The following excerpt is from the 2002 book Banking on Death, or Investing in Life: The History and Future of Pensions, by Robin Blackburn, pp 387-89. It is for wonks only. I am not going to fancy it up with pictures nor explain anything to anyone, save one comment: In the 1990’s, what they called “New Democrats” are now known as “Conservadems”, or “Blue Dogs.” The footnotes are the author’s.

…The dilemma posed by Social Security was different. There was business backing for privatization but it was not yet overwhelming. In the absence of an agreed path to privatization the financial corporations were cautious, fearing that they could be lumbered with a large number of unprofitable small investors. Clinton had pleased his constituency by giving them something they really wanted – a large cut in capital gains tax – and for the time being most were content. Nevertheless, there was still a definite ideological and cultural impetus towards privatization. The extraordinary buoyancy of the stock market was giving added appeal to the idea that the program’s difficulties could be fixed by personal accounts. Prominent economists were coming forward with detailed blueprints. We will shortly consider the scheme drawn up my Martin Feldstien. But since Feldstein inclined to support the Republicans, it was also significant the Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University and Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard produced a partial privatization plan for Social Security in 1997. These men were closer to [Larry] Summers and other figures in the administration, and had both served, with Washington’s approval, as advisers to the Russian government.

At a conference held at Harvard in June, 2001, former staff members of the Clinton Administration presented papers explaining that plans for partial privatization or mandatory private provision had been intensively prepared in 1997-98 but abandoned prior to the State of the Union address in 1999. A newspaper report explained:

President Clinton and his economic advisers spent 18 months secretly discussing the elements of a plan to add individual accounts to Social Security, but abandoned it when it became clear the president would be impeached … Throughout 1998 a working group met once or twice a week, with the agenda disguised on official schedules, to discuss options and has out details of a proposal. The president was briefed every six weeks.(1)

The so-called ‘Special Issues’ task force was set up by Larry Summers and Gene Sperling, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. While some of those involved favored privatization anyway, there was also the political objective of devising a reform that could bring together Republicans and New Democrats. One of the papers, written by the of the aides involved, makes it clear that this was believed to require mandatory private accounts: ‘For example, one option was for worker to indicate their choice of a private sector fund manager on their 1040 tax form. The working group’s estimates were at the level of detail that it was determined how many digits an ID number would have to be for each fund and how many key strokes would therefore be required to enter all the ID numbers each year.’

… But it was not technical or design questions which eventually doomed the working party’s efforts. In the event Monica Lewinsky sabotaged the privatization cause. As the aide explains:

Toward the end of 1998, as the possibility that the President would be impeached came clearly into view, the policy dynamic of Social Security debate changed dramatically and it became clear to the White House that this was not a time to take risks on the scale that would be necessary to achieve a deal on an issue as contentious as Social Security reform. The President decided to follow a strategy of trying to unite the Democrats around a plan that would strengthen Social Security by transferring some of the budget surpluses to Social Security and investing a portion of the transferred funds in equities. (2)

A paper by a different group of Clinton aides further explained that the political situation by no means deterred the White House from courting controversy” ‘Put simply, the communications and political staff at the White House were enthusiastic about anything, including Social Security reform, that would divert attention from the scandal. Clinton evidently decided that it would be better to advocate controversial means for saving Social Security than to arouse a different sort of controversy that would have attended a privatization bid.
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(1) Thomas E. MacUrdy and John Shoven, ‘Asset Allocation and Risk Allocation: Can Social Security improve its future solvency problem by investing in private securities?, in John Y. Campbell and Martin Feldstein eds, Risk Aspects of Investment-Based Social Security Reform, Chicago and London, pp 11-32.
(2) Jim Stanford, Paper Boom, Ottawa 1999, p. 349

A few of us who are politically inclined have experienced what I call “The Bounce.” It is a life-shattering experience wherein we realize that our political philosophy is bankrupt, and so we leave it and go shopping for another.

I was once a right winger. Dave Budge was once a communist, he says. David Horowitz was a Maoist. The “Neo-Cons” are reformed leftists.

