The BLS' Birth Death model page shows that 317,000 "imputed" jobs were added by the model, suggesting that the real data measurement of jobs shows a net LOSS of over 220,000 jobs in April. Not good. I'm rarely accused of being too optimistic, but it looks like that's where it is today.

UPDATE 2: The revision to the May jobs report just came out. I win after all. The net gain for last month was revised upwards to 109,000. Still pretty dismal. Just slightly less so.

The "Great Global Warming Swindle" Swindle

The Great Global Warming Swindle

That's the film aired in the UK recently purporting to show that Global Warming was a total fraud perpretated on the public by, er, well, the entire scientific community of a bazillion countries. I urge everyone to look at this video, for it represents the last gasp effort of the global warming deniers to make their case. It has all the tricks, sophistry, straw men and outright falsehoods we have come to expect from the professional denier class.

When you watch the video keep these points in mind:

(1) Of the eighteen 'experts' interviewed in this film, 6 are known in the public record as being majorly funded by the fossil fuels industry, either directly or through right wing think tanks (Ball, Clark, Lindzen, Spencer, Michaels & Singer), 5 are not research scientists in any discipline (Moore, Dreissen, Shikwati, Calder, Corbyn), 4 are scientists in other disciplines removed from climatology (Friis-Christensen, Stott, Shaviv, Reiter). Only three remain on that video that are climatologists doing real research. Of these three, Christy endorses the IPCC report, Akasofu urges action to curb carbon use because of the contribution man makes to warming, and Wunsch has openly protested to the show's producers that he was swindled and misrepresented. Text of Wunsch's letter here

(2) Data was made up. One of the main graphs shown on the film was attributed to NASA, showing temperature changes in the 20th century, did not in fact come from NASA, but from a small outfit called the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine. This is a one man shop run out of a prefab warehouse in rural Oregon by a protein chemist that splits his time between global warming rants and writing homeschool tracts and post nuclear survivalist pamphlets. His graph used outdated data ending in the 80's. The producer of the film admitted just taking a marker and extending the line to make it appear that the data was current. In other words, he made stuff up.

(3) Other Data cited was found to have serious math errors that, when corrected, eliminated the points the film tried to make. Dr. John Christy was prominently quoted in this film as the co-producer of a dataset of temperatures that showed that the troposphere was not warming, only surface temps were. The implication of this is that a heightened greenhouse effect is not being detected at all. A team of scientists for the US Climate Change Program poured over the Christy-Spencer dataset and found the errors, concluding in it's report that:

"Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies."

Who wrote that refutation of that entire argument? Dr. Christy himself. He was on that team of scientists that corrected his own data.

(4) Most if not all of the points have been debunked by elementary fact checking. One hilarious example was the supposition that England used to be a warm wine growing region, but now it's too cold to grow wine, showing that temps were hotter in medieval times (and by inference warming is natural and no big deal.) Well someone oughtta clue in these guys that they better stop growing wine in England: http://www.englishwineproducers.com/

For a thorough scientific debunking of virtually every word in the film, check out what real climate scientists have to say, or a handy layman's reference over at Grist Magazine, How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.

(5) The show's producer quickly came unhinged by criticism. When two prominent scientists wrote them to question the numerous shortcomings of the data presented, the producer replied to them by e-mail : " you are a big daft @#%!" and "go @%$! yourself". The London Times is rarely hilarious, but this article on this weird behavior is a hoot.

Global Warming denial has been a lucrative cottage industry for a small band of marginal scientists willing to take copious amounts of money from the fossil fuel industry directly, or indirectly through fossil fuel industry funded "think tanks". Now that one by one the big company funders are giving up the fight and grudgingly acknowledging the science behind global warming, there's a mad scramble to save their reputations, leading to bogus propaganda pieces like this film. It's threadbare substance shows how little argument there really is about the basic points of global warming.

The Alternate Reality of Hard Right Wingers

Every now and then we run across a column, or post, or letter that is so off the wall, so barking mad crazy as to defy rational response. The cognitive dissonance we feel is usually due to the strength and mass of the opaque mental constructs of the ideologically extreme. Facts do not obscure the right winger's view of these constructs. Neither do written words. No, the hard right winger see what he wants to see, reads what he wants to read, with no fear whatsoever that what is perceived bears little or no correspondence with what actually exists.

For just one small and insignificant example of this phenomenon in action, we can turn to my friend and recently re-employed Jason Williscroft. I'm happy to report he has re-established his blog. I surfed over there tonight to see what mischief he's been up to and I find he's still mumbling to himself about me after all this time.

As I scanned the first sentence or two, where he called me a "cranky old fibber" (totally unfair -- I am not a fibber.) I wondered if this was going to be as good as when he ragged on my observations on unemployment using health insurance policy sales at his small company to refute the unemployment numbers (huh?). Or when he tried to make the argument that fewer Iraqis were being killed after the Iraq War started than before it began (double huh?). Or when his dad argued that the US Post Office would work a whole better if they were funded by user fees (triple huh? The USPS does run on user fees. They're called "stamps".)

I was a little disappointed then to see that he merely missed the whole point of my light hearted post suggesting that out of work Republican congressional aides find employment as CapitalOne barbarians. Oddly, our Jason thought my point was that I "maintain(ed) that the economy is so bad that the average recently unemployed Republican may have to tighten his belt a notch?"

