forsyth | Rabble Rousing

Okay, technically, I missed. But it's still here. And I'm still working on the False Dichotomy post. But some good old rabble rousing, that I'm gonna send as a letter to the editor, for the local papers here to ignore. It's behind the cut, for the curious. Any suggestions will be welcome, this is still basically a first and a half draft.

Last week we witnessed the sorry spectacle of a giant company defaulting on the promises it had made to its employees. This time, it was United Airlines ditching its pension plan. United Airlines receives billions of dollars in subsidies and loans from us, the taxpayers, and flies to and from airports paid for by our tax dollars, through skies monitored by infrastructure we built. The pensions that United's executives have thrown overboard will be made up, by once more, us, the taxpayers, through government pension insurance. Many of the employees will get far less than the pensions they were promised, earned, and paid into.

United's executives have been properly, generically sorrowful, such as Jake Brace, the Chief Financial Officer, who said the deal was "not a good outcome [but] it's unfortunately a necessary outcome. This is not in any way a joyous day."

I'm sure. I wonder how many of the executives are going to suffer "necessary" cuts to their pay and benefits, while they threaten their workers with still more reduced pay and unilaterally rewritten contracts. After all, the executives rake in millions of dollars in pay and benefits, surely they'd be willing to share the sacrifice and pain of a "necessary outcome."

Yeah, me neither. But that's how things work these days, aren't they? The people in charge, whose job it is to be responsible, aren't. They're hired to lead the company, to steer it through problems. When something goes wrong, they're supposed to fix it. But what we get is "sacrifices" that only apply to everybody else, all the regular workers. Any cuts or firings happen on down the ladder, and then the executive who "got rid of a financial burden" gets a raise and promoted. Pain's for the little people.

Which is why it's not surprising President Bush's so-called plans for Social Security are so awful. He prides himself on his time as an executive, despite the inglorious fates of the businesses he helmed. He's the "CEO President," and came out of exactly that culture of privilege and disconnect.

What is President Bush's plan, anyway? For months and months, all he'd dare tell us was his insistence on "private accounts." When he was flying around the country on our dollars, trying to sell his plan, he wouldn't even tell his hand-picked audiences any specifics, just that Social Security was going to be "bankrupt" soon. And when anybody asked how he'd pay for the private accounts, his only answer was to take out more loans, mostly from China. But recently, the President's finally revealed more of his plan. Because, he claims, Social Security is going to be "bankrupt", there will have to be benefit cuts in the future. So the President's solution is to... cut benefits. So he's going to solve the problem by doing exactly what he said we'd have to do if we didn't do anything.

Which leads to the other problem with the President's Social Security "plan." There is no crisis. Social Security is not going to be "bankrupt" any time soon. If you look at the numbers used in selling the program, the miracles that the private accounts are supposed to provide use what I'll call the "happy numbers", which are much more optimistic than the "doom and gloom" numbers he's been using to claim Social Security's going "bankrupt." If you use the doom and gloom numbers on the private accounts, they do practically nothing, other than make us take out billions more in loans. And if you use the happy numbers on Social Security, then Social Security never goes "bankrupt."

And of course, the entire time President Bush's been jaunting across the country whipping up this "crisis," he and the Republican Congress have been spending like mad. They've been binge borrowing, then giving huge chunks of change to their buddies, the richest of the rich, in tax giveaways and the elimination of estate and capital gains taxes, which only affect tiny slivers of America. And you can bet who's going to have to pay back those loans, you and me, and our kids. Forget fiscal restraint, it's as if they've completely forgotten we're in the middle of a war, with people dying every day. $87 billion for the troops, and $100 billion in the latest tax giveaway for their contributors. All the pain and the sacrifice comes from the little people, while the ones on top get rewarded, even when they screw up.

That's no way to run a business, or a country.

For my next rant, it'll be something about how the Republicans in Congress are whiny crybabies who're throwing a hissyfit that they've only gotten 95% of the judges they wanted appointed, so they're going to throw a hissy-fit and use their tiny majority to destroy even more of the rules they've been destroying for the past five yeas (and that they abused to block many many lots of Clinton's judges).

Hey they want to act like spoiled, corrupt, power-hungry brats, it's time somebody called them on it. Of course, the more malevolent interpretation would be they're just executing a mad power-grab, but calling them whiny spoiled brats is probably better for propaganda.

Tags: Politics, Writing, Rants