We bouncers think ourselves very special. After all, we thought our way through a defective philosophy to fine a better one. We think good, or so we think.

But it ain’t quite like that. Yeah, we read and think a lot, but the bounce is quite a different phenomenon than we imagine it. As I explained to Budge (click on link – it’s a fun thread for masochists), our political outlooks are coats of armor that protect us from reality. Once we have a philosophy of everything, we can put on our smug hats and profundinate to the rest of the world on how things should be.

So Budge is now a libertarian, Horowitz a … Brownshirt? The “Neo-Cons”, I need say no more. And me? I really did think, as I bounced from right to left that someone had slipped the answer to the left. I went for years forcing the world into that mental stockade. And, since I was a former member of the right … well, I had insight that others lacked. Got that? I bounced, you see …

I’ll never be a righty again, of course, especially in the post-Buckley era. Bill Buckley single-handedly got rid of the lunatic fringe, but they are back now in droves, and are so strong that it is hard to see the thoughtful conservatives that are still around.

But I am also not a lefty, at least not in the American sense. There is no left in the United States. What there was of it withered and died in the post-war era. There was a nice compromise in the 1950’s, where they let us have our unions, our Social Security, but they still insisted on their wars and military spending, and fear governed. The advent of the National Security State in 1947, and the deep propaganda of the Cold War, followed by the Drug War, and now the Terror War … makes us a society where fear governs. And where people are afraid of each other, there can be no left. Propaganda has destroyed our minds, so that only the passing of generations will bring us back to sanity.

The unions are shells, and Social Security is under attack again, this time by Democrats, who are supposedly our “left.” We are so right wing that the right wing Democrats look like lefties to us.

The bounce … oh yeah – the bounce: Those of us who are deeply indoctrinated in one set of ideas, and who find those ideas to be defective, naturally look for another set of ideas to replace the old ones. We cannot live without the indoctrination. It defines us, sets us apart, makes us special. We literally self-indoctrinate. Budge has built himself a fortress complete with machine gun turret of ideas that simply do not work … and reality is a crawl across the bottom of his screen, hardly noticed.

This is not a world that conforms to ideology. They are all defective. As I told Budge, there is really only one philosophical insight that matters, and it consists of two words:

Power corrupts.

That is the meaning of Tolkien’s “ring”- if affected all who touched it. It is power. We cannot manage it, we cannot come near it without changing. Frodo had to go away at the end. Even though he was a good and strong and courageous man, he had touched the ring, and it had changed him.

I call myself a “European-style socialist” in debate now and then, and in this country, which is all right wing all the time, that is like a loud fart in church. But by that expression, I do not mean that I have adopted the tenants of socialism, or that I do not recognize the good things about what we call “capitalism.” It simply means that in Europe, at this time, power is distributed among the business class, the workers, the government agencies and the military in such a way as there are checks and balances. For most of them, life is very good. Balance is the key.

But nothing lasts. Power waits in the wings there just as here. Power always hovers nearby.

There is a very interesting debate going on down here in Colorado right now. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed anything like it. Michael Bennet, a right wing Democrat, won the nomination from Andrew Romanoff, who ran as a progressive. (Don’t know what to think about that, as Romanoff was once a member of the DLC. Sometimes even our primary choices are fake.)

Bennet has no use for progressives, and even refuses to come on the Denver radio station and talk to the progressive base. That is such a surprise, as usually right wing Democrats understand give and take, and realize that to get progressives to vote for them, they have to give something.

But oddly, Bennet is giving nothing. I’ve never seen that before! Imagine a right wing Democrat refusing to give anything to progressives! It’s crazy, but when I look in those beady eyes, I think he might want to have them arrested.

So the debate is this: Democrats say that as bad as Bennet is, if his opponent, Ken Buck, gets in office, things will be even worse! And they also say that progressives have this crazy “all or nothing” mentality and would rather (they are coining a phrase here, so please try to imagine it visually) “cut off their nose to spite their faces.”