He then proceeded to lecture me on why the economy is so terrific, without regard to the use of messy facts:

• "national unemployment at record lows," Jason says. Sorry friend. December's unemployment rate was 4.5%. Not bad, but not a record low, considering that rate was 3.9% in the December before President Bush was installed. 6.8 million were unemployed by the BLS' definition in December 2006 when Jason penned this claim. 5.6 million were unemployed six years before.
• "gas prices bottoming out" Jason says. Are you kidding? Being grateful for $2 gasoline after it went up to $3 is like being grateful to the guy beating your head with a ball pien hammer simply because he slowed down a bit. Of course, gas prices may be on the march again, so the shelf life of Jason's optimism may be expiring.

Beyond these unreal claims, what's weirder is that he thought I was talking about the economy at all. These right wingers are so hard wired with their preconceived notions of liberals, folks like Jason will see and hear me claim the economy is terrible and the sky is falling, regardless of whether that has anything to do with what I'm really saying or not. This reality-bending phenomenon is hilariously chronicled by Tom Tomorrow in his This Modern World comic here and here.

So, Jason, for the record: no I do not think the sky is falling down. The economy is not in great shape, but it is not in the tank either. Growth rates are down in the Bush era from the Clinton era, but we aren't in a recession at this point. Unemployment is up from the Clinton era, but it is not to depression levels. There are big economic worries out there, like our massive debt both government and consumer, our annual budget deficits, the bursting of the housing bubble and our ridiculous trade imbalance. However recognizing these present risks is not the same as saying the sky is falling down. There is more to the world than black and white absolutes Jason. Not only are there shades of grey, but there's a wonderful array of colors and hues out there.

As for what the economy is like for our Jason? He says of his recent bout of unemployment after his company collapsed: "I had so many offers rolling in that I took an extra month off just to evaluate them and make sure I didn't blow any opportunities."

Yeah, whatever dude. I'm just glad you found a job. Congratulations and best of luck in your new endeavor.

Our "Unnatural Aristocracy"

There's a meme going around today at Kos, TPM and the LA Times raising the spector of an "unnatural aristocracy" should Sen. Hillary Clinton be elected to President for two terms. If that should happen, then a Bush or a Clinton would have been President for 28 years.

What strikes me as odd is why the hubbub now, with 10 of those 28 years the subject of future speculation? Where was the hand wringing all along about our existing "unnatural aristocracy"? After all, the Republicans haven't nominated a national ticket without a Bush or a Dole on board since 1972, 35 years ago.

Just because Bill Clinton had the good fortune to marry a formidable partner named Rodham, we're supposed to believe our unnatural aristocracy is suddenly a bipartisan problem?

Job Hunting Tip for Out of Work Republicans

Now that the Democrats have taken control of Congress, hundreds of GOP Congressional staffers are now in a mad scramble for employment. "The hundreds of Republican staffers — not to mention more than a few Members — who will lose their jobs in the next few weeks are going to face a hostile marketplace on K Street as unemployed Republicans flood the market."

I really feel their pain. Really. That means the uber-patriots from GOP Congressional offices that shut down the Miami vote counting in 2000 below, are getting their pink slips soon.


Judging from that manufactured display of outrage, it's clear that their best career path is to join the CapitalOne credit card marketing team. What's (Left) in YOUR Wallet?



Miss ya already.

Flashback: Rumsfeld's Handshake With Saddam

So Saddam Hussein has been found guilty of genocide against Kurds in 1982. Shock and surprise. How many of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders will now use that as justification for the Iraq War? Never mind that the US had no problem with Saddam's genocide at the time. That famous picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand took place about a year later, long after we knew full well what went down.

But what was the context of that picture?

One problem with using the Google to surf the internets is that there's relatively little hard info pre-1990 to be found. That's not too surprising, since few people knew what the internet was in 1990. After a session of cleaning out my basement however, I came across this gem, a Newsweek from January 2, 1984. On the Periscope page is a news snippet describing the meetings leading up to that handshake:

"The Case for a Tilt to Iraq
The United States is definitely "moving to improve relations with Iraq," says one senior administration policymaker. The wave of Iranian-inspired terrorism in the Middle East is strengthening the case of those senior American officials who have been urging a U.S. Tilt toward Iraq. These officials argue that resuming diplomatic relations with Baghdad would serve as a kind of "diplomatic retaliation" against Iran. In addition, it would give Syrian President Hafez Assad "something else to worry about," in the words of one State Department source; Syria and Iraq are bitter rivals. Iraq severed ties with Washington in 1967. On his current stay in Baghdad, special envoy Donald Rumsfeld is sounding out officials on their willingness to resume relations. At the very least, Washington would want assurances that Iraq no longer harbors Abu Nidal and other terrorists. With the resumption of relations, Washington might help Iraq's oil exporting operations."

(Here's a jpg of the actual page for those lacking trust in my transcription skills.)

So we see clearly why Rumsfeld was for Saddam before he was against Saddam. How embarrassing for him, to be this wrong AND inconsistent at the same time. We also see that EVEN THEN it all revolved around oil, despite it being presented in an "oh by the way" tone in Newsweek.

Cheer up! Congress is on the Job!

Take a look at our intrepid House of Representatives Armed Services Committee web page.

They've got a plan for Iraq! In fact, they've got an organized "Victory In Iraq" Caucus all set up and working to ensure our... well... Victory in Iraq!

Scroll down the page a little to the "Victory In Iraq Caucus" link for further details on all the excitement! I don't know about you, but I feel SO much better. Tip of the hat to Atrios for spotting this.

The Iraq War: We Told You So.

