The State of Confusion

Personal note: The lateness of this note (which I had intended to post over the weekend) is due, in part, to the fact that my computer was taken over by various adware, viruses, several trojan horses, and other software intended to track my usage of the 'net (or worse). While the following post was written well in advance of this event - and needs to be published - never fear that at some point in the near future I will comment about the folks that write and propagate such code. Let's just say that I rate the current administration and its actions as nearly saintly compared to these leeches.........

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This past week, I watched the “State of the Union” address in order to get some idea what the “mandates“ are that will be addressed by this lame duck president. Most of what he had to say either conveyed nothing of meaning to me personally (something common to most of these addresses by any president of any stripe) or left me feeling angry and almost violated. More on that in a minute. There were, I have to admit, two points made within the address with which I do agree:

- Social Security, as it is currently structured and managed, is destined to fail some day, and

- We need to support our troops around the world in whatever ways possible.

Social Security cannot support itself with population demographics being what they are. As has been laid out quite succinctly by many people, when this entitlement was first conceived and enacted, there were many workers supporting each retiree, and the system could easily sustain itself. However, as we have improved our standard of living and developed medicinal treatments to prolong life, this balance is slowly but inexorably shifting to fewer workers per retiree.

So, one of three things must happen - 1) current and future workers must pay more in taxes in order to keep benefits at parity with past generations; 2) current and future retirees must accept lower benefits as fewer workers supporting them means less money in the pool, or 3) the government must step in with supplemental benefits.

None of these is easy or painless. They all require someone with a backbone to suggest and carry them out. We have perhaps one solid backbone in the Executive and Legislative branches combined.

So this bold new initiative to save Social Security is laid on the table. Going beyond the quite proper assumptions made above about the system as it stands, one key assertion was made to support taking bold action now - timing of the failure of the system. It was claimed that the system will fail within 13 years if nothing is done. No one - not one opinion I have read nor the quick “back of the envelope” calculation I made - agrees with, nor comes anywhere near this short a time. It’s bunk, intending to scare folks into talking about a fix, plain and simple.
But perhaps the single biggest thing that I saw in this whole conversation, and which the mainstream media has conspicuously stayed away from, is the question of benefits for those 55 and above. Pandering of this magnitude is rarely seen in politics these days - “For those 55 and over, there will be no reduction of benefits” (or something very close to that). Why not change benefits for those already in the AARP generation? Wouldn’t the future value of today’s savings have a huge impact?

I’ll tell you why - because the AARP generation forms a key constituency of the Conservative Right, and they do mobilize and get out the vote.

You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Another underlying assumption not discussed is that Social Security provides a living income for those that really on it. It may, but it’s a pretty dismal standard of living by most any measure. To live in a way that we are accustomed to in our retirement years, supplemental income from other investments or assets is required.

Which brings me to the subject of initiatives like the IRA and plans like 401ks. Weren’t these sold, when they were first proposed, at least in part on the assumption that Social Security cannot and would not provide for a living wage for those of us retiring 20, 30, or more years out? Those of us who are fiscally responsible enough to plan for the reductions of benefits from Social Security (if not outright failure) are not considered in the administration’s calculations. The math’s too complicated - if not too complicated to figure out, then too complicated to try to communicate.

Which brings me around to what I see as the real reason this whole discussion was started at the beginning of the second term of this president’s administration - it’s a diversion to keep us thinking about a domestic-policy issue, while the case for war against yet another “up and coming terrorist country” in the War on Terror is made.

Think I’m kidding? Even CNN picked up on that, reporting on Condi Rice’s statements about invading Iran. I pray that this administration is not so arrogant as to think that our “success” in Iraq will be as “easily” achieved in other Arab countries desperately in need of “liberation”.

Which now brings me back to my second point of agreement with the address - we need to support our troops. This second invasion of Iraq was based on the premise that weapons of mass destruction were under development and nearly ready for deployment. We now know, through no less than the administration’s own admissions, that there never were any WMD. Let’s finish the work in Iraq, get them stabilized and self-governing, and get out.

Then, let’s not do this again. Let’s not send our young men and women into war based on phantoms or, perhaps, for some quiet personal agenda. These are people we are talking about - not pawns in some global chess game for power through the currencies of oil and money.
True leaders lead by doing what’s best for the USA, not what’s best for them through their personal investments and holdings. Spending tens (and soon to be hundreds) of billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of lives perpetuating this country’s needs on the oil economy seems self-serving.