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OK. That was sarcasm. This is real: To please his base, Ken Buck is running as a wild-eyed right winger. To avoid making promises, Michael Bennet is avoiding progressives, and being vague. He thinks progressives have nowhere else to go anyway, so fuck ’em. This being America, progressives being mild and malleable, he’s probably right.

When Bennet or Buck get to Washington, if both could be elected, they would disappear behind closed doors,sit down, shake hands, and get to work on the corporate agenda. They are the same person. They are only playing roles assigned them by political necessity.

Democrats who call progressives names for not supporting their crappy candidate are stupid. Progressives who vote for that crappy candidate because he is the “lesser of evils” are stupid.

I know no other words that fits so well.

Glenn Greenwald announces that President Obama has cruise-cluster-bombed yet another country, this time Yemen, and (I think) nominates him for a second undeserved Nobel Peace prize. :

Amnesty International, June 7, 2010:

Amnesty International has released images of a US-manufactured cruise missile that carried cluster munitions, apparently taken following an attack on an alleged al-Qa’ida training camp in Yemen that killed 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children.

The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma’jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa’ida.

My bet on the “al-Qa’ida” members killed? See below.

Ordinary everyday Muslims have a weird habit of becoming post-humus members of “al-Qa’ida.” It justifies the slaughter of innocent people.

But let’s be real for a moment here: Our wars are not controlled or even affected in any way by electoral politics. The course of events in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Yemen, would not be different had John McCain won the election. Obama is a figurehead.

Here is an interesting post over at 4&20. Some women made a statement by baring their breasts in a gathering on the Clark’s Fork River near Missoula. The comment thread isn’t particularly useful – it’s just an exhibition of two ugly features of American life: Victorian prudishness, and Rosie the Riveter feminism.

The women are demanding “equality” in a stupid manner – they want to be able to display their chests in public in the same manner that men can. They forget one poignant feature about women: breasts. Men find them extremely attractive. Men are stimulated by looking at them. *

Breasts are really neat things. They are just globules of flesh designed to deliver milk to infants through a nipple on the front, and yet evolution has set them aside for another purpose – to attract and stimulate men. Our bodies, like women themselves, are complicated products of long evolutionary selection processes. The curves on the female body for instance, are there to allow her to bear children, and yet that 70% waist-to-hip ratio drives men nuts. Female features are soft – the hair, the faces … don’t get me going here.

The Clark’s Fork brigade – are they really that stupid? I suggested in the comments something I’ve noted about nude beaches and nude pumpkin runs and bike rides and such – that the women (and men) putting their wares on display in public are usually those who don’t enjoy much demand in private. A woman with a really attractive rack knows only to titillate (pardon the expression) without going on full display. The male imagination does the rest.

Is it discrimination that men can show their wares while women can’t? I suppose. It ought not to be illegal, but that is a Victorian hangover. If it were legal, it would be no more prevalent than it is now. Attractive women would not be walking down the sidewalk or into work with their mammary units in full bounce mode. The research on this issue was best explained by Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (paraphrased): Women’s bodies are works of art. Men’s bodies are functional. Women don’t get the same jolt at seeing a naked man as men do with women. When women go on display, men get aroused. That could be dangerous. Women want to filter potential mates, and public advertising of racks is a poor choice of media.

Woody Allen also chimed in on this issue, regarding the male organ – it is, he said, both an object of revulsion and attraction on the part of women. Once attracted to the other qualities of a potential mate, a woman will enjoy his giblets, but before that time, she has no interest in seeing them. It’s just not the same.

We’re different, Clark’s Fork cadre. We’re just different.