All right, I've tried to resist this for a long time. I really didn't want to do it. Well actually, I did. Here goes:

We Told You So. We Were Right. You Were Wrong.

The Iraq War is a devastating, bankrupting, economy destroying disaster. Each time you fill your tank up with $2 to 3+ gasoline, remember that:

We Told You So. We Were Right. You Were Wrong.

You don't remember that we warned you before the Iraq invasion? Well on October 14, 2002, six months before the invasion, the group I've been involved with, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, ran a full page ad in the New York Times entitled "They're Selling War. We're Not Buying". The ad spoke of how the war was marketed like a new product, and suggested that warning labels be attached to that product: "Warning: War Will Wreck the Economy"; "Warning: War Will Breed Terrorism"; "Warning: War Will Discredit America in the World's Eyes" and "Warning: War Will Take A Terrible Toll in Human Life".

In March 2003, BLSP marshaled 7 Nobel Prize winning economists and scores of other businesspeople to sign another New York Times full page ad, this time highlighting the economic cost of a war with Iraq. The message:

"Which is smarter? Spending $80 million a year to disarm Iraq peaceably -- or spending a thousand times more on a war? In a time of economic peril, such a crushing "war surcharge" could only be justified by a clear threat to our nation. Iraq presents no such threat."

On March 6, 2003 I had the opportunity to co-sign a letter to President Bush asking to speak with him concerning the economic consequences of war. That letter predicted lower stock prices, higher oil prices, lower consumer confidence, forced cuts in Federal state and local government programs, disrupted transportation, tourism and shipping and a backlash against American brands abroad. Of those predictions, all have come to pass at least somewhat except one: the stock market is higher than it was in 2003, partly fueled by huge gains in the defense and oil industries.

Of course, none of these ads and letters stopped the war from happening. BLSP didn't give up though. In March 2004 I had the privilege of representing BLSP in Washington unveiling a campaign kicked off by an ad in the New York Times signed by over 70 national business leaders titled: "Have you noticed what's happening to Chief Executives who lie?" and observed:

"We now know that the case the President made for his war was built almost entirely out of falsehoods."

Later, after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the dysfunctional Federal response became obvious to all, again it was business leaders that connected the dots with the Iraq War's drain on our resources, observing:

"They died because the infrastructure of this great nation has been allowed to go to hell in favor of war in Iraq. They died because the National Guardsmen who could have saved lives were shipped off to that war.

The myopia is mind-boggling. This very year hurricane protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain were slashed by 79%. Flood prevention projects in New Orleans took a 53% hit. The Corps of Engineers leader who complained was ousted. FEMA was gutted. Nothing not shaped like a Pentagon got adequate funding from this administration."

Now we see the result of this war. Cost estimates range in the trillions. Well over 2,600 American soldiers killed, as well as over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Anti-American fervor is at a fever pitch in the Islamic world. We have lost all trace of respect and political capital in the world. We're generating hundreds of billions of new government debt owed to foreign governments largely as a result of this disaster. Oil is so expensive that when it drops below $70 per barrel, it's treated as good news. Sectarian violence and anarchy rules in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction found, save some leftover spoiled canisters that the Reagan administration sold to Saddam in the 80's.

We Told You So.

If you're a businessperson, go join BLSP so the message can continue. If you're not a businessperson, go join their sister group True Majority. Enough is enough.

If You Want to Cut Pork, Go to the Pentagon

(Here's the post I spoke of in my last entry.)

The Truth Laid Bear wants all good bloggers to support a bill put forth by a handful of conservative Republican Senators called "The Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package", This bill ostensibly offsets the costs of Hurricane Katrina with a bunch of Federal budget cuts to Medicare and a 5% reduction in all domestic spending. This is apparently a litmus test for bloggers and politicians alike. Support the bill with a specific declaration on your blog, and you are a "Porkbuster". Oppose the bill, and you favor profligate government waste. Faithful right-thinking bloggers are then supposed to declare their support on their blogs, to then be highlighted on the TTLB site. Look closer however, and the whole deal appears to be just another right wing attempt to frame opposition to domestic spending as "trimming wasteful pork".

I would like to say "I support the Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package", but I can't. It's a terrible, highly partisan bill that targets all the wrong areas and lets the main sources of government pork go untouched. This "package" would slash domestic spending across the board by 5%, increase Medicare costs and freeze COLA adjustments for non-military personnel. The recent pay hikes for Congressmen are not affected, nor are any military programs. This package is supposed to save $130 billion in 2 years. The fact that the Medicare savings don't accrue to the benefit of the Federal Budget (being an off-budget Trust Fund program) is apparently lost on our intrepid budget cutters.

Well this is just balderdash. Most of the waste in government takes place in the military side of the ledger. In this chart, the red pie slice is the military's portion of all Federal discretionary spending. All, except for one important distinction: the Iraq and Afghanistan operations are funded by off budget emergency appropriations. What you see is the military budget minus our current wars du jour. So when our arch-conservative (and downright loopy) freshman Senator Tom Coburn (R, Mars) exempts all military spending from cuts, he's walking away from the biggest pie slice of all. Of course, that's intentional. The military is the Republicans' third rail, just as domestic spending such as Medicare and Social Security are the Democrats'. This bill therefore is merely a Trojan Horse partisan attack on the Democrats wrapped in anti-pork rhetoric.