What if we spent that money on research into alternative fuels? Better photovoltaic conversion rates for solar power? Better fuel efficiency for our vehicles? Better building techniques for our homes that increase insulative value?

What if, indeed.

Mandates Considered

Consider this exchange, in the Marketing Department of any company large enough to have one:

“How’s that market survey coming on the new and improved Widget?”, asks Sue, Director of Marketing.

“Well, the responses are all in and have been tallied. Of the respondents who participated, 51.4% of them responded favorably”, responds Bill, Marketing Manager for Widgets.

“Great!”, Sue explodes, “A clear mandate for the product!”

Sound reasonable? Of course not. At 51.4%, no marketing person or department in their right mind would even consider attempting to bring such a product to market. And no one would claim a clear mandate.

However, this president does claim a mandate based on the November election. Of those who voted in the 2004 presidential election, 51.4% voted for George Bush. Based on that percentage, he continues to claim a “mandate” for his administration’s policies from the first term, and that those policies should be continued and expanded in the second term.

Now, consider this alternative exchange at the same firm:

“How’s that market survey coming on the new and improved Widget?”, asks Sue, Director of Marketing.

“Well, the responses are all in and have been tallied. Of the respondents who participated, 51.4% of them responded favorably”, responds Bill, Marketing Manager for Widgets.

“That’s all?”, Sue replies incredulously. “But this is all we have. We have no other products in the pipeline. Without this, we have nothing to be recognized for; nothing to be remembered for.”

“We have what we have, and there are at least some people who like it. The other thing we have is the ability to blanket the market with our message. Who knows, if we say it enough times, maybe people will begin to believe that we are the best option out there for Widgets and they will say to themselves, ’We have to buy that‘,” Bill offers up.

“I like the way you think. That just might work..........”

Sound far-fetched? Sound ludicrous? It’s not. It’s the modus operandi for this administration. They trot out as many people from as many different departments that might have an opinion and they all say the same thing in an effort to get people to believe whatever the issue of the moment is - the War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Axis of Evil, the Imminent Demise of Social Security.

Why do we buy into this? Because that’s all we’re fed by our mainstream media outlets. Investigative reporting of the type that exposed Watergate simply doesn’t exist in this country any more. As Bob Schieffer wrote in his memoir "This Just In: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV" , once the mainstream media shifted its collective thinking about news gathering and reporting as a fundamental need and a cost of doing business, to just another part of the network that must be self-sustaining and generate revenues to at least break even, true investigative news reporting disappeared.

So now we get the news bites, the sound bits, the extreme stories that the news organizations see as being probably to bring in viewers and prop up the ratings. In a sports bar I was in recently in California, the hard news of the afternoon was the high-speed chase being played out on the LA freeway system. People in the bar sat and watched the TVs - ALL of which had been switched over to the chase - for over two hours, commenting on and rooting for or against the runaway driver in their own ways.

How much money was spent on fuel for the helicopters covering the action? What other news stories could have been under investigation using that money? We’ll never know, because the networks knew they could sell advertising time at a premium, because people all over the area were like those people in that bar - sitting and watching the action.

So how do we change the situation? How do we, as a society, demand better? For starters, let’s stop being a nation of rubber-neckers, looking for the next bloody auto accident to gawk at. Demand better from wherever it is you get your news. Below are some ideas:

• Turn Fox News off - turn BBC News on; or try the English language version of Al Jazeera on-line news - www.english.aljazeera.net. (On second thought, just turn Fox off altogether).
  
  
• Put down the Star - pick up a copy of the Financial Times or the English language version of Le Monde and see how the rest of the world views itself and we Americans.
  
  
• Change the channel from “Everybody Loves Raymond” to “C-Span” in order to see how the Congress really operates. I‘ll admit, it can be dead boring at times. At others, it’s actually quite enlightening.
  
  
• Better yet, turn off the TV and read a book. Not Tom Clancy or a bodice-ripper; try a historical account of the Vietnam war, a book about religious intolerance, or a textbook on marketing in order to better understand how those messages you see all around you every day are designed and used to influence your opinion.
  
  
• Instead of going to www.whitehouse.com, try www.whitehouse.gov, or the web site for either major political party (or any of the smaller “fringe” parties). See what they have to say. Read their platforms; try to understand their positions.
  
  

Bottom line - become better informed. Don’t believe everything you see on TV or in print. Take in as many different points of view as you can, and decide for yourself. Don’t become anyone’s shill - speak your mind about your opinions, carefully considered and arrived at by you and you alone.