By the way, I know I will be accused of sexism and misogyny for writing this. I know that form of posturing well. Here are two things to consider: As we age, we become less attractive. I am sixty. If I show myself in public without proper cover, I would rightly be arrested for genuine indecency. Secondly, the positive outcomes from the hard and courageous work of feminists – greater opportunity and equality in the workplace, sexual liberation and more avenues to enjoy life and freedom – none of that is affected in the least by what is written above. Men still like looking at women.
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*Better yet, looking a breasts is good for men. There was a bizarre study in Germany that compared two groups of men – one group was asked to look at breasts for ten minutes daily, the other, poor schmucks, not. The results: The ogling group exhibited longer life expectancy, lower blood pressure, better blood circulation, and less chance of coronary heart disease. Further, the study said, the ten-minutes of admiration had the same effect as a 30 minute cardio workout.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.” (Albert Einstein)

Well, Social Security is under attack again, and the attacks are serious, even more so now that Democrats are in power. Paul Krugman put up a good column today.

A lot of the Beltway establishment has a thing about Social Security — in a way, by the way, they don’t have a thing about Medicare, which is a vastly more important long-run problem. No matter how much you talk logic or numbers, they’re obsessed with the idea that Social Security must be cut; as I wrote back when, somewhere back in the 90s talking tough on Social Security became a badge of seriousness, and facts just can’t make a dent in that social convention.

Indeed, facts don’t matter, but action does. And we need serious action now to once again save the program from predators.

In my time, the first serious attack on the program came in the early 1980’s when Ronald Reagan was president. It was full frontal, and failed miserably. They quickly learned that the program was extremely popular, that it was a third rail. They backed off, and did two things:1) Using JuJitsu, they instituted the largest tax increase in history, applied solely against working people and retirees receiving benefits; 2) they set out to convince the younger generation that the program could not be sustained, and that they would never receive benefits. (Most youth that I have talked to echo that choice bit of propaganda.)

The next, and more serious attack,came in the late 1990’s, when Bill Clinton was president. As revealed by aides after he left office, he was set to spring a secret privatization plan on us, and it had gone so far as to have measurements be made of the amount of keyboard input time would be necessary to set up the new private accounts. Fortunately for all of us, Clinton is a sleazeball, and his presidency was jeopardized by the Monica scandal. To shore up support, he needed to rally his base, and so became a champion of the program. The “Lock Box” was created.

But it was close. Too close.

The next attack came from George W. Bush in 2005. He said he was going to spend some “political capital” to privatize the program. But since he was perceived as a right wing Republican, and since he had very little capital, it was easy to mount opposition, and the plan quietly died.

We are in trouble now, serious trouble. One, a Democrat is in office, and two, his administration is offering assurances that the program is safe. Assurances are nothing more than a disarming tactic. As with the Public Option, the linchpin of health care reform, Democrat assurances are probably meant to forestall ground-level organization. They will then, in Clinton fashion, spring on us the fully developed privatization plan.

These are Democrats. I may not know much, but I know Democrats.They are far, far more dangerous than Republicans. Now is the time to join organizations that exist to prot3ectSocial Security, and spend what money and effort you can for that cause.

MoveOn is running a campaign.

National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Preserve

Preserve Your Social Security

And, of course, write to your representative and senators. Be polite but firm. Tell them that the issue is important, that if they betray trust, you will vote for their opponent in the next election. (That makes your one vote into two.) It takes courage to vote for a Republican to punish a Democrat, but it is easier to unite against Republicans. Only Democrats can undermine Democrats.

From Glenn Greenwald: What political courage looks like:

Park 51 opponents have made much of the fact that polls show majority support for their view, as though public opinion should dictate where religious minorities can congregate. A new poll today reveals that 62% of Americans — a record high — now oppose the war in Afghanistan. By the reasoning of project opponents, shouldn’t that mean that public opinion should be honored with a withdrawal from that country? After all, religious freedoms are not supposed to be dependent upon the approval of majorities; the whole point of such liberties is to protect minorities from majoritarian frenzies. By contrast, wars are actually supposed to be fought only with the support of the citizenry. If majority sentiment should prevail, a far more compelling case can be made that it should do so with regard to Afghanistan than with the religious liberties of a minority group.

Asking for political courage from politicians who represent the most frightened and neurotic people on the planet is a fool’s errand. Of course they know what is up, how wrong what they are doing is. But what is there to make them do the right thing? In American politics, doing the right thing is its own punishment.