If anyone is serious on Capitol Hill about reducing wasteful spending, you have to look at the Pentagon first. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admitted in 2002 that the Pentagon has lost track of an estimated $2.3 trillion of military transactions. That's $2.3 trillion or over $8,000 for every man woman and child living in the USA. Contrast that with the $77 per person cost of pork identified in the Porkbusters database so far, and the $448 per person that Coburn's bill claims to save. And that before the Iraq War started, before Halliburton snagged those no bid contracts, before those untold billions were unaccounted for in the Iraq reconstruction budget. It's so bad, non-partisan tax watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense said in 2003:

"DOD is by far the most fiscally mismanaged agency. The GAO has said that overhauling the Pentagon's financial management will be a major challenge "that goes far beyond financial accounting to the very fiber of the department's business operations and management culture." In fact, no major part of DOD has ever passed an audit and the Pentagon readily admits that flawed business systems and practices are common within the agency. They claim it would take decades to get all of the agency books in order."

It's not just accounting incompetence though, it's deliberate policy decisions that waste hundreds of billions of dollars. Dr. Lawrence Korb, Asst Secy of Defense under Ronald Reagan, recently wrote a complete analysis of today's military programs. By targeting wasteful weapons systems designed to fight cold war enemies that no longer exist, he's found over $60 billion per year that could be cut from military budgets that actually would strengthen our national security.

Here's just one example from Korb's Report of the kind of unneeded pork we should cut: the V-22 Osprey program. This dog is a tilt rotor craft that takes off like a helicoptor and then flies like a plane. Or at least that's what it's supposed to do. Originally ordered in the 80's, it was dropped by the Army in the late 80's because of enormous technical problems and field test failures. Then-Sec'y of Defense Dick Cheney canceled the program in 1991. It was revived by Congress however and continued to live on in Pentagon budgets ever since. Several serious accidents in continued testing make the Osprey more deadly for our Armed Forces than the entire Kosovo War. The total cost of this dog is up to $50 billion. A little over $500 million was spent on payments to military contractors in FY2003, spread throughout two dozen different congressional districts. This dog should go before it kills any more Marines.

You want another piece of pork to dispense with? It's called "Operation Iraqi Freedom", an unforgiveable boondoggle that wastes $5.8 billion per month. That's $70 billion per year.

Follow Korb's advice on the traditional budget, and follow Congressman Murtha's advice on Iraq, and we'll have saved $260 billion over the next two years while actually strengthening military preparedness. That's twice what the Senator Coburn's package wants to slash, without snatching Medicare benefits from those who need them and slashing every domestic priority we have bedsides.

Dr. Korb presented the idea of his military cuts in October within days of Sen Coburn's Medicare and domestic cut package. But the TTLM "Porkbusters" effort apparently will have none of that. Only domestic programs are attacked in their database they've set up. Yet just that one Marine-killing Osprey program costs more than all of the pork identified in that database put together. So is "porkbusters" just a right wing framing campaign against domestic spending, or are they serious about actually trimming bigtime wasteful spending? It will be very interesting if Korb's recommendations ever makes it on the "Porkbusters" site.

Putting Porkbusters to the Test

In the aftermath of a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration, I was poking around the blogosphere and came across a growing site called "The Truth Laid Bear", which styles itself as a "fully developed portal to the blogosphere". It's pretty impressive too, with something like 7K visits per day and close to 50,000 blogs registered as part of the "TTLB Ecosystem". OK, so I registered my small blog with the group and was immediately branded an "Insignificant Microbe". Dudes, you might want to check with your publicist on the wisdom of that initial Out of the Box Experience. Subsequent scans by their software promoted me to "Slimy Mollusc". I feel so vindicated.

In any event it looks like a pretty nifty community to bop around in. One part of the site that drew my attention, being the hopeless would-be polysci wonk that I am, was a campaign called "Porkbusters". This brainchild of Instapundit is a great idea. It invites all bloggers to identify some particularly noisome example of government waste or pork and blog about it. We're also asked to pressure our Congresscritters to eliminate said pork forthwith. Porkbusters also promises to post each example on their site so that the whole community can share in the outrage.

Well I'm going to put this to the test. You see, the whole campaign appears to have a decidedly rightward tilt. Looking through the pork cited, all of it comes from domestic non military spending. Yet about 50% of the discretionary budget is devoted to the military, not including the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. My suspicions were confirmed by Porkbusters' highlighting of a right wing attempt to cut social programs, framed as the "Fiscal Watch Team Offset Package", an attempt to offset the expenses of cleaning up after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

So my next post will highlight some Pentagon pork. Let's see if the TTLB Ecosystem is up to including that in their efforts.

GOP Senate to Workers: It's Fine to Be Paid 1/3rd Less Than Depression-Era Laborers

First, some perspective. Pictured here are some day laborers working on construction of the Hoover Dam in 1932.


These men were part of a corps of 5,000 men paid 50 cents an hour to do the dirty unskilled labor that created the magnificent dam over 5 years of hard dangerous work. Those who got that 50 cents an hour considered themselves lucky, as wage rates were depressed by the height of the Great Depression. Still, labor unions at the time bitterly denounced the wage rates and working conditions of the Hoover Dam laborers:

"We believe that a great injustice is being perpetrated against the workers at Boulder Dam in the general lowering of working and living conditions on a project directly under the supervision of our Government during this time of depression and unemployment. Labor at Boulder Dam has no voice in the settling of wages, hours of labor, working conditions, safety or living conditions. Last year local Labor Unions attempted to have the Bacon-Davis prevailing wage law apply to the Boulder Canyon project and Boulder City. An investigation by the conciliation Division of the Department of Labor found that the Bacon-Davis Act did not become a law until two days after the Six Companies signed their contract. Further, that reservations were not covered by the prevailing rate of wage law and the result was a general lowering of wages and working conditions. An arbitrary scale of wage was imposed on skilled mechanics twenty-five to fifty percent lower than the prevailing scales for similar work in the territory adjacent to the project."

Picture and quote from the Boulder City/Hoover Dam Museum. Go there if you're in Vegas sometime. It's an incredible story they tell.

Now fast forward to 2005. The GOP dominated US Senate has just voted down the first increase of the minimum wage since 1997: from $5.15 to $6.25 an hour. All the Democrats plus four Republicans voted for it. It failed 51-49. In the time since the last increase in the minimum wage, Senators voted themselves seven pay raises totaling $28,000 per year.

What does this have to do with the Hoover Dam workers? Well, 50 cents an hour in the Depression translates into $7.89 per hour in today's dollars. (Don't believe me? Do the math with the historical Consumer Price Index.) What the Senate is saying is that today's minimum wage workers should be getting a wage 35% LOWER than unskilled, non-union labor in the height of the Great Depression. This is progress? No. It's a crime against Americans. Next election time, remember who did this to us.

The Called Ball Didn't Fall: Bush Tax Cuts an Objective Failure

Reality is an inconvenient thing sometimes. In the polarized atmosphere of today's politics, reality is often hard to come by. Everyone has their spin, their set of facts and warping of same. Because of this, no one trusts what the other side is saying, and perhaps rightly so. That's why I like to get back to basics and simply rely on hard primary data that no one can dispute or question. So when a friend in another forum claimed that the Bush administration's tax cuts actually worked to foster economic growth and raise tax receipts (as reported by USA Today), I thought it was time to look at the facts.

When playing pool, the way players prevent one another from benefiting from lucky shots is to require each player to call what shot he/she is trying to make. If it happens, then fine. If something else happens, like the wrong ball falling into the wrong pocket, it doesn't count. The President's budget message to Congress each January is the fiscal politics version of calling your shots, though the administration would like us to forget this.

Each year the President's budget message contains five year projections of where the administration thinks revenues, spending and deficits will be. These projections are based upon the enactment of whatever tax and spending plan the President proposes with the message. So if a President suggests a bold new tax cut for example, the predicted effects of that tax cut are built into the numbers. What that means is that revisiting those numbers afterwards tells us if the predictions actually happened the way they predicted.

These numbers distill all of the spin, all the arguments, loaded catchphrases and sales slogans down to mathematical objective reality. In this case the numbers are produced and are sourced from the administration itself in a audited and vetted procedure that no one of either party has questioned for decades. So no one on either side of the aisle should be able to quibble with them.

In January 2002, after 9/11 and President Bush's first round of tax cuts, the administration suggested the rest of their major tax cuts and predicted a swift economic rebound. 9/11 was blamed for the deterioration of Federal finances leading to a $106 billion deficit projected in 2002, the first since 1997. Enacting the Bush plan for 2002 would

"...boost 2002 GDP growth by 0.5 percent and lead to the creation of 300,000 more jobs. The Administration has built its economic forecasts around the assumption that an economic stimulus package will be enacted."

Those forecasts led to projects that by FY2004, economic growth would have been such to generate $2,175 billion in revenues. Offsetting that was $2,189 billion in spending, or a deficit of only $14 billion. Don't take my word for it. The Bush administration figures here are at the OMB's website in Excel, and Lotus 123.

Well 2004 has come and gone. The speeches are all done, the beans all counted. Here then is the REAL "No-Spin Zone". The final report on spending in 2004 comes to us in the President's budget message in January 2005. Bush reported that revenues came in at $1,880 billion, while spending was $2,292 billion.

Let's review. Actual revenues were $295 billion less than what the administration predicted would be the result of their economic growth and tax plan. They were off by almost 14%. They called their shot. The called ball didn't fall in the called pocket. Not even close. The period between prediction and outcome started AFTER 9/11 and ended BEFORE Katrina, so no excuses can be given for unforeseen events.

Now, Keynesian economics posits that raising deficit spending can sometimes jumpstart economic growth. Could any spending restraint by the administration have dampened growth during this time? Hardly. Bush administration projections called for them spending $2,189 billion a year by FY2004. Actual spending came in $103 billion MORE than what they had promised to do. No restraint there. The called ball didn't fall. Not even close.

So what of my friend who pointed to state government revenues as proof the tax cuts were working? Well, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities looks at state government finances closer than any other public source I know. Their data suggests that this area is subject to immense political spin. Turns out State government finances are still in fiscal crisis, though deficits are beginning to shrink. In other words, the growth we are seeing now merely is catching up from the fall those revenues took in recent years. Further, many states are "decoupling" various tax deduction items found in Federal tax codes, a stealth tax increase raising state taxes without fanfare or much notice.

In other words, while state tax revenues might be rising, they signify nothing but an accidental ball falling into the pocket, uncalled by any player. It's just not relevant to answering the question of whether Bush's tax cuts are working. The called ball didn't fall. End of story.

Feds Were Not Always This Incompetent: The Response to Hurricane Marilyn

Will wonders never cease? A friend of mine pointed me to an article in the National Review criticizing the Bush Administration's response to Katrina. They were pretty enthusiastic. Unfortunately, they were blaming bureaucracy in general, as if the notion of a government agency included incompetence by definition, wrapping it up with: "Unfortunately, there is not much that can be done to make bureaucracy less bureaucratic."

You can excuse the NatReview for feeling this way. After all, conservatives spend all their time when they're out of power complaining how government doesn't work. Then when in power they spend all their time proving the point.

There is a way to make government work though. You have to want it to work. You have to give a damn about the mission you're about. Then, all things can be possible.

I was looking around to find out how well the Feds have responded to previous hurricanes and came across this excellent resource at the Quick Response Program and the Natural Hazards Center of the University of Colorado. That center reminded me of an excellent test case measuring the response of the Bush I and Clinton administrations to similar situations. In 1989
the Bush administration spearheaded relief efforts in the US Virgin Islands following Hurricane Hugo, while the Clinton administration relied on many of the same personnel and resources to respond to Hurricane Marilyn's USVI destruction six years later.

Quick Response Report #82 , written by Betty Hearn Morrow and A. Kathleen Ragsdale of the International Hurricane Center of Florida International University, reported on the response to Marilyn, with specific reference to comparing that response to Hugo. The Hugo response was very unsatisfactory:

"In the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo, many St. Croix residents had expressed anger that the first federal planes to finally arrive several days after the storm carried troops armed with guns, not food and water, in what many felt was an overreaction to earlier looting reports (Morrow, 1992). There was a strong racial tone to the perception of many that the U.S. troops had arrived to protect white tourists from black locals, not to provide disaster assistance to the U.S. citizens of St. Croix, most of whom were people of color."

The notion that a majority Black community had to wait several days for Federal relief efforts to arrive should have a familiar ring to it for anyone following the controversy of Federal response to Katrina in New Orleans. Even so, was that just a function of the remoteness of the Virgin Islands and the difficulty in mobilizing a large relief effort? Apparently not, as the Clinton administration's response to Marilyn was quite different:

"In anticipation of their need, a number of FEMA disaster specialists had been sent to St. Thomas before Hurricane Marilyn's landfall. By daybreak on September 16, relief supplies and personnel had already begun arriving (FEMA, 1995e). This was the first deployment of the new Federal Interagency/State Field Assessment Team designed to provide quick and technically accurate early damage assessments. According to their reports, St. Thomas received the heaviest impact - 80% of the homes were damaged, 40% were uninhabitable, and 20-30% of the businesses were destroyed (FEMA, 1995b, 1995c)...

"Within one week after the storm, FEMA had directed close to 60 strategic missions transporting more than 1,500 emergency personnel and 1.3 million tons of essential cargo, including food, water, and plastic sheeting for roofs (FEMA, 1995a). Federal Coordinating Officer Dennis Kwiatkowski was quoted as saying, "We are pulling out all the stops in getting supplies down here to make recovery happen" (FEMA, 1995e). Five distribution sites were being operated by the Virgin Islands Territorial Emergency Management Agency (VITEMA) on St. Thomas. More than 2,100 federal agency personnel had been deployed. Four contracts had been awarded for immediate housing repairs. Dive teams had begun assessing infrastructural damage to the area's harbors and Navy Seabees had begun structural repairs to public buildings. Military and security forces included about 500 Army, Air Force, and Navy personnel, 500 National Guardsmen, and 500 federal law enforcement personnel (FEMA, 1995d). All major roads had been cleared, the St. Thomas airport was open for visual flight operations using a mobile air traffic control tower, and the St. Thomas Hospital was operational using generators for power."

So all of this happened "within one week", meaning that much of the work was already done on the ground in the time that the Federal Katrina responders took to glom onto the fact that they needed to respond at all.

Was the vastly quicker response to Katrina due to a much more talented force on the ground? No, most of the people involved were also involved with Hugo's response and could compare the two:

"Indeed one veteran FEMA reservist made these unsolicited remarks: "One thing that is noteworthy for your study, is that we seem to have had more active Army with weapons at Hugo. Here we have an adequate supply of federal marshals and they're doing a good job, but they [the military] were much more noticeable at Hugo. He had been one of the first FEMA workers to be sent to St. Croix after Hugo, which he attributed to having a military background. Yet, he stated, "I never felt one iota threatened on St. Croix . . . Other than the tension involved with going through one of these things [a hurricane], I found the people very helpful and honest." He had driven his rental car all over the island and was often helped when he lost his way. There was a general feeling that the atmosphere was more relaxed on St. Thomas
and, yet, the recovery process was going a lot faster than it had six years earlier on St. Croix."

So the Bush I Administration waited several days before getting help to the victims of Hurricane Hugo. When help arrived the first response was to send in the army to stop looting.

The Clinton administration responded much quicker, with humanitarian disaster relief in position in real time, offering much faster response to a devastating situation in St. Thomas. Because help was already there, looting by desperate people never happened.

Fast forward to Bush II's administration, which reverted to Bush I's pathetic too late and a dollar short response to Hugo. Once again the main initial concern was sending in the troops to stop looting, instead of disaster relief efforts. Once again help comes days too late.

The difference in these situations is that the Clinton administration WANTED to use government to make a difference for people. It's part and parcel to the Democratic Party ideology. The Republicans on the other hand have since Reagan wanted to shrink government down to a size small enough so that he could "drown it in a bathtub", as Grover Norquist famously said.

In a recent blog post I opined that right wingers were not qualified to run government, because their incompetence sprang from the simple fact that they hate their jobs, preferring to drown their jobs in a bathtub rather than execute them to the best of their ability. That blog post went up months ago. Unfortunately, Katrina just added a deadly exclamation point to the argument.

Hurricane Katrina: When the Alarm Bells Ring, Bush Hits the Snooze Button

At first blush it seems unfair to lay the disaster of Hurricane Katrina on George Bush's doorstep. After all, who can stop hurricanes from going wherever they want to go? However, the Bush administration, and the longer term policies of those who support the Bush administration, have a lot to do with how bad the carnage and destruction really are.

Failed: Protecting New Orleans from Flooding
First off, those levees did not have to have been breached. The Army Corps of Engineers has been working on shoring them up for some time, but they've been hampered by budget cuts through the years. The Southern Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project was started in 1995 under the Clinton administration. Over the years about $500 million of an estimated needed $750 million was spent shoring up levees. Under Bush, the money to complete the project was diverted in 2003, by pressures resulting from the Iraq war and the need for tax cuts for the rich.

Again, from Editor and Publisher:

"On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Failed: Redirecting the National Guard Away from the Scene
Speaking of the war in Iraq, are you wondering why the government emergency response so far has been so tepid? While not denigrating the heroic efforts of those that ARE on the scene, I'm sure they would be a lot happier if so much of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was there helping, instead of helplessly watching from Iraq.

Failed: Abandoning the Gulf Coast Poor
Lots of questions abound concerning why so many people didn't leave New Orleans beforehand. Well maybe that's because that the population of New Orleans is desperately poor and unable to hop into their handy Hummers or Esplanades to truck their way out to their summer homes. That might also explain the looting. When the infrastructure of civilization collapses all around you, you still have to eat, change the baby, take your medicine and survive.

New Orleans had a poverty rate in excess of 34% before the Bush administration came to town. Since then, the national poverty rate has climbed each and every year . Had there been a continuation of the Clinton administration's economic policies towards poverty, which reduced poverty by the largest degree in 30 years, it is likely that fewer people in New Orleans would have been in such vulnerable straits when Katrina hit. I tried to check New Orleans specific figures, but for some strange reason the New Orleans municipal web server isn't responding.

Failed: Where's the Proactive Government Response?
Speaking of all of that, there's a lot of talk about how ill-prepared the government response was, from the New York Times, "Waiting for a Leader" down to one citizen talking to the Chicago Sun Times comparing Fidel Castro's response to hurricane preparations versus the U.S. response.

"I detest Fidel Castro, but I will tell you this. When a hurricane is approaching Cuba, Castro has set up a system to bus everybody out of harm's way before disaster hits.

"We knew the hurricane was going to hit New Orleans and Mississippi hard. Why didn't we send buses in to get the poor people out before disaster hit? We spend millions on recovery and rescue AFTERWARDS . . . when we could have alleviated so much death BEFORE?"

The New Orleans Times-Picayune said on Tuesday:

"No one can say they didn't see it coming. ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

But of course, there's more. Turns out that on July 24 of this year, the Times-Picayune reported that government plans for evacuation of the poor began and ended with a DVD distributed throughout the city with the message that the poor were on their own if they needed to evacuate: From that Times-Picayune story (courtesy of Attytood at the Philadelphia Daily News)

"City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."

Keep this callous laissez faire attitude in mind when you peruse this excellent Katrina timeline.

Failed: Combating Global Warming and the Increasing Ferocity of Hurricanes
And finally, the big 800 pound elephant in the room. Fact is that just last month scientists at MIT nailed the connection between the increasing ferocity of hurricanes with global warming, specifically oceanic water temperatures. Years of global warming denial by Bush administration partisans and oil industry paid hacks have meant billions of tons of carbon dioxide warming the Earth that could have been ameliorated by now. Had we gotten to work on ratifying and implementing the Kyoto Treaty when we should have, that category 5 hurricane might have been a category 4 or 3 hurricane. That, as the people in the Gulf States are now painfully aware, makes a huge difference.

A concerned citizenry needs to respond. Over at the new NewOrleansJustice blog, there's a handy reference reminding us what the Constitutional duties of government officials are, naming names of those in charge of this unfolding catastrophe.

Today's Right Wingers are Unqualified for Government Service

Here's a challenge: Can anyone mention a single policy of George W. Bush's since he was installed as President that actually worked as advertised at the time? Anything? In any area?

Ever wonder why this question is so tough? I think the answer is so obvious that no one notices it: Modern Republican ideology hates government. When Ronald Reagan was President, he proclaimed that government wasn't for solving problems, government WAS the problem. When his budget director David Stockman wrote his famous mea culpa a few years later, he made it clear that "Reaganomics" was not a coherent economic plan, but merely a calculated scheme to "starve" government of resources to be able to do anything. Conservative boss Grover Norquist famously quipped that he wanted to shrink government down to a size small enough so that he could "drown it in a bathtub"

Can you think of any reason why anyone should expect success or even competence from anyone who hates the career endeavor they are in? Would you expect competence from a medical doctor who scoffs at the Hippocratic oath and thinks modern medical procedures are overkill and hooey? Would you entrust your home renovations to an electrician who thinks that building codes are evil and unnecessary? Would you trust your child's education to a teacher who wants to drown them in a bathtub?

Of course not.

Is there any reason why we should even expect competence from people who hate their jobs? When George Bush was running for President, he appeared to be blissfully unaware of basic matters of civics. Like castigating his opponents for wanting to run Social Security "like it's some kind of federal program". And it continues: From the President we hear that the Social Security Trust Fund is composed of "just IOU's", blissfully unaware that by describing Treasury Bonds as such, he violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment, an impeachable offense.

Once in power the right wing's incompetence continued of course. Allowing 9/11 to happen by aggressive neglect, at best. Demolishing the surplus and creating the largest deficits known to U.S. history. Putting the brakes on economic growth and jobs. Dismantling environmental protections. Rolling back the rights of working Americans. Demanding huge goals in education and refusing to fund the implementation of them. Trashing virtually every international treaty in operation. Bobbling the war in Afghanistan and turning it into the largest opium source in the world while allowing the Taliban back in to reorganize. Trashing our civil liberties. Manipulating our national science institutions for the benefit of corporate greed or weird religious extremist ends. And the final insult, the trumped up lies that enabled a totally fumbled, incompetently planned war on Iraq.

These are not the actions of a group who cares about government, about civics, about the health of the body politic and about America itself. These are the actions of the teacher who wants to drown kids in a bathtub, or a surgeon who thinks the Hippocratic Oath is nonsense.

A corollary to this idea is the fact that those who support the right side of the aisle share their leaders' distaste for all things government. Whether that distaste comes from personal convictions or the steady propaganda drip of the right wing media machine is subject to debate. Whatever the case is, no one can expect a person to devote much time learning about what is distasteful to him or her. So it should come as no surprise that those who have a distaste for government are those who know the least about its workings, policies and decisions. In the field, the ignorance of the workings of government by conservatives are way too numerous to mention. One characteristic example though is found in the rant of an otherwise apparently accomplished and intelligent blogger who recently argued that the U.S. Post Office would do far better if it relied not on taxes, but on user fees. This guy was apparently unaware that the USPS already does run on user fees. They're called "stamps".

The incompetent are leading the country with the support and grace of the ignorant. Be afraid. Be very afraid. People who hate what they do aren't qualified to remain in the profession they hate. Do them, and us, a favor and get them into another career path now!

The Biggest Reason to Protect Social Security

George Orwell once said: "We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." In our continuing series on Social Security, I decided to skip to the last myth to be busted:

Myth #6: Social Security is a drag on the economy. (Reality: Social Security has been a mighty engine for U.S. economic growth in several different ways.)

This is because in all of the excellent mobilization going on out there on telling the truth about Social Security, few are talking about perhaps the most fundamental reason of all not to tamper with the program. Fact is, Social Security is a critical piece of our society's economic infrastructure put into place to make the boom and bust business cycle smoother and more predictable. This in turn makes our economy safer, more productive and the most secure place on the planet for someone to do business.

De-emphasizing Social Security and the rest of the social safety net may have a stunning and more than a little frightening effect on the entire macro economy. To see it, let's do what Orwell suggests and look at restating the obvious. In this case we remind ourselves why the Social Security system was enacted in the first place.

When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, he explained to the American people exactly what the bill was designed to do:

"It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness." (Statement on Signing the Social Security Act August 14, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt, accessed at the FDR Library)

So Social Security is more than just a social program but also an integral part of managing the United States macro economy. The concept is pure Keynesian economics at it's best. If you ensure that a higher proportion of the population has buying power regardless of where you are in the boom or bust business cycle, you will lessen the severity of the bust, without having much of an effect on the boom.

It's just common sense. Take two local merchants. One merchant is located in a place where only 5% of the town can afford his products when times are bad. The other merchant lives in a place where 30% of the town can afford his products when times are bad. Which merchant is worse off? Which businessman can afford to hire more people, pay more taxes and contribute more to his community, helping to jump start a bad economy that much quicker?

A strong guaranteed Social Security and the rest of the social safety net ensured that no matter what, more people could afford to participate in the economy than if those programs weren't there. Then, as those dollars recycle through the economy changing hands at a fast pace, a 'multiplier effect' takes over and jump starts the economy quicker, lessening the impact of bad times and lengthening the life of good times.

Has it worked? You bet. Due to the stabilizing effects that President Roosevelt described, the severity of the ups and downs of the business cycle substantially lessened after Social Security was put in place. The United States was buffeted by extreme booms and busts throughout the 19th century up through the Great Depression, as shown on this chart.



While you can visually see how the jagged lines smoothed out especially after World War II, the business cycle smoothed out on a statistical basis as well. Before Social Security was enacted, the standard deviation of annual economic growth stood at 0.59 and after Social Security was enacted the standard deviation dropped to 0.44, indicating lower volatility. Taking the upheaval of World War II out of the equation drops post war standard deviation of annual growth to 0.24. This means that economic growth became more predictable and the business cycle of boom and bust became less painful for the society, just as Roosevelt had predicted. At the same time, the economy grew at a faster pace. In the seven decades before Social Security, average annual GDP growth stood at 3.4%. After Social Security was enacted, average annual growth rose to 3.86%. While that seems a small difference, it represents additional trillions in our economy today than otherwise might have been. (Data derived from L. Johnston and S.H. Williamson, "The Annual Real and Nominal GDP for the United States, 1789 Present." Accessed at Economic History Services, March 2004, http://www.eh.net/hmit/gdp/)

So what happens when the "economic structure of vastly greater soundness" is tampered with or eliminated? Especially if those doing the tampering show little ability to implement economic policies that perform as expected? Well, it's not much of a stretch to imagine that business cycles, both up and down, will become more pronounced, more unpredictable and harder to control. It's also not a stretch to imagine that overall economic growth might slow back down to pre-New Deal levels.

Don't let them destroy Social Security. We have only one macro economy to